The fact that I say "Times up," doesn't mean I oppose new ideas - I spend too much time working on my IP to claim that - but it does imply that I have a rather jaunticed view whether some new scheme, including the plethora that I get to see that violate the infamous second law of thermodynamics, will sustain this planet's human population - or even a significant fraction of it - at anything above the state of "extremely dire."
I am going to count the forms of new primary energy that were discovered scaled to a meaningful level during the 19th and 20th century combined, a period of 200 years: One.
I'm done counting.
As for energy conversion devices, if you count the jet engine and the internal combustion engine as new primary energy conversion devices, you can count to two, but, maybe a little farther not much farther even if you include the battery and the electrical generator (in both thermodynamic directions) in the list.
The invention of the photovoltaic solar cell, which took place in 1954, a little over a half a century ago, does not qualify by the way, in this context because of the very important qualifying word "meaningful," which I define here as one exajoule, on the grounds that humanity now consumes 500 exajoules of energy each year.
I am tired of hearing by the way, how all of humanity should all risk our lives on the premise that solar energy is great just because somebody said that "heavier than air" human flight was impossible.
For more than 5000 years people claiming that heavier than air flight was impossible were right, not wrong.
Time's up.
To me the biggest risk of solar PV energy is not the waste that it generates - although I have reported on the delusionary thinking connected with that irrefutable fact, that solar PV energy generates significant waste - but rather the complacency that the handwaving about solar energy generates.
My last diary focused on the an article from a scientific - or more properly a technological journal - about molten carbonate fuel cells. I spend a lot of time in journals. There isn't time to read as much as I would like and my life will be properly addressed by the phrase "Time's Up," before I know even a tiny fraction of what I would like to know, write a fraction of what I would like to write, before I invent only a fraction of what I would like to invent, and love only a fraction of what, and more importantly, who, I would like to love.
When my father died, my stepmother - bless her soul - said to me, "I hope I loved him enough," and that is why my stepmother is among those who I have not loved enough, because she did not love enough, and knew as much, even though she is very good at loving.
Time's up.
I am good at reading.
Here's a journal I'd like to read if I had time: "Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making." Maybe you think I am joking when I say that there is a journal of this name, but as it happens, I am not.
I have just downloaded for later reading, an article called, "The minimum spanning tree problem with fuzzy costs." Fuzzy Optim Decis Making (2008) 7:105–118.
Of course the word "fuzzy" has different meaning in different contexts. If one is discussing mathematics, for instance, the word "fuzzy" means something quite different than when I describe Amory Lovins "fuzzy thinking."
Amory Lovins doesn't know shit from shinola about mathematics or any other physical science subject. As a result of his 30 year orgy of ignorance and greed, hundreds of billions of tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste have been dumped into the atmosphere, because too many people believed his fuzzy talk, and I assure you, that mathematicians had little to do with this outcome.
Here is another technical term that is found in the article on "spanning tree" problems: "minmax regret."
Um. Well then.
Also there is a term called "maximum regret:"
Now(T ) = [δ(T ), δ(T )] forms a deviation interval of spanning tree T . The upper bound δ(T ) of the deviation interval is called the maximal regret of T.
I have maximal regret that I ever took the ideas of pieces of shit like Amory Lovins seriously, and possibly I am talking about a deviation interval, but none of my terms in this paragraph are technical.
Something to Regret: More Could Have Been Done.
Time's up.
For as long as I have been thinking about the problem of energy - going back many years now - I have been hearing a few comments about the putative ecomomics of solar power, by the way. Often the announcements - I recall them from 30 years ago - that solar electricity was about to become competitive with grid based electricity generated by dangerous coal, dangerous natural gas and remarkably safe nuclear energy, have come along with the announcement of a new breakthrough. For as long as I can remember I have heard the claim that solar would become affordable through the mystical intervention of "mass production," often from people who liked to imply that the reason that solar energy was not more popular was because of "giant corporations."
