Adventure Ausrama Blog

Carbon capture from power stations that are coal powered is not going well. coal-powered power pollution For decades there has been much talk about capturing carbon from coal-fired power stations. So far projects have failed to come up with a viable solution. Coal is dirty and it remains so. Nuclear is more realistic alternative but it is dangerous.   power station pollution carbon coal-fired capture soda ash power stations pollution A new attempt is about to be made in India by Carbon Clean Solutions (CCSL). Claims are being made of capture costs as low $30.00 a tonne, half of that achieved so far in other tests. Pollution is also claimed to be reduced to zero. Such figures are obviously totally baseless.       carbon coal-fired pollution power stations cement fertilizer  Reduction of carbon by salt and amines to soda ash is the method to be used. Soda ash is used for fertilizer and cement. There is more than one system. The list i...

Turning carbon dioxide in carbon monoxide may seem like a silly thing to do, considering carbon monoxide is a deadly poison. However, if this can be done easily and cheaply it could reduce pollution: it is used to produce fuels and plastics. A catalyst has been made that does the conversion into carbon dioxide. It does the task rapidly. Last year the world's first commercial capture process at a coal power plant began operating. Waste gases were bubbled up through vats of amine solution. This is very expensive though. The new process became possible when it was made to work in water. Electrocalysts have been used for two decades to take an oxygen molecule from a CO 2 atom. As it now safely functions in water a whole new horizon opens up to clean up the environment. conversion occurs at a rate of 290,000 atoms a second, an improvement of 26 times the pre-water process. Little maintenance of the system is needed. It has only been done in the lab so far. Plans...

The Australian economy is heading southward and this does not mean we are moving closer to Antarctica. Our financial health is still in primary products. The price and demand for iron ore and coal still drives the economy. At the moment the foot is really off the accelerator and we are idling downhill. We will eventually reach the bottom. Then the country will have big problems. Tax revenue is already falling due to lower demand by China. US demand for Chinese good remains sluggish. As the world economy falls it impacts strongly on Australia. We have not made the move away from agriculture and manufacturing. This is mainly because our resource bowl has kept wages high. Manufacturing countries always have a wage differential advantage. In time, wages will rise in China as they have in Japan. Then companies will probably move to Southeast Asia. The hope that Australia will have a increase in IT start-ups to offset the fall in resource exports is not well founded. Products ...

Australia has made a new world record in "supercritical" steam. This involves the use of solar panels to generate heat that boils water and generates steam. The steam could be used instead of coal in power plants. Pressure reached 3,400 psi at a heat of 1,058°F. This is peak performance "stuff". It rivals coal in its efficiency. The first time a non-carbon source has at least equalled the efficiency of coal. Six hundred mirrors (heliostats) were used and their beams were directed at two towers housing solar receivers and turbines. In the future power generation could be virtually free from the sun during daylight hours. This technology is new and supersedes older "subcritical" steam production. More work has to be done but there is no doubt power generation will eventually not need coal. It is not good news for Australian exports. It is good for the world though. Science by Ty Buchanan http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.c...

With such a hot sunny climate Australia should invest more in solar energy. The heat also needs to be converted into electricity. With the sun beating down on us, there is almost free energy to be had.  Sure there is a cost. Even if it costs as much as coal generation we should go ahead and develop it. China has signed a gas agreement with Russia. As time goes by they will reduce their purchases of coal from Australia. This country should heed the signs and change policy at home as well. Vast Solar had built the nation's first solar thermal standalone plant at Forbes, NSW. It will generate 6MWth of electricity. Storage will enable electricity to be pushed into the grid 24 hours a day.  There are plans to construct a 30MW operation, and other countries are showing interest in having similar plants established by Vast Solar. The big step has been with improved storage making a viable day and night supply. The new plant has been called the concentrated solar ther...

It is proposed that natural gas be used instead of coal for electric power generation. The national climate summit put a deadline of 2012 for this to happen with the dirtiest power station, Hazlewood. Environment Victoria took up the challenge saying that natural gas with renewable energy resources could reduce Hazlewood's pollution by 14.4 million tonnes to just 1.8. Wind generation would gradually replace natural gas. The claim is exceedingly optimistic. Too much faith is placed in wind generation despite the fact that electricity production by this means has peaked in northern Europe and it still does not make a profit.  Beyond Zero Emissions is even more optimistic. Its plan aims to end Hazlewood's use of coal by 2013.  Failure to reduce emissions means it could be closed. The future looks good for natural gas production with gas being obtained from coal seams and 20 gas power plants being planned. Natural gas is not really clean though. Indeed, leakage of methane ga...

