Use of coal, oil and fossil fuels

[Ed Dinning 1Participant @eddinning1]

Hi Folks, withe the current load noises over the pollution caused by fossil fuels and why we should, or should not use our own resources, it seem to be forgotten that only about 25% is converted to fuel for all forms of transport.

What will we do for lube oil?

Most of the rest is PETRO chemicals and used as feedstocks for plastics and a variety of other uses.

Coal can be used as a cheap form of carbon much more easily than "carbon capture"

A final thought about Ethanol in fuel:

Ethanol is much lower mass than normal petrol or diesel

The burning reaction is based on mass consumed

We by fuel by volume

So 1 L of Ethanol fuel weighs less than normal fuel and gives you less MPG; it is cheaper, but I doubt if it is proportionally so

Ed

[Ed Dinning 1Participant @eddinning1]

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Posted by Ed Dinning 1 on 02/08/2023 21:49:31:

………

Most of the rest is PETRO chemicals and used as feedstocks for plastics and a variety of other uses.

Coal can be used as a cheap form of carbon much more easily than "carbon capture"……..

Ed

So stop making so much single use plastic. Every time I buy cabbage, carrots etc they come in a plastic bag. No reason why it couldn't be a paper bag if it needs a bag at all. Farmers are ploughing wool into the fields while we run around in man made fibre jumpers/fleeces, which pour microfibres into the environment every time they get washed. If plastic cannot be recycled, it should be heavily taxed, then they'd develop some that can. Why can't I take my shampoo/washing up liquid etc bottles somewhere and refill them? Getting the tops off to use the last drops is difficult enough with present designs

You don't use carbon capture because you want the carbon, it is to prevent release of CO2 to the atmosphere. Current proposal is to pump it back into the rock formations from which we have extracted gas/oil. There must be some natty way of extracting the CO2 from the exhaust gas.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

You are right of course about petroleum but trying to get that Petroleum is not a "fossil fuel" into the heads of politicians of all flavours, campaigners, journalists and the General Public is probably akin to rolling a whole barrel of the stuff up Ben Nevis.

Indeed the one thing conspicuously lacking from all the debates / discussions / campaigns / policies / waffle, most loudly by people who seem barely to know what is energy and its relationship to power, is the question of materials.

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Sorry, I don't see your point about coal though. The aim is to "capture" not the "carbon" despite all the silly slogans and headlines, but carbon-dioxide; the main by-product of burning coal. The idea is to reduce and eventually stop using carbon and its flammable compounds as fuel.

[Chris Pearson 1Participant @chrispearson1]

Posted by duncan webster on 02/08/2023 22:08:42:

So stop making so much single use plastic. Every time I buy cabbage, carrots etc they come in a plastic bag. No reason why it couldn't be a paper bag if it needs a bag at all.

I couldn't agree more. 'Tis worse with the pieces of meat in their plastic prisons (part recyclable, part not).

Last time I went to France (2020, within a whisker of the COVID lockdown) I noticed that paper bags were commonplace.

I haven't bought a bag (of any sort) since the 5 p charge came in, which shows how unnecessary they are (as well as how mean I am).

[John Doe 2Participant @johndoe2]

The OPs first question is one reason why the Government will be granting more oil exploration licences in the North sea; We will still need oil, even if we don't burn it.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Posted by Ed Dinning 1 on 02/08/2023 21:49:31:

What will we do for lube oil?

They'll want us to use turnip oil or something like that, just rub it in with oatmeal

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

My opinion is that fossil fuels developed over time with population growth from say 1 Billion to 8 Bliion now giving us the life we reached about 30 years ago, and electricity & water for one of the basic building blocks to made our progress possible, is now disgarded to unproven theoretical beliefs/new Ideologies dumped on us at 7-8 Billion scale of population.

If we get rid of fossilil fuels as they want, which will be at basic level extremely expensive in the long run as well, and this fail us, it will e very costly and difficult to revert back to fossil fuels and life on earth may never be the same again unless population umbers go down to 3 Billion scale like the 50-Ties again.

The new ideologies are constructed making use of the current ideologies it wants to replace, now this is important too.

The Digital Ideology now embedded in most systems over the globe including the Internet, has any body dare to work out how much electricity this ideology alone consumes due to its activities in total, that must be gigantic over the globe.

So I think we are in for a few hard ecconomic money versus resources surprises that will wake up the human race pretty wel in near future.

