Future Energy Solutions: Exploring Technologies and Possibilities

2. Our(i.e. us Earthlings)Energy Futures

3. This evening… Ask questions at any time. A brief review of Energy Technologies... • In current use • Known but not yet much used • Some potential futures • Suggestions for most likely candidates • How you can help determine our future energy solutions

4. More info: More info, web links etc will be available at the end, on dead-tree-sheets or, on request, via email. N.B. I don’t plan to spend much time discussing matters that are already much in the news, e.g. “Conventional Oil & Gas” – you probably know as much as I do about those. I hope to get you thinking about energy matters that are not normally in the news.

5. Who am I? • John Hall • Not a Professional Engineer, nor a Nuclear Physicist. • I have an inquisitive logical mind, and a keen awareness of people’s feelings and aspirations. • “Helping People Prosper in the Information Age” • “The Panorama Guy” (Cochrane panorama in the Town Office) • I have grand- & great-grand-children, and want them to have fulfilling lives.

6. Preparing to Meet Future Energy Needs • More people, • Many living ‘better’ lives, • We'll need more energy.

7. The Challenge • More Energy! • More Pollution? • More Wars? • 'They' are working on solutions - prepare yourself to participate in the discussion.

8. Energy sources and technologies in current use, with some of their positive and negative characteristics.

9. But before we plan to use more Energy… Reducing our energy demands may cost less than finding and exploiting new resources, and will help with pollution etc concerns. So first look for efficiency & utility (usefulness) Who has tried Compact Fluorescent (curly) lamps? Who likes & uses them? Who does NOT like them, and why not? Who is the strongest disliker? Have you tried LEDs?

10. Coal • Burns dirty, disperses acid rain and Mercury, a neuro-toxin, into the environment. • Conventional extraction kills thousands of miners annually world-wide, via accidents and disease. • 'Clean Coal'? Long promised, has not happened yet. • In-situ Gasification – many negative & positive implications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification

11. Oil & Gas ("Conventional") • A HydroCarbon fuel, from 'stewed dinosaurs, with trees' or other sources. Mostly contained in underground or under-sea rock formations ('reservoirs'). Extracted primarily by drilling into the rock, or in some cases, where it's near the surface, by open-cast pit mining.

12. Oil & Gas ("Conventional" Perhaps...) • There is a suggestion being discussed that oil is not created from decaying organic material, e.g. dinosaurs, but results from an ongoing naturally-occurring process deep within the Earth, whereby Carbon and other materials, subjected to intense heat and pressure, creates hydrocarbon fluids which subsequently migrate up to the "oil reservoirs" where we find them today. • This is known as the "Abiotic Oil" theory.

13. Shale Oil & Shale Gas ("Unconventional") • It has been known for several years that there are significant quantities of hydrocarbon materials trapped in Shale - a porous rock. • However it is only recently that technology & techniques that can extract these have been developed...

14. Fracking (1) • ... One such is Hydraulic Fracturing, a.k.a. 'Fracking', in which water, sand and a chemical mix are injected under very high pressure from a well drilled into the Shale rock formation. • This creates fissures (cracks), which allow the previously-trapped oil or gas to flow to the well and thence up to the surface. The sand grains prevent the fissures from closing when the pressure is reduced.

15. Fracking (2) • There is mounting evidence that the disturbance of the rock formations, and injection of water and unknown chemicals, is causing serious problems with water and air quality. Since the areas subject to Fracking are typically rural, the affected residents rely on private drilled wells for their water supply. Some residents report experiencing severe health problems, which they attribute to Fracking operations in their locality. • A more obvious evidence of abnormality is that, in some cases, they can turn on their kitchen tap and set fire to the gas contained in the water that runs (or spurts) out.

16. Nuclear • Many dangerous 'incidents': Windscale, Three-Mile-Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. • Waste repository is dangerous for >20,000 years • ‘Side-stream’ products are very dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands. • There is not much more Uranium available, and developing countries will be needing some of it. • Current nuclear reactors use Nuclear Fission for energy production, but there may be another option…

17. Nuclear Fusion Fission is an inherently dangerous process, but an alternative, Fusion, is being researched. This avoids many of Fission’s problems, but comes with a new problem of its own: we can’t make it work, or have not yet been able to, though it is the source of the Sun’s energy. (Sol fuses four tons of Hydrogen into Helium every second, and exports the resulting energy as light, heat & ‘Coronal Mass Ejections’ etc.) Research projects require very large and expensive resources, but success appears to be always 20 years in the future. However reports of progress or activities are frequently in the news, and will not be covered in this presentation. Google “nuclear fusion” (with the quotes) for lots of info.

