Anyone interested in reading a detailed report compiled by W.Shawn Gray?

It deals with problems we will encounter with the approaching Peak-Oil Crisis

and other associated issues. It is very comprehensive and Shawn has tried to

deal with them in a PDF Document of some 42 Pages.

It is well worth downloading from his URL and website listed below.

For the past nine months I have been investigating then writing a paper about “Post-Carbon Australian Options for Railway Locomotives”. The (ever updating) draft of the paper has been released on the net for public comment from my website at http://www.auzgnosis.com/pgs/auzloco.htm

Ethanol fuel is ethanol (ethyl alcohol), the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. It can be used as a fuel, mainly as a biofuel alternative to gasoline, and is widely used by flex-fuel light vehicles in Brazil, and as an oxygenate to gasoline in the United States. Together, both countries were responsible for 89 percent of the world’s ethanol fuel production in 2008.^[1] Because it is easy to manufacture and process and can be made from very common crops such as sugar cane, potato, manioc and corn, in several countries ethanol fuel is increasingly being blended as gasohol or used as an oxygenate in gasoline. Bioethanol, unlike petroleum, is a renewable resource that can be produced from agricultural feedstocks.

Anhydrous ethanol (ethanol with less than 1% water) can be blended with gasoline in varying quantities up to pure ethanol (E100), and most modern gasoline engines will operate well with mixtures of 10% ethanol (E10).^[2] Most cars on the road today in the U.S. can run on blends of up to 10% ethanol,^[3] and the use of 10% ethanol gasoline is mandated in some cities.

Ethanol can be mass-produced by fermentation of sugar or by hydration of ethylene (ethene CH₂=CH₂) from petroleum and other sources. Current interest in ethanol mainly lies in bio-ethanol, produced from the starch or sugar in a wide variety of crops, but there has been considerable debate about how useful bio-ethanol will be in replacing fossil fuels in vehicles. Concerns relate to the large amount of arable land required for crops,^[4] as well as the energy and pollution balance of the whole cycle of ethanol production.^[5][6] Recent developments with cellulosic ethanol production and commercialization may allay some of these concerns.^[7]

According to the International Energy Agency, cellulosic ethanol could allow ethanol fuels to play a much bigger role in the future than previously thought.^[8] Cellulosic ethanol offers promise as resistant cellulose fibers, a major and universal component in plant cells walls, can be used to generate ethanol.^[9][10]

Water power

Energy in water (in the form of kinetic energy, temperature differences or salinity gradients) can be harnessed and used. Since water is about 800 times denser than air,^[26][27] even a slow flowing stream of water, or moderate sea swell, can yield considerable amounts of energy.

One of 3 PELAMIS P-750 Ocean Wave Power engines in the harbor of Peniche, Portugal

There are many forms of water energy:

• Hydroelectric energy is a term usually reserved for large-scale hydroelectric dams. Examples are the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State and the Akosombo Dam in Ghana.
  
• Micro hydro systems are hydroelectric power installations that typically produce up to 100 kW of power. They are often used in water rich areas as a Remote Area Power Supply (RAPS). There are many of these installations around the world, including several delivering around 50 kW in the Solomon Islands.
  
• Damless hydro systems derive kinetic energy from rivers and oceans without using a dam.
  
• Ocean energy describes all the technologies to harness energy from the ocean and the sea:
  
  
  
  • Marine current power. Similar to tidal stream power, uses the kinetic energy of marine currents
    
  • Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the temperature difference between the warmer surface of the ocean and the colder lower recesses. To this end, it employs a cyclic heat engine. OTEC has not been field-tested on a large scale.
    
  • Tidal power captures energy from the tides. Two different principles for generating energy from the tides are used at the moment:
  
  
  
  
  1. Tidal motion in the vertical direction — Tides come in, raise water levels in a basin, and tides roll out. Around low tide, the water in the basin is discharged through a turbine, exploiting the stored potential energy.
     
  2. Tidal motion in the horizontal direction — Or tidal stream power. Using tidal stream generators, like wind turbines but then in a tidal stream. Due to the high density of water, about eight-hundred times the density of air, tidal currents can have a lot of kinetic energy. Several commercial prototypes have been built, and more are in development.
  
