StoppingClimateChange
.com Energy
Parks
Electrify everything possible, use CO2-neutral fires for
energy needs beyond electricity's reach.
We need to plan on building thousands of Nuclear-Hydrogen-Biomass Energy Parks
for mass producing synthetic fuels from natural ingredients if we are going to
actually carbon-neutralize the world.
BIOSYNFUELS are made by gasifying plant carbon into syngas and
then mixing it with hydrogen gas in the presence of catalysts to synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuel
molecules
like gasoline, etc.
Click for individual chapters. >
Prologue: Insight from
Hindsight
Introduction: Stopping Climate Change's Growth 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
By changing things as little as
possible, we get results as quickly and as inexpensively as possible.
Ultimately, the only way the world will stop using fossil fuels is when the energy industry offers electricity and equivalent carbon-neutral liquid fuels at much lower cost.
200% more Clean Carbon Neutral energy is better than 100% Renewable energy replacement.
It's critically important that you, the reader, have a clear understanding of what "Carbon Neutral" (CO2-neutral) means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_neutrality
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What's the big advantage behind having nuclear powered Energy Parks instead of Wind Farms and Solar Gardens?
Worldwide, there are probably more than a million scientists, engineers, and others working full time to come up with ways for mankind to end the burning of fossil fuels to stop Climate Change without giving up any of the virtually countless benefits burning fossil fuels brings us all day, every day.
Energy Parks are intended to enable power-plant level companies to replicate the various energies we obtain from fossil fuels - namely, heats and electricities - without adding to the climate-changing emissions that fossil fuels also bring. Wind Farms and Solar Gardens can only bring relatively small amounts of unreliable electricity you wouldn't want to power traffic lights with.
The advantage of having your own battery-like underground Molten Salt nuclear Reactor (MSR) is that you can make massive amounts of nuclear electricity and heat without having to mess around very much with things nuclear. MSRs are a different nuclear animal and when the reactor goes away, so does the radioactivity.
How you use a molten salt nuclear reactor: (1) you lease a fresh "reactor in a can", (2) lower it into your power plant's reactor silo, (3) connect it to the steam generator, (4) run it at full power for 4 to 7 years (depending upon who made it), (5) when the fuel is depleted, turn it off, (6) disconnect it, (7) lift it out of the underground reactor silo, and lower it in a nearby radiation and heat decay (cool-down) underground silo for 4 to 7 years. (8) Later, a reactor truck, railroad car, or barge comes with another fresh reactor, (9) the old, and now cooled-down reactor-in-a-can, can be safely taken back to the factory to be refurbished by robots, refueled, and leased again. When using certain blends of uranium and thorium in a molten salt reactor, the cost of the heat can be far cheaper than coal, making for a very profitable operation. For details, see: ThorConIsle - Design Paper.pdf and ThorCon exec_summary.pdf
The advantage of using a Plasma Torch Gasification Reactor to obtain your carbon-neutral Biofeedstock is that all the energy needed to create the sun-like heat necessary to break biomass molecules down into their constituent atoms comes from the nuclear reactor's electricity, not by consuming a portion of the biomass itself as in all the other biomass gasification processes. This gives you very good control over an extremely wide range of sub-optimal feedstocks enabling maximizing the yield and purity of the carbon-neutral syngas product. By breaking down biomass using temperatures greater than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (yes, 5,000+) a very tar-free syngas is produced.
For Details see: Plasma Gasification of Biomass.pdf and Biomass - US DOE 2016_billion_ton_report_.pdf
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Introductory Overview Articles
The Energy Park idea draws its fundamental concepts from
two different, but complementary, sources:
1., Dr. Forsberg's "Nuclear-Hydrogen-Biomass System" and
2., Dr. Olah's "Beyond
Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy".
The Energy Park idea's Bottom Line: Use Dr. Forsberg's Nuclear-Hydrogen-Biomass System to make
Dr. Olah's Carbon-Neutral
Biosynfuels for all commonly used combustion fuels.
