Thread: Katoomba Monthly Temp average set to be SMASHED!!! AGAIN!!!

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

What happens with ships and planes? What will they be burning?

You have raised some interesting challenges there, Paul.

The challenge with air travel will be the technology, but I expect the issue with shipping will be more one of governance.

Yes, bunker oil (No 6) used in shipping is one nasty one that will have to go (just behind black coal and diesel on CO₂ emissions).

Belcher-1-2.jpg

But, the use of Flag of Convenience countries will be the biggest obstacle to making progress there. What incentive would a FOC country like the Marshall Islands (with pop. of just 50,000 and a fleet of over 3,000 registered ships) have to reduce its emissions!

Shipping line owners are getting the messages from populations around ports that they don't want their pollution, particularity tourist destinations, so at least the cruise line part of the industry will probably tidy up their act.

At only about 2-3% of global greenhouse emissions, shipping is probably not the highest priority to solve, although a much easier technical problem than aviation. At least the weight and size of the 'engine' and fuel load is not a major factor with boats.

Are electric vessels the wave of the future in shipping? | Environment| All topics from climate change to conservation | DW | 20.03.2018

Commercial aviation makes a similar contribution to greenhouse emissions to shipping, so still a lower order problem to solve, IMO. According to some, bio-fuel seems like the most likely contender to reduce aviation emissions in the near term.

Qantas has today announced its Los Angeles based aircraft will be powered by biofuel from 2020

Airbus Partners With SAS To Deliver Green Aircraft - Simple Flying

I delude myself that buying carbon offsets when I fly is helping. It is hard to know if I am getting what I pay for there. Some refer to them as the new indulgences with about the same level of guarantee of arriving with a 'clean' green conscience.

However, outside electricity generation and heating, road transport is still the big one to solve.

Transport is responsible for nearly 30% of the EU’s total CO2 emissions, of which 72% comes from road transportation. Quote from CO2 emissions from cars: facts and figures (infographics)

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

A question that I raised some time ago (but possibly during the white noise phase) was "At what point will a fossil fuel vehicle become impossible to sell, and therefore worthless?"

I dunno FF, but I reckon at the rate that I turn over my cars I will have bought my last petrol model. If I last long enough to replace my recently purchased car (replacing my 26yr old Magna) it will definitely be a hydro or electric model. And, if I don't go the distance and that car outlasts me then my kids are going to know the answer to your question...

Originally Posted by woodPixel

-- On street parking.... I live in a new area. The local shops and some underground parking areas have ultrachargers and the Tesla quick chargers. I'd say the future city areas might have the equivalent of parking meters that also dispense juice (the ultimate in paid parking!)

Dedicated on street parking for electric vehicles that also provide charging points are already common in many areas in Europe.

This one is in the very heart of Paris.

Electric car parking charging.jpg

This one in the small remote town of
Mosjøen just below the Arctic Circle in Norway.

E-car park in Mosjøen.jpg

They are also here outside where I have coffee with some of my mates once a week. Not that I see many e-cars there, but that will happen.

I bought my last (and only) new car in 1980. $16K is the most I have ever paid, always buying second hand vehicles. I paid $12k for the last vehicle a couple of years ago. A 2005 Lexus ES300 with 27,000km on the clock. When we go electric I am not sure if there will be sufficient vehicles on the second hand market for my purposes. However, they may not allow me to drive by that time. Maybe I could take up horse riding again. (Millmerran to Blue Mountains about 40 days out in the wilderness).

Regards
Paul

Edit: Brett has requested pix. Not quite sure exactly what the pix would be of or if he clicked the wrong button (I have done that before). I have also managed to delete the first part of this post so apologies if it no longer making sense . Well, even less sense.

However, not being one who wishes to disappoint.

This is the famed car. The previous owner reached 95 (years old, not mph) and decided it was time to hand in his licence:

P1050991 (Medium).JPG

Maybe it was for the mighty Mazdas. Can't bring myself to throw them away as the motors are still excellent. The rear wheel steering on the white one worried me when it started to go in the wrong direction travelling down the hills coming into Gloucester. Quite alarming really.

P1050992 (Medium).JPG

But most likely Brett was after the 'orse. Being something of a Steptoe I had to 'ave an 'orse didn' I? What was 'Arold's 'orse called? 'Ercules? Anyhow, here he is all ready to go: Just has to be broken in.

