5 ms·
Who cares about fuel, you can get a lot of energy from renewable resources and nuclear just fine, the later mostly requiring metallurgy and concrete. Much more
by swiley 6y ago
Who cares about fuel, you can get a lot of energy from renewable resources and nuclear just fine, the later mostly requiring metallurgy and concrete.
Much more interesting are petrochemicals, many are possible to synthesize without petroleum but it's way less economical.
- bilbo0s 6y agoHow do you do the metallurgy, manufacture the concrete, or synthesize the petrochemicals in the absence of fossil fuel energy? Examples given in the article were on the scale of post nuclear conflict societal collapse. No ports, no highways, no railways, no dual use infrastructure at all. No more fossil fuel deliveries happening. No deliveries of anything. Rebuilding in that environment would be challenging in the extreme. I'm not sure that any rebuilding happens in the vast majority of places.
- nitrogen 6y agoIf you can manage to make mirrors (maybe even using rotating mercury) using wood for your initial heat source you might be able to use solar thermal for metallurgy.
- hinkley 6y agoAs the article points out, the coal or charcoal in steel production isn't just a heat source, it's also a reduction reaction. Heat speeds up the oxidation reaction, so you need something in the crucible/fire that is capable of scavenging oxygen before it binds with the iron.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago> metallurgy, manufacture the concrete, or synthesize the petrochemicals in the absence of fossil fuel energy I think you could use biomass to bootstrap these. Biosmass wouldn't be sustainable, but once you have the metallurgy, etc in place you could then build wind turbines.
- bobthepanda 6y agoBiomass doesn’t burn hot enough.
- jabl 6y agoHow do you think they made iron before the industrial revolution? Hint: charcoal.
- bobthepanda 6y agoGoing back to just pig iron would be pretty terrible. The Old World cleared nearly all of its forests getting to that point.
- jabl 6y agoTrue, it wouldn't support anything close to the scale of steel production today. But it could be a step in a bootstrap process. Build some hydro/nuclear/wind power plants, then you can start looking into hydrogen reduction for steel production.
- Symmetry 6y agoEnough people know that Wootz steel is possible through mixing wrought and cast iron in the right sort of vessel that we'd have at least some steel with decent carbon content. Or pattern welding will be fine for most things.
- bigger_cheese 6y agoWith careful management and modern forestry techniques I believe sustainable (or close to sustainable) charcoal production is possible, I can remember seeing CSIRO do a study using Australian Mallee trees. These grow fast enough such that you can rotate which part of the plantation you are harvesting to enable something close to continuous production. I can't find paper https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/pub?pid=csiro:EP115427 https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/pub?pid=csiro:EP115427 is closest thing google turns up. You also get eucalypt oil as a by-product from harvesting these trees wikipedia tells me this has a high enough octane rating to serve as a fuel in it's own right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_oil Now this might be difficult to achieve in a near collapse. I'm not sure the size of plantations you would need I assume would be pretty massive.
- swiley 6y agoA number of ancient civilizations managed these without fossil fuels so it's not inconceivable.