Is this credible …?

[Roger BestParticipant @rogerbest89007]

Cloud cuckoo land.

I am a huge advocate of green tech but some things are just not achievable or viable at the scale they advocate.

Growing stuff to burn or bio-digest it at the scale of our enormous consumption of fossil fuels is hopeless, for instance we have to import wood for Drax, we can't even feed one wood pellet burning power station, let along six.

Move the playing field, bio-digest waste and use wind and tidal power for the bulk of our energy needs and there may be an argument, but to use valuable agricultural land to grow fuel is wasteful when so many people in the world are hungry.

[File HandleParticipant @filehandle]

Posted by Joseph Noci 1 on 04/09/2022 14:42:29:

Posted by Keith Wyles on 04/09/2022 13:38:59:

Using agricultural land to produce ……….. However, if we get to the position of producing an excess of green electricity, this could be used to hydrolyse water to produce hydrogen (and oxygen) to provide a clean fuel.

Or just use the excess of green electricity…

The point is that it is in excess of what is being used. As I understand it wind turbines are paid not to produce energy when it is not needed. It makes sense to use it to produce an energy source that is storable, rather than not use it. The problem with light and wind energy is that production is not consistent with use.

[File HandleParticipant @filehandle]

Posted by Roger Best on 04/09/2022 16:53:27:

Cloud cuckoo land.

I am a huge advocate of green tech but some things are just not achievable or viable at the scale they advocate.

Growing stuff to burn or bio-digest it at the scale of our enormous consumption of fossil fuels is hopeless, for instance we have to import wood for Drax, we can't even feed one wood pellet burning power station, let along six.

Move the playing field, bio-digest waste and use wind and tidal power for the bulk of our energy needs and there may be an argument, but to use valuable agricultural land to grow fuel is wasteful when so many people in the world are hungry.

We already grow wheat to make bioethanol to make up 10% of E10 petrol.

[File HandleParticipant @filehandle]

Posted by duncan webster on 04/09/2022 15:57:39:

According to a university in California grass is better at sequestering carbon than trees. Eventually trees either die, fall down and rot away or catch fire and burn away. Either way the captured carbon is released back into the atmosphere, whereas grass creates soil via its roots and that is permanent. As a by product you can have meat. Ploughing to grow cereals and vegetables releases carbon fom the soil, you don't have to plough permanent grassland

I am curious how grass creates soil? If you mean the organic part, so do trees, just walk into woodland to see it.
Where possible farmers now use no-plough methods. If you look at the moment you will see cereal stuble that has been seeded using minimal cultivation. I suspect that you might need to look at who is funding the university research.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

Unfortunately, the alternatives all have their shortcomings, for instance, owners of electric cars use up mostly fossil methane, which is increasingly in short supply thanks to VP, wheras petrol and diesel vehicle users have better supplies. Hydrogen gas, touted by the enviromentalists still has to be produced by electricity from some source.

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

If this was treated as a problem in a control system then the cause is too much positive feedback, ie +ve compound growth , in everything, for too long.

Geronimo saw this happening many years ago, with his famous , " When you 've eaten everything else, eat your money ".

[derek hall 1Participant @derekhall1]

As mentioned before, if the wind stops blowing or its night time not much power if anything, is generated by these green systems of power generation.

The river Severn has the second highest tidal range from low to high tide in the world. It happens twice every 24 hours regardless of the weather, we really should be looking at this more seriously now thanks to Putin.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Whilst I agree that we should look again at the Severn barrage, it's supporters claim it has the same output as three nuclear stations. They quote 2 GW average. Hinckley C will have an output of 3.2 GW, if they can't get even simple sums right I'm not inclined to believe their cost estimates

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

I''m afraid nameplate outputs on new nuclear designs are a bit hopeful too.

The AGR's were rated at 1320MW, 1000MW was nearer the mark over their life .

[Phil WhitleyParticipant @philwhitley94135]

Every sewage works could be a gas generation plant, and after extracting the fats oils and greases from the raw effluent the rest is digested to produce methane, to run the plant and to put into the gas grid. What remains after digestion is a very good liquid fertiliser, and a solid which is a superb soil improver. All the water can be recycled, no outfalls into sea and river neccasary, apart for use as storm overflows. The one flaw in the plan is the obsession we have for killing bacteria, which encourages us to buy toxic chemicals to pour down sinks and toilets which destroy the bacteria that do the digestion. We need engineers! Remember that the most important man in the world is the one who keeps the sewers working, because without him we are all in the sh*t!