003_LI (Medium).jpg

Millmerran to the Blue Mountains: 40 days: Easy. Some methane production so not entirely pollutant free.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

What happens with ships and planes? What will they be burning?

Hydrogen!

air travel.jpg

Serious though, the Yanks have some new Super Heavy Lifters theyve been playing with for years. The tonnage of these things are incredible: Monster Machines: The Aluminium Airship Of The Future Has Finally Flown | Gizmodo Australia

These can be fitted with computer smarts, GPS and remote guidance. No humans. Simply have fleets of these ferrying things around.

Perhaps, without planes, we can find a more civilised and elegant way to travel port-to-port?

saiing boat.jpg

I seem to have skipped a few posts somehow so I will return to them.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by woodPixel

Bushmiller, I've been giving things a bit of thought.

With your old creaking bunnings-hammer maintained CO2 belching smog generator (hehhe ) how much longer, if you absolutely had to, could it be made to run?

Is it possible to shut down each of the generating plants one at a time, use them for parts and keep 5 going, then 4.... 3, 2, 1....

I've been thinking. Everyone says the whole plant must be turned off fully on some random Tuesday, like a switch. Why? Why can't we keep 1 of the 6 grinding away Just In Case?

Why does everyone talk of it as an all or nothing affair?



Is it possible to turn it off for a while and fire it back up with a weeks notice?

WP

For a brief moment I thought you were talking about our new car (2005), which is actually the same age as the old ute (you guessed it... 2005). But I hadn't yet posted that detail when you asked this question.

Some parts in power stations would be interchangeable from station to station but not many: A bit like the tyres on my car might be interchangeable with those on yours, but just as likely not. That would be the case with Millmerran compared the other supercritical plants in QLD (Callide C, Tarong North and Kogan Creek). Those units are all different. Different turbines and different boilers.

In NSW, as I mentioned in post #697, there are twelve fundamentally similar units at four locations. They could arguably be progressively shut down and in some cases "spares" supplied to the remaining units to keep them generating. However, much of the components that wear out have to be replaced with new items. For example, the boiler tubes wear thin from erosion of the particles in the gas flow (coal and ash) and have to be completely replaced. The turbine blades may suffer damage and also have to be replaced with new components. NSW is the best placed system to undertake a progressive shut down. The sort of scenario that would see this happen is something like a transformer blowing up. It may well be that the transformer from a shut down station could be rescued. The only slight barrier to all this is that nowadays these stations that were owned by the Electricity Commission of NSW are now privately owned.

If I can draw an automotive analogy, our previous sedan was a 1995 Mazda 929. Quite a nice car but not many produced and few after market parts were made: Pretty much limited to tyres and windscreen wipers. So I bought a second vehicle to keep in reserve for when the first wore out intending to keep one running from the two cars. Big mistake. It was the rear wheel steering that was the primary concern as that I knew was very expensive to replace. It messed up on my main car and I looked into swapping them out. Before I did that I had a check done and the control arms and other wheel components were worn: On both vehicles! In other words the same components break down and there is no mileage in swapping them out. They have both been pensioned off.

Same story with the power stations. In fact Millmerran has a 50% interest in Callide C but the units are different.

As to shutting down some units in the same station, this could happen naturally if a major fault develops and it is too expensive to repair. It would then indeed become a spares store for minor parts such as instrumentation, valves, controls etc. I don't think a station would deliberately do this as it costs as much to run one unit as it does two units, apart from chopping a few jobs. All the fixed overheads remain the same.

Age of individual units and the commercial viability will mainly dictate which units shut down first.

Can units be shut down for a while and restarted? Yes, they can. We do it every year deliberately for outage maintenance: Normally a maximum of nine days. However, every five years we have a major outage for upgrades and these could go for up to six or eight weeks. We only undertake these because we have to. It is expensive to restart a coal fired power station as they have to burn oil (diesel usually, but not always) to start up and do this for some while preheating the boiler and then warming the turbine before synchronising and actually making some MWs. If a unit is "mothballed" for a longer period, the time taken and money spent to get it running again is even more protracted and expensive. Added to that, some precautions have to be taken to keep the boiler and turbine in good order while it is "parked." Not a situation to be undertaken lightly. They are certainly not available for use at a moments notice.