Unless we found a simple safe power source to replace fossil fuels thats not expensive, not a battery as power source etc, we are done, most people wont have enough money even with increases to hae a happy life spending it all every month only on the basics sitting at home if you can afford the home.
I know for a fact that people has made some unnessary trips/wasted time money & resources all around the globe due to the digital ideology play out since around 1992+, have seen how techs driven past each other due to new managerial practices that got centralised, thats just one type of an example, but thats not talked about, it all sounded wonderfull in theory as it was presented at the time.

 

 

 

Edited By Chris Mate on 03/08/2023 06:38:54

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

Making steel without carbon is impossible but do you have to use coal to to add the carbon into high carbon steel? We are mining and importing coal for the steel works in Wales.

David

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Ady1 on 03/08/2023 03:17:04:

Posted by Ed Dinning 1 on 02/08/2023 21:49:31:

What will we do for lube oil?

They'll want us to use turnip oil or something like that, just rub it in with oatmeal

.

Many of the best lubricants came from that noble and little-understood beast, the Whale

… but thankfully mankind eventually came to its senses on that one.

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 03/08/2023 08:53:11

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Chris –

You raise a very important point about the electricity used by the Internet; and the problem has been raised many time but so far no-one seems to want to do anything about it. The biggest single culprit appears to be digital currency; but the drive for ever-faster broadband for mainly entertainments-carrying can't help.

Your observation about reverting to using fuels from fossil minerals misses that even if in time we decide to do that, they will anyway run out in time, earlier still if their consumption rises as it has been doing. New reserves are still being found but it is becoming harder and costlier to do so, the rising population and its development raise demand, the resources are finite and no new reserves will develop within the likely span of our own species as a whole*.

We did not start burning coal at any significant rate until the last few centuries, and using petroleum products started in the 19C; but the great rise in using coal started in the 18C. Until the early 20C coal was the universal fuel for domestic heating, powering factories (and later electricity-generating) and transport. It was also vital for iron-ore reduction and a major source of fuel gas and a range of useful chemicals.

Even then it was causing problems and some early-20C scientists were already warning of possible climate-change, but based on contemporary coal use and giving the danger point well into the 21C.

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*Humans appeared on Earth less than 1 million years ago, though with precursor species up to about 4M y previously. The average life-span for a mammal species seems to be about 3M years. So we've a way to go yet, before Nature withdraws us; but not long enough for new coal and petroleum to be there for our distant descendants. The Coal Measures are between 300 and 400 M years old; most petroleum and natural-gas from around the 100 – 150 My mark; but though they formed in much less time than that and have "simply" lain buried ever since, it still takes some millions of years of the right conditions for the original organic sediments to form, and still more millions to be buried and fossilised under their cover-rocks. And none are being formed now in time for us!

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David –

Yes it is possible, by using hydrogen in electric furnaces, and this method is being at least developed if not already in use in some countries.

In the 1890s a sort of half-way method was invented in Italy and used widely for a few decades; in which a mixture of pulverised carbon (presumably coke), iron-ore and limestone was melted in electric-arc furnaces. It still used carbon but only enough to reduce the ore to iron, so still producing carbon-dioxide but much less in proportion than by having to add coke as fuel.

[IanTParticipant @iant]

I'm sure we do need to find alternatives to oil and gas but not for the reasons normally stated. Simply put we have been in a deficit situation for 3-4 decades now with respect to 'new' sources of oil versus growth in it's use. We are now at the point where that ratio is about 5 to 1. In other words we are consuming (globally) five times more oil than we are discovering new deposits and this gap is increasing annually as (so called) third world countries move up the 'Wealth' index – with more industry and larger middle classes (who drive cars and 'consume' things). This growth cannot be supported forever.

The modern world is dependent on diesel. It powers heavy machinery, aircraft, ships and road frieght. Without diesel everything stops. There may be alternatives but they are far in the future. That's not just air freight/travel but also farming, mining, international trade and food distribution. There may be a problem with CO2 emmisions but a far greater threat is going to be energy – or a lack of it. The Global economy would collapse without diesel.

We are facing a crisis but it's not the "climate emergency" everyone fears. We should be building nuclear as fast as we can (as a National prioity) and doing everything we can to become self-sufficient most especially in food. We are not going to boil to death but many could freeze without affordable power.

I find my self humming "Always look on the bright side of life"

Regards,

IanT

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

IanT, you are spot on!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Unfortunately politicians of all colours will not see it until it is too late, I will be gone when the brown stuff hits the fan but I have children and grandchildren who will go through the crisis. I'm also thinking the uncontrolled worldwide population growth will be a 'challenge'.

