Author Topic: the dark side of cobalt  (Read 15686 times)

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Online Marco

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #150 on: July 15, 2023, 05:40:18 pm »
The market follows incentives, with short time horizon on ROI, it is what it is not because of physics but because of economics.
 

Online vad

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #151 on: July 15, 2023, 05:47:18 pm »
The market follows incentives, with short time horizon on ROI, it is what it is not because of physics but because of economics.
Unelected bureaucracies, such as IPCC or WHO, are often motivated by corruption opportunities, seeking the shortest possible ROI.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 05:50:05 pm by vad »
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #152 on: July 15, 2023, 05:53:05 pm »
Quote from: Siwastaja
We are quickly approaching a situation where half of our energy need is already supplied by renewables directly.
Oh, I apologize. You must be better informed than the IEA, who states, and I quote: ”Fossil fuels accounted for more than 81% of production in 2019, as in previous years.” Or perhaps you were referring to electricity generation specifically, rather than total energy production?

Fuck you too, I am not playing this "put words in one's mouth" game. I even clarified what meant by "quickly" further down in my message. 2019 is not even 2023, and 2019 especially is not 2038-2043, which was the range mentioned in my post. While I happily discuss with people who disagree, l don't discuss with mentally dishonest people, so you are now ignored from now on. Enjoy your echo chamber.
 
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Online vad

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #153 on: July 15, 2023, 06:09:55 pm »
Quote from: Siwastaja
We are quickly approaching a situation where half of our energy need is already supplied by renewables directly.
Oh, I apologize. You must be better informed than the IEA, who states, and I quote: ”Fossil fuels accounted for more than 81% of production in 2019, as in previous years.” Or perhaps you were referring to electricity generation specifically, rather than total energy production?

Fuck you too, I am not playing this "put words in one's mouth" game. I even clarified what meant by "quickly" further down in my message. 2019 is not even 2023, and 2019 especially is not 2038-2043, which was the range mentioned in my post. While I happily discuss with people who disagree, l don't discuss with mentally dishonest people, so you are now ignored from now on. Enjoy your echo chamber.

Adiós!
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 07:49:13 pm by vad »
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #154 on: July 15, 2023, 06:39:57 pm »
Also we don't need such factor of 5 in reduction of energy consumption. We are quickly approaching a situation where half of our energy need is already supplied by renewables directly.
That is an over-simplification. The next big problem to solve is storage since renewable sources are both erratic and seasonal where it comes to supply. And don't start with heat storage using water or batteris. It won't work for seasonal storage because the volume of water needed is too big, batteries will be too big & expensive and the leakage is too high. So for the next 10 to 20 years you are left with renewables being a addition to using fossil fuels up to a certain level but renewables will not a 100% replacement until seasonal storage is commercially viable.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Bud

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #155 on: July 15, 2023, 07:17:26 pm »
With all those fat obese people that are everywhere in the streets there is a lot of room for 5x improvement in food supply availability. Just get them eat 5x less their junk food and go to gyms 5x more often.
Facebook-free life and Rigol-free shack.
 

Offline tom66

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #156 on: July 15, 2023, 07:36:16 pm »
Still, burning fossil fuels when better alternatives are available is extremely stupid, and playing around with the climate is a colossally bad idea exactly because of the we don't know for sure factor.
I beg your pardon, what better alternatives can replace fossil fuels now and in the foreseeable future?

The world's total energy production was 617 EJ in 2019, increasing at a 2% annual rate. Fossil fuels accounted for more than 81% of production in 2019, as in previous years (source: IEA, https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-balances-overview/world).

All hydro, nuclear, biofuels, wind, solar, and geothermal combined amounted to less than 19% combined, and the 80/20 ratio has been stagnating for years.

P.S. Please note that this is total energy production, including liquid fuels for transport, and not just electric generation.

Well you start with using less energy, to do more!

Sector specific but:

Transport -
* An electric vehicle will typically have a sticker rating of 100MPGe or above.  That 20% of renewable energy goes a lot further when it charges a car compared to the equivalent in fossil fuels.
* Where you can't electrify fully you use hybrids or hydrogen vehicles.  And encourage less use of cars, so stop building areas that are car dependent.
* Aircraft are tricky - in the short term carbon offsetting and capture will be necessary. In the longer term a shift towards biofuels, synthetic fuels and maybe hydrogen makes sense.

