7 ms·

Can't read the article. How energy efficient and environmentally friendly is the hardening process compared to making steel? And is it a "in 20 years" thing ag

by nico_h 5y ago

Can't read the article. How energy efficient and environmentally friendly is the hardening process compared to making steel? And is it a "in 20 years" thing again, like all new battery tech?

martythemaniak 5y ago
A general note: in a world of super cheap solar or wind, energy efficiency doesn't matter as much. It's cheap because In many instances, the end product is the "battery". A desalination plant can be run when the sun is out and the end product (clean water) can be stored and used. In this instance, the hardening step stores energy in the final product. Just run that step at the right time.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  This kind of thinking is why cryptocurrency miners are setting up shop at substations. They get severely discounted electricity from the utilities, in exchange for ramping up and down their servers to keep the grid load balanced. Except, of course, cryptocurrency isn't nearly as useful as, say, desalinated water.
  - orasis 5y ago
    “Except, of course, cryptocurrency isn't nearly as useful as, say, desalinated water.” Heresy!!
  - vkou 5y ago
    > Except, of course, cryptocurrency isn't nearly as useful as, say, desalinated water. I'd like to expand on this a bit. The major problem with cryptocurrency is that the value of a typical coin seems to be ~ the cost of electricity needed to mine one. This means that a crypto miner turns $1 of energy into ~$1 of wealth. As far as business plans go, this is an absolutely horrific use of energy. Nearly no other business produces so little wealth, for such a high energy input. The economy in general, by the way, turns $1 of energy into ~$17 of wealth. [1] [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36754#:~:text=Expressed%20as%20a%20percent%20of,lowest%20since%20at%20least%201970 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36754#:~:tex....
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      That's why they are pursuing deals with electric companies. In exchange for helping with loaf balancing, they get electricity well below market rates. They are making a killing. Everyone who buys the coins are just helping to remove the pandemic stimulus from the economy, which I suppose is its own sort of good.
- gnramires 5y ago
  That's a common misconception; energy will matter anyhow. It's useful to think of industry as a three factor limitation of energy, materials and intelligence[1] -- you are sort of always limited by one of them. If energy was of literal no concern, we could promptly utilize very inefficient carbon capture or even synthesize elements. Solar energy still has significant costs in labor (what I call intelligence) and materials, both of which are finite. We will always as a civilization be managing those factors, even with a seemingly unlimited source like a feasible fusion reactor (which would require an advanced highly costly and finite reactor to produce energy) to solar panels (which outsource the fusion to some 150 million km away producer :) ) A quick googling gives me about 24 MJ/kg for steel production. A compression cycle with, for example, 1cm of displacement would need to exert 2.4 GN or about 24 million tons of kg-force over a 1kg sample to use equivalent energy, which I believe is far above any press in existence. [1] Indeed we know the first two are equivalent via E=mc^2 , however this conversion constant is essentially prohibitive outside of stellar nucleus. We also know the third one, intelligence, can be built from raw materials and energy, so there's also a conversion factor there.
ahevia 5y ago
The summary states the process of making hardened wood is more energy efficient, but I also wonder how long this would take to scale. Seems great for small operations (like the bench at a local park), but might require regulatory changes to use in any large projects.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Not sure if this is exactly the same but cross laminated timber (CLT) is already being used for constructing all kinds of buildings. Executive summary of its qualities: - Stronger and lighter than concrete. Think thinner floors and walls but with similar strength and load-bearing capability; less tonnes of material to move around. That alone is a big advantage. - Several buildings across the world already exist; more are being planned. So, its beyond the proof of concept stage but still early days in terms of adoption. - A few ambitious skyscrapers are being planned that will be built using it. So, instead of steel and concrete, these would be mostly made out of wood. Needless to say these will be very prestigious buildings; which should count as an advantage as well. - While it uses glue, it's not nearly as much as e.g. MDF; in the order of a few percent. It's mostly wood basically. The cross lamination is what gives it its strength. E.g. toxicity associated with MDF and similar materials is not much of a concern. - It's quite safe from e.g. a fire safety point of view and should also be usable in e.g. earthquake zones like Tokyo (which has a 350 CLT building planned). It's also quite durable (e.g. rot & humidity). - It's a nice way to capture carbon, obviously. As opposed to dumping massive amounts of carbon needed for e.g. concrete production and transport. So, very environmentally friendly. Also after demolition (it's wood basically). - You can work it using traditional wood working tools. Hammers, nails, saws, etc. - You can do a lot of this offsite as well and ship prefab components to the construction site. So, there is less waste on site of material that needs to be removed after. Existing construction work involves extensive use of power tools and produces enormous amounts of waste. - As a side effect of that: faster & more efficient construction. This is a big plus point as construction sites in busy cities are very disruptive. - Short term its somewhat more expensive than traditional construction methods (concrete). But long term there is plenty of potential for cost reductions due to scaling, learning effects, etc. Large scale CLT production simply does not yet exist. - The wood needed to produce it could feasibly be produced using sustainable foresting. But obviously that would be a sector that would need to be scaled up. However, if done right, that in itself is a good thing. It would basically mean countries investing in sustainable forestry, which has all sorts of nice side effects in terms of carbon capture, nature, and jobs. The biggest hurdles are not so much technical feasibility but just changing an industry used to a particular way of working along with its supply chains to work in different ways using different supply chains. That kind of thing does not happen overnight. But with the advantages listed above, there is plenty of interest in this.
joshvm 5y ago
Steel is incredibly energy intensive. It's not unusual for casting plants to have their own dedicated power stations. Traditionally you'd use coke to melt things (well, smelt iron ore), nowadays with induction/arc furnaces you can in theory use green energy, but it's still a huge amount of power.

