Researchers propose a chemical compound to increase oceanic CO2 sequestration

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

So-called climate schemes have a tendency to be horribly expensive, impractical and of debatable benefit. The 25% figure quoted in the article for natural ocean CO2 uptake is likely an underestimate anyway. Is this just another straw for emission-obsessed alarmists to clutch at?
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Enhancing the ocean’s ability to remove CO2 particles from the atmosphere will be crucial in the fight against climate change, according to a new research paper, says Phys.org.

At present, around 25% of all CO2 emitted to the air is absorbed by the oceans. When these molecules enter the water they cause acidification, having a negative impact on marine environments, particularly for shell forming organisms such as crabs and shellfish that rely on fragile eco-systems for survival.

But in a joint research paper published today (Dec. 21) in the journal, Joule, academics from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Hamburg, believe they have found a way to increase the amount of CO2 stored in the ocean without causing additional acidification.

‘Breakthrough’ claimed as fusion experiment generates excess energy for the first time

Before getting too excited, note that the energy used was ‘enough to boil six kettles of water’, at vast expense and effort. Still some way to go to ‘save the planet‘, to borrow a time-worn phrase from climate melodrama.
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FUSION FIRST – Scientists have hailed a ‘true breakthrough’ as a fusion reaction has successfully generated more energy than was used to create it, says Imperial College London.

For over seventy years, scientists have been attempting to harness thermonuclear fusion – the power source of stars – to generate energy.

Fusion has the potential to produce vast quantities of clean energy using few resources, requiring only a small amount of fuel and generating limited carbon emissions.

Once a fusion plasma is ‘ignited,’ it will continue to burn for as long as it is held in place.

Is the CO2 battery for long-duration energy storage any good?

The makers say: ‘To charge the battery, we take CO2 at near atmospheric temperature and pressure and we compress it. The heat that is generated during compression is stored. When we exchange the thermal energy with the atmosphere, the CO2 gas becomes liquid.

To generate and dispatch electricity, the liquid CO2 is heated up and converted back into a gas that powers a turbine, which generates power. The CO2 gas is always contained and the entire system is sealed. We don’t use any exotic materials.’
— Looks like another net user of power.
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Italian startup Energy Dome, maker of the world’s first CO2 battery, is officially entering the US market, says Electrek.

Energy Dome’s battery uses carbon dioxide to store energy from wind and solar on the grid.

Experimenting with CO2 instead of steam for more efficient power generation

Brayton cycle [image credit: Wikipedia]

Efficiency gains can be made as ‘energy is lost turning steam back into water’, which doesn’t apply to the CO2. Whether the idea can be scaled up to full electricity grid level isn’t yet known.
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Sandia National Laboratories researchers recently delivered electricity produced by a new power-generating system to the Sandia-Kirtland Air Force Base electrical grid, says Green Car Congress.

The system uses heated supercritical carbon dioxide instead of steam to generate electricity and is based on a closed-loop Brayton cycle.

The Brayton cycle is named after 19th century engineer George Brayton, who developed this method of using hot, pressurized fluid to spin a turbine, much like a jet engine.

Supercritical carbon dioxide is a non-toxic, stable material that is under so much pressure it acts like both a liquid and a gas.

Balloons Detect an Earthquake from the Stratosphere

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Next stop: Venus?

Spaceweather.com

August 10, 2022: If you want to detect an earthquake on Venus–good luck. The planet’s surface is hot enough to melt lead, and the atmospheric pressure is crushing. No ground-based seismometer could possibly survive.

What’s an extraterrestrial seismologist to do? Launch a balloon.

Above: Researchers prepare to launch a Strateole-2 balloon with sensors capable of detecting earthquakes from thousands of kilometers away.

A new paper just published in the Geophysical Research Letters reports the detection of a magnitude 7.3 earthquake by a fleet of balloons floating through the stratosphere above Indonesia’s Flores Sea. Onboard infrasound sensors registered acoustic waves rippling upward from the sea surface below, proving that, here on Earth, balloons can be used as seismometers.

