Absurd Actions - Desert Energy Project

                                                                                                         "Combat the cause and not the effect"

12.08.2010: US “clean” hydrogen, the way to say good by to our world [1]
The Florida International University works on a technology linked to the production of environmental harmful chlorine. The university aims to use sodium hydroxide, a side product of the electrolysis of sodium chloride to react with carbon and water to form backing soda (Na2CO3).

Here the endless story of chemical depletion of nature proposed by the University:
1 - Electrolysis: It demands high energy input resulting in two highly reactive chemicals.
NaCl + 3,2 MW/h = 1 Tonne of Chlorine (Cl2) + 1,1 Tonnes of caustic soda (NaOH))
2- Caustic soda reaction:
NaOH + C (Methane) + H2O + heat energy = Na2CO3 + H2
40 tonnes NaOH/Hour + 6 Tonnes Carbon + 9 Tonnes Water produce 53 Tonnes Na2 CO3 + 2 Tonnes H2

Carbon Credits and the chlorine industry
CO2, methane or organic waste may be used in this reaction, the University includes in its calculations a profit of carbon credits of $ 12.335.000/year.
The University of Florida stresses that more than175 chlor-alkali enterprises already exist in China, showing exponential capacity increase. India has barely 15 chlor-alkali plants and immense growth of their chlor-alkali industry is expected.

Chlorine industry is expanding in Asia because of low environmental and low prices of coal-based electricity, which amounts 40% of the production costs. Chlorine is mainly used in the production of PVC, other plastic material and many chlorinated chemicals.

The environment
Chlorine chemicals are under scrutiny in many parts of the world. The paper and pulp industry may be driven to using non-chlorine bleaching agents, and PVC is under close scrutiny.

The EPA in the US has considered the level of dioxins, by-product of chlorine chemical production, use or destruction, in the human body to be at maximum acceptable levels. Plasticisers used with PVC, notably the phthalates, have been identified as being endocrine disruptors (hormone like substances) and a basis for concern and possible trade bans.

Electrochemical chlorine production is currently one of the most energy-intensive processes in the chemical industry. Any effort to attract other activities in its related byproducts increases depletion of natural resources. Calculating profits from carbon credits for such harmful industrial sector is incredible.

[1] Florida International University: Cleanhydro a Fossile-Fuel Based Clean Recipe For Clean Energy.
http://www.cleanhydro.net/cleanhydro.html

18.04.2008: Carbon Dioxide Transformed Into Methanol [1]
Yugen Zhang and colleagues 2009 describe a method to transform carbon dioxide into methanol which can be used as fuel.
The authors use N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs), an organocatalyst which contains no toxic heavy metal and is stable under oxygen, in contrast to heavy metal catalysts. Carbon dioxide is activated by the NHC catalyst and reacts with Hydrosilane, a combination of silica and hydrogen. Water is added and methanol is the endproduct.

Carbon dioxide to methane [2]
Matsuo and Kawaguchi 2006 propose a mixture of a zirconium benzyl phenoxide complex and tris(pentafluorophenyl)borane catalyse the reaction of carbon dioxide with hydrogen to generate methane via a bis(silyl)acetal intermediate.

The carbon society
The attempt to reduce CO2 back to fuel is a desperate attempt to stick to the carbon economy. The input energy getting the combustion product back to an organic fuel will always be higher than what is achieved later on while burning it again.

Decarbonising the society
Instead of burning carbon fuel and trying to transform a bit of the emission back to a reusable fuel, any emission of carbon dioxide should be avoided. The Global Energy Initiative of the Desert Energy Project presents a carbon-free energy economy. Politicians, energy corporations and car makers have to get together to embrace this promising energy field. The emerging financial centres like China, India and the Arabian countries, replacing US and Europe, will have the political and the financial strength to implement the solar /hydrogen economy.

