5 ms·

Bio-coal is possible, and may be economically viable (especially when produced from biowaste as here), but only makes sense for an extremely brief transition wi

Bio-coal is possible, and may be economically viable (especially when produced from biowaste as here), but only makes sense for an extremely brief transition window. So these guys need to go from the current five-gram scale to the estimated one million tonnes per day scale in less than five years. Maybe in China that's possible.

elric 7y ago
I'm not sure whether I agree with your timeline. Coal will likely remain useful for a variety of industrial processes, like steel production.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  But that's because of it's usefulness as a chemical precursor (i.e. carbon) rather than because it was worth it to burn for straight heating energy in a power plant. I am pretty much okay with (or at least resigned to) petrochemicals/coal being used for the next 30 years to produce chemicals and other products. Burning it is a waste of a very useful chemical feedstock. The lowest value (and by extension least valuable) thing you can do with a material like coal is burn it. If it's used because of it's properties other than it's fuel content of course it's value is higher and economics will make it more compelling. These are entirely different markets in size and kind.
- MertsA 7y ago
  Even with steel there's direct reduced iron and electrolytic steel production is already on the horizon.
  - neltnerb 7y ago
    Is this what you're talking about? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-way-to-make-steel-uses-electricity/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-w... Looks like another great way to use excess renewable power when the grid is underutilized but the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. Build enough of these to matter and you could probably get away with a fair bit less battery storage as long as you still have natural gas peakers.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      http://www.hybritdevelopment.com http://www.hybritdevelopment.com "If successful, HYBRIT means that together we can reduce Sweden’s CO2 emissions by 10% and Finland’s by 7%."
      - neltnerb 7y ago
        Nice! I saw a great presentation from some researchers that figured out how to make electrolytic Boron as well using molten oxide electrolysis. http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/64889/34540560-MIT.pdf;sequence=2 http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/64889/34540560... (warning, link to a thesis)
        jacobush 7y ago
        How old are you? ;-)
        neltnerb 7y ago
        Why?
        jacobush 7y ago
        " I saw a great presentation from some researchers " and the paper you linked to was from 1940. :-)
        neltnerb 7y ago
        Haha, I didn't notice that actually. The presentation I saw was last year by some folks researching the topic who found a way to make it economical enough. I could have sworn the name was the one I thought but guess I am too old to have a good memory =)
    - MertsA 7y ago
      It's not really all that conducive to starting and stopping depending on energy prices. We already have that same capability with Aluminum and I've never heard of any Aluminum plant shutting down during the day and picking back up at night. Those cells and keeping them running are going to be expensive enough that I doubt it would make economic sense to stop production unless power is just absurdly expensive. The price of iron isn't about to fall through the floor and the price of electricity isn't going to skyrocket so even if power was free all night I'm still not sure that it would be worth it to save a little on electricity costs in the day and miss out on a chunk of production. I think the much bigger impact is going to come from deferred charging of battery electric vehicles. The transportation sector accounts for 28% of total US energy consumption. Electric cars are getting capacities large enough that range is close enough to on par with traditional ICE vehicles. It's already commonplace to shift around when you fill up at the gas station by a day or so, with electric vehicles rather than having to work around personal schedules to refill you can just leave it plugged in when parked at home and let it charge whenever it's appropriate so long as it meets basic constraints like e.g. make sure I have at least 60% charge by time to leave for work. If a large portion of 28% of total energy demand can be deferred a bit that should do a lot to increase the flexibility of demand to accommodate the variability of renewable power sources. And that doesn't even touch on repurposing spare capacity as a distributed energy storage mechanism. If the margins of buying power at cheap costs and selling it at peak demand can more than pay for the degradation of the battery and any conversion inefficiencies then that's a ton of energy storage capacity right there. It already makes economic sense for utilities to use some battery energy storage systems today so I can't imagine it would be impractical when the capital costs are reduced to nothing and it's just the operational costs to consider.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Before coal, there was charcoal; the process works perfectly well with it. We switched because the energy-ROI and logistics are much easier than the manual charcoal production process was.
  - elric 7y ago
    Your comment made me realize that I didn't fully understand the difference between coal and charcoal. I assumed they were functionally equivalent, just of a different origin. But apparently charcoal is just carbon, and coal contains all kinds of other substances which can be used to create rubber and other synthetics. As a result burning charcoal is much cleaner (though making it isn't), and coal has uses far beyond merely setting it on fire.