Heating -
* For home heating you promote lower internal temperatures (or higher in summer) combined with better insulation, underfloor heating and heatpumps.  For older buildings that are impractical to insulate or convert to heatpumps you look at alternatives e.g. hydrogen gas burned in normal gas boilers/water heaters.
* For industrial heating you mandate a switch to heatpumps by a certain date, e.g. 2035 or so.

Electricity -
* Renewable electricity generation
* Seasonal energy storage
* Nuclear where practical/cost effective
* Decommission coal and natural gas plants as soon as grid stability criteria are met
* Home solar/battery and consumption management (encouraging usage when electricity in surplus: e.g. EVs that charge on off-peak electricity)

Agriculture -
* Use less land for cattle grazing and return that land to nature, planting new forests
* As has been mentioned, where cattle are raised, use a diet that produces less methane gas (but in general, try to shift away from ruminant mammals)

Industry -
* Carbon capture where feasible
* Moving to less carbon intensive processes, e.g. making concrete with hydrogen
 
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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #157 on: July 15, 2023, 08:25:48 pm »
The next big problem to solve is storage since renewable sources are both erratic and seasonal where it comes to supply. And don't start with heat storage using water or batteris. It won't work for seasonal storage because the volume of water needed is too big, batteries will be too big & expensive and the leakage is too high.
Although it doesn't apply to all locations, if the water table is economically feasible to reach, there's your giant thermal mass you can connect to. In fact, with geothermal heat pumps, wherever there's a large mismatch between heating and cooling demand (which is most areas in the US), the ground mass gets heated or cooled over a few years requiring additional operation of the heat pump to balance it, perfect to use excess energy during spring/fall for.

Then there's finding uses for excess energy during spring/fall. If nothing else, just run a bunch of old servers mining crypto or whatever.
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #158 on: July 15, 2023, 08:39:49 pm »
Just as a thought, one very tricky part, and often misleading one unfortunately (when it comes to political communication or dodgy startups), is the cost of switching to much more energy-efficient solutions for given applications vs. the energy savings that can be projected with the operation of said more energy-efficient solutions during their lifetime.

While the example of LED lighting is one clear success, there are many other areas for which the net result is a lot less favorable, sometimes negative, or at best similar, but merely displacing the energy consumption elsewhere.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #159 on: July 15, 2023, 09:25:35 pm »
The next big problem to solve is storage since renewable sources are both erratic and seasonal where it comes to supply. And don't start with heat storage using water or batteris. It won't work for seasonal storage because the volume of water needed is too big, batteries will be too big & expensive and the leakage is too high.
Although it doesn't apply to all locations, if the water table is economically feasible to reach, there's your giant thermal mass you can connect to. In fact, with geothermal heat pumps, wherever there's a large mismatch between heating and cooling demand (which is most areas in the US), the ground mass gets heated or cooled over a few years requiring additional operation of the heat pump to balance it, perfect to use excess energy during spring/fall for.
But you can't turn heat into electricity so you are still stranded without seasonal electricity storage. Your heatpumps won't do anything without electricity. Likely scaling up your electricity storage is more economic compared to having two seperate systems.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #160 on: July 15, 2023, 10:05:12 pm »
If you heat or cool the thermal store ahead of time, the heat pump can run more efficiently reducing the energy needed.
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Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #161 on: July 15, 2023, 11:14:21 pm »
If you heat or cool the thermal store ahead of time, the heat pump can run more efficiently reducing the energy needed.
You are not counting for leakage which you'll also have in storage underground. A much better solution is to add insulation to a home so you need less energy to begin with.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline langwadt

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #162 on: July 15, 2023, 11:46:49 pm »
If you heat or cool the thermal store ahead of time, the heat pump can run more efficiently reducing the energy needed.
You are not counting for leakage which you'll also have in storage underground. A much better solution is to add insulation to a home so you need less energy to begin with.

I think the current building regulations here is close to 300mm rockwool as minimum, not sure much more will help
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #163 on: July 16, 2023, 12:26:40 am »
If you heat or cool the thermal store ahead of time, the heat pump can run more efficiently reducing the energy needed.
You are not counting for leakage which you'll also have in storage underground. A much better solution is to add insulation to a home so you need less energy to begin with.

