Adventure Ausrama Blog

The Australian government has opened the way for Australia to have nuclear power stations. The Liberal/National Party government (note these are not liberals: they are right wing conservatives) plan to lift the ban. Anthony Albanese leader of Labor says that the ending the ban is fantasy. Why would Australia even want such a dangerous electricity generation system when it is fourth on the planet in coal reserves and is ranked even higher on quality coal. Just like Donald Trump this business government is in gaga land. Their fantasy is to put power stations and hide the waste on Aboriginal land - let Aboriginals die of radiation poisoning. We have only to look to Japan to see what can happen. Remember Chernobyl and One Mile Island? People are filling up the planet. There nowhere to pur contaminated waste. The current Australian government treat Aboriginals as third class citizens even after illegal immigrants. Aboriginals have had their unemployment benefits taken away. Their wiv...

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...

Conservative belief of renewables causing power blackouts is bad science. It is amazing how far the Australian conservative parties, namely the Liberals and Nationals, will go to promote their misguided beliefs. Both parties have policies of discrediting the reality of global warming.   malcolm turnbull "Shaddap You Face " you ignorant voters! Conservative politicians are paranoid about the truth. Recently, power blackouts occurred in South Australia that were caused by lighting strikes - a record number struck the state during a storm. The Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnball, saw it as an opportunity to blame the state's move to renewable energy. The Federal Government is doing everything it can to completely destroy alternative energy. This is their policy and they do not hide it. To the rest of the world Australia is living in the dark ages - black coal. The Government is pandering to vested interests.     malcolm turnbull Malcolm Turnbull say...

Chemistry - Phones explode because lithium operates by chemical action. Let's not kid ourselves here: The iPad has had battery "explosions" just as much, if not more than Samsung. It is just that Samsung is more outspoken about issues. Apple believes that if it ignores a problem it will go away. I would like to see the real statistics on all phones. Batteries operate by chemical action. What you learned at school was that chemicals are dangerous. The unexpected sometimes happens. Lithium has the capacity to store a lot of energy. This pent-up power is always looking for a way out of its container. Though the incidents of phones catching fire is very low, the mere thought of something exploding in your pocket is frightening. Lithium batteries are notoriously unstable. They have caused fires on aircraft. Thankfully, no one has yet been killed. We do not have any alternative to lithium batteries. They are the most efficient and can be made very small. Consumer...

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...

Despite claims that battery technology will improve over the next few years, the battery has remained the same for half a century. Sure base materials that make the battery store electricity have changed, but not that much in recent years. All the same battery technology Due to mass production and increasing demand the price of batteries will fall. This is just economics really. The cost of Solar has fallen 80 per cent in five years. Don't expect batteries for your phone or tablet to fall this much though. The great hope is that advances in solar technology in electrical catchment and storage can be "transferred" to other products. Communication and motor vehicle manufacturers could be putting too much faith in this, however. It may not happen. Batteries can be charged in a matter of minutes now. The future could see people carrying a "spare" mobile phone power pack in their pocket. Exchange stations could spread and be ubiquitous everywhe...

Adopting battery powered cars is the worst thing societies can do. It is just a transfer from dirty oil engines to dirty oil power station. Removal of carbon at power stations is talked about a lot. However, nothing has been achieved. Experiments have largely failed. The distance barrier is still a problem for battery cars. To go more than two hundred miles requires an enormous battery, far to heavy to put in vehicles. Price is still an issue : there is little hope of a reduction even with mass production. Weak demand continues. Planners are saying that the lack of battery "charge" centers is the main barrier. This is only secondary. Where does the capital come from to build them? Battery swap stations were established by the Electric Light Company to service a fleet of electric trucks a century ago. Buses in China get new batteries en route. The trucks disappeared and Chinese buses are government run. Changing to a recharged battery is not cost effective. If ...

Much has been said about the adoption of biomass technology to replace wind and solar energy production. Biomass involves the burning of sugars, starches and oils from crops to make biodiesel and ethanol. The cost of gathering this waste has not been factored in. Wind and solar need maintenance but for the most part they just sit there and do their job. Farmers have simply left waste in the fields - ultimately burning or plowing them in. They do not see money in gathering up the left overs from crops. Environmentally, biomass looks good. However, financially they are a no-go. Who will pay a higher price for electricity? Charges are already extremely high using coal which is just dug from the ground. The biggest problem is that biomass involves burning while wind and solar do not. Just substituting biomass for widely available conventional fossil fuels is not a an ideal move forward. This is like electric cars which are only substitutes for petrol motor vehicles - a poor and ...

If you want to clean up the environment get a bike. Not just any bike though: you need a Hy-Cycle with pedal power assisted by hydrogen. A team of developers at the School of Chemical Engineering led by Associate Professor Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou has put a lot of work into the new bicycle. The main problems in the past has been storage and cost. Hydrogen is now safely stored in hybride, a stable metal. This "compound" is then secured in a canister. Hydrogen is fed into a fuel cells that charges a lithium battery. The battery range is 125 kilometers at a cost of $2.00. This distance is sufficient for a day's use on one charge. Major cities across the world have already established bicycle pools where people can collect a bicycle, ride it to their destination and leave it at the nearest bike station. It would not be difficult to hire out the new powered Hy-Cycles at a small fee alongside ordinary bicycles. Improvements are already on the way. The current sto...

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...