Artificial Photosynthesis: Clean Energy’s Holy Grail?

Given that unsustainable fossil fuel burning has now endangered our planet’s fragile climate, will artificial photosynthesis based energy generation be the clean and sustainable energy production’s “Holy Grail”? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Given the recent dire UN IPCC irreversible climate change warning, it seems that if humanity can master an energy generating system based on photosynthesis used by plants for millions of years would not only serve as a very viable clean, sustainable and renewable energy production for industrial use but also serve as a viable way of cleaning up the excess carbon dioxide already in the earth’s atmosphere produced by decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning. But is there an inherent difficulty of artificial photosynthesis that it is now labeled as the “Holy Grail” of cleaning up the energy generation systems of our industrialized world. 

Joel Ager of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories is just one of the 5 energy research labs in the United States currently working to develop a viable way to replicate photosynthesis in generating energy for industrial use. Their latest prototype is an “artificial leaf” that uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and water to convert it into methanol / methyl alcohol but in a chemical reaction that’s ten times faster than typical plant based reactions found in nature. Once perfected, artificial photosynthesis could provide a truly carbon neutral way to generate electricity to power the wheels of industry. Though this is the latest phase of the development of artificial photosynthesis, research into the concept has been around for a few decades now. 

Back in 1980, “splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen via ordinary sunlight” has been a goal of photochemists finding ways to wean industry from its heavy dependence on crude oil when it comes to energy generation. Michael Grätzel and his team at Lausanne, Switzerland had devised a system with special catalysts that carries out this process with high efficiency. The catalytic material consists of platinum and ruthenium dioxide deposited on titanium dioxide. A notable feature of the system is that it is effective over long periods, with hydrogen production undiminished after two days of ordinary sunlight exposure. 

Low Cost Solar Thermal Power Plants: Sunny Future?

With increasing concerns over the deleterious effect of excess industrial activity produced carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, are low cost solar thermal power plants the viable long-term answer?

By: Ringo Bones 

Here’s a solar energy generation concept that could surely make solar power advocate Ed Begley, Jr. blush, but could low cost solar thermal power plants be a practical and economically viable long term solution in curbing our conventional power generating activity from dumping excess carbon dioxide gas into the Earth’s atmosphere? Luckily, the idea seems to point a sunny future on the concept of affordable renewable energy power generation. 

A civil engineer named Andrea Pedretti says constructing low cost solar thermal power plants using simple aluminized plastic foil is up to 50 times cheaper than the glass based mirrors currently used as the parabolic mirror through in a solar thermal power plant. Aluminized plastic foils found in the market today are now about as corrosion resistant as the glass based mirrors currently used in solar thermal power plant construction. Given that aluminized plastic foils used as a mirror are much lighter than their glass based counterparts, most of the financial savings in constructing these types of solar thermal power plants could mostly come from using cheaper support structures bearing much lighter loads.   

Andrea Pedretti’s low cost solar thermal power plant concept had been tested in a Moroccan cement factory and shows results on par with their costlier rivals that use conventional glass based mirrors on their parabolic through arrays that heat the working substance – like oil or water – that generate power by being directed to drive a dynamo type electrical generator. If scaled up, aluminized plastic foil based low cost solar thermal power plants could finally make practical clean solar power available to the parts of the world who can’t afford conventional solar thermal power plants. If the concept becomes successful, who needs the groundwater pollution risks of fracking. 

Helium 3: Clean Energy Source Of The Future?

Even though we have yet to design a practical nuclear fusion power plant that can economically use helium 3 as a fuel, does it really represent a clean energy source of the future?

By: Ringo Bones

All of our experimental controlled nuclear fusion power plants use helium 3 as a starting material. Unfortunately, a lot of experimental fusion power plants working on the ignition principle seems to be only able to sustain nuclear fusion for a few fractions of a second while those more ingeniously designed ones based on the working principles of Ballotechnic Superfluid are woefully underfunded, does this make the promised potential of an atomic isotope of a gas currently used to make balloons float called helium 3 be forever be in the far-off future? But even if we managed to design a practical controlled nuclear fusion power plant to use it tomorrow, do we ever know where to find it? But first, here’s what we know so far about helium 3.

