Scientists Find Key To Creating Clean Fuel From Coal And Waste

From The Guardian:

'Gasification' process enhanced to save millions of tonnes of carbon and provide energy

Millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide could be prevented from entering the atmosphere following the discovery of a way to turn coal, grass or municipal waste more efficiently into clean fuels.

Scientists have adapted a process called "gasification" which is already used to clean up dirty materials before they are used to generate electricity or to make renewable fuels. The technique involves heating organic matter to produce a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, called syngas.

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Harvesting Energy From Nature's Motions

Left to right: Assistant Professor Brian Mann, graduate student Samuel Stanton, and undergraduate student Clark McGehee. (Credit: Duke Photography)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 9, 2009) — By taking advantage of the vagaries of the natural world, Duke University engineers have developed a novel approach that they believe can more efficiently harvest electricity from the motions of everyday life.

Energy harvesting is the process of converting one form of energy, such as motion, into another form of energy, in this case electricity. Strategies range from the development of massive wind farms to produce large amounts of electricity to using the vibrations of walking to power small electronic devices.

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Methane Maps Step One for Energy Prospectors

From Popular Mechanics:

A team of geologists recently found hundreds of plumes of methane gas—a potent greenhouse gas and potential energy source—in the Arctic Ocean, indicating there may be more methane being released from deep in the ocean than expected. Here is a look at the recent findings and the known sources of methane out today.

An international team of scientists has found hundreds of methane gas plumes in the depths of the Arctic Ocean. German and English researchers used sonar to detect 250 columns of bubbles pushing out of the seabed of West Spitsbergen and then sampled the water in those areas, finding that the gas was predominantly methane. The discovery indicates there may be more of the gas being released and from deeper areas of the Arctic seabed than expected.

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Critique Of The Path To Sustainable Energy 2030

From the Next Big Future:

Brave New Climate reviews the work of Mark Z. Jacobson (Professor, Stanford) and Mark A. Delucchi (researcher, UC Davis) entitled “A path to sustainable energy by 2030” (p 58 – 65 Scientific American Nov 2009; they call it WWS: wind, water or sunlight).

Jacobson and Delucchi argue that, by the year 2030:
Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels.

Carbon Emissions from Expected Wars Based on Militarization of Technology Similar to Energy Sources

They also state:

Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered.

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America's Natural Gas Revolution -- A Commentary

From Wall Street Journal:

A 'shale gale' of unconventional and abundant U.S. gas is transforming the energy market.

The biggest energy innovation of the decade is natural gas—more specifically what is called "unconventional" natural gas. Some call it a revolution.

Yet the natural gas revolution has unfolded with no great fanfare, no grand opening ceremony, no ribbon cutting. It just crept up. In 1990, unconventional gas—from shales, coal-bed methane and so-called "tight" formations—was about 10% of total U.S. production. Today it is around 40%, and growing fast, with shale gas by far the biggest part.

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High-Energy Batteries Coming To Market

Photo: Battery unpacked: This graphic illustrates the multilayered structure of a ReVolt rechargeable zinc-air battery. From top to bottom: the battery cover, which lets in air; a porous air electrode; the interface between electrodes; the zinc electrode; the casing. Credit: ReVolt

From Technology Review:

Rechargeable zinc-air batteries can store three times the energy of a lithium-ion battery.

A Swiss company says it has developed rechargeable zinc-air batteries that can store three times the energy of lithium ion batteries, by volume, while costing only half as much. ReVolt, of Staefa, Switzerland, plans to sell small "button cell" batteries for hearing aids starting next year and to incorporate its technology into ever larger batteries, introducing cell-phone and electric bicycle batteries in the next few years. It is also starting to develop large-format batteries for electric vehicles.

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What Is The Real Cost Of Power Production?

POLLUTION COSTS: The hidden costs of power production include the health effects of air pollution and alternative fuels are no panacea. Corn ethanol has similar or even slightly higher negative impacts than gasoline. © iStockphoto.com / Mayumi Terao

From Scientific American:

Market prices don't reflect hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden costs of energy production to human health and the environment.

Market prices don't reflect hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden costs of energy production to human health and the environment, a National Research Council panel said in a report released today.

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New Israeli Battery Provides Thousands Of Hours Of Power

Photo: Prof. Yair Ein-Eli in his Technion lab, where he invented a battery that is potentially as eco-friendly as sand. Photo: Technion

From Jerusalem Post:

A new kind of portable electrochemical battery that can produce thousands of hours of power - and soon replace the expensive regular or rechargeable batteries in hearing aids and sensors and eventually in cellphones, laptop computers and even electric cars - has been developed at Haifa's Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

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Natural Gas Changes the Energy Map

Deep drilling: At Range Resources’ site in Washington County, PA, a specially designed rig is used to drill more than a thousand meters down and gradually turn 90° to follow the gas-rich shale deposit. The rig will drill half a dozen wells at the site. Beside it is a pond holding debris and mud from a well. Credit: Roy Ritchie

From Technology Review:

Vast amounts of the clean-burning fossil fuel have been discovered in shale deposits, setting off a gas rush. But how it will affect our energy use is still uncertain.

The first sign that there's something unusual about the flat black rocks strewn across the shore of Lake Erie comes when Gary Lash smashes two of them together. They break easily and fall into shards that give off the faint odor of hydrocarbons, similar to the smell of kerosene. But for Lash, a geologist and professor at nearby SUNY Fredonia, smashing the rocks is a simple trick designed to catch the attention of a visitor. The black outcroppings that protrude from the nearby bluff onto the narrow beach are what really interest him.