Tony

[Frank GorseParticipant @frankgorse]

It’s a line from another Python song that keeps playing in my mind- “pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space ‘cause there’s beggar all down here on earth”

[John Doe 2Participant @johndoe2]

I have heard it said that the USA uses as much power just to run air-conditioning, as Africa uses for everything?

Building insulation standards and building techniques need to be vastly improved, as this will reduce the energy needed to both heat and keep them cool.

Steam powered locomotives were only about 6% efficient?

We really need to harvest the natural non-polluting sources of energy from the environment; I cannot believe that people object to solar farms in fields ???????

In the UK, tidal flow should be developed with maximum priority. A small horizontal wind turbine could be put on top of every electricity pylon – the pylons are already there and there must be thousands of them.

The North England and Scottish moors could be re-forested to help absorb carbon, and/or maybe provide a renewable supply for wood-chip burners.

Geothermal bores could be routinely dug next to every house where possible for heat pumps to tap into the "free" heat energy under the ground.

New houses should only be allowed within half a mile of a railway line, and new stations built to service them. Re-lay the branch railways that Beeching ripped up.

This will all require a national, integrated plan.

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 03/08/2023 10:27:22

[Chuck TaperParticipant @chucktaper]

Major embolism inducing rant:

There is no uncontrolled worldwide population growth. In fact (global) population growth is slowing and will begin to decline mid century.

Solar energy provide more than enough energy – "200,000 times the world’s total daily electric-generating capacity is received by Earth every day in the form of solar energy."

The problem is not energy its our unwillingness to embrace and make the necessary changes to how we live.

Politicians only reflect our aggregate demand as a collective. We voted for them. i.e. its not them its us.

The internet used approx 20% of the global energy budget (which by some strange coincidence mirrors the brain/body energy balance)

Everything is always ending in catastrophe. Everything is always worse that it used to be. My ideology is better than your Ideology because mine is mine – – gimme a break!

Regards.

Frank C.

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

Posted by Chuck Taper on 03/08/2023 10:35:36:

Major embolism inducing rant:

There is no uncontrolled worldwide population growth. In fact (global) population growth is slowing and will begin to decline mid century.

Mr Chuck taper, how in gods name [sorry god] do you know population growth will slow and decline by mid century.

Tony

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Really, if it is a "climate emergency" it is because we face serious problems that were becoming evident but largely swept under the hearth-rug decades ago.

At one time people talked happily about "taming Nature" but we are now learning Nature can't be tamed, and if we bite it, it will bite back, and bite far harder.

No, "we" won't "boil to death" but if heat-waves in Southern Europe and parts of the USA become more frequent and severe, many will die from heat-stroke while many more will place enormous collective strains on their electricity supplies by trying to run air-conditioning systems flat-out.

While the loss by policy or depletion of minerals like petroleum will also mean the major loss of all those materials equally as important as Diesel fuel.

Fuel? Fine – let's see how we can use hydrogen as a fuel for ships, trains, agricultural plant (JCB is working on that), etc; but how do we generate enough electricity to produce the gas? Oh, from offshore wind-turbines and on-shore solar arrays.

Oh dear… though, no more materials readily made and effective in use for making, installing and servicing such plant; and how much food-producing land do we need lose to solar arrays (and to the bison-cuddlers and corporate tree-monoculturalists)?

'

What of water?

Oh dear… no more polythene for the water-mains, assuming we can still find enough electricity for the pumps. Copper becoming rarer, too, by increasing demand and over 90% of the world's reserves all now owned by China. Best start using iron and lead pipes again. At least metals are salvageable, with some attrition, but not enough can be returned to cope with the demand.

I have yet to follow it up to establish the sources, but I have a leaflet printed with pretty-coloured ink (made from??), published by something calling itself "Weymouth Climate Hub". New to me but as far as I can tell, a group with rather more knowledge, sense and manners than "Just Stop All" , though still stuck on "energy" – only, and that as a synonym for "electricity".

The leaflet carries a map of predicted stress on water supplies by 2040, by bands of ratio of consumption to supply.

The worst-affected (averaging >40%) are unsurprisingly Iberia, most of the Middle East, North Africa and Eurasia, Australia and the entire USA including (surprisingly) Alaska. The UK and France are rated as at Medium to High Risk, 20-40%: higher than Canada, Russia – and most of Africa! The figures probably reflect not just population density, but how mains water is used, and its availability.