“The same technique should work in the atmosphere of Venus,” says Raphael Garcia, the study’s lead author and a planetary scientist at the Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronatique et de l’Espace of the University…

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‘Sand battery’ could solve green energy’s big problem, suggests BBC

Finnish capital Helsinki in winter

They admit so-called green energy has a big problem, namely intermittency. Getting rid of reliable electricity generation from power stations creates it, but that’s what the likes of the climate-obsessed BBC constantly advocate. The sand idea may have some uses, but it’s admitted that ‘The efficiency falls dramatically when the sand is used to just return power to the electricity grid’. No, the big problem will remain.
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Finnish researchers have installed the world’s first fully working “sand battery” which can store green power for months at a time, says BBC News.

The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy.

Using low-grade sand, the device is charged up with heat made from cheap electricity from solar or wind.

The sand stores the heat at around 500C, which can then warm homes in winter when energy is more expensive.

National Grid wants ‘low-carbon’ back up generators to replace diesel

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

It goes without saying any alternative will be more expensive than diesel. But cost can’t stand in the way of climate dogma and obsessing about ‘carbon emissions’, i.e. the trace gases that nature relies on for photosynthesis.
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National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) has launched their first ‘Call for Innovation’ to businesses across the UK to find a new low carbon alternative to backup diesel generators – Press release.

NGET currently use batteries alongside diesel generators to provide backup power to a substation for key activities such as cooling fans, pumps, and lighting, enabling it to continue to perform its crucial role in the electricity transmission system.

Energy Islands: Orkney’s radical marine power experiment

Mocean Energy’s Blue X wave energy converter at Forth Ports’ Rosyth Docks [image credit: Mocean Energy]

The article title says the experiment ‘is a blueprint for the future’, but tidal power devices have a long record of not exactly becoming a roaring success. When might this future arrive? Talk of being a ‘global leader’ sounds upbeat and optimistic, press-release style, but will there be enough – or any – followers? After the intro, we come to the prototype wave converter.
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We’re standing, it seems, on the deck of a stocky, barge-like boat with yellow trim, going full steam, says the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Water whips past, flicking up foam. But the ‘boat’ is stationary – tethered to the sea floor, it is in fact a 1.5MW tidal energy generator.

Developed by Spanish firm Magallanes Renovables, the ATIR platform has two turbines submerged in the fast-flowing waters of the Fall of Warness, south of the island of Eday in the Orkneys.

Doomberg: Where Stuff Comes From

Guest post from Doomberg. Original is posted at https://doomberg.substack.com/p/where-stuff-comes-from

“this dovetails in sinister fashion with the basic idea that any sufficiently advanced technology cannot be distinguished from magic. highly evolved capitalism becomes such a technology and the largess and plenty it produces gets mistaken for a property of the universe rather than a made thing, a thing that must be created rather than simply reaped.” – el gato malo

Modern society is awash in stuff. There’s stuff at the grocery store. At the hardware store. At Amazon and eBay. We eat stuff, wear stuff, buy stuff, and store stuff. Click some buttons, swipe a card, tap a phone – and presto! Stuff appears, like magic.

At least for now.

We are a carbon-based species. Carbon forms the foundation of our bodies and the external world we experience. Almost everything we touch is carbon-based. As I type this, I’m sitting on a couch made predominantly from foamed polyurethane, my feet resting on a carpet made from synthetic nylon. I just sipped water from a bottle made of polyethylene terephthalate, which I then placed on a coffee table made of wood.

Not only is our stuff mostly based on carbon, but the energy required to manipulate materials – to make stuff – comes predominately from carbon-based feedstocks as well. While not all stuff is based itself on carbon – copper wire is made of copper, after all – we can’t make use of it without first extracting energy from carbon fuels. In other words, we can’t mine copper without carbon. Those excavators, dump trucks, and bulldozers aren’t going to run themselves.

Since energy is life, mastering the chemistry of carbon and harnessing the energy of stuff to make other stuff is core to the human endeavor.

