Dilla
Senior Member
you're right, dammit. my mistake.
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Peak Oil Planning
- Thread starter RKudlac
- Start date
you're right, dammit. my mistake.
unimaginative2
Senior Member
It's obviously not a big deal, and it's a common mistake, but it's important that people realize that Russia's oil sector isn't a big commie monolith. These are all publicly traded companies that we're all so hysterical about. We can go out and buy stock in them right now, if we want. A lot of the anger from the west seems to be that it's Russian publicly-traded oil companies profiting from Russia's oil, rather than the Western Seven Sisters. I might add that they prosecuted Khodorkovsky for fraud at a privatization auction, which pretty much nobody disputes, and non-payment of taxes, for which the case was also very strong.
The simple issue is that price signals simply can't work the way they used to. In the past, when the price got unacceptably high, the Saudis just took a wrench (a very big wrench) to a few valves and literally within days could increase production by millions of barrels per day. If the Saudi/Kuwaiti fields are peaking, and there is very strong evidence that they are, future increases in production will have to come from massive offshore or heavy oil projects which take many years to plan and build. Sure, a decade down the line when all these new projects prompted by high prices come on line, prices might level off or drop a bit. But that won't be before an absoutely crushing spike that will totally devastate all developed economies if we don't somehow prepare for it by aggressively promoting conservation and alternatives to petroleum.
The simple issue is that price signals simply can't work the way they used to. In the past, when the price got unacceptably high, the Saudis just took a wrench (a very big wrench) to a few valves and literally within days could increase production by millions of barrels per day. If the Saudi/Kuwaiti fields are peaking, and there is very strong evidence that they are, future increases in production will have to come from massive offshore or heavy oil projects which take many years to plan and build. Sure, a decade down the line when all these new projects prompted by high prices come on line, prices might level off or drop a bit. But that won't be before an absoutely crushing spike that will totally devastate all developed economies if we don't somehow prepare for it by aggressively promoting conservation and alternatives to petroleum.
Prometheus The Supremo
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Bio-crude Turns Cheap Waste Into Valuable Fuel
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2008) — CSIRO and Monash University have developed a chemical process that turns green waste into a stable bio-crude oil. The bio-crude oil can be used to produce high value chemicals and biofuels, including both petrol and diesel replacement fuels.
“By making changes to the chemical process, we’ve been able to create a concentrated bio-crude which is much more stable than that achieved elsewhere in the world,†says Dr Steven Loffler of CSIRO Forest Biosciences.
“This makes it practical and economical to produce bio-crude in local areas for transport to a central refinery, overcoming the high costs and greenhouse gas emissions otherwise involved in transporting bulky green wastes over long distances.â€
The process uses low value waste such as forest thinnings, crop residues, waste paper and garden waste, significant amounts of which are currently dumped in landfill or burned.
“By using waste, our Furafuel technology overcomes the food versus fuel debate which surrounds biofuels generated from grains, corn and sugar,†says Dr Loffler.
“The project forms part of CSIRO’s commitment to delivering cleaner energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by improving technologies for converting waste biomass to transport fuels.â€
The plant wastes being targeted for conversion into biofuels contain chemicals known as lignocellulose, which is increasingly favoured around the world as a raw material for the next generation of bio-ethanol.
Lignocellulose is both renewable and potentially greenhouse gas neutral. It is predominantly found in trees and is made up of cellulose; lignin, a natural plastic; and hemicellulose.
CSIRO and Monash University will apply to patent the chemical processes underpinning the conversion of green wastes to bio-crude oil once final laboratory trials are completed.
The research to date is supported by funding from CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship program, Monash University, Circa Group and Forest Wood Products Australia.
National Research Flagships CSIRO initiated the National Research Flagships to provide science-based solutions in response to Australia’s major research challenges and opportunities. The nine Flagships form multidisciplinary teams with industry and the research community to deliver impact and benefits for Australia.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080204094459.htm
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2008) — CSIRO and Monash University have developed a chemical process that turns green waste into a stable bio-crude oil. The bio-crude oil can be used to produce high value chemicals and biofuels, including both petrol and diesel replacement fuels.
“By making changes to the chemical process, we’ve been able to create a concentrated bio-crude which is much more stable than that achieved elsewhere in the world,†says Dr Steven Loffler of CSIRO Forest Biosciences.