The WCH gives its web-site as holding the necessary citations.

Awful problems, awful quality of public debate – and no easy answers.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Putting solar farms on fields which could be used to produce food seems a little short sighted to me. Of course not all open land is very productive, but all new builds, residential or industrial, should be covered in solar panels, and we should be investigating retrofits (structure might not be strong enough in some cases)

And why do southerners always want to cover the north of England and Scotland in trees? They will grow equally well in the south, in fact as it's warmer they'll grow better.

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

Posted by duncan webster on 03/08/2023 10:51:40:

Putting solar farms on fields which could be used to produce food seems a little short sighted to me. Of course not all open land is very productive, but all new builds, residential or industrial, should be covered in solar panels, and we should be investigating retrofits (structure might not be strong enough in some cases)

And why do southerners always want to cover the north of England and Scotland in trees? They will grow equally well in the south, in fact as it's warmer they'll grow better.

I'm all for returning the UK to the green and pleasant land it once was, but sadly I'm not in charge!

Tony

[IanTParticipant @iant]

With regards to population growth, you need a birth rate of 2.1 just to stand still.

Most Western countries are now below that, as are China, Japan and other parts of Asia. India will have a larger population than China before too long and in fact it may be that China will be unable to recover from their disasterous 'one-child' policy that had an unexpected side effect in also greatly reducing the proportion of females born because they were the 'unwanted' sex.

It seems that as countries move from pre-industrial/rural to industrial economies (and most especially when woman become educated/literate) – then birth rates first stall and then fall sharply. Obviously large urban populations also need affordable energy to sustain them.

With regards a shortage of (affordable) 'dense' energy (e.g. diesel and other distalates), it would impact very quickly and once the global infrastructure started to collapse it would very hard if not impossible to recover it. All this talk of 'renewable' technologies would be somewhat academic if the raw materials (or finished goods) to build them just weren't available here. Look at the chaos caused by supply line disruption after Covid (just the shortage of chips for car manufacture for instance) to get some idea of how quickly this could happen.

Climate change may (or may not) be an immediate threat but falling off a energy cliff before we have usable alternatives most certainly will be. We need to be as self-sufficient in energy and food as we can be – and real soon.

Regards,

IanT

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

John Doe –

Building standards are being improved greatly, but that does not account for all the existing ones, nor for the big increase in insulating materials needed. A builder whom you might expect would find it profitable, once told me that increasing the insulation of individual homes reaches a point where it is actually less "green" than it seems. (He also frankly admitted it would be too costly and wasteful to fit his own home, a 1930s ex-Council unit, with a heat-pump, despite no labour-charges – not something you'd expect to hear from an accredited plumber!)

'

Steam locomotives are indeed very inefficient but I am not sure they are relevant here. Nice to watch though!

'

Solar "farms" in fields: apart from unsightly, the serious objection is taking very large areas of land that should be producing food, for relatively low output for their scale. There is also some NIMBY speculation here by the builders choosing rural areas far for their intended customers in London or other major cities. They also turn the land from agricultural to industrial use, for tax purposes, an important point for landowners to consider.

'

Tidal Flow (submarine equivalent of wind-turbines) – I agree. Actually British firms are among the word's best at designing these but we've governments set on wind and sunlight, so not encouraging them. I think a tidal-flow scheme is being built by the Shetlanders?

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Re(?)-foresting. Apart from aesthetics, this is already encouraging swathes of ecologically harmful, monocultured, import-species pines in neat rows, by major companies with no interest in the countryside or the environment at large, just for "carbon-trading" and "green" posturing. A lot of the Welsh and Northern English moors are also sheep-grazing land.

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Ground-source heat-pumps next to every house? Fine until one cold day your heating all goes off because your pump has extracted heat from the ground much more rapidly than its natural replacement rate. Even worse when every home along the road has the same installation. Although not affected by cold fronts as I imagine an air heat-pump could be, this depletion, analogous to pumping a water-well dry, may be why we don't hear much about ground heat-pumps. Also, as with air ones, the maximum amount of heat energy and its temperature would be quite low, few existing homes are suited to it, and installing one could mean replacing the entire heating-system and putting in masses more insulation.