Carbon dioxide to help cut train delays caused by leaves on tracks

Image credit: Rail Technology Magazine

The BBC headline says ‘dry ice’ [etc.], which is the solid form of carbon dioxide. When deployed ‘The dry ice then quickly turns back into gas’. Surely that won’t do for climate obsessives?
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The new method of removing leaves from tracks will be trialled across northern England in the coming weeks, reports BBC News.

The technique, developed by University of Sheffield engineers, involves blasting tracks with dry ice from a passenger train.

It will be trialled by operator Northern in the coming weeks.

Could Scotland’s unwanted wind turbines be turned into playparks?

Windy Standard wind farm, Scotland [credit: RWE.com]

Ideas, opinions, feedback etc. are invited here. It could be said they’ve already had decades to think about this, but any negativity will no doubt be ignored. Existing uses include children’s play areas and bike sheds, but there’s only so many of those that would find a place.
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One wind farm company is looking for imaginative ways to repurpose turbines at the end of their lives, says BBC News.

When Windy Standard was built in Dumfries and Galloway in the mid-1990s, it was Scotland’s second largest wind farm.

Now it is coming to the end of its functional life and the old turbines are set to be replaced by more powerful machines.

But what happens to the original turbines? Owner Fred Olsen Renewables wants to find creative and sustainable ways to ensure they do not end up in landfill.

Space-based solar power for the UK?

Credit: NASA

The UK is not alone in what’s billed as a new space race. China for one is in the game. If you think you’ve heard it all before, you probably have. 
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Vast solar power satellites in Earth’s orbit, beaming energy back to Earth. It’s a serious idea for green energy from the UK Space Agency, say insurers MS Amlin.

In one of his early dystopian short stories, the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov imagined a mile-wide space station that could “feed solar energy to the planets”.

Published in 1941, under the title Reason, it described a fantastical “energy converter” that gathered sunlight and beamed it across the entire solar system.

Some 80 years later, Asimov’s flight of fancy is starting to take real shape.

Turbines use wind from passing traffic to generate power

ENLIL vertical axis wind turbine

Most of the traffic will be powered by the supposedly dreaded fossil fuels, but never mind. Natural wind can also play a part. It’s the impression of trendy modernity and conformity to prevalent climate theories that counts, presumably, as the amount of electricity produced will be limited, to say the least.
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Istanbul has installed wind turbines that generate electricity using the air turbulence generated by traffic, reports The Independent.

ENLIL is a vertical turbine developed by Istanbul Technical University and tech firm Devecitech have been placed on roadsides in Turkey’s largest city to harness the wind generated by passing vehicles, and to soak up solar energy at the same time.

Infinite Power promotes new electricity from radioisotopes technology

Credit: Infinite Power

Are power companies and solar panel producers getting nervous yet? If not, they may see difficulties ahead for this idea.
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Infinite Power’s breakthrough is a semiconductor that can convert high energy beta particles, X-rays, and gamma rays into electricity.

The Infinite Power cells function similarly to a photovoltaic solar cell, with two critical differences: The precise materials and design of the cells allows us to replace solar radiation with high energy releases from natural decay of radioisotopes.

Critically, our proprietary semiconductor can withstand higher energy releases associated with radioisotope decay over a long period of time.

Why ‘nuclear batteries’ offer a new approach to carbon-free energy

Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

‘Plug and play’ nuclear power in a box, or container, is the basic idea.
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We may be on the brink of a new paradigm for nuclear power, a group of nuclear specialists suggested recently in The Bridge, the journal of the National Academy of Engineering. TechXplore reporting.

Much as large, expensive, and centralized computers gave way to the widely distributed PCs of today, a new generation of relatively tiny and inexpensive factory-built reactors, designed for autonomous plug-and-play operation similar to plugging in an oversized battery, is on the horizon, they say.

These proposed systems could provide heat for industrial processes or electricity for a military base or a neighborhood, run unattended for five to 10 years, and then be trucked back to the factory for refurbishment.