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Looking at it from an engineering perspective, it's not difficult to make Methane from Grass as described, and most of the advantages claimed are valid. Large scale biological processes aren't unusual, and no-one should be surprised that Methane from Grass is possible.

Looking closer, the claimed benefits aren't as substantial as first implied. Green Gas aims to replace the proportion of Natural Gas burnt by residential consumers, and assumes those consumers will meet modern insulation standards.

The biggest problem is the amount of grass that could be harvested on a large scale in the UK. A large amount of non-agricultural land will have to be repurposed, which won't be easy, and there are many calls on land.

Bear in mind that Fossil fuels don't have a straightforward reliable low-cost future. God isn't making any more, and, over the next 30 years or so, we can expect costs to skyrocket as demand exceeds supply. (We are already experiencing what happens when energy is used by a unfriendly foreign power as a political lever.) At the same time the hehaviour of world weather provides ever more evidence that Climate Change is for real and that the consequences are serious. And not understanding or denying issues does not protect one from the resulting pain.

Like it or not there's an urgent need to reduce dependency on fossil fuels. I suggest a positive attitude be taken to all the possibilities. The pros and cons of the various options have to be carefully balanced by experts and taken up on their merits. Unqualified, ill-read folk who believe their opinion is as good as that of a specialist have no part to play in technical evaluations.

My feeling is Methane from Grass, Sewage and other biological processes is a useful adjunct to Nuclear, Wind, Solar, GeoThermal, Hydrodynamic and other sources. None of them on their own are the golden bullet, but together they take a big chunk out of the need to burn fossils.

I'd add the need to think big too! Expect a lot of changes. The goal is to move the nation out of danger, not to keep grandad in the style to which he has become accustomed!

Dave

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

You only have to imagine how much fuel it takes to cut, collect, process & transport the grass to see this idea will go nowhere.

Martin.

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

My father was involved with a prodject to create a Severn barrier. The idea was to build dams across the Severn using some islands as anchors but making it from Pykrete instead of concrete as it is made from water and sawdust frozen. It would be frozen from sea water and when finnished it would provide its own electricity to keep it frozen and have huge spare capacity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete

David

[MacolmParticipant @macolm]

While predictable, tidal energy is anything but continuous, and worse, a large variation between spring and neap tides. The good news is that the installation laste a long time, so that eventually the high costs are recovered. The French La Rance facility is about 250MW max and 60MW average, so you would need quite a lot of similar projects to make much difference.

**LINK**

[MacolmParticipant @macolm]

Try link again.

**LINK**

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

If the income less operating and maintenance is less than the interest on the capital it never pays for itself. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it for security of supply reasons, but governments are keen on vanity projects

[DMBParticipant @dmb]

Wots the problem?

Windmills up in the air, only taking up a small patch of farmland for the base. Solar panels on roof of almost every building and on odd patches of land unsuited to farming.

All the time there are umpteen local wars going on wasting precious resources even after the First World War to "end all wars" ( oh yeah!) why should I give a bigger?

[DMBParticipant @dmb]

?

 

Edited By DMB on 05/09/2022 16:21:08

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by J Hancock on 04/09/2022 13:42:37:

Sailing ships and windmills seemed quite successful at the time.

I wonder what is the biggest difference between then …………. and now ?

The huge quantity of dull manual work, time, personnel and oppression required to build, maintain and use them.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Scotland might be felling forests to build wind-turbines…

Meanwhile in Wales. big companies like airlines, with no direct agricultural, forestry or energy interests, are allowed to buy farmland to cover with monocultures of alien conifer species, using "carbon-trading" as their excuse.

Whilst in many other places, the more attractive, fertile and valuable is the land for producing food; the more it attracts remote speculators looking for space for solar-arrays, waste-incinerators, huge warehouses and long-distance commuter housing.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

It will be interesting to see what our new secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy makes of all this.

[ just a statement of fact ]

MichaelG.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

A few more summers like this one and the problems of wood-burning deforestation in Europe will be solved.

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Posted by J Hancock on 10/09/2022 12:50:30:

A few more summers like this one and the problems of wood-burning deforestation in Europe will be solved.

Yeaaaa. That would mean my neighbours getting rid of their stinking polluting stoves and we would not have suffer every winter.😀

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by blowlamp on 10/09/2022 10:52:40:

Why post this video Blowlamp? Do you think it makes sense, and if so why? I spotted a few flaws. Did you see them too?

So far, others have responded to misunderstanding about Climate Change by explaining the science and identifying the evidence supporting the science.

Blowlamp's turn to defend: if I say the video is dimwitted propaganda, what proves I'm wrong? Please don't waste time stating beliefs, I want facts please! Engineering not politics.

Dave

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