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The Real Impact of America's Oil Crisis -- An Interview

Image: The book Power Trip, by Amanda Little

From Time Magazine:

Esoteric climate-science warnings about America's oil dependence can make even the most well-meaning of eyes glaze over. Amanda Little, author of Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells — Our Ride to the Renewable Future, took a different approach. She traveled from an offshore oil rig to the halls of the Pentagon, from NASCAR racetracks to the office of a pricey plastic surgeon in order to tell a more human side of the energy story. TIME talked to Little about how fossil fuels saturate our lives and why taking personal responsibility is the key to pulling out of this mess.

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Energy Crisis Is Postponed As New Gas Rescues The World

Oil shale is rock containing deposits of oil and is pictured here burning.

From The L.A. Times

Engineers have performed their magic once again. The world is not going to run short of energy as soon as feared.

America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel. Russia's grip on Europe's gas will weaken. Improvident Britain may avoid paralysing blackouts by mid-decade after all.

The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected.

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Physicists Measure Elusive 'Persistent Current' That Flows Forever

Image: Harris made the first definitive measurement of an electric current that flows continuously in tiny, but ordinary, metal rings. (Credit: Jack Harris/Yale University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 12, 2009) — Physicists at Yale University have made the first definitive measurements of “persistent current,” a small but perpetual electric current that flows naturally through tiny rings of metal wire even without an external power source.

The team used nanoscale cantilevers, an entirely novel approach, to indirectly measure the current through changes in the magnetic force it produces as it flows through the ring. “They’re essentially little floppy diving boards with the rings sitting on top,” said team leader Jack Harris, associate professor of physics and applied physics at Yale. The findings appear in the October 9 issue of Science.

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Tiny 'Nuclear Batteries' Unveiled

From The BBC:

Researchers have demonstrated a penny-sized "nuclear battery" that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes.

As radioactive substances decay, they release charged particles that when properly harvested can create an electrical current.

Nuclear batteries have been in use for military and aerospace applications, but are typically far larger.

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New Way to Tap Gas May Expand Global Supplies

Engineers and geologists are learning how to extract natural gas from layers of shale, a sediment. Matt Nager for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new technique that tapped previously inaccessible supplies of natural gas in the United States is spreading to the rest of the world, raising hopes of a huge expansion in global reserves of the cleanest fossil fuel.

Italian and Norwegian oil engineers and geologists have arrived in Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania to learn how to extract gas from layers of a black rock called shale. Companies are leasing huge tracts of land across Europe for exploration. And oil executives are gathering rocks and scrutinizing Asian and North African geological maps in search of other fields.

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Energy-From-Waste Powers US Army

The pyrolysis tube at the system's heart can consume 100kg of waste per hour

From The BBC:

A system that generates energy from rubbish is being sent by defence firm Qinetiq to the US army.

The PyTEC system heats mixed waste, releasing a gas that can be burned to produce five times more energy than is required to drive the system.

Qinetiq say that the system, already in use on British navy ship HMS Ocean, has been "containerised" for US army use.

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Cleaning Up On Dirty Coal

Photo: Cheap coal: This demonstration plant in Wilsonville, AL, uses a transport gasifier to turn two tons of cheap, low-quality coal per hour into a clean-burning gas. A plant based on similar technology is scheduled for China. Credit: KBR

From Technology Review:

A novel gasification process for low-quality coal heads to China.

The industrial boomtown of Dongguan in southeast China's Pearl River Delta could soon host one of the country's most sophisticated power plants, one that uses an unconventional coal-gasification technology to make the dirtiest coal behave like clean-burning natural gas. Its developers, Atlanta-based utility Southern Company and Houston-based engineering firm KBR, announced the licensing deal with Dongguan Power and Chemical Company this month.

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‘Peak Oil’ Is A Waste Of Energy

From The New York Times:

REMEMBER “peak oil”? It’s the theory that geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic catastrophe. Well, just when we thought that the collapse in oil prices since last summer had put an end to such talk, along comes Fatih Birol, the top economist at the International Energy Agency, to insist that we’ll reach the peak moment in 10 years, a decade sooner than most previous predictions (although a few ardent pessimists believe the moment of no return has already come and gone).

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Powerful Ideas: Beer Waste Makes Fuel

From Live Science:

After beer is made, the waste from breweries could help generate power, researchers now suggest.

One problem brewers face is what to do with the thousands of tons of grain left over at the end of the brewing process. In the past, they just sold the waste to farmers who either fed it to their animals or spread it on their fields as fertilizer. However, in Europe, given reductions in cattle breeding and stricter regulations on what waste is allowed on land, neither option is as easy anymore.

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Hydrocarbons In The Deep Earth?

This artistic view of the Earth's interior shows hydrocarbons forming in the upper mantle and transported through deep faults to shallower depths in the Earth's crust. The inset shows a snapshot of the methane dissociation reaction studied in this work. (Credit: Image courtesy A. Kolesnikov and V. Kutcherov)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 27, 2009) — The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth's crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle —the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core.

The research was conducted by scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues from Russia and Sweden, and is published in the July 26, advanced online issue of Nature Geoscience.

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The Arctic's Oil Reserves Mapped

Undiscovered Arctic oil reserves are largely under the ocean

From The BBC:

An estimated 30% of the world's undiscovered gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil may be in the Arctic, according to a map published on Friday.

The map is the culmination of an assessment carried out by the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Writing in the journal Science, its authors say the findings are "important to the interests of Arctic countries".

But, they add, they are unlikely to substantially shift the geographic pattern of world oil production.

According to the new map, the majority of oil is likely to be found underwater, on continental shelves.

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