Add to this the wall that electric vehicle roll-out will hit when there is simply not enough electricity being generated to replace petrol and diesel fuels; I have long suspected that Hydrogen fuelled vehicles are the VHS of sustainable transport, and battery cars are the Betamax technology.
But where do we get all that Hydrogen from?
Well, it's what we always used to burn in our homes before North Sea gas came along. Older readers will recall the mass-conversion of domestic cookers to methane when that fuel came on line - surely it's also possible to convert them back, if we reverted to a mix of Hydrogen, Methane and CO in our gas networks?
Coal gas, or Town gas as it was called, as almost every town in the country had its own gas plant, is obtained by heating coal in the absence of air. And we've got billions and billions of tons of coal under our feet. And now of course the dirty and dangerous work of getting it out of the ground, even from under water, can be done by robotic mining machines, piloted by technicians sitting at their terminals on the surface.
It may still be a pipe dream, but I feel that we are creeping closer and closer.
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| Robot miners are already in use ... in China |
28 comments:
If we are to rely on new technology to reduce carbon dioxide (and other pollutants) the I suspect that we not only have to change the fuel of our cars but also reduce the need for them.
So, in a thirty year plan or so we have to reduce the *need* for cars or long journeys. So... reintroduce cottage hospitals for ordinary medical care. Bring back smaller local schools. Make local 'corner shops' a requirement for new estates. Increase the availability of buses and routes. Reopen train routes.
None of this will be cheap, but spread over decades is doable. Back to the 50's but with electric/hydrogen trains, lorries, and buses.
As I recall, the other product from the Town Gas process was huge mounds of coke which was used partly as smokeless domestic fuel and partly for steel smelting. And, of course, the source of the heat for separating Town Gas from coal was ... burning coal.
If you want lots of hydrogen, how about the tropical coasts? Lots of reliable solar power to both desalinate the sea water and split it into hydrogen and oxygen.
Some of the desalinated water can also be used to irrigate crops, to improve the locale.
Perhaps African coasts could be the next big thing in global energy, although storing hydrogen for long-distance shipping has leakage issues.
Of course, burning all that hydrogen will put a lot of water vapour into the air, probably affecting rainfall patterns and the rivers of those countries that use a lot of it.
The law of unintended consequences is bound to bite somebody on the backside.
I don't get it, if all people want to do is erect a tent in Victoria Street and spend the day marching, chanting and singing "revolutionary" songs, we have all the power we need?
You don't (necessarily) need robot miners - there's a way of extracting the gas in situ:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification
Thought that for a long time.
When Mrs T took on the NUM she should have ordered the mothballing of the mines - skeleton staff to maintain access in future, as a resource we might need one day. It's estimated we still have 3.5 billion tonnes available and perhaps far, far more.
Besides, if the theory about a coming solar Maunder Minimum is right we may need to burn coal like Billy-o to counter the global freezing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sh_nlz43Pc
P.S. Forgot to include: re est. UK coal reserves -
https://euracoal.eu/info/country-profiles/united-kingdom/
@DJ - CO2 is not a pollutant and there is no scientific/environmental 'need' to reduce its output - it's all hyperbolic, politicised nonsense.
Energy is the backbone of every modern society and those with the cheapest access to it have the most prosperous economies and best looked-after residents.
This self-destructive drive to increase energy costs beyond what even the ordinary person can afford is the most ridiculous policy I have ever seen and its promotion by knee-jerk, no-nothing, gullible morons is laughable.
Our country could be self-sufficient in energy, CHEAP energy, and wipe the floor with most of the rest of the world, certainly Europe, if sensible policies were put in place. NO PARTY has sensible policies on energy except UKIP (possibly TBP when they get around to making policy?)
When the factual truth dawns on these absolute dickwads that are dead against progress and instead of dragging shitweasels off the top of tube trains we start hamstringing 'climate protesters and energy activists' instead then it will be the FIRST country to come to its energy-senses that survives the coming financial and economic onslaught we're about to meet head on.
I fail to see how our leadership cannot see this plain and simple course of action. It's almost as if they WANT us to collapse into utter failure.
The storage and transmission of Hydrogen has its problems; the H2 molecules are so tiny that they leak out of almost anything; so crumbly old networks pipes are definitely leaky!
Assuming we fix the above, we could perhaps be sensible though and make H2 by splitting water overnight with unused electricity from "permanently on" generators. The H2 is put to use in (for example) fuel cells and the O2 is sold off commercially - or allowed back into the atmosphere to replenish it.
The only sensible long-term energy supplies should be nuclear, to provide clean, CO2-free electricity for all the proposed electric vehicles.
Conventional nuclear power stations are NOT the answer, due to huge constructional & fuelling costs, along with the hazards. But the inherently-safe fused thorium salt reactor designs (first developed in the 1960s) not only shut themselves down safely if coolant is lost, but also consume and break down radionuclides in their fuel, added from other reactors' waste. There are commercial designs underway in both India & China, sized for large towns, etc. Smaller units may be modular, in shipping containers.