I think the current building regulations here is close to 300mm rockwool as minimum, not sure much more will help
No, but with such thick insulation you don't need much heating to begin with; a heatpump is good enough. At that point what really counts is getting a house ventilated properly. My own home isn't that well insulated compared to modern day standards but the insulation isn't the problem for keeping the heat in. The ventilation system (or lack thereof) is the problem.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2023, 12:29:17 am by nctnico »
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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #164 on: July 16, 2023, 01:42:21 am »
You are not counting for leakage which you'll also have in storage underground. A much better solution is to add insulation to a home so you need less energy to begin with.
It's apparently small enough that the accumulation can be seen over a period of a few years.
No, but with such thick insulation you don't need much heating to begin with; a heatpump is good enough. At that point what really counts is getting a house ventilated properly. My own home isn't that well insulated compared to modern day standards but the insulation isn't the problem for keeping the heat in. The ventilation system (or lack thereof) is the problem.
A window mounted HRV would be an easy fix, not sure why there aren't any ready made products for just that.
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Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #165 on: July 16, 2023, 02:21:36 am »
You are not counting for leakage which you'll also have in storage underground. A much better solution is to add insulation to a home so you need less energy to begin with.
It's apparently small enough that the accumulation can be seen over a period of a few years.
You can't determine that without having numbers on energy in versus energy out.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #166 on: July 16, 2023, 05:42:10 am »
The next big problem to solve is storage since renewable sources are both erratic and seasonal where it comes to supply. And don't start with heat storage using water or batteris. It won't work for seasonal storage because the volume of water needed is too big, batteries will be too big & expensive and the leakage is too high.

For seasonal, batteries are obviously no-go, and while water (or soil/bedrock) thermal storage has been demonstrated even at seasonal scale, and possibly workable, I agree it won't be a silver bullet because suitable sites are limited and building is expensive. However, as I have stated before, there is nothing wrong burning fossil fuels, which are super trivial to store, to support during harsh winter conditions, Dunkelflaute periods etc. Cost is higher than it is now because NRE and maintenance costs of facilities spread to significantly smaller number of kWh produced, but this is then compensated by cheaper prices when plenty of energy is available. This is BTW exactly what Germany is already doing and the direction seems just fine. Shutting down nuclear early gave a small setback* but that's something which needs to happen anyway so in bigger picture it doesn't matter.

*) in other words, in Germany, renewables had to take over both fossils and nuclear at the same time

Batteries and smart load management (specifically EV ("I need 80% by morning", where UI/UX is actually the biggest challenge!) and implicit distributed thermal masses) storage work very well within 24 hrs or so, and this is already huge since PV production varies within said period for the obvious reason.

Hydrogen is part of the solution too because it can be used in industrial processes e.g. steel, and of course as last resort medium for thermal heat generation despite poor efficiency, but even that it better than wasting excess generation completely.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2023, 05:50:14 am by Siwastaja »
 

Offline AVGresponding

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #167 on: July 16, 2023, 08:51:14 am »
But you can't turn heat into electricity

I'm confused, because almost every means of generating electricity that I know of, has a differential of heat at its heart. The two exceptions I can immediately think of are tidal power generation and hydrogen fuel cells.
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Offline tom66

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #168 on: July 16, 2023, 09:19:33 am »
The next big problem to solve is storage since renewable sources are both erratic and seasonal where it comes to supply. And don't start with heat storage using water or batteris. It won't work for seasonal storage because the volume of water needed is too big, batteries will be too big & expensive and the leakage is too high.

For seasonal, batteries are obviously no-go, and while water (or soil/bedrock) thermal storage has been demonstrated even at seasonal scale, and possibly workable, I agree it won't be a silver bullet because suitable sites are limited and building is expensive. However, as I have stated before, there is nothing wrong burning fossil fuels, which are super trivial to store, to support during harsh winter conditions, Dunkelflaute periods etc. Cost is higher than it is now because NRE and maintenance costs of facilities spread to significantly smaller number of kWh produced, but this is then compensated by cheaper prices when plenty of energy is available. This is BTW exactly what Germany is already doing and the direction seems just fine. Shutting down nuclear early gave a small setback* but that's something which needs to happen anyway so in bigger picture it doesn't matter.

Yes, burning fossils in limited circumstances is OK, provided a few factors are accounted for;
- It is all offset in some way, e.g. by carbon capture at source or direct air capture solution
- The extraction process is relatively clean with minimal environmental contamination
- The country isn't dependent upon the fossil fuels from unfriendly nations
- There's limited local air pollution, so ICE vehicles still can't exist on this except for very specific applications where there is no alternative (I'm thinking construction equipment for instance, has to operate for long periods of time without access to electricity)

The great thing about renewables is that once they can cover 90% of all demands you can probably supply any fossil fuel requirements from local reservoirs, or at least for Europe it can almost certainly all come from within the EU/UK.