Regards
Paul



Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by woodPixel

Hydrogen!

air travel.jpg

Serious though, the Yanks have some new Super Heavy Lifters theyve been playing with for years. The tonnage of these things are incredible: Monster Machines: The Aluminium Airship Of The Future Has Finally Flown | Gizmodo Australia

These can be fitted with computer smarts, GPS and remote guidance. No humans. Simply have fleets of these ferrying things around.

Perhaps, without planes, we can find a more civilised and elegant way to travel port-to-port?

saiing boat.jpg

WP

Quite a few years back the prospect of Airships was raised and seemed to gain some traction for a while. When people talk about hydrogen cars I immediately think back to the Hindenburg (no I wasn't there ) and wonder how Joe public would go with the safety aspect. As I have said before, we use hydrogen to cool our generators and we are most careful with it. No naked flames, no smoking, no mobile phones, no radios.

However, modern versions advocated using helium, which is inert. I think the two main problems were that helium is expensive and nobody wanted to be limited to 100Km/hr. I have just read your link and it appears that the aluminium airship uses helium, but is a half size prototype. The production models are still to be built.

I heard that Greta Thunberg was criticised for using the sailing boat to travel from Europe to the US as it cost more than a flight would have done and consumed more energy than was consumed in the flight. That may have been true if the yacht was single use only, but I assume it was not single use.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Biofuel is a little controversial as it is still a polluter.

Yes, Paul, but I would think a slightly lesser evil than pure avgas.

And, yes, there are other controversies around biofuels, not least being the displacement of food growing land where they compete for arable land.

Biofuels, from ethanol to biodiesel, facts and information

A young friend drove around for awhile on used fish and chip oil. It did take him a little time to get it warmed up on a cold morning and you could smell him coming a block away!

Originally Posted by NeilS

Yes, Paul, but I would think a slightly lesser evil than pure avgas.

And, yes, there are other controversies around biofuels, not least being the displacement of food growing land where they compete for arable land.

Biofuels, from ethanol to biodiesel, facts and information

A young friend drove around for awhile on used fish and chip oil. It did take him a little time to get it warmed up on a cold morning and you could smell him coming a block away!

Neil

I smiled at smelling your friend coming. I suppose I was thinking in terms of that more than the specifically grown crops as I do have a problem with ethanol. It uses more fuel then the pure petrol equivalent, but more of an issue is the use of land for fuel instead of food production. As the world population increases, and the need for more agricultural land arises, it will become more of an issue and will only put off the evil moment. It is still a fossil fuel and as you say, just not quite so evil.

It is a slightly different scenario if the waste components (non-edible) are utilised to produce ethanol. Having said all that, why wouldn't hemp be considered? I think the oil companies were successful in shutting down that opportunity back in the 1920s.

Regards
Paul

The E85 I was talking about is made from waste product.

Race Blend E85 - United Petroleum and About Dalby Bio-Refinery - United Petroleum

They have a thing on the site showing the process.

I believe they use Sorghum, or the product part that isn't used for food. I could be very wrong.

I like the fact that its derived from plants, so the CO2 I generate is neutral. I would, even though poor, buy a neutral product even if it costs more. I may be different to other peasants (ahem, "low cost consumers") as I believe the price of buying cheap is often, ultimately, higher (may favourite saying: "The poor man pays twice")

There's a conversation starting on this aviation thread about electric aircraft. Some discussion on hydrogen too.

I’ve been dipping in out of this excellent thread.
But just saw this in the news.


Air pollution levels plummet as coronavirus lockdown sees China's factories fall silent
Coronavirus lockdown in China has air pollution levels tumbling, NASA satellites reveal - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Cheers Matt.

Ian

The second post in that thread raised an instant problem. Modern aircraft rely on having used a good proportion of their fuel during the flight so landing weight is reduced. If a fault occurs immediately after take of they may have to jettison fuel to reduce weight. A battery will still have the same mass on landing as at take off.

As hydrogen is used the explosive limit is rapidly approached. How do we cope with this in the power station? If we have to degas the generator, the hydrogen is forced out with CO2 and then the CO2 is purged with air. The reverse procedure is followed for gassing up. We do not want an an air/H2 mix under any circumstances.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

If a fault occurs immediately after take of they may have to jettison fuel to reduce weight. A battery will still have the same mass on landing as at take off.

Yebbut I thought they jettisoned fuel to mitigate the chances of explosion during emergency landing?