It seems it is not only nuclear power that pollutes the earth with radioactive substances. For centuries coal and oil production has brought thousands of tons of polluted material from beneath the planet to the surface. Further processing concentrates it even more.  Apparently the sludge is left lying around and is not isolated from the population. For every barrel of oil pumped up into storage, ten barrels of polluted water is dragged up as well. Uranium and radium occur naturally below ground. In the US plastic pipes used in the production process were given to kindergartens to make playground equipment. The coal and oil industry has known for many years about the problem but has kept very quiet about it. While nuclear power stations are closely monitored, limits are set high for coal and oil which allows producers to pollute at will. Tests for radioactivity on dumps of sludge give readings 700 times higher than clean areas. With new housing estates being built on top of dis...

The National Sustainability Council presented its long awaited report called the Sustainable Australia 2013: Conversations with the Future . This is the first of a series of biennial papers to advise the government about the state of the economy vis-a-vis the environment. Full of optimism, the newly founded council said the future looked bright if we changed to building sustainable communities. However, the type of community needed is far more radical than envisaged by the council. Despite Australia having many of the most livable cities in the world we need to start planning immediately for the kind of balanced society of the future. Oil will not be around forever and coal is too polluting to be used at such high rates. This means individuals driving around in five seater cars will not be possible. Electricity use is skyrocketing with Internet cloud servers and hungry mobiles gobbling up tonnes of coal and oil in power stations. Future cities will have to be designed with hou...

It seems that we have pushed the peak oil period further forward by obtaining coal seam gas from just about everywhere we look. Fracking does damage the environment and the current freedom for the gas companies could be curtailed. When peak oil is reached the impact on Australia's rural areas will be significant. Supplies of oil will fall and prices for the scarce commodity will rise. Farmers use advanced machinery to sow, plant and harvest food crops. If governments set priorities then agriculture will have to be given precedence over private use. Transport will be next in line. There are two aspects of transport. Movement of food is very important, but as people will not be able to freely use their cars they will opt for public transport to get to their places of employment. People will have to live with limited mobility as they did in the days of the horse and buggy. A day out will be a luxury. Economies will go into recession as trade slows down. Perhaps people will ...

Energy created by lasers could be the way of the future. Researchers have used models and they show that lasers can produce "cold" energy by nuclear fusion. A new generation of fast, powerful lasers makes this possible. To achieve fusion a short, carefully controlled pulse is required. The pulse target is hydrogen and boron. Creating neutrons is not the objective because they cause radioactivity. The Australian research is duplicating what is going on at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, but they are using deuterium-tritium fuel. A single laser pulse can generate 500 times more electricity than all the power stations in the US. At first the research team did not believe hydrogen-boron fuel would work. However, models indicated that it was only ten times more difficult than deuterium-tritium. For it to work the laser pulse must be clean, that is, lasting only a million, millionth of a second. Optical energy ...

Price is already changing consumer behavior in regard to carbon. However, price signals can make people do the wrong thing. Because electricity has risen sharply in Australia over the last two years some people are going back to old wood burning appliances for heating and cooking. Burning wood pushes more carbon into the atmosphere. It is just swapping wood for coal. Demand for fuel timber has risen 30 per cent this winter. It isn't cheap either. A tonne delivered to your door costs $350 and lasts about six weeks. More new fireplaces are being purchased, so there is a trend. Sitting over a fireplace is bad for your health. Pollutants are drawn into the lungs. It is like smoking cigarettes. Over a year a wood heater produces more dangerous particles than five diesel trucks. Already 6 per cent of people in Sydney use wood burners and this number is rising. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/A...

Ian Mcfarlane the Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources says Australia should still consider nuclear power. He must be off his bonnet if he thinks Australians will have a bar of this dangerous form of electricity generation. If a Coalition government seriously suggested a move to nuclear energy people would be protesting in the streets. Then there is the " not in my backyard " syndrome. No community would accept such a potentially toxic plant in their area. For Mr Mcfarlane's information lessons have been learned from the impossible situation in Japan where there in no solution to the problem. Australians do not want nuclear and will never want nuclear. Japan's economy is severely damaged and the Japanese will have chronic illnesses into the future. Much of the country will have to be fenced off, never to be used by humans ever again. Australians like everyone else in the world will have to pay much more for electricity as systems of clean coal power generat...

The world is in a tight corner and people are far too optimistic. Thinking that carbon pollution will cure itself is not scientific fact. Only a fool would hang onto the notion that nothing is wrong. The poles are thawing out and that is fact. Polar bears are dwindling in number as their traditional frozen feeding grounds get warmer. Butterflies that used to stay on in winter in southern England have moved north to colder climes. Those species that stay are getting larger. Despite coal power stations being the main culprit more are being built to meet Mankind's increasing demand. Much is said about nuclear power stations holding the key to a "clean" future. Used uranium is going around Europe at this very moment without finding a home in any country. Where will this dangerous product be put in the future? Unless it is blasted into space toward the sun there is no where for it to go. France gets more than 80 percent of its electric power from nuclear means, but this is th...