Energy Matters Global and Domestic

[NewcastleFalcon]

Weighty matters indeed....news, views, information, and debate with random off-topic meanderings and humour if we are lucky, lets see.

So two category on-topics to start from me

Carbon Capture at Drax B

Familiar face on the forum Drax B, (if you followed POTD thread in 2016) in the news this morning

This is the gist
"The first carbon dioxide has been captured using C-Capture technology at Drax Power Station in their innovative bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) pilot

This moves Britain further ahead in the race to develop BECCS technologies – essential in the fight against climate change

The project could enable Drax to become the world’s first negative emissions power station – reducing harmful greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere."

REgards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Oh and number 2 on the domestic front.

OVO Energy.....running around Killingworth in Nissan e-NV200 all electric vans.

They should be establishing a production facility at NIssan Sunderland for these things, getting a bit economy of scale, making them cheaper and selling them hand over fist. But guess what? I find out they are made in exclusively in Spain..but do get their batteries from Sunderland.

Regards Neil

[EDC5]

I see the Drax train passing through town every day! it looks like it's a mile long sometimes.

[Michel]

How much CO2 does the train produce?

Go nuclear. It's the only sane solution.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Springing from spotting that biomass train thundering through little Hebden Bridge I did a bit of digging. Those wood pellets have quite a journey making their way from the forests in North America over to Drax.

I have got myself a little intrigued now as to the full journey of those wood pellets....having a look at the Port of Liverool now to see if I can track down the vessel on which they arrived just for my own amusement of course. Plenty of detail on the vessel movements to peruse.

I imagine the rail freight cost for that 1600 ton train will be expensive enough, but taking that back to the shipping costs and handling costs of that bulk over from the US or Canada, and over that side getting the pellets from processing plant to port, and prior to that getting the wood from the remote forests to the mills.....by the time the pellets reach the generating plant at DRAX B there is a fair amount of energy expended in the logistics of turning trees into electricity!

Transportation and loading can be as much as 40 percent of the total delivered pellet cost, according to Brent Mahana of Cooper/Consolidated, the largest independent barge operator in the U.S. Of that cost, roughly 30 percent is fuel. Shipping by barge is by far the cheapest method, followed by rail. But much of the North American supply is too far from an inland waterway or rail loading yard to make it economical. With diesel at $4 a gallon, just 50 miles' worth of trucking costs to get feedstock to mills and finished pellets to oceanic ports can make or break an entire supply chain.

Can us human beings actually build a Nuclear Power plant on time, in budget, and which can handle its own waste safely, and cover its eventual decommissioning costs from within the revenues generated and set aside from its sales? Are there any success stories to quote, and because we haven't built any for a while looks like all the expertese and the big contracts go overseas. So who leads the world in such things...the French? The Chinese? USA?...Don't think its the UK any more!!

Regards Neil

REgards Neil

[bobins]

You can watch how they go about shipping the pellets from Louisiana all the way to Drax as the process was featured in an episode of Mega Shippers on Quest channel.
https://www.questod.co.uk/show/mega-shi ... HD_143737B

[NewcastleFalcon]

Bit of a cadbury's smash punchline at the end of the wood pellet's journey............

At Drax they grind them back into a dust to fuel the boilers!

REgards Neil

[white exec]

Insane! Wouldn't it make more sense to generate the electricity in N.America, and cable it to UK/Europe?
Shipping costs by cable are pretty low, predictable and non-polluting, once the cable etc has been laid.

One more argument for further increasing renewables investment. Agree about nuclear being in the mix, but the all-in costs are putting just about every commercial investor off.

[bobins]

One wonders just how 'green' Drax and its wood pellets are - once you factor in the machinery and equipment needed to fell the trees,
the fuel for the lorries needed to transport the timber from the forests to the processing plant,
the manufacture and maintenance of those lorries,
the people who fell the trees and drive the lorries and their respective transport and 'lifestyle' needs,
the running of the pellet processing facility,
the transport and 'lifestyle' needs of those people running the processing facility,
the transport of the pellets from the processing facility to the dock,
the manufacture and maintenance of those transport vehicles,
the transport and 'lifestyle' needs of those people transporting the pellets from the facility to the dock,
the transport and 'lifestyle' needs of the stevedores (now there's a word you don't hear much these days !!) at the dock,
the manufacture and maintenenace of the vessels needed to tranport the pellets from Louisiana to the UK,
the transport and 'lifestyle' needs of the ship crew,
the stevedores in the UK,
the manufacture and maintenance of the locos and wagons and the fuel for same,
the transport and 'lifestyle' needs of the train crew and those needed to maintain the rail line.
Then it finally gets to Drax ! And all they do is set fire to it

[myglaren]

^Agreed.
I often think that many of these would be environmentally friendly solutions cause more problems than they solve.

Something must be done but in a lot of cases it seems to be doing something to be seen to be doing something, rather than tackling the fundamental problems.

[white exec]

...and almost all of those are recurring/ongoing costs for each and every pellet delivered!

[bobins]

Something must be done but in a lot of cases it seems to be doing something to be seen to be doing something, rather than tackling the fundamental problems.

The trouble is, if you were to do a root cause analysis, then the fundamental problem boils down to : too many people consuming too much. And that's - for all intents and purposes - currently an insolvable problem. Every 'solution' is nothing but smoke and mirrors / kicking the can down the road.

[myglaren]

It is indeed.

[Michel]

I often think that many of these would be environmentally friendly solutions cause more problems than they solve.

I can't think of one that doesn't. Wind turbines all over the place are horrible, inefficient, ruin landscape and wildlife habitat not only by their presence but all the construction involved around them. Wave/Tidal - a nonsense if we don't want the things everywhere.

Hydroelectric - good, still tough on the surrounding environment for many years though.

Nuclear power - efficient, clean, safe. Yes, expensive but compared to coal it's a far newer technology and with care and interest rather than pure profiteering I'm sure could be made much better.

Fire the waste off into space every so often. They don't create that much really. Send up into orbit on the Atiane transport rocket , wait until there's a decent payload and send it off on a long orbit into the sun...

[bobins]

A drawback of launching waste into space is if the launch vehicle explodes on launch. Even without waste on board, when rockets explode on launch they spew highly toxic waste onto the surrounding land and into the air. I do, however, think nuclear power should still be utilised as one of the base load power suplliers.

Back in 2010 there was an astonishing documentary made called 'Into Eternity' - also titled 'Nuclear Eternity'. It covered the building of the underground Onkalo Waste Repository on an Island in Finland. Quote: "This film explores the question of preparing the site so that it is not disturbed for 100,000 years, even though no structure in human history has stayed standing for such a long period." Mind expanding stuff !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_sp ... repository


Onkalo-kaaviokuva
See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons



In 20 years time they'll have cracked fusion. Mind you, ever since they first started working on fusion they've said it will work reliably in 20 years time, and no doubt they will continue to say it's 20 years away in 20 years time