18. Wind (Ground-level based) (1) • Effective, but not very efficient, $-wise, because air is alow-energy-density source, so we need to 'process' LOTS of it, thus wind turbines are LARGE for modest output (compared to e.g. water). e.g. two water turbines at Canmore, in a building about the size of a house, generate 50MW. A very large wind turbine, with a rotor of 80 Metres diameter, could generate about 2.5MW in average conditions. Your electric kettle probably consumes 1.5 – 2 KW. • Because of noise concerns, many wind turbines are sited in locations far from where the energy is required. The cost of the necessary electricity grid connections can be significant.

19. Wind (Ground-level based) (2) • You have probably seen several wind turbines, locally and in the Crows Nest Pass area. The majority of these are Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs). These can generate a ‘beating’ noise/feeling which some people find objectionable, or has bad effects on their sleep or general health. • Health Canada is conducting research on these health problems. • There are other design types, (Vertical Axis Wind Turbines – VAWTs), which as the name “Quiet Revolution” of one model suggests, can be designed to avoid creating such noise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietrevolution_wind_turbine

21. How does a Quiet Revolution VAWT reduce noise? • If the vanes were straight, on each revolution there would be three times when the wind energy is at maximum, and three times it is at minimum, so there are three ‘thumps’ per revolution. • With the vanes skewed, no matter what the position of the vanes with respect to the tower, or to the wind is, there is always a steady push on the turbine rotor – as one vane is leaving the ‘high force’ area, the next vane is coming round to take up the load.

22. What to do if there is no wind, or sunshine? Wind (and Solar) resources are ‘intermittent’, i.e. sometimes not there when you need their energy. This shortcoming may be overcome, though probably at significant cost, by providing some system for Energy Storage & Recovery.

23. Energy Storage & Recovery • Batteries: many new technologies in development. • Reversible Hydro-Electric (use spare off-peak capacity to pump water back up to the lake, for use later when demand increases) • A motor-generator coupled to a large flywheel. (Installed in an underground pit, just in case it disintegrates at speed). • Heat oil or melt salt with spare off-peak electricity or Solar etc. Use that stored energy to heat water or a gas to run a turbine-alternator later.

24. Water • Hydro-Electric: mostly safe & clean, but drowned forests emit CO2etc for many years. • Dams interrupt fish migration, which can kill species – so several US dams were recently demolished.

25. Solar heating • Mature technology, widely deployed, mostly small scale, however some interesting new ideas are being explored: • Solar Chimney: convection current from a 'solar greenhouse' spins a turbine-alternator, which generates electricity.A project in Australia is working on this.

26. Solar Tower/Furnace: • An array of steerable (sun tracking) reflectors beams concentrated sunlight to a Solar Furnace atop a tower, melting salt. This stored heat energy can be used day or night to produce high-temperature steam, which runs a conventional turbine-alternator to generate electricity.

27. Two solar furnaces in Spain. No good indication of scale, but they are obviously large. “Go BIG or Go Home”

28. Solar electricity • Few problems, advancing rapidly. Will likely be significantly less expensive in a few years, hence some reluctance to deploy it today. • Very scalable: from per-household to 'cover Nevada and the Sahara Desert'

29. Ground-source heat & cooling • Used for domestic space & water heating etc. Basically this is a heat pump, just like in your refrigerator. It pumps heat from the ground into your house. (The deeper into the ground you dig/drill, the higher the soil temperature is). • Swap two pipes – it becomes a cooling system: pumps heat from your house into the ground, storing the excess for use next winter. • Home-sized units are becoming popular.Co-efficient of Performance: ≈ 4, use 1 KW to run it, returns ≈ 4 KW of heat • Iceland, Italy & New Zealand have large installations (District heating & Domestic Hot Water). Where hot enough they can do steam => electricity

30. Bio-Fuels • Ethanol from Corn/Maize starch (USA) Energy Output = Energy Input x 1.3 • Ethanol from cane sugar (Brasil) Energy Output = Energy Input x 8 • Ethanol from sugar-cane bagasse* (Brasil) “Cellulosic Ethanol”. (researching better Enzymes) • Bio-Diesel from discarded cooking oil Many bio-fuel crops deplete the soil. Sustainability? * bagasse: the cane stalks, leaves etc after the sugar syrup has been extracted