[1] Riduan, Siti Nurhanna; Zhang, Yugen; Ying. Jackie Y.: Conversion of Carbon Dioxide into Methanol with Silanes over N-Heterocyclic Carbene Catalysts. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Volume 48 Issue 18, Pages 3322 - 3325; Published Online: 31 Mar 2009 DOI: 10.1002/anie.200806058
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122295517/abstract

[2] Matsuo, Tsukasa; Kawaguchi, Hiroyuki: From Carbon Dioxide to Methane: Homogeneous Reduction of Carbon Dioxide with Hydrosilanes Catalyzed by Zirconium-Borane Complexes. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2006, 128 (38), pp 12362–12363. DOI: 10.1021/ja0647250
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja0647250

Charcoal to save the climate [1]
Christoph Steiner and Lehmann of the Faculty of Engineering University of Georgia presented their ideas at the UN Conference on Climate change preparing for the agreement in Copenhagen 2009.
They propose pyrolysis of plant waste and all other organic trash. This would produce black carbon called "biochar" which ploughed under would bind carbon dioxide from Atmosphere. This could counteract human induced increases in carbon-based greenhouse gases and help combat global warming.

Warning against the use of charcoal [2]
Wardle, Nilsson and Zackrisson at SLU, the Swedish University of Umea, say that benefits of biochar may be overstated.
The researchers found that charcoal, mixed into humus, increased the number of soil microorganisms which decompose organic matter in the soil. Charcoal caused greatly increased losses of native soil organic matter, and soil carbon, which is released as carbon dioxide. The authors stress that the knowledge about charcoal effects on native soil carbon is limited, indicating that strong advocacy for charcoal addition to offset CO2 emissions remains premature.

Wheat straw, switchgrass and hybrid poplar is the super climate solution says ARS [3] [4]
According to Paul Adler and colleagues form the USDA Agricultural Reseache Service (ARS) compared the net production of carbon dioxide and two other greenhouse gases associated with producing biofuels from several different bioenergy crops. The researcher predicts 40 % reduction of greenhouse gas emissions if ethanol and biodiesel from corn-soybean rotations were used instead of gasoline and diesel. His teams hits all scores saying that this prediction may even be topped by a three-fold greater reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to corn-soybean rotations switchgrass and hybrid poplar.

Its just a nice tool to get rid of waste, but it does not solve anything. Organic waste is to precious there are other numerous other applications for such organic materials.

Algae and Cianobacteria cleaning flue gas [5]
David Bayless, a professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio University developed a bioreactor that cleans up carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel exhaust from with the help of heat-loving algae and hybrid solar lighting. David Bayless says that 20% of the carbon dioxide emission may be removed from the flue gas of coal-burning power plants, remaining 80% will still go the atmosphere.
So Bayless instead placed screens of woven fibre with algae vertically. Since algae need sunlight to thrive he brought in hybrid solar lights that collect sunlight with curved mirrors and then channel it through the reactor via optical fibres.
The algae can be harvested and made into biodiesel fuel and feed for animals. Bayless and Keith Cooksey use a cianobacterium Chroogloeocystis siderophila which withstands 55 degree Celsius which is the temperature of the flue gas.

German experiments with Algae and power plant emission [6]
A 2,2 Million project wants to built a small aquaculture of microscopic algae which reduce carbon dioxide from the stack of a small power plant in Reltbrook, at Hamburg, Germany by E.ON Hanse. It uses Haematococcus spp algae. Much sunlight, warming energy, nutrients and lots of fresh water is needed as input. The light efficiency of fotosynthesis bioreactors is 10 to 15 percent, According to Martin Kerner who developed the project.

Professor Laurenz Thomsen from the private Jacobs University suggests to convert CO2 from the stacks of power plants into biomass, using giant bioreactors with sea water and algae located at the shore of the Mediterranean sea.
One major problem will be the concentration of toxic components , such as dioxins, sulphur compounds and all the other components of fumes of power plants.

Photovoltaic electricity from the solar energy and feeding it to the grid is the best way to avoid CO2 at all. Wind energy and electricity from photovoltaic can be stored as hydrogen as fuel for traffic and fuel for power plants to run at night.
The International Climate Protection Proposal described here, is an unlimited storage for electricity. Carbon sequestring with algae is no storage of electricity, urgently needed for off shore wind parks.