by nico_h 5y ago

Can't read the article. How energy efficient and environmentally friendly is the hardening process compared to making steel? And is it a "in 20 years" thing again, like all new battery tech?

martythemaniak 5y ago

A general note: in a world of super cheap solar or wind, energy efficiency doesn't matter as much. It's cheap because In many instances, the end product is the "battery". A desalination plant can be run when the sun is out and the end product (clean water) can be stored and used. In this instance, the hardening step stores energy in the final product. Just run that step at the right time.

zdragnar 5y ago
This kind of thinking is why cryptocurrency miners are setting up shop at substations. They get severely discounted electricity from the utilities, in exchange for ramping up and down their servers to keep the grid load balanced. Except, of course, cryptocurrency isn't nearly as useful as, say, desalinated water.
- orasis 5y ago
  “Except, of course, cryptocurrency isn't nearly as useful as, say, desalinated water.” Heresy!!
- vkou 5y ago
  > Except, of course, cryptocurrency isn't nearly as useful as, say, desalinated water. I'd like to expand on this a bit. The major problem with cryptocurrency is that the value of a typical coin seems to be ~ the cost of electricity needed to mine one. This means that a crypto miner turns $1 of energy into ~$1 of wealth. As far as business plans go, this is an absolutely horrific use of energy. Nearly no other business produces so little wealth, for such a high energy input. The economy in general, by the way, turns $1 of energy into ~$17 of wealth. [1] [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36754#:~:text=Expressed%20as%20a%20percent%20of,lowest%20since%20at%20least%201970 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36754#:~:tex....
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    That's why they are pursuing deals with electric companies. In exchange for helping with loaf balancing, they get electricity well below market rates. They are making a killing. Everyone who buys the coins are just helping to remove the pandemic stimulus from the economy, which I suppose is its own sort of good.
gnramires 5y ago
That's a common misconception; energy will matter anyhow. It's useful to think of industry as a three factor limitation of energy, materials and intelligence[1] -- you are sort of always limited by one of them. If energy was of literal no concern, we could promptly utilize very inefficient carbon capture or even synthesize elements. Solar energy still has significant costs in labor (what I call intelligence) and materials, both of which are finite. We will always as a civilization be managing those factors, even with a seemingly unlimited source like a feasible fusion reactor (which would require an advanced highly costly and finite reactor to produce energy) to solar panels (which outsource the fusion to some 150 million km away producer :) ) A quick googling gives me about 24 MJ/kg for steel production. A compression cycle with, for example, 1cm of displacement would need to exert 2.4 GN or about 24 million tons of kg-force over a 1kg sample to use equivalent energy, which I believe is far above any press in existence. [1] Indeed we know the first two are equivalent via E=mc^2 , however this conversion constant is essentially prohibitive outside of stellar nucleus. We also know the third one, intelligence, can be built from raw materials and energy, so there's also a conversion factor there.

ahevia 5y ago

The summary states the process of making hardened wood is more energy efficient, but I also wonder how long this would take to scale. Seems great for small operations (like the bench at a local park), but might require regulatory changes to use in any large projects.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Not sure if this is exactly the same but cross laminated timber (CLT) is already being used for constructing all kinds of buildings. Executive summary of its qualities: - Stronger and lighter than concrete. Think thinner floors and walls but with similar strength and load-bearing capability; less tonnes of material to move around. That alone is a big advantage. - Several buildings across the world already exist; more are being planned. So, its beyond the proof of concept stage but still early days in terms of adoption. - A few ambitious skyscrapers are being planned that will be built using it. So, instead of steel and concrete, these would be mostly made out of wood. Needless to say these will be very prestigious buildings; which should count as an advantage as well. - While it uses glue, it's not nearly as much as e.g. MDF; in the order of a few percent. It's mostly wood basically. The cross lamination is what gives it its strength. E.g. toxicity associated with MDF and similar materials is not much of a concern. - It's quite safe from e.g. a fire safety point of view and should also be usable in e.g. earthquake zones like Tokyo (which has a 350 CLT building planned). It's also quite durable (e.g. rot & humidity). - It's a nice way to capture carbon, obviously. As opposed to dumping massive amounts of carbon needed for e.g. concrete production and transport. So, very environmentally friendly. Also after demolition (it's wood basically). - You can work it using traditional wood working tools. Hammers, nails, saws, etc. - You can do a lot of this offsite as well and ship prefab components to the construction site. So, there is less waste on site of material that needs to be removed after. Existing construction work involves extensive use of power tools and produces enormous amounts of waste. - As a side effect of that: faster & more efficient construction. This is a big plus point as construction sites in busy cities are very disruptive. - Short term its somewhat more expensive than traditional construction methods (concrete). But long term there is plenty of potential for cost reductions due to scaling, learning effects, etc. Large scale CLT production simply does not yet exist. - The wood needed to produce it could feasibly be produced using sustainable foresting. But obviously that would be a sector that would need to be scaled up. However, if done right, that in itself is a good thing. It would basically mean countries investing in sustainable forestry, which has all sorts of nice side effects in terms of carbon capture, nature, and jobs. The biggest hurdles are not so much technical feasibility but just changing an industry used to a particular way of working along with its supply chains to work in different ways using different supply chains. That kind of thing does not happen overnight. But with the advantages listed above, there is plenty of interest in this.

joshvm 5y ago

Steel is incredibly energy intensive. It's not unusual for casting plants to have their own dedicated power stations. Traditionally you'd use coke to melt things (well, smelt iron ore), nowadays with induction/arc furnaces you can in theory use green energy, but it's still a huge amount of power.