elric 7y ago

I'm not sure whether I agree with your timeline. Coal will likely remain useful for a variety of industrial processes, like steel production.

neltnerb 7y ago
But that's because of it's usefulness as a chemical precursor (i.e. carbon) rather than because it was worth it to burn for straight heating energy in a power plant. I am pretty much okay with (or at least resigned to) petrochemicals/coal being used for the next 30 years to produce chemicals and other products. Burning it is a waste of a very useful chemical feedstock. The lowest value (and by extension least valuable) thing you can do with a material like coal is burn it. If it's used because of it's properties other than it's fuel content of course it's value is higher and economics will make it more compelling. These are entirely different markets in size and kind.
MertsA 7y ago
Even with steel there's direct reduced iron and electrolytic steel production is already on the horizon.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  Is this what you're talking about? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-way-to-make-steel-uses-electricity/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaner-cheaper-w... Looks like another great way to use excess renewable power when the grid is underutilized but the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. Build enough of these to matter and you could probably get away with a fair bit less battery storage as long as you still have natural gas peakers.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    http://www.hybritdevelopment.com http://www.hybritdevelopment.com "If successful, HYBRIT means that together we can reduce Sweden’s CO2 emissions by 10% and Finland’s by 7%."
    - neltnerb 7y ago
      Nice! I saw a great presentation from some researchers that figured out how to make electrolytic Boron as well using molten oxide electrolysis. http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/64889/34540560-MIT.pdf;sequence=2 http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/64889/34540560... (warning, link to a thesis)
      - jacobush 7y ago
        How old are you? ;-)
        neltnerb 7y ago
        Why?
        jacobush 7y ago
        " I saw a great presentation from some researchers " and the paper you linked to was from 1940. :-)
        neltnerb 7y ago
        Haha, I didn't notice that actually. The presentation I saw was last year by some folks researching the topic who found a way to make it economical enough. I could have sworn the name was the one I thought but guess I am too old to have a good memory =)
  - MertsA 7y ago
    It's not really all that conducive to starting and stopping depending on energy prices. We already have that same capability with Aluminum and I've never heard of any Aluminum plant shutting down during the day and picking back up at night. Those cells and keeping them running are going to be expensive enough that I doubt it would make economic sense to stop production unless power is just absurdly expensive. The price of iron isn't about to fall through the floor and the price of electricity isn't going to skyrocket so even if power was free all night I'm still not sure that it would be worth it to save a little on electricity costs in the day and miss out on a chunk of production. I think the much bigger impact is going to come from deferred charging of battery electric vehicles. The transportation sector accounts for 28% of total US energy consumption. Electric cars are getting capacities large enough that range is close enough to on par with traditional ICE vehicles. It's already commonplace to shift around when you fill up at the gas station by a day or so, with electric vehicles rather than having to work around personal schedules to refill you can just leave it plugged in when parked at home and let it charge whenever it's appropriate so long as it meets basic constraints like e.g. make sure I have at least 60% charge by time to leave for work. If a large portion of 28% of total energy demand can be deferred a bit that should do a lot to increase the flexibility of demand to accommodate the variability of renewable power sources. And that doesn't even touch on repurposing spare capacity as a distributed energy storage mechanism. If the margins of buying power at cheap costs and selling it at peak demand can more than pay for the degradation of the battery and any conversion inefficiencies then that's a ton of energy storage capacity right there. It already makes economic sense for utilities to use some battery energy storage systems today so I can't imagine it would be impractical when the capital costs are reduced to nothing and it's just the operational costs to consider.
pjc50 7y ago
Before coal, there was charcoal; the process works perfectly well with it. We switched because the energy-ROI and logistics are much easier than the manual charcoal production process was.
- elric 7y ago
  Your comment made me realize that I didn't fully understand the difference between coal and charcoal. I assumed they were functionally equivalent, just of a different origin. But apparently charcoal is just carbon, and coal contains all kinds of other substances which can be used to create rubber and other synthetics. As a result burning charcoal is much cleaner (though making it isn't), and coal has uses far beyond merely setting it on fire.