If the world converted to these safe and reliable power units, oil & coal could be left in the ground for future generations, or reserved for non-fuel uses such as plastics.
Sir,
the environazi do not want to give us access to "clean" energy, whatever clean means.
what the environazi want is to kill us all, by making impossible for us to have energy.
and energy is everything.
it is not a coincidence that the environazi keep steering us towards increasingly more complex, expensive, unreliable, scarce energy sources. and if technology makes one of those sources cheap and reliable, they immediately switch gear and ban it, or heavily tax and regulate it. as they did with nuclear fission energy.
re hydrogen: i could not imagine anything more difficult and dangerous to handle, and more scarce in nature.
no wonder the environazi like it so much.
and i totally agree with Ed P
nuclear power is the answer. but first we need to get rid of the environazi.
To convert existing natural gas boilers to run on hydrogen (as they did in the past before North Sea gas) would seem a cheaper and quicker alternative to converting all boilers to electric.
The power to electrolyse water could come from wind turbines – especially efficient when the power from these turbines is greater than the electricity grid needs (such as at night perhaps) – and from nuclear. We don’t need to rely on solar power from sunnier climes.
However I believe burning hydrogen with its high temperature of combustion produces NOx pollutants and does so particularly when used as a fuel for ice vehicles and this would need to be overcome as well as being rather inefficient in its power to volume ratio.
On the other hand I cannot see battery technology being a successful answer for the storage of electricity or the powering of vehicles unless a battery using a cheaper and more plentiful element than lithium is found.
Dave G beat me to it. Calling CO2 a pollutant is akin to calling dihydrogen monoxide a pollutant. (Many environmentalists were fooled into signing a petition to ban what is in effect water).
I stand unbowed in calling Carbon Dioxide a 'pollutant'. Too much of anything is a Bad Thing, whether it is oxygen, nitrogen, water, carbon dioxide or any other substance. Climate change is certain and inevitable (see previous periods of climate change). How much of the current change is down to the works of man is debatable, and what, if anything, we should do about it is even more debatable, but levels of carbon dioxide are correlated with earlier hot periods of the world's climate so we should proceed with caution.
Regrettably, good science (which still needs doing) has been outshouted by poor bandwagon science and Climate Change radicals, but just because XR are talking bollocks doesn't mean that we are free to do whatever we want without risking adverse consequences.
Nuclear fission is safe, clean and reliable. A nuclear power station puts out electricity 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even in January.
The only problem with it is that the power stations are expensive to build. But they go on working for 50 or 60 years, and pay for themselves in the end.
Hydrogen leaks and explodes. Hydrogen boilers would kill a great many people.
Don Cox
I stand unbowed in calling Carbon Dioxide a 'pollutant'. Too much of anything is a Bad Thing...
specifically, it's a 'bad thing' if it has an adverse effect on the environment or those living in it. No one can state how much CO2 is good or bad for us - except, in the case of CO2, MORE is better than LESS (to a point - that we're very unlikely to ever exceed).
More to the point, the activists (and even scientists) can't tell us what the 'correct' level of CO2 is supposed to be.
levels of carbon dioxide are correlated with earlier hot periods of the world's climate
...and also COLD periods of our climate - making my point above.
Aye, anon.
Not that old chestnut yet again. "More people choke to death on carrots in the UK than are eaten by lions, so carrots are more dangerous than lions".
Raed has a point. If technology can find a way to use the H2 but leave the C then it would be better still.
A similar gas can be made from wood, straw etc., and that would be cyclic, no net CO2 produced.
H2-air explosions are no worse than CH4-air ones either, maybe less destructive even.
As someone said, the only feasible scaleable power technology we have that is a viable alternative to coal and gas is nuclear. All else is nonsense. Hydrogen? Electrolysis? Are ye gone bonkers? The cost of energy from hydrogen is approximately 9X that of energy from gas. Christ, hydrogen makes the fucking windmills look sensible.
NB the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere lags atmospheric temperature by several hundred years. (The warmer atmosphere warms the oceans but very slowly and dissolved CO2 is released a long time later.) Bang! That was the sound of the rationale for carbon reduction disappearing in a puff of smoke. It is drivel. If the CO2 panic is real, it is too late, and corrections will start to work in similar 600 to 800 years.
NB2 it is almost always warmer than this during an intergalcial period. Since the last ice age, ten thousand of the eleven thousand years have been warmer than this. This means what?
Source: http://i.snag.gy/BztF1.jpg
Clue:
Say you were a politician and you knew something to be inevitable, something that you could blame on something else, and this soemthing else could be taxed, made scarce, and controlled and made into a massive wealth and control engine. You could even turn it into a quasi-religion. What would you do?