“This makes it practical and economical to produce bio-crude in local areas for transport to a central refinery, overcoming the high costs and greenhouse gas emissions otherwise involved in transporting bulky green wastes over long distances.â€
The process uses low value waste such as forest thinnings, crop residues, waste paper and garden waste, significant amounts of which are currently dumped in landfill or burned.
“By using waste, our Furafuel technology overcomes the food versus fuel debate which surrounds biofuels generated from grains, corn and sugar,†says Dr Loffler.
“The project forms part of CSIRO’s commitment to delivering cleaner energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by improving technologies for converting waste biomass to transport fuels.â€
The plant wastes being targeted for conversion into biofuels contain chemicals known as lignocellulose, which is increasingly favoured around the world as a raw material for the next generation of bio-ethanol.
Lignocellulose is both renewable and potentially greenhouse gas neutral. It is predominantly found in trees and is made up of cellulose; lignin, a natural plastic; and hemicellulose.
CSIRO and Monash University will apply to patent the chemical processes underpinning the conversion of green wastes to bio-crude oil once final laboratory trials are completed.
The research to date is supported by funding from CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship program, Monash University, Circa Group and Forest Wood Products Australia.
National Research Flagships CSIRO initiated the National Research Flagships to provide science-based solutions in response to Australia’s major research challenges and opportunities. The nine Flagships form multidisciplinary teams with industry and the research community to deliver impact and benefits for Australia.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080204094459.htm
Prometheus The Supremo
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NIST building hydrogen pipeline laboratory
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology is constructing a new laboratory that's designed to test materials for hydrogen pipelines.
Widely used in industrial processing, hydrogen is attractive as a fuel because it burns cleanly without carbon emissions and can be derived from domestic sources, researchers noted. But long-term exposure to hydrogen can cause pipelines to become brittle, increasing the potential for dangerous failures.
The NIST's 750-square-foot laboratory is being constructed at the NIST campus in Boulder, Colo., and is expected to be operational by mid-year.
Researchers plan to use the hydrogen laboratory to develop long-term service tests and apply them to study pipeline materials and mechanical effects. The NIST is coordinating its research and safety plans with other national laboratories and industry groups working with hydrogen.
Tom Siewert, the NIST metallurgist who will manage the new laboratory, said initial research will include collecting fatigue and fracture data from existing pipelines as a baseline.
The new laboratory is among a variety of NIST programs focusing on hydrogen, including studies on fuel cells.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology is constructing a new laboratory that's designed to test materials for hydrogen pipelines.
Widely used in industrial processing, hydrogen is attractive as a fuel because it burns cleanly without carbon emissions and can be derived from domestic sources, researchers noted. But long-term exposure to hydrogen can cause pipelines to become brittle, increasing the potential for dangerous failures.
The NIST's 750-square-foot laboratory is being constructed at the NIST campus in Boulder, Colo., and is expected to be operational by mid-year.
Researchers plan to use the hydrogen laboratory to develop long-term service tests and apply them to study pipeline materials and mechanical effects. The NIST is coordinating its research and safety plans with other national laboratories and industry groups working with hydrogen.
Tom Siewert, the NIST metallurgist who will manage the new laboratory, said initial research will include collecting fatigue and fracture data from existing pipelines as a baseline.
The new laboratory is among a variety of NIST programs focusing on hydrogen, including studies on fuel cells.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International
H
Hydrogen
Guest
^Then in twenty years they can get around to figuring out how to store an adequate amount of hydrogen in a car. For example, storing liquid hydrogen in a car would require an insulated cryogenic fuel tank (-253C). The problem is that the cryogenic hydrogen would always be boiling away. This would make enclosed or underground parking really fun. Hydrogen is flammable in the air in concentrations of five percent and up, and at that point the minimum energy required to ignite it is about one-twentieth of that needed for gasoline or natural gas. Can you say fuel-air explosion?
If compressed hydrogen is to be used instead of liquid hydrogen, the fuel tank would need to be eight times the size of a gasoline tank in order to contain the equal energy. It would have to be crash safe, too.
Or boom.
If compressed hydrogen is to be used instead of liquid hydrogen, the fuel tank would need to be eight times the size of a gasoline tank in order to contain the equal energy. It would have to be crash safe, too.