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New homes next to railways, with new stations (by your suggestion, potentially one every mile!). Hard to see how that can be achieved. Such ribbon-development, like most NIMBY (i.e. not in the speculator's back yard) estates now, would take no account of local geography, needs, services, other transport, etc. There are sprawling housing-estates being built around the country, within a few miles of existing main-line stations, but aimed mainly at London commuters, even 100 miles from the capital. A billboard I saw advertising a new estate near Banbury boasted of its 45-minute train times from there to London.

(Brimsmore Estate's 3000 houses, just outside Yeovil, was advertised by double-page spreads in the London Evening News. A friend, a local man, living in Yeovil told me there is very little local employment available for such estates, but by train it is about 100 miles from London and 50 from Bristol, the latter offering the more efficient rail route from the South-West to Wales, most of England and Scotland.)

'

Re-opening branch-lines closed not by Dr. Beeching but by a government wanting to do that. He was the consultant: it was really the Ernest Marples Plan, after the Minister of Transport who held a lot of shares in a motorway-building company and thought the future lay in road transport anyway. I think Barbara Castle managed to rein the anti-rail lobby in a bit.

This is good idea where possible, and a few have been rebuilt as Network Rail, not heritage, lines. It is not practical in most cases because under the plan, British Railways rapidly sold key areas – junctions, stations and lengths of track-bed – for development of buildings and roads, precisely to prevent any future re-opening.

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"National, integrated plan." What, as if by a joined-up government?

Fortunately we are not China, even if we do give away vital assets to it. Unfortunately though we lack that nation's ability or will to make long-term, integrated plans based on governments of (in our, not its, case) all hues thinking ahead and understanding anything related to science, engineering and business. (Knowing only Annual Accounts and Dividends, is not good enough!)

Some while ago I read HS2's official web-site. I do not know if the management has improved since, but not one of its named Directors was an Engineer, let alone anyone with any stated railway building, operating or service-selling experience. They were all support staff, necessary but still support roles: legal, personnel, accounts. Oh, and some mystery magisterium called "Director of Strategic Partnerships". I rest my case.

[Graham MeekParticipant @grahammeek88282]

I don't know if any of the members saw the two programs on the BBC recently about the change to Electric cars and Heat Pumps.

To iterate some of the posts here we are totally ill prepared.

An estimate of the current fitting of Heat pumps means it will take 400 years to complete. A system that produces three times the heat for the energy put in (????) and uses electricity which is three times as expensive as gas. I don't think I will be fitting one anytime soon. The latest Nuclear plant is still being held up in the planning stages and has been for 10 years. The national grid cannot cope with the off shore electricity produced, so the companies are paid to turn the generators off.

A more efficient means of carbon capture from the burning of coal would be my way forward, and I don't mean pumping the stuff into disused oil wells. Carbon is one of the building blocks of life it's removal from the emissions means it could be used for other things. It just requires a bit of thinking outside the box.

Unfortunately big money runs the current thinking which is all electric.

Regards

Gray,

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

You'd have to put a lot of energy into turning CO2 into carbon, more than you got by turning carbon (coal) into CO2, so it's a bit self defeating

Lots of houses near me don't have cavity walls, so the only way of insulating is either lining inside, which makes the rooms smaller, or cladding the outside, but then the roof isn't big enough, so it needs a new roof. Getting close to being more economical to knock them down and start again, but at least it would save the carbon footprint of all the bricks and concrete

 

Edited By duncan webster on 03/08/2023 12:56:46

[John Doe 2Participant @johndoe2]

Posted by duncan webster on 03/08/2023 10:51:40:

Putting solar farms on fields which could be used to produce food seems a little short sighted to me. Of course not all open land is very productive……….

And why do southerners always want to cover the north of England and Scotland in trees? They will grow equally well in the south, in fact as it's warmer they'll grow better.

Why did we not immediately start planting our own extra wheat and crops on unused land when that idiot Putin invaded Ukraine?? Look out of the train window as you next go somewhere, and see how many fields and empty spaces do not have crops in them, just rough grass, but no livestock. (Yes, I do know about fallow fields.)

Who says I am a southerner? Far from it ! The South already has trees – but could still have many more – whereas there are huge areas of Yorkshire, northern England, and Scotland that are completely tree-less moors, as far as the eye can see. This seems a huge waste of land to me. Planting trees* on land not suitable for use as farm land, would increase natural biodiversity, and retain rain water as well as helping reduce climate change, so a multiple bonus on land that is simply wasted otherwise.

*But please, let's have indigenous woodland trees, not acres of conifers.

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