A novel energy storage solution featuring pipes and anchors

Image credit: buoyant-energy.com

That’s the headline, but is ‘novel’ its only merit? Buoyant Energy is described as promising but then, aren’t they all? Energy storage on a meaningful scale seems as far away as ever, having rejected the obvious ones: coal, oil, gas and sometimes even nuclear.
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What do pipes and anchors have to do with storing energy? More than you might think, suggests TechXplore.

A new IIASA-led study explored the potential of a lesser known, but promising sustainable energy storage system called Buoyancy Energy Storage.

There is general consensus that renewable energy sources will play an important role in ensuring a healthier and more sustainable future for the planet and its people, and many countries are indeed already seeing such technologies displacing “dirty” fossil fuels in the power sector in an effort to lower emissions. [Talkshop comment – CO2 emissions have absolutely nothing to do with dirt].

The biggest problem with renewable energy sources, however, is that power supply is intermittent, meaning that the energy output at any given time does not necessarily meet the demand at that time.

Zero-emission ‘Seagliders’ could cross Channel in 40 minutes

Image credit: Brittany Ferries

Battery weight is always a problem for electric-powered flight. No reason to think this type of machine would be any different, meaning the economics of the idea remain questionable.
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Ferry operator Brittany Ferries has announced that it will work with US-based start-up Regent Craft to develop sea-skimming “flying ferries” that could reduce sailing times between England and France to as little as 40 minutes, says E&T.

Brittany Ferries described the proposed battery-powered vehicle as combining “the convenience of passenger ferries with the comfort of hydrofoils, the aerodynamic efficiency of hovercraft and the speed of aircraft”.

It resembles a small aircraft which skims the surface of the sea. It uses the wing-in ground effect, which would involve riding on a cushion of air trapped between a wing and the water surface; this is similar to how a hovercraft supports itself as it moves.

Britain’s real energy revolution: Rolls-Royce to roll out Small Modular Reactors by 2030

Rolls-Royce’s revised reactor building design.

As most of the UK’s existing reactors will have closed down by 2030, time for dither and delay is over, or should be. The percentage of reliable electricity on the grid system is already sinking too fast due to climate obsessions.

H/T The GWPF
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The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the UK Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project has revamped the proposed mini reactors to increase their output.

The factory-built reactors will now generate 470 megawatts, enough to provide electricity to a million homes.

The project, launched in 2015, aims to bring ten mini nuclear reactors into use by 2035, with the first due to enter service around 2030.

Tech needed to halt climate change still underdeveloped, IEA complains

The notion of buying a climate with the aid of future tech is looking as far away as ever. Certainly not within the dreamt-up deadlines we’re fed with almost daily, at the present rate of ‘progress’. The obvious solution being of course to ditch the unscientific ‘net zero’ fantasies and rejoin the real world, but that’s too much to ask of the climate obsessives running most governments today.
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Global climate targets can only be reached with a major acceleration in clean-energy innovation, as many of the technologies required to bring down CO2 emissions are currently only at the prototype or demonstration phase.

This is the conclusion of a joint report released Tuesday from the European Patent Office (EPO) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), reports DW.com.

“Around half the emissions reductions to get to net zero by 2050 may need to come from technologies that are not yet on the market,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in a press release.

The world’s ‘most powerful tidal turbine’ launches in Scotland

They keep trying, but tidal turbines have yet to make it to the big league in terms of competing with established alternatives like wind turbines. The report calls it a vessel.
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Scottish floating tidal turbine technology provider Orbital Marine Power has successfully launched its 2MW tidal turbine, the Orbital O2, from the Port of Dundee , reports insider.co.uk.

The operation was managed by Osprey Heavy Lift and saw the 680-tonne tidal turbine transferred from the Forth Ports quayside facility in Dundee into the River Tay using a submersible barge.

The launch marks the completion of the turbine build, managed by TEXO Fabrication, and the O2 will now be towed to the Orkney Islands, where it will undergo commissioning before being connected to the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), becoming the world’s most powerful operational tidal turbine.