Can sustainable biofuels replace the standard kerosene, or Jet-A, fuel ? [7]
According to Enviro Aero one acre of algae can produce enough oil to make 3,000 gallons of jet fuel in a year. The world's entire airliner fleet could be powered from a cultivated area just the size of West Virginia, or Belgium. The seeds from the jatropha bush are also high oil-content which can be used for jet fuel. Research is being done by Airbus, Honeywell Aerospace, UOP, International Aero Engines (IAE) and JetBlue Airways.
The reality: Until now there was only one flight made by Virgin Air using a mix of 20% of coconut oil and 80% kerosene in one of its 4 engines.
There are flights scheduled for 2009 with biofuel in one engine by Air New Zealand using 50% jatropa oil, Continental Airlines, using 50% Algae oil in one engine and JAL using 50% camelina oil (from Camelina sativa also known as wild flax and is an important food crop). Airbus has no schedule yet.

Changing from petrol to Diesel[8] [9]
Zervas and colleagues 2006 propose the replacement of gasoline passenger cars by diesel ones in Grece and the Ireland where diesel cars remains less than 1%. The authors calculated a CO2 emission reduction of more than 10,5% if a diesel penetration higher than 50% occurs in these countries.

Biodiesel should replace bioalcohol [10]
Crutzen and colleagues 2006 state that ethanol yields only 25% more energy than the energy invested in its production and 12% CO2 emission gain compared with fossil fuel, whereas biodiesel yields 93% energy gain during production, and 41% CO2 emission gain compared with fossil fuel . The authors look on pollutants reloesed in the environment. They found that biodiesel releases just 1.0% nitrogen, 8.3% phosphorous, and 13% pesticides compared with the production of alcohol.

Crutzen and colleagues conclude, however that converting all U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand.
They suggest that synfuel hydrocarbons or cellulosic ethanol, produced from low-input biomass grown on agriculturally marginal land or from waste biomass, could increase environmental benefits compared with food-based biofuels.

However, large-scale development of synthetic fuels increase the primary energy use and carbon emissions needed for conversion of gaseous and solid carbon sources to a usable liquid form. The United States' National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that greenhouse gas emissions for coal-based synfuels are nearly twice as high as their petroleum-based equivalent. [11]

Biofuel versus food [12]
It is absurd to back bio-fuel because it still produces greenhouse emission, it harms the ecology and the environment and endangers food supply. Green parties and NGOs should stop running behind small local initiatives which do not meet the real demands of decades to come. Solar energy from PV, parabolic reflectors, and hydrogen production in desert regions do not compete with food and have zero emission.

Carbon Capture and Storage [13]
Low-carbon electricity power plants will never be available. The German government support the demonstration and commercialisation of Carbon Capture and Storage CCS in an effort to increase coal fired power plants. According to EUROSOLAR, "Carbon free" power stations are still in development and could come on line at the earliest in 15-20 years. This means they cannot make a contribution to protect against climate change until 2020. Thus, they are not relevant to meeting the targets of the Kyoto protocol either. Capturing and compressing CO2 requires much energy and would increase the fuel needs of a plant with CCS by about 10-40%.It will increase the cost of energy from a power plant by 30-60% depending on the specific circumstances.

Vattenfall Europe AG at Lausitz, Germany, will build a pilot power plant using carbon capture technology, compress the CO2 into a liquid and store it in underground reservoirs.

Capturing and storing CO2 presents no contribution to climate protection, says IPCC [14]
The IPCC says that one kilo of the greenhouse gas CO2 is emitted per kWh from coal power plants. CCS systems reduce efficiency of power plants increasing input of fuel, augment solid wastes and environmental impacts.

Carbon Capture and Store (CCS)[15]
To produce 1 kWh of electricity it is necessary to burn 280 g of coal. The carbon capture and storage (CCS) system rises the demand of coal up to 350 g of coal to produce 1 kWh , producing 0.8 kg CO2.
Transport of the CO2 are calculated with 50 to 60 Euro /Ton. The European Union, leading this technology aims to get it down to 20 Euro which increases the price by 1.6 Cent per one kWh.

Even in case the consumer is willing to accept the horrible high costs of CCS, one must ask where to store the CO2? A coal power plant of 700 MW consumes 1 million tonnes of coal per year. Three million tonnes of CO2 are created which must be compressed and cooled down to 20°C to be liquefied. To a volume of 4 million cubic metres. These volumes cannot be stored at the source, but pumped to a nearby cavern.

