Optimist wrote:What are you on about? Are you implying that a reactor cannot be made bigger that a certain size? How does that work? Why would "physical size" limit TDP to 1,000 bpd, but not traditional refineries? I am affraid you make no sense.
TDP is still in development. They are still ironing out various issues. Just because nobody has spoken publicly about 25,000 bpd, does not mean it cannot be done. In fact, even when people think something is impossible, it does not mean it is impossible. See Roger Bannister and the four minute mile.
Heck, there is no reason why they can't do 250,000 bpd!
They say they are scalable to about 1,000 bpd, straight from the horses's mouth.
until CWT gets that 500 bpd plant to work anywhere near advertised, nobody is going to give these guys the time of day.
Optimist wrote:Sorry to burst your pessimistic bubble, but TDP is the perfect answer to PO. The higher the price of crude, the better for TDP!
In a peak oil world the basic concentrated industrial-agriculture model fails. Food will be localized. It costs LOTS of energy to grow and ship feed corn, to incubate baby turkeys, to house and move turkeys to a processor, to process turkeys.
No, the relative cost of the guts remains the same--FREE!The relative cost of the guts remains the same--expensive.
I am not familiar with what was said to Kenneth S. Deffeyes. I was probably based on a preliminary cost estimate. Thanks to the MO plant, TDP can be evaluated using REAL numbers. Big difference.Geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes remembers as a young man being instructed that as soon as a barrel of oil hit $5 (it was $2-3 at the time) then oil shale would be make Colorado rich because it would become magically economical to extract it. It is ALWAYS going to be too expensive to extract. The same can be said about biomass etc.
Optimist wrote:In a peak oil world the basic concentrated industrial-agriculture model fails. Food will be localized. It costs LOTS of energy to grow and ship feed corn, to incubate baby turkeys, to house and move turkeys to a processor, to process turkeys.
You seem to think oil will disappear overnight. That won't happen. Over the last 35 years US oil production has fallen by 36% ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8124325/ ), or about 1.27% per year. Global production would probably follow a similar decline. Say after me GRADUAL. Lots of time for alternatives to penetrate the market. And with higher oil prices, many will work on this.No, the relative cost of the guts remains the same--FREE!The relative cost of the guts remains the same--expensive.I am not familiar with what was said to Kenneth S. Deffeyes. I was probably based on a preliminary cost estimate. Thanks to the MO plant, TDP can be evaluated using REAL numbers. Big difference.Geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes remembers as a young man being instructed that as soon as a barrel of oil hit $5 (it was $2-3 at the time) then oil shale would be make Colorado rich because it would become magically economical to extract it. It is ALWAYS going to be too expensive to extract. The same can be said about biomass etc.
In conclusion, here's what we have:
1. Oil will run out.
2. It will not happen overnight. It will happen gradually.
3. Oil gets more expensive.
4. Eventually alternatives are cheaper than oil.
Not too hard to follow, is it?
I discovered something amazing recently and I tried to tell a bunch of friends about it. A guy in Illinois has, it seems, invented a device that can turn almost anything into oil, plus a few byproducts (all useful).
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Inventor Paul Buskis is not planning to process people, of course. He's going after trash. His thermo-depolymerization process works on any carbon-based substance--chicken entrails, tires, plastic milk jugs, you name it. Garbage in, oil out--that's the promise.
My friends scoffed. "Sounds too good to be true," was their consensus. "It'll never work."
Ah, but it's already working. A company called Changing World Technologies has built a plant in Carthage, Missouri, based on Buskis's process. It's producing 400 barrels of oil a day right now, extruded from the wastes of nearby turkey processing plants. The company is building another plant in Philadelphia to process sewage into black gold.
My friends would have none of this. They assured me the invention will emit toxic pollution. (It doesn't.) It will use more energy than it produces. (Quite the opposite.) It's voodoo science: "How can oil be created?"