Huh?
In fact, the world's largest producers of solar cells include "giant corporations," like BP for instance, the same company that leaks dangerous fossil fuel crudes all over the Alaskan tundra and has huge - though publically ignored - dangerous fossil fuel accidents like the Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 people instantly and injured 170 in March of 2003.
I have no idea how many "solar will save us" aficinados here called for banning oil or phasing it out at the the time, but I'll bet if you look, you will find a number uncomfortably close to zero.
On the other hand, the same people think it internationally news worthy if someone farts in a nuclear plant, especially if a few of the atoms in the hydrogen sulfide portion of the fart happen to be tritium atoms.
The "solar will save us" anti-nuke set is remarkable for claiming that nuclear power is "too expensive." In general, they like to point to the high capital costs of building a nuclear power plant, many of which derive from the fact that nuclear power plants are required to meet safety standards that no other energy industry could possibly match under any circumstances. This is a cultural decision.
I feel ambivalent about this issue. One of the reasons that I like nuclear energy is that it is safer than all other forms of energy. If standards were lowered to save money, probably the number fatalities associated with nuclear energy would climb from the "next to zero" figure no observed over the 50 year history of commercial nuclear power. No other system of energy could prove as safe for any amount of money. But it is reasonable to ask whether it is wise to spend 3 billion dollars on extra safety features in a nuclear plant in order to save maybe 30 lives over a 50 year period, when one could save maybe many thousands of lives by purchasing $10,000 worth of health insurance for 300,000 uninsured children. (Ideally, of course, there would be sufficient resources in the world so that such a matter was not even close to being either/or.)
But away, back to the "solar will save us" anti-nuke crowd:
They complain that nuclear is too expensive and that solar "will become cheaper with mass production." They also like to claim that "solar is growing exponentially." I've been hearing both of these claims for decades.
Time's up.
According to the solar business site solar buzz, as of this writing, July 17, 2008, the cost of a solar cell in the United States is $4.83/"watt" up one cent. I, and not solarbuzz, have put the quotation marks around the word "watt" to denote that what is actually being discussed is the peak power and not the average continuous power. In a recent diary,Life Cycle Analysis of Solar (And Wind) Power in Switzerland I noted that in Switzerland the average power of solar cells in Switzerland is about 10% of the peak power. I was criticized for "cherry picking" by a commentator, and I reacted quite cantankerously - that's my style - but the commentator was right and I was wrong. In many places, say New Mexico for instance, solar PV electricity can have a capacity utilization as high as 25%.
An unwritten law of discussing solar energy is that one can only discuss it under ideal conditions. I often violate this law by a refusal to believe that the sun god is above all other gods, but here I will obey this law and pretend that the capacity utilization of all solar PV systems, is 25%, even in Oslo during a blizzard during the winter solstice.
Let's calculate. At $4.83/"watt," the price of solar plants on a continuous average basis is found to be $19.32/watt, ignoring any cost associated with energy storage devices like a solar powered world might need in Oslo during a blizzard during the winter solstice.
This translates to about $19,320/kw of installed infrastructure.
In spite of the "exponential growth" leading to "mass production" this trivial form of energy is still quite expensive, which is not to imply that anyone should be dissauded from another 50 years of being a true believer.
A typical size for large power plants, including nuclear plants, is about 1000 MW,which is one million times larger than a one kw plant, of course. Thus a solar plant of equivalent size would cost about 20 billion dollars, excluding external costs - the cost of dumping dangerous solar PV waste - each.
According to this document, the cost of building the 90 GW of new coal fired capacity in the United States - at 2007 prices - was estimated to be about $145 billion, suggesting a capital cost of about $1600/kw. And's let be clear, people are seriously considering doing exactly this, while we all chat so pleasantly about the grand solar future.