31. Next: Sources and Technologies that are known, but are not, or not widely, in use.

32. Methane Hydrate • a.k.a. “Ice that Burns”. • Formed from ocean biota carcases that sink to the ocean floor, decompose, and are transformed by cold, pressure & time into ‘crystal cages’ that contain Methane in a solid form. • One cubic metre of Methane Hydrate contains ≈ 80 cubic metres of Methane (at NTP - normal temperature & pressure) • Huge quantities exist, “equivalent to all the oil & gas found to date”.

33. Methane Hydrate “Ice that Burns”

34. Methane – Good News There’s plenty of Methane available, from shale gas & Methane Hydrate

35. Methane – the BadNews There’s plenty of Methane available, from shale gas & Methane Hydrate

36. Methane – the Bad News There’s plenty of Methane available, from shale gas & Methane Hydrate • but burning it adds more CO2 to our Biosphere • and leaks/escapes are very bad for Climate Change, because Methane’s effect on the atmosphere is 20 - 30 times worse than CO2’s

37. Wind (High altitude) • With high-flying kites or balloons, which raise turbine-alternators to higher altitudes where winds are stronger and more consistent (‘Jet Streams’). • Also lower-level kites, flying circles or figure-8 patterns ‘across the wind', creating their own 'relative wind’, which has a higher speed. MakaniPower has apparently made some well-engineered designs:www.makanipower.comwww.makanipower.com/category/flights/ A rather busy & complex website – I suggest you go there and browse.

38. Ocean Tides and waves • Submerged water turbine-alternators in tidal flows - “Lunar Energy” www.energybc.ca/profiles/tidal.htmlPhysically smaller than wind turbines of equivalent generating capacity, because Water has a greater Energy-Density than Air. • Ocean Waves – oscillation of hinged floats spins turbine-alternators www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/hydro/wave-power/ There are several variations on this theme.

39. Fuel from Trash (1) • Municipal ‘landfills’ (trash dumps) generate Methane as materials decompose. In some cases this is collected and used to power utility vehicles. • Enerkem’s processes take ‘sorted municipal waste’, break it down to basic molecules, and re-configure them as Propane, Butane and other valuable HydroCarbon products/fuels. • http://www.enerkem.com/en/home.html

40. Fuel from Trash (2) • http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre • http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch and others, are very large collections of discarded trash, much of which is HydroCarbon based plastics. Because of the mixed constituents, and the volume, it is not feasible to sort & recycle these potentially-useful materials in conventional ways. But being HydroCarbon-based, they contain a lot of “Embodied Energy”, which can be recovered by burning, and the heat used for various industrial processes. • Or perhaps they are suitable as feedstock for Enerkem’s processes. (‘Fuel from Trash (1)')

41. Cold Fusion • Demonstrated, debunked. Not here yet

42. “Zero-Point Energy” a.k.a. “magnet motors” or "over-unity". Deemed by some to be theoretically possible. Several 'demonstrations', but “No, you can't examine it yourself – you would just steal my ideas”. “Run your car on Water” claims. “Wotsizname was doing that, but men in black trench-coats visited him, and he has not been seen since”.

43. "Solar fuel" (liquid) • H from water • + C from CO2 (atmosphere, or concentrated industrial sources) • + energy from sunlight • + a catalyst • => Liquid HydroCarbon 'drop-in' fuel, i.e. a direct replacement for gasoline etc, requiring no, or only minor, changes to engines. • Several technologies in research, some operating (at laboratory scale) www.airfuelsynthesis.com/ phys.org/news109941196.html

44. “OK, we see your point” “What is your solution?”

45. Future Solutions should... • Be Carbon-neutral, or better (to minimize climate change) • Be clean in other ways • Use readily-available fuel • Be known to be workable • Be safe to use

46. So my proposed candidates are: Solar (liquid) fuel (H + C + sun + catalyst) Fuel from trash Solar-electric Solar-heat And the likely best choice is ...

47. Unclear!

48. Nuclear!

49. “Are you crazy”? "You were just telling us about the terrible problems with Nuclear Energy”

50. Yes – NUCLEAR But NOT your father’s (Uranium-based) Nuclear energy