Well, it's been done before. The earth created oil by heating, cooling, and squeezing the rotted remains of plants and animals. Buskis replicates that process mechanically. What took millions of years in nature, his process achieves in a day.
What's a Cynic to Do?
Today, most of our electricity comes from a few big power plants that use coal, oil, gas, or nuclear fuel. At this point, therefore, even electric cars run on fossil (or nuclear) fuel, since you have to plug them into the grid to recharge them.
Yet even now electricity doesn't have to come from just a few sources. It can come from any number of generators, they can be of any size, and the electricity they supply can come from any source including wind and sunlight. Electricity is electricity.
What's more, right now you can buy a wind or solar generator that will not only power your household devices but send electricity into the grid: That technology exists.
If you live in Germany and have such a generator, you can definitely sell the power you produce because German law requires utilities to buy it. In 2001, in fact, the German government started paying subsidies to people who installed such renewable energy devices in their homes.
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But even if the usage keeps growing at the current rate, Germany expects to generate 14 percent of its electrical power from non-polluting renewable sources by 2010. Much of this will come from generators owned by individual households.
My inner cynic is feeling cornered. I'm thinking: Why can't we do that?
Let's say you have a solar generator on your roof and a hydrogen-making mini-plant in your basement. Anytime your solar generator makes more energy than you're using, the excess flows to your basement and makes hydrogen.
Later, when the sun isn't shining, your fuel cells kick in and you draw down on your hydrogen supply.
If your hydrogen tanks fill up, the excess energy flows into the grid. When the grid has more power than it can sell, the excess goes to big electrolyzers that store energy as hydrogen on a commercial scale. The massive fuel cells then emit energy as needed to keep the overall supply constant.
In this system, more or less everybody produces energy. They sell to the grid when they have more than enough. They buy back when they're running a deficit.
pea-jay wrote:Okay so how much energy would get fed back into the grid really, when H2 production is going on in the basement? And even if a bare surplus balance were to occur between the house and the grid, could that difference power those living in apartments plus all those nonresidential uses such as offices, factories, schools. To be sure some of those buildings could also be generators of electricity, but I don't think he has taken the time to calculate the EROEI or even if the total wattage of the proposed generation would still be enough to power our way of life.
Articles like this are not the slightest bit helpful and lull many into a false sense of security. "Don't worry...technology will save us" or my favorite (NOT) "The stone age did not end because a lack of stones."
Full article: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/ ... _after_oil
The point is that living in a home with modern conveniences that is independent of the grid is feasible with current technology.
pea-jay wrote:Yes, but can everyone live in one? Do we have enough resources to build everyone one? Is there enough time to retrofit or replace existing homes to meet the expected need for renewables to offset declining fossil fuel supplies? It's a lofty goal, but do the numbers (and implementation schedule pan out?) I am not sure if it does.
pea-jay wrote:The point is that living in a home with modern conveniences that is independent of the grid is feasible with current technology.
Yes, but can everyone live in one? Do we have enough resources to build everyone one? Is there enough time to retrofit or replace existing homes to meet the expected need for renewables to offset declining fossil fuel supplies? It's a lofty goal, but do the numbers (and implementation schedule pan out?) I am not sure if it does.
The plastics they tested were mostly polyethylene. They began by pyrolyzing the material, heating it in a furnace in the absence of air to break down molecules to form a waxy fluid with molecular weight in the range of lube oil. Isomerization dewaxed the fluid to produce diesel and base oil. The base oil yield varied between 30 percent and 40 percent by weight, although that output could be increased by oligomerizing short-chain olefins, the main byproduct of the process.
According to the researchers, the quality of the base oil was consistent and exceptionally high – viscosity of between 3.4 centistoke and 5.4 cSt, pour points ranging from minus 13 to minus 37 degrees C, and viscosity index of 150 to 160.
“This is probably about as good as you’re going to get in a base oil,” said Miller, a fellow and senior consulting scientist at Chevron Energy Technology Co. in Richmond, Calif.
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