Much of the world's nuclear construction capacity has been destroyed by ignorance, and nuclear plants that are ordered now will all face FOAKE costs - First of A Kind Engineering - costs. According to many anti-nukes, nuclear power is "too expensive." but a reasonable figure for new nuclear construction is probably in the range of $2000/kw capacity and $3000/kw capacity.
But this is all prognostication. Only about 30 nuclear plants are now under construction and with the crush of disappearing resources, it is not clear what they will cost, although I doubt they will reach $10,000kwh.
Now I would like to get to the meat of this diary, if it has meat, which maybe it doesn't and talk about fuel cells.
The article cited is Selman, Journal of Power Sources 160 (2006) 852–857. Here is the abstract.
Now some quotes:
In spite of public perception, the MCFC has continued to make remarkable advances in both technical and economic respects during the last 10 years. This is in part an effect of the major push given to MCFC technology by worldwide interest and funding in the 1980s and early 1990s...
This combined technical and marketing effort is under way in spite of a downturn in the public image of the MCFC and its commercial potential. A major factor in this gloomy perception among potential users was the conjunction, in the mid-90 s, of rather unrealistic assessments of various types of fuel cellin different stages of development. For example, too optimistic assessments of PEMFC and SOFC were abundant, while assessments of PAFC and MCFC appear in hindsight too pessimistic.
strong>In the last 5 years the economics of fuel cells in general are being assessed more soberly.<</strong> This is largely the result of difficulties in the implementation, limited lifetime and high cost of the PEMFC, which for a long timewas the prime contender for early and wise-spread commercialization, especially in transportation. To name just one difficulty, hydrogen, due to its storage and cost barriers, has proved to be an interesting goal – and a boon to the world of research – but not the simple universal fuel of popular science.
In stationary power generation, too, it is safe to say that fuel cells, which in this case means mostly MCFC or SOFC, are still in an expensive early-commercial stage and not competitive with advanced combined-cycle technology...
The bold is mine.
Time's up.
SOFC stands for "solid oxide fuel cell;" PEMFC stands for "Polymer electrolyte fuel cell; and MCFC stands for "Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell."
The electrical performance of the various types of fuel cell has reached what appears to be a kind of steady state, although further improvements are not excluded. Remarkably, the differences in performance, although they do exist, are less conspicuous than the similarities...
They still don't work for very long, by the way, meaning you have to invest that capital cost quite frequently.
...The most significant advances in MCFC performance have been made in lifetime (durability), which about 15 years ago was still considered fatally short and difficult to control. Limited lifetime is mainly caused by the corrosive and difficult-toimmobilize electrolyte, as well as the relatively unstable nickel oxide cathode. During the last 10 years, the lifetime of stacks has been stretched from at most a few months to as long as 2 years...
And let's not forget that classic first law of thermodynamics often ignored in handwaving arguments about hydrogen Hummers and hydrogen HYPErcars:
...The idea of using the simplest of possible fossil fuels – carbon – is very old, dating back more than a century when molten hydroxide was used by Jaques and others as electrolyte in a coal-fed fuel cell with iron cathode. (See [7] for details about this fuel cell and other early developments here referred to.)...
But perhaps happily:
Since then, direct anodic oxidation of carbon in carbonate melt has practically been abandoned, except for occasional explorations. The main reason for poor performance was perceived to be the leaching of impurities in carbon (and especially in coal), leading to contamination of the melt. Also, the desirable four-electron oxidation of C to CO2 (if achieved at all, which is not easy to confirm experimentally) is always under threat of being reduced to a two-electron process due to the powerful driving force for CO formation by the Boudouard reaction of C
with CO2.
And if you're wondering about that Boudouard reaction, keep it in the back of your mind. What people will do to try to save their cars, but not the lives of their decendents, will involve coal gasification and liquefaction. It will work in the very short term, and people will march around with talk - and nothing but talk - about sequestration, which will never actually happen any more than the fuel cell in every basement, the chicken in every pot, the solar cell on every roof and the lutefisk in every jar.
Time's up.
