Imported oil and the threat to our security

[Zipper]

Good article Majoor.

I completely agree that there needs to be more balanced view from both sides on this issue, and that the "nuclear" fear that is garnered (by the left) is just keeping a lot of wasteful dirty/environmentally impactive power plants open that need not be. While on the other side (right), their must be greater acceptance of alternative powers and investment in such so as to take the place of not only the older types of power generation, but to also replace the nuclear stations that are aging and cost more to refurbish then to replace with the newer technologies.

Alberta is a great example of this. It is fairly dependant on coal and natural gas to fuel its power stations. One nuclear station in central Alberta could supply the whole Provence. As well Alberta has one of the highest wind levels and sun intensities in the world, so to increase the efficiencies of wind and solar generation would allow much more of the oil/coal/natural gas to be sold worldwide for other things.

All that and a better environment? Cool.

 

[loyalcana]

Good article Majoor.

I completely agree that there needs to be more balanced view from both sides on this issue, and that the "nuclear" fear that is garnered (by the left) is just keeping a lot of wasteful dirty/environmentally impactive power plants open that need not be. While on the other side (right), their must be greater acceptance of alternative powers and investment in such so as to take the place of not only the older types of power generation, but to also replace the nuclear stations that are aging and cost more to refurbish then to replace with the newer technologies.

Alberta is a great example of this. It is fairly dependant on coal and natural gas to fuel its power stations. One nuclear station in central Alberta could supply the whole Provence. As well Alberta has one of the highest wind levels and sun intensities in the world, so to increase the efficiencies of wind and solar generation would allow much more of the oil/coal/natural gas to be sold worldwide for other things.

All that and a better environment? Cool.

The problems facing nuclear power has never been pressure faced by enviormental groups but by the high operating cost of running the plant. A single nuclear power plant will only be able to produce enough power to supply enough power to supply about 2-3 industrial parks.

 

[daniel h.]

The problems facing nuclear power has never been pressure faced by enviormental groups but by the high operating cost of running the plant. A single nuclear power plant will only be able to produce enough power to supply enough power to supply about 2-3 industrial parks.

The new-generation CANDUs are  like the difference between a 1971 car and a 2005 car.....startup cost is high, at around 1 billion a reactor, but after that they are much cheaper than coal on a per kilowatt hour basis.

 

[a_majoor]

Nuclear power may well be the way to go, here are some articles archived in "Wired" magazine:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/nuclear_pr.html

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html

And another system called OTEC:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/craven.html

The real key is to have a wide range of systems to choose from.

 

[muskrat89]

A single nuclear power plant will only be able to produce enough power to supply enough power to supply about 2-3 industrial parks.

That's funny.. I have one near me (not a CANDU) - seems like it generates a little more than 3 Industrial Parks' worth...

# In 2000 the Palo Verde nuclear plant generated 30.4 million megawatts of power.
# About 4 million people in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas receive power generated by the Palo Verde plant.
# Palo Verde is the only nuclear energy facility in the world that uses treated sewage effluence for cooling water.
# Palo Verde does not use fossil fuels to generate electricity. It is a zero-emissions facility.

Granted, it is the largest nuclear facility in the US, and not typical, but it certainly counters the generalization that you made, above.

 

[loyalcana]

That's funny.. I have one near me (not a CANDU) - seems like it generates a little more than 3 Industrial Parks' worth...

# In 2000 the Palo Verde nuclear plant generated 30.4 million megawatts of power.
# About 4 million people in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas receive power generated by the Palo Verde plant.
# Palo Verde is the only nuclear energy facility in the world that uses treated sewage effluence for cooling water.
# Palo Verde does not use fossil fuels to generate electricity. It is a zero-emissions facility.

Granted, it is the largest nuclear facility in the US, and not typical, but it certainly counters the generalization that you made, above.

Sorry I got some of my data wrong but Alberta does however consume 50 million megawatt hours per year so even the Palo Verde nuclear reactors would not be able to take the demand, not to mention that most new reactors in the world are now built in the 1000 MWe range and not the 3800 MWe of Palo Verde.