In USA 50 per cent of electricity is won by coal power plants. The CCS system is not feasible. The US government must abandon its policy of backing the fossil energy economy.

Installation of Carbon Capture and Store CCSY is not justified from a financial point of view [16]
Abadie and Chamorro 2008 studied the costs of to installation of CCS in a coal-fired power plants. The authors say that installation is not justified from a financial point of view, unless carbon market parameters change dramatically, carbon capture technology undergoes significant improvements, and/or a specific governmental policy to promote these units is adopted.

Iron sulphate as ocean fertiliser to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxid [17]
Buesseler and colleagues 2004 propose introduce micronutritients in the ocean to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide. Several experiments introduced 4,4 Kg of iron sulphate /square kilometre in the Southern Ocean [2002 Southern Ocean Iron Experiment (SOFeX)], the North Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean in the proximity of the Canary Islands and in the Central Pacific near the Galapagos Islands.
Note, however, that all plants and soil may capture only 25% of human produced carbon dioxide. The other 75% will destabilise the balance of nature. No one can predict the effect of adding thousands of Tons of iron sulphate to the sea, such poisonous algal blooms or a sudden drop of dissolved oxygen, killing all marine life.

All carbon based fuel combustion must be avoided [18]
Nitrogen oxides, also known as NOx, are the combination of nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide (NO plus NO2) that are the emission of aircraft and automobiles, of biomass burning, and of some industrial processes.
According to Paul Crutzen it will be necessary to bomb the stratosphere with sulphur. He suggests to create a man-made sulphur screen in the sky, launching hundreds of rockets filled with sulphur launched into the stratosphere. Crutzes believes that global warming may reach such critical levels within the next 30 years that a radical strategy will be needed.
Well known are the problems of acid rain which is mostly caused by human emissions of sulphur and nitrogen compounds which react in the atmosphere to produce acids.
Human sources are electricity generation, factories, and motor vehicles. Coal power plants are one of the most polluting. The gases can be carried hundreds of kilometres in the atmosphere before they are converted to acids and deposited. In the past, factories had short funnels to let out smoke, but this caused many problems locally; thus, factories now have taller smoke funnels. However, dispersal from these taller stacks causes pollutants to be carried farther, causing widespread ecological damage. [19]

Bio fuel is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse, according to Paul Crutzen [20]
Paul Crutzen and colleagues , together with the OECD report, warned nations not to rush headlong into growing energy crops because they cause food shortages , damage biodiversity and some of the most commonly used biofuel crops releases around twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) than previously thought
According to the study of Crutzen microbes convert 3 to 5 per cent of the nitrogen in fertiliser to N2O. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considered 2 per cent in its calculations. Doubles findings of the IPCC.
Crutzen estimates the relative warming effect due to N2O emissions from rapeseed biodiesel 1 to 1.7 times larger than the cooling effect due to saved fossil CO2 emissions. For corn bioethanol in the US, the figure is 0.9 to 1.5, and cane sugar bioethanol, with 0.5 to 0.9.

According to Richard Doornbosch, author of the OECD report for a Round Table on Sustainable Development, says the benefits of first generation biofuels are questioned. The report concludes that governments should scrap mandatory targets. Doornbosch stresses the importance of establishing correct full life-cycle assessments for biofuels.
Other Exotic proposals

Artificial clouds[21]
Professors John Latham and Stephen Salter propose a fleet of yachts that would pump fine particles of sea-water into clouds, thickening them to reflect more of the Sun's rays. The authors say that increasing the reflectivity by about 3%, the cooling will balance the global warming caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere.
They propose to spray 18 000 Tons/hour of sea-water droplets continuously over a significant fraction of the world's oceanic surface. The authors designed a wind-powered unmanned vessel which can be remotely guided. The required spraying power might come from turbines attached to the vessels which move across the sea like a sailing vessels.

Global Sunshade [22]

Roger Angel wants to create a giant sunshade made of of 16 trillion glass discs to block 2% of the rays of the sun. This could stop global warming if it covers an area of 100 000 km², positioned 1.5 million km from earth. It would be 20 million tonnes heavy, and would be launched by an 2 kilometres long vertical tube electromagnetic launcher located near the summit of a mountain.