As of 2011, even though it is still a laboratory curiosity, helium 3 can already be purchased at a rather steep price of 3,000 US dollars a liter. Ordinary, low-cost helium used for making balloons float are sourced from natural gas wells – primarily from Texas and adjacent states in the United States - where it comprises 1.75 per cent of the gas with 0.5 per cent carbon dioxide mixed in while the rest is methane. Some natural gas wells in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan contain a higher percentage of helium 3 compared to ordinary helium in comparison to other natural gas wells elsewhere on Earth, but most helium 3 on Earth – given its scarcity – primarily came from Cold War era atmospheric Hydrogen Bomb tests a little over 50 years ago before being halted by test ban treaties.

As we just recently found out, the closest abundant – and might be economically viable – store of helium 3 is on our Moon. Almost all of the helium 3 found on the Moon is primarily produced by our Sun and it got there via the solar wind and the occasional coronal mass ejection or two. Sadly as well as fortunately, the Earth’s magnetosphere deflects most of these radioactive helium 3 particles that came from our Sun to land on the Moon instead of increasing everyone’s incidence of cancer here on Earth. Back in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and his Apollo 11 team set-up the “aluminum foil” experiment on the Moon’s surface. The purpose of which to use the aluminum foil to capture atomic particles thrown off by the solar wind which are otherwise deflected by the Earth’s magnetosphere. Upon bringing back the foil for an extensive lab analysis at NASA, it was found out that the aluminum foil used in the Lunar surface experiment managed to capture a high percentage of helium 3 atoms – as well as atoms of argon and neon caught in the stream of the solar wind.

Integral Fast Reactor: The Safe Nuclear Fission Reactor?

Shaken by the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and more recently, the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster, will the IFR fulfill the nuclear energy industry’s needs for a safe nuclear fission power plant? 

By: Ringo Bones 

For over 50 years, the world has been waiting for the dream of the practical nuclear fusion energy to be realized – but engineers at Argonne National Laboratory had already tested the supposedly safe next generation of that old and much-abused standby – the nuclear fission reactor. Since 1991, nuclear engineers at Argonne had not only tested but had built a kind of nuclear fission reactor that not only is inherently safe but also consumes its own dangerous radioactive wastes – including dangerous radioactive wastes from other older commercial fission nuclear power plants. 

The Argonne nuclear engineers’ design is dubbed the Integral Fast Reactor or IFR that uses high-energy or “fast” neutrons to trigger the nuclear fission chain reaction. In contrast, conventional light-water reactors which are currently used by over 99% of the global nuclear fission power plant industry typically slow their neutrons down with a “moderator” like graphite rods or heavy water. And given that fast neutrons can cause many more types of elements to undergo fission, the IFR is not limited to using uranium and plutonium that conventional commercial nuclear fission reactors use as fuel. 

The IFR can also use the highly radioactive elements with half-lives of tens of thousands or even a few million years that are by-products of uranium and plutonium fission that are deemed as “radioactive wastes” as its own fuel. By separating the long-lived radioactive isotopes out of the waste stream, nuclear power plant operators using the IFR type nuclear fission reactor will finally eliminate the problem of having a huge inventory of radioactive wastes that requires hundreds of thousands, and like neptunium-237, even a few million years of containment. And unlike the more familiar breeder-type nuclear fission reactors still operating in Europe and Japan, the IFR can “burn” plutonium rather than producing it. It thus precludes the possibility that a cache of nuclear weapons-grade fuel might fall into the hands of rogue states and terrorist bomb makers – lessening the headache of the International Atomic Energy Commission when it comes to “auditing” potential nuclear weapons-grade materials used by most typical commercial nuclear fission power plants. 

The other great advantage of the IFR, according to its designers at Argonne, is a safety system that makes it virtually resistant against those catastrophic loss-of-coolant accidents that crippled the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and more recently the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant during the Japanese tsunami of March 11, 2011. The IFR’s fuel assembly is designed in such a way that it would actually expand if it started to get too hot. This thermal expansion would allow more neutrons to escape from the reactor core and since it is the neutrons that trigger fission, the neutron leakage would slow the chain reaction and eventually bring it to a halt – before a disastrous core meltdown could occur. And given the lack of progress in the commercial applications of nuclear fusion, the IFR seems to be the only near-term technology currently available that can provide a huge energy source while addressing global warming and environmental concerns over excessive carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in commercial power generation.     