 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #169 on: July 16, 2023, 09:24:38 am »
But you can't turn heat into electricity

I'm confused, because almost every means of generating electricity that I know of, has a differential of heat at its heart. The two exceptions I can immediately think of are tidal power generation and hydrogen fuel cells.

This, of course heat can be turned into electricity, with the exact same limitations as turning hydrogen into electricity, namely poor efficiency and cost and space requirements of equipment. Heat-to-electricity is not much being researched/advocated because it's way more impractical than heat-to-heat, and since 1/3 or so (more than 2/3 in cold countries) of our total energy needs are in form of heat, supplying that directly from stored renewable heat offsets having to produce that same heat by burning fossil fuels.

Ground source heatpumping is a big deal because it combines annual storage with renewable energy source (sunlight) harvesting in one simple package. Classic, simple installations just drill a hole in bedrock/soil and utilize thermal energy stored into the first 100-200 meters of the planet, the energy originates from sunlight; earth's crust itself has enough mass to average out the annual temperature so that energy is stored passively without any human intervention in the summer and then used in the winter, latter requiring relatively small input of power. It is also possible to actively store energy into the crust during summer, enabling the system to work with less collection area (i.e., larger hole density), and it isn't even expensive to do so; a circulation pump and large fan coil is all that is needed for compressor-less heat transfer. This is not any kind of pipe dream or "idea" or even a prototype, this is all commonplace existing technology.

Even air source heatpumping utilizes the inherent annual thermal storage of the earth's crust + atmosphere (mostly the latter)! People often miss this fact.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2023, 09:27:30 am by Siwastaja »
 

Offline peter-h

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #170 on: July 16, 2023, 01:04:08 pm »
Electric cars will reach a plateau before long. It is already starting in some areas. The problem is that > 50% (the actual figure has certainly been well researched but seems unpublished) of the population in the developed world has no charging opportunities.

Electric aircraft projects are being abandoned very fast. They were wonderful for "green" column-inches on social media, and collecting EU R&D grants ;)

Ground sourced heat pumps are indeed great (I have been around that business since the 1970s) but for most people impossible, or very expensive with a few tens of k for a borehole. It is easy only if you have a fairly large field, say 1-3 acres and then you only need a ~1m deep trench for the pipe. Or a lake, or a stream which is always running.

Air source heat pumps are crap; the COP is largely fiction due to evaporator icing. I am rather very familiar with this... The appliance also rots away in not too many years.
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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #171 on: July 16, 2023, 01:12:46 pm »
It seems like what would really solve a large part of the energy problem is some sort of heat transportation system interconnecting countries in southern and northern hemispheres. It's technically feasible, but nobody has found a way to make it economically feasible yet.
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Offline tom66

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #172 on: July 16, 2023, 03:35:43 pm »
It seems like what would really solve a large part of the energy problem is some sort of heat transportation system interconnecting countries in southern and northern hemispheres. It's technically feasible, but nobody has found a way to make it economically feasible yet.

Why not just transport electricity?  China has a 3,200km ultra HVDC transmission line (+/-1.1MV) built by ABB, it transmits up to 12GW.  Efficiency is in excess of 90%.  Going up to +/-1.5MV UHVDC could allow transmission beyond 5,000km with similar efficiency. 
 
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Online Marco

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #173 on: July 16, 2023, 05:06:57 pm »
Ground source heatpumping is a big deal because it combines annual storage with renewable energy source (sunlight) harvesting in one simple package.

As always, I'm disappointed governments aren't trying to put in district heating with street level ground source heat pumps ... it makes far more sense than forcing individuals to install air source heatpumps which can't feed old radiators.

Trenchless techniques have changed the solution space massively from classical district heating solutions. Hot/warm/chilled water should be an utility.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2023, 05:09:32 pm by Marco »
 
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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #174 on: July 16, 2023, 07:42:28 pm »
Why not just transport electricity?  China has a 3,200km ultra HVDC transmission line (+/-1.1MV) built by ABB, it transmits up to 12GW.  Efficiency is in excess of 90%.  Going up to +/-1.5MV UHVDC could allow transmission beyond 5,000km with similar efficiency. 
The temperature difference between the hot and cold areas is an energy source that could theoretically be exploited. Probably not enough to make the whole system a net generator, but it could make the effective efficiency very high.
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