Or boom.
unimaginative2
Senior Member
Sounds scary, but it would be incredibly difficult to get a concentration of five percent from a leaking car tank. Hydrogen is lighter than air and disperses much too rapidly.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
I really don't see the viability of hydrogen because, unlike petroleum, it has to be generated rather than mined, extracted or collected. To say that hydrogen is a "fuel" is like saying electricity is a "fuel". Even those hydrogen-producing E.Coli have to be fed a food source that is most likely grown with petroleum-based fertilizer.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
Yeah, it's odd that hydrogen has been so quickly taken to be the solution to energy problems in some quarters. It has been well-marketed. In the short term, improving on efficient hybrid engine technology will go a considerable way to reducing consumption on certain vehicles. There are a number of structural changes that can be made to cars that can exact savings in terms of fuel consumption as well.
The hydrogen would be bleeding off constantly. It's just that kind of a gas.
The hydrogen would be bleeding off constantly. It's just that kind of a gas.
Prometheus The Supremo
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hydrogen, stop demeaning yourself. alot of people think highly of you. 
H
Hydrogen
Guest
Hey, when you are the stuff of stars, nothing really gets you down.
Prometheus The Supremo
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H
Hydrogen
Guest
Auntyhydrogen is a sweetheart, but so rarely seen.
TrickyRicky
Senior Member
Environmental concerns aside I think there are parameters missing in the discussion about peak oil. Peak oil is really a price issue not a material scarcity issue. There is no lack of material recoverable to process into synthetic crude but there is a bottleneck in price incentive and infrastructure to do so.
We still don't live in an age of commodity scarcity just an age of material bottleneck. The defining issue of our age is labour cost and labour movement. We freak-out about small price point increases in the cost of fuel but the rise of the cost of oil from 90 cents to $1.05 or even to $2.00 or $3.00 per litre is of little consequence relative to the force of taking someone who makes $100 a day and transfering his production to a guy who makes $5. To turn $100 of labour cost into $5 is worth burning a hell of a lot of surplus fuel at basically any price producers want us to pay.
We still don't live in an age of commodity scarcity just an age of material bottleneck. The defining issue of our age is labour cost and labour movement. We freak-out about small price point increases in the cost of fuel but the rise of the cost of oil from 90 cents to $1.05 or even to $2.00 or $3.00 per litre is of little consequence relative to the force of taking someone who makes $100 a day and transfering his production to a guy who makes $5. To turn $100 of labour cost into $5 is worth burning a hell of a lot of surplus fuel at basically any price producers want us to pay.
afransen
Senior Member
And there is a price point for fuel where even the slightly insane alternatives, such as hydrogen, become appealing.
H
Hydrogen
Guest
High temperature superconductors could change the way electricity is transmitted. There is still considerable research in the area. The energy savings would be enormous.
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Physicists reveal superconducting surprise
MIT physicists have taken a step toward understanding the puzzling nature of high-temperature superconductors, materials that conduct electricity with no resistance at temperatures well above absolute zero.
If superconductors could be made to work at temperatures as high as room temperature, they could have potentially limitless applications. But first, scientists need to learn much more about how such materials work.
Using a new method, the MIT team made a surprising discovery that may overturn theories about the state of matter in which superconducting materials exist just before they start to superconduct. The findings are reported in the February issue of Nature Physics.
Understanding high-temperature superconductors is one of the biggest challenges in physics today, according to Eric Hudson, MIT assistant professor of physics and senior author of the paper.
Most superconductors only superconduct at temperatures near absolute zero, but about 20 years ago, it was discovered that some ceramics can superconduct at higher temperatures (but usually still below 100 Kelvin, or -173 Celsius).
Such high-temperature superconductors are now beginning to be used for many applications, including cell-phone base stations and a demo magnetic-levitation train. But their potential applications could be much broader.
"If you could make superconductors work at room temperature, then the applications are endless," said Hudson.
Superconductors are superior to ordinary metal conductors such as copper because current doesn't lose energy as wasteful heat as it flows through them, thus allowing larger current densities. Once a current is set in motion in a closed loop of superconducting material, it will flow forever.
In the Nature Physics study, the MIT researchers looked at a state of matter that superconductors inhabit just above the temperature at which they start to superconduct.