The tale of Hydrogen as a fuel is the same as electricity: it is clean at the point of use, but the production of the energy is a very dirty business.
With electricity more often than not the creation of that electricity involves the burning of a fossil fuel.
With Hydrogen, industrial scale production involves steam reforming of methane or North Sea gas. So all you are doing is introducing another energy-intensive process into the production of the final product: hydrogen. When you can just burn the Natural Gas more energy-efficiently.
The problem with all of the "green" solutions like electric cars is the end users suffer from the delusion that the energy they are using is somehow produced magically, by some environmentally-friendly process.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Somehow hydrogen stations could be self-refuelling by having solar panels they say, but even if you completely covered the station forecourt in panels, you probably only generate enough electricity to power the lighting needed to be able to see what you are doing in the gloom under the panels and possibly the hydrogen pumping equipment.
You'd be waiting a very long time for the panels to produce enough Hydrogen by electrolysis (which is the greenies primary go-to production method for "green" hydrogen.
You'd have to cover most of the country in solar panels and wind turbines and how the wind blows 24/7 and the sun never sets in order to produce enough Hydrogen by electrolysis to supplant fossil fuels by hydrogen.
DP111 writes
Once one goes down the greeny road, we will be hooked for all the rest of the eco-lunacy. All these Greeny eco solutions are not about energy efficiency but raising taxes, and getting nations into the Climate Change trap. Once in, it will be almost as difficult to get out as getting out of the EU. As with the EU, we will be committed to follow all sorts of idiot policies mandated by the UN IPCC, pay massive amounts of money into it. America just got out without having paid too much into it. Besides they have Pres Trump.
Too, its not by any means certain whether we will be freezing, boiling or staying static. Our planet is a dynamic planet, and this means that it has massive inertia, which regulates it better then any tinkering by man. But the main issue here is not getting trapped in UN Agenda 21 with no way out.
Seems ironic that our potential saviour (in terms of energy) will be the much maligned and (claimed) polluting COAL!
It hasn't gone away, is still accessible and we have 'infinite' reserves!
Robotic mining is entirely feasible and IIRC much of the equipment used to dig the stuff out was semi-robotic to start with.
Personally I'd welcome the chance to burn coke again!
Post Brexit and the adoption of US standards, folks will have to get used to 10 days of hols per year (plus Bank Holidays etc.).
Perhaps the robots will be there to give workers a bit more time off?
DJ "If we are to rely on new technology to reduce carbon dioxide (and other pollutants)"
Sorry if someone has already mentioned it (haven't read all the comments yet) but CO2 is NOT a pollutant! If it is then so is dihydrogen monoxide!
OK...Dave_G 10:20 and even more so anon at 11:21! Sorry for repetition.
This planet needs a lot more CO2, believe me. Even more than that if the veggies want us all to stop eating meat.
Here's another one I had forgotten:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/gisp2temperaturesince10700bpwithco2fromepicadomec.gif
CO2 rising steadily for 7000 years.
The technically and scientifically illiterate do not understand the difference between energy and power.
Things that are of use need sources of power. We have power stations not energy stations.
Energy in Joules, power in Watts (joules per second). The clue is in the definition. This is ABSOLUTELY elementary.
The amount of energy is not what's important. The concentration of it, reliably and controllably into practical sources of power is what is required.
I could write war and peace on this, as could any other scientifically/technically literate commentator.
What we are seeing in all this "green" nonsense is a pseudo-religion. Actually a cargo cult in which the laughable "electric car" - which equates to the bamboo control towers and radars made by the natives in Pacific islands post 1945 - is perhaps the most potent symbol.
If the cargo cultists get these stupid things, the gods will magic up the means to charge them (I think they're actually plotting to do that but not the sort of "charge" they expect and non cult members will have to pay it too).
Four legs good, two legs bad! Unfortunately it not even that. "Green" is three legs good, five legs better!!
Thinking of buying a Tossler? Please do, I could do with a good laugh a few years from now.
David Rose had an article in the DM on Sunday about an ex Naval Engineer, Trevor Jackson (ex BAE, Rolls Royce and nuclear subs) who has invented an electric car battery that can do 1,500 miles. It’s actually a fuel cell made from aluminium. The energy comes when the aluminium is dipped in an electrolyte solution. The invention is a new electrolyte solution that isn’t poisonous or caustic. The eventual idea in the future being that you put it in the car and when it’s empty you swop it at the supermarket.
He has faced considerable opposition from car manufacturers but has just signed a multi million deal with Austin Electric in Essex who have the rights to the old Austin Motor Company logo to produce the cells. He has support from the Dept of Business, Innovation and Skills and has a grant to develop it further.
Austin are starting out with Tuk-tuks for the Asian market and then electric bicycles and finally a kit to convert diesel and petrol cars to hybrids. He reckons they could eventually go into lorries, buses and aircraft too.
Rossa...remarkable stuff. Thanks.
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