  
  
  
  • Wave power uses the energy in waves. Wave power machines usually take the form of floating or neutrally buoyant structures which move relative to one another or to a fixed point. Wave power has now reached commercialization.

• Osmotic power or salinity gradient power, is the energy retrieved from the difference in the salt concentration between seawater and river water. Reverse electrodialysis (PRO) is in the research and testing phase.
  
• Vortex power is generated by placing obstacles in rivers in order to cause the formation of vortices which can then be tapped for energy.
  
• Deep lake water cooling, although not technically an energy generation method, can save a lot of energy in summer. It uses submerged pipes as a heat sink for climate control systems. Lake-bottom water is a year-round local constant of about 4 °C.

The Geysers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The West Ford Flat power plant is one of 21 power plants at The Geysers

The Geysers, a geothermal power field located 72 miles (116 km) north of San Francisco, California, is the largest geothermal development in the world. It is currently outputting over 750 MW. The Geysers consists of 22 separate power plants that utilize steam from more than 350 producing wells. ^[1] The Calpine Corporation operates and owns 19 of the 22 facilities. The other three facilities are operated by the Northern California Power Agency and the Western GeoPower Corporation.

[edit] Description

The Geysers geothermal development spans an area of around 30 square miles (78 km²) in Sonoma and Lake counties in California, located in the Mayacamas Mountains. Power from The Geysers provides electricity to Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino, Marin, and Napa counties. It is estimated that the development meets 60 percent of the power demand for the coastal region between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oregon state line.^[1]

Steam used at The Geysers is produced from a greywacke sandstone reservoir, that is capped by a heterogeneous mix of low permeability rocks and underlaid by a Felsite intrusion.^[2] Gravity and seismic studies suggest that the source of heat for the steam reservoir is a large magma chamber over 4 miles (7 km) beneath the ground, and greater than 8 miles (14 km) in diameter. ^[3]

Unlike most geothermal resources, the Geysers is a dry steam field, which means it mainly produces superheated steam. Because the power plant turbines require a vapor phase input, dry steam resources are generally preferable. Otherwise, a two-phase separator is required between the turbine and the geothermal wells to remove condensation that is produced with the steam.

[edit] History

The first recorded discovery of The Geysers was in 1847 during John Fremont‘s survey of the Sierra Mountains and the Great Basin by William Bell Elliot. Elliot called the area “The Geysers,” although the geothermal features he discovered were not technically geysers, but fumaroles. Soon after, in 1852, The Geysers was developed into a spa for The Geysers Resort Hotel, which attracted the likes of Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Mark Twain.^[4]

[edit] Future

The Geysers electrical plant reached peak production in 1987, at that time serving 1.8 million people. Since then, the steam field has been in gradual decline as its underground water source decreases. Currently, the Geysers produce enough electricity for 1.1 million people.

Techniques developed from Enhanced Geothermal Systems research will increase the production of the region in the future. By reinjecting greywater from the nearby city of Santa Rosa, existing wells will be recharged. This water will be naturally heated in the geothermal reservoir, and be captured by the existing power plants as steam. The project should increase electrical output by 85 MW, enough for about 85,000 homes.^[5]

Scientists Explain New Process for Producing Biodiesel from Feather Meal

Scientists in Nevada are reporting development of a new and environmentally friendly process for producing biodiesel fuel from “chicken feather meal,” made from the 11 billion pounds of poultry industry waste that accumulate annually in the United States alone. Their study appears in the July 22 issue of ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

Hydropower in Europe: Current Status, Future Opportunities

By 2020, a fifth of all energy consumption in European Union (EU) member countries must come from renewable sources – hydro, wave, solar, wind, and biomass. This mandate, which EU leaders signed in March 2007, is part of a proposal designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent (compared with 1990 levels).

The emphasis in Western Europe is retrofitting hydro plants with modern equipment, usually upgrading the capacity of the plant. In Eastern Europe, the focus is rehabilitating aging plants that often were allowed to deteriorate during the era of the Soviet Union.