 

[Zipper]

Sorry I got some of my data wrong but Alberta does however consume 50 million megawatt hours per year so even the Palo Verde nuclear reactors would not be able to take the demand, not to mention that most new reactors in the world are now built in the 1000 MWe range and not the 3800 MWe of Palo Verde.

Ok I too got my figures wrong. But even 1 nuclear plant in combination with wind and solar plants, with the idea of replacing the nuclear plant down the road would be better then the crazy number of coal and natural gas plants in operation (because their cheap?) now.

I mean whoever heard of (here in Edmonton) of building your coal generation plants upwind (prevailing wind) of your major cities? Sheesh!!

 

[George Wallace]

I mean whoever heard of (here in Edmonton) of building your coal generation plants upwind (prevailing wind) of your major cities? Sheesh!!

Have you ever visited Ottawa?  It's major Garbage Dump (the Carp Mountain) is upwind.  It must be a Canadianism.

 

[GO!!!]

I have heard rumours of the fuel cell technology that is being developed at RMC, which generates electricity by combining water with a special type of membrane - 0 emissions, extremely low cost and nearly ready for sale.

Anyone with more info on this exciting development?

 

[Acorn]

It's (was) under development at Ballard. As far as I know, from a former Ballard employee, they couldn't produce the fuel cell for cars that they were working on for Daimler Chrysler, so they lost that contract, and most of their R&D funding outside of Government (CF) funding. It was advertised as "nearly ready for sale" a few years ago, but I haven't seen anything new to indicate that it's gone any further.

Acorn

 

[a_majoor]

PEM fuel cells like the ones Ballard was working on need pure hydrogen gas as a feed, and oxygen from the air to operate. PEM fuel cells also require a lot of platinum to catalyse the reaction, so the basic fuel cell stack is very expensive.

The real killer right now is the need for pure hydrogen. There are no commercial H2 stations where you can fill up, and hydrogen is very tricky to store, needing insanely pressurized fuel tanks, or Dewars chilled to @ -200 C to be stored in liquid form. Other storage media hold a very small volume of H2 per unit of mass.

Getting the hydrogen is also a problem, since it takes a lot of energy (usually from coal fired plants) to electrolyse it from water, other schemes for decomposing hydrocarbon fuels like natural gas, methanol or gasoline require an energy hungry "reformulator". If any impurities from the hydrocarbon feedstock get into the PEM stack, it poisions the catalyst and renders the stack useless.

There are other types of fuel cells out there, and some are advertized as being able to use natural gas or methanol directly, but generally these sorts of fuel cells have lower conversion efficiency and are not as well developed as the PEM fuel cell (which has been refined since the first NASA missions in the 1960s, where cost was no object and fuel cells provided power for Apollo and Space Shuttle missions).

For military missions, a fuel reformulator and PEM fuelcell stack connected to electric motors would provide about a 30-50% increase in fuel economy (although I don't know of any groups working on a diesel reformulator), which makes this worth studying regardless of the negative points raised above. Civvies would't pay the huge cost premium for their vehicles, but they don't have to bulk ship fuel across the planet either.

 

[GO!!!]

I was led to believe that the fuel cell in development at RMC right now is not reliant upon an outside source of power.

That is - add water to the membranes, and electric current is produced - period.

The problems revolved around shrinking the technology enough and making it portable.

I was'nt referring to the Ballard fuel cell.

My contact could have been misinformed though...

 

[George Wallace]

Anyone old enough to remember the 60's?  There was a High School kid who developed a battery that ran on sugar and water.  I believe the big car companies bought out his patent right away quick to keep it from further development.  I always wonder what ever truly happened to it.

 

[Zipper]

I remember hearing about that GW. Good question. I wonder if there is any info running around about that?

As for the Ballard fuel cell. I remember that Chrysler pull out (damn them), as my shares in Ballard tanked right after.  :threat:

Grumble...

 

[a_majoor]

I didn't find anything on the RMC web site to indicate any water based fuel cell, but in straight physics terms it is impossible anyway; water (H2O) is already reacted. The energetic reaction of Hydrogen and Oxygen is what powers both the Ballard Fuel cell and the Space Shuttle, water is the exhaust product at the end. The only difference is the Space Shuttle is running its reaction thousands of times faster than the PEM fuel cell, producing heat and water, while the fuel cell stack mixes tiny quantities of hydrogen and oxygen, producing heat and water.....