When a material is in a superconducting state, all electrons are at the same energy level. The range of surrounding, unavailable electron energy levels is called the superconducting gap. It is a critical component of superconduction, because it prevents electrons from scattering, thus eliminating resistance and allowing the unimpeded flow of current.
Just above the transition temperature when a material starts to superconduct, it exists in a state called the pseudogap. This state of matter is not at all well understood, said Hudson.
The researchers decided to investigate the nature of the pseudogap state by studying the properties of electron states that were believed to be defined by the characteristics of superconductors: the states surrounding impurities in the material.
It had already been shown that natural impurities in a superconducting material, such as a missing or replaced atom, allow electrons to reach energy levels that are normally within the superconducting gap, so they can scatter. This can be observed using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).
The new MIT study shows that scattering by impurities occurs when a material is in the pseudogap state as well as the superconducting state. That finding challenges the theory that the pseudogap is only a precursor state to the superconductive state, and offers evidence that the two states may coexist.
This method of comparing the pseudogap and superconducting state using STM could help physicists understand why certain materials are able to superconduct at such relatively high temperatures, said Hudson.
"Trying to understand what the pseudogap state is is a major outstanding question," he said.
Lead author of the paper is Kamalesh Chatterjee, a graduate student in physics. MIT physics graduate students Michael Boyer and William Wise are also authors of the paper, along with Takeshi Kondo of the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University and T. Takeuchi and H. Ikuta of Nagoya University, Japan.
Source: MIT, by Anne Trafton
----------------------------------------------
Physicists reveal superconducting surprise
MIT physicists have taken a step toward understanding the puzzling nature of high-temperature superconductors, materials that conduct electricity with no resistance at temperatures well above absolute zero.
If superconductors could be made to work at temperatures as high as room temperature, they could have potentially limitless applications. But first, scientists need to learn much more about how such materials work.
Using a new method, the MIT team made a surprising discovery that may overturn theories about the state of matter in which superconducting materials exist just before they start to superconduct. The findings are reported in the February issue of Nature Physics.
Understanding high-temperature superconductors is one of the biggest challenges in physics today, according to Eric Hudson, MIT assistant professor of physics and senior author of the paper.
Most superconductors only superconduct at temperatures near absolute zero, but about 20 years ago, it was discovered that some ceramics can superconduct at higher temperatures (but usually still below 100 Kelvin, or -173 Celsius).
Such high-temperature superconductors are now beginning to be used for many applications, including cell-phone base stations and a demo magnetic-levitation train. But their potential applications could be much broader.
"If you could make superconductors work at room temperature, then the applications are endless," said Hudson.
Superconductors are superior to ordinary metal conductors such as copper because current doesn't lose energy as wasteful heat as it flows through them, thus allowing larger current densities. Once a current is set in motion in a closed loop of superconducting material, it will flow forever.
In the Nature Physics study, the MIT researchers looked at a state of matter that superconductors inhabit just above the temperature at which they start to superconduct.
When a material is in a superconducting state, all electrons are at the same energy level. The range of surrounding, unavailable electron energy levels is called the superconducting gap. It is a critical component of superconduction, because it prevents electrons from scattering, thus eliminating resistance and allowing the unimpeded flow of current.
Just above the transition temperature when a material starts to superconduct, it exists in a state called the pseudogap. This state of matter is not at all well understood, said Hudson.
The researchers decided to investigate the nature of the pseudogap state by studying the properties of electron states that were believed to be defined by the characteristics of superconductors: the states surrounding impurities in the material.
It had already been shown that natural impurities in a superconducting material, such as a missing or replaced atom, allow electrons to reach energy levels that are normally within the superconducting gap, so they can scatter. This can be observed using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).
The new MIT study shows that scattering by impurities occurs when a material is in the pseudogap state as well as the superconducting state. That finding challenges the theory that the pseudogap is only a precursor state to the superconductive state, and offers evidence that the two states may coexist.
This method of comparing the pseudogap and superconducting state using STM could help physicists understand why certain materials are able to superconduct at such relatively high temperatures, said Hudson.
"Trying to understand what the pseudogap state is is a major outstanding question," he said.
Lead author of the paper is Kamalesh Chatterjee, a graduate student in physics. MIT physics graduate students Michael Boyer and William Wise are also authors of the paper, along with Takeshi Kondo of the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University and T. Takeuchi and H. Ikuta of Nagoya University, Japan.
Source: MIT, by Anne Trafton