Can Germany Phase-out Her Nuclear Power Plants by 2022?

Many see it as a fool’s errand from an economic perspective, but can Germany really wean herself out of nuclear power by 2022?

By: Ringo Bones

It can be quite dramatic what a few months can make. Near the end of 2010, German chancellor Angela Merkel was so busy lobbying for an extension of Germany’s existing commercial nuclear power plants to meet the country’s greenhouse gas emissions quota targets. Then in March 11, 2011, the tragic earthquake and tsunami that hit the north-eastern part of Japan that crippled the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Comparisons to the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl disaster seemed inevitable despite the radiation spread largely confined to the immediate area, nevertheless, the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster renewed the whole world’s skepticism on commercial nuclear fission energy production. Now the question is; can Germany be able to wean herself out of nuclear power by the year 2022?

As a trained nuclear physicist Chancellor Angela Merkel had always been willing to accept currently assessed risks of nuclear power generation given that it is the only energy production method we that doesn’t emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses while at the same time being economically viable – make that the only non greenhouse gas emitting energy production method than can economically compete with coal, oil and natural gas. The stakes are high, but if Germany succeeds in replacing all the nuclear power plants currently in operation with wind and solar or other renewable energy alternatives, the whole world would certainly follow. And this would finally solve the problem of where to store all those high-level radioactive wastes and related safety concerns.

The 2011 International Year of Chemistry: Advancing Our Search For Clean and Free Energy?

Given that one of its goals is drawing attention on is sustainable development, can the celebration of the 2011 International Year of Chemistry really aid humanity’s search for clean and free energy sources?

By: Ringo Bones

Even though the declaration of UN’s 2011 International Year of Chemistry was decided as far back as December 2008 in New York and Paris during the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations when it adopted a resolution proclaiming 2011 as the International Year of Chemistry, humanity’s search for a reliable source of energy to run the global wheels of industry that doesn’t break the bank and the environment was decided even further back. But in what aspects of our search for reliable clean and almost free – i.e. low-cost – energy sources where the celebration of the 2011 International Year of Chemistry can provide the most help?

The field of rechargeable chemical rechargeable battery technologies could probably be the primary beneficiary of this year’s celebration of the 2011 International Year of Chemistry. Given that the current state-of-the-art technology of lithium iron phosphate batteries already made it as having almost the same power-to-weight ratio to gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines, could more cleaver advances in the science of chemistry this year provide us with batteries that has the same power-to-weight ratio of gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines or even better them? That alone could make electric cars run without emitting a single gram of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – given that the electricity used to charge the batteries are produced via non-carbon dioxide emitting means of course.

Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster: The Death Knell for Commercial Nuclear Power?

Despite of having been compared to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster even though the spread of radioactivity is still localized does the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster the death knell of commercial nuclear fission power generation?

By: Ringo Bones

As one of the most famous casualties of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit the north-eastern part of Japan, the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster got a Level-7 Rating comparable to that of the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, even though the spread of most of the radioactive debris due to the meltdown was confined to the immediate area of the Fukushima plant. Sadly the people and the press at large have perceived it as the death knell for commercial nuclear power generation.

The oft cited reason for the renewed anti-nuclear power activism raised by the Fukushima nuclear disaster is that if it happened in a technologically advanced and rich country like Japan with a culture that holds discipline and dedication to one’s job with such a high esteem that a much worse nuclear disaster could happen anywhere. But is this sound reasoning, or is it rather based on politics – make that the politics of ignorance - rather than the science of nuclear fission power generation? Well, all of this reminds me of what Isaac Asimov once said about “new” problems created by technology – he says: “If technology is the root cause of our current problems, then, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”

Sadly, a much bigger problem is looming – i.e. the accelerating greenhouse effect in our atmosphere caused by our inconvenient failure to wean ourselves out of fossil fuel based power generation that could create much stronger storms, longer droughts, higher than average temperatures and raise sea levels before the end of the 21st Century. Commercial nuclear fission power generation has always been touted – and it is the only commercially and technologically viable one we have – of a carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases free power generation. Before solar, wind and other carbon-free alternative / renewable energy power generation schemes can fully replace coal and even nuclear fission power plants, nuclear fission power generation is - unfortunately – here to stay.