Hydrogen and Oxygen is about the most powerful chemical reaction possible, some "tweaking" is possible by burning exotic elements like Boron in the mix, or cheating by using liquid Ozone (O3) or liquid Flourine (F2), but these produce toxic byproducts like Hydroflouric acid, and large quantities of O3 tend to spontaniously decompose into O2 in an exothermic reaction (i.e it explodes). Clearly, hydrocarbon fuels like kerosene, while more stable, don't produce as much energy, and sugar, which is mostly carbon, has about as much energy as charcoal (Try stuffing a tube full of marshmellows and igniting the end: it isn't going to take off like a rocket). The thermal energy of materials is a fairly good indication of how much energy is available in any sort of chemical reaction.

Chrysler and the other auto makers are backing away from fuel cells for most of the reasons given in my previous post: you can't pull into a local "HydroCan" station and fill up with hydrogen, and extracting the hydrogen from fuels like gasoline requires a very complex "reformulator" in the car, along with the fuel cell stack. Cost wise, this is a non starter for the average car driver, but for a CF trucker or LAV crew in a place like Dafur, where PetroCans are also scarce, this still offers certain advantages.

 

[Acorn]

The Ballard cell system I'm thinking of relied on some form of membrane and reactant that was supposed to create the hydrogen needed to power an auto engine - as a_majoor says, water was the exhaust. Not sure what the fuel was. It didn't work. I wasn't aware that it was an RMC project.

My ex-Ballard contact was really enthusiastic about the prospects - silent generators, for example (though he was thinking on the "quiet campsite" line). He was pretty bitter when the project folded. Maybe some of it migrated to RMC - my info is 5-10 years old.

 

[Zipper]

Chrysler and the other auto makers are backing away from fuel cells for most of the reasons given in my previous post: you can't pull into a local "HydroCan" station and fill up with hydrogen, and extracting the hydrogen from fuels like gasoline requires a very complex "reformulator" in the car, along with the fuel cell stack. Cost wise, this is a non starter for the average car driver, but for a CF trucker or LAV crew in a place like Dafur, where PetroCans are also scarce, this still offers certain advantages.

And this is why we (North America) are going to be on the losing end of this technological battle. It won't be long before Iceland is the worlds first hydrogen based economy, with Sweden and probably Japan not far behind.

Non-starter from who's point of view? The N.American auto industry? The Oil and Gas industry? Its more a question of will then of dollars and cents. We could do it if we dropped the money into the R&D now. Problem is it would cut into the above mentioned bottom lines.

 

[Spr.Earl]

We export close on 30% of the U.S.'s needs never mind our own needs and other exports.
We have enough fuel and gas to survive,but whay get's up my craw why do we have to pay World Prices for own gas.

 

[Acorn]

Non-starter from who's point of view? The N.American auto industry? The Oil and Gas industry? Its more a question of will then of dollars and cents. We could do it if we dropped the money into the R&D now. Problem is it would cut into the above mentioned bottom lines.

It's an economic non-starter. Hydrogen is still way more expensive to produce (refine) per Km driven than any fossil fuel. Same applies to electrical generation - hell, some stations still use coal.

The R&D is being done. It just hasn't reached the economic critical mass yet. Look at the hybrid cars - would you pay $5k more for a car that you have to change the engine (battery) every 5 years for an additional $3k when you can get a car that will last for decades before needing an engine rebuild (assuming decent preventative maint procedures)?

Acorn

 

[a_majoor]

We export close on 30% of the U.S.'s needs never mind our own needs and other exports.
We have enough fuel and gas to survive,but whay get's up my craw why do we have to pay World Prices for own gas.

Let me try an analogy. You see Tim Horton's charges $2.00 for a medium coffee and a donut, since they are an international company (owned by Wendy's), but due to my ruleing as Emperor of The Great White North, you can only charge $1.23 for the same product, even though the price of the coffee beans and raw donut dough (or whatever they are made of) is the same. Would you even consider getting into the coffee & donut business under those circumstances?