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1. Dr. Charles Forsberg's "The Nuclear-Hydrogen-Biomass System."
In 2007, Dr. Forsberg, a chemist and nuclear
scientist from MIT and Oak Ridge Laboratories, prepared a slide show and
academic paper to present a related concept to the Annual Meeting of the
American Institute of Chemical Engineers .
Nuclear-Hydrogen-Biomass System - Slides - Dr Charles W. Forsberg .pdf
Quick slide show overview.
Nuclear-Hydrogen-Biomass System - Paper - Dr Charles W. Forsberg .pdf
Paper.
(ABSTRACT)
Meeting U.S. Liquid Transport Fuel Needs with a Nuclear-Hydrogen-Biomass System
Charles Forsberg
Dr. Forsberg's view: "The two major energy challenges for the United States
are (1) replacing crude oil in our transportation system and (2)
eliminating greenhouse gas emissions.
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A strategy is proposed to meet the total liquid-fuel transport energy needs
within 30 years by producing greenhouse-neutral liquid fuels using biomass
as the feedstock and nuclear energy to provide the heat, electricity, and
hydrogen required for operation of the biomass-to-fuels production
facilities.
Biomass is produced from sunlight, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and water.
Consequently, using liquid fuels from biomass has no net impacts on carbon
dioxide levels because the carbon dioxide is being recycled to the
atmosphere when the fuel is burnt. The U.S. could harvest about 1.3 billion
tons of biomass per year without major impacts on food, fiber, or lumber
costs.
The energy content of this biomass is about equal to 10 million barrels of
diesel fuel per day; however, the actual net liquid-fuels production would
be less than half of this amount after accounting for energy to process the
biomass into liquid fuel. If nuclear energy is used to provide the energy in
the form of heat, electricity, and hydrogen to support biomass growth and
conversion to liquid fuels, the equivalent of over 12 million barrels of
greenhouse-neutral diesel fuel per day can be produced. The combination of
biomass and nuclear energy may ultimately meet the total U.S. transport fuel
needs."
- (Copy of text on slide 33, above, by Dr. Charles W. Forsberg.)
Conclusion:
There is sufficient biomass to meet U.S. liquid-fuel needs if the energy and
hydrogen inputs for biomass-to-fuel processing plants are provided by
advanced nuclear energy.
2. In 2006, Nobel Prize winning energy chemist, Dr. George A. Olah, published his influential book: "Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy."
Dr. Olah and his co-authors explored the
different fuels that could be made from captured carbon dioxide;
how they would be made, their advantages, shortcomings, and potential problems.
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527324224
Beyond Oil and Gas - Literature Seminar - Lit_T_Matsumoto_B4.pdf A Japanese slide show presenting a quick overview of Dr. Olah's book.
Beyond Oil and Gas - Methanol Synthesis - Summary by George Olah.pdf Dr. Olah's comments on Methanol Synthesis.
Beyond Oil and Gas - The Methanol Economy - Slide Presentation -
R-Prakash-USC-May2014.pdf A more detailed
presentation.
Dr. Olah's view: Liquid hydrocarbons are a cheaper, safer, and
more energy-dense way to store, handle, and use combustion
energy than gaseous fuels such as hydrogen.
Methanol can be a carbon-neutral lowest
common denominator liquid combustion fuel for making all the other liquid fuels and
many other substances.
The key is to use nuclear's virtually endless cheap
energy lavishly to make every person in the world energy-rich.
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Prosperity stabilizes population. A carbon-free, nuclear powered, prosperous, smaller population is what the world needs. Nuclear energy - both the electricity and thermal kind - is any country's quickest, cheapest pathway to prosperity. With more cheap power per person, more people will find a way to use that ambient energy to travel a pathway to prosperity. The United States spends 10,000 Watt-hour per day per person; Mexico, 2,000 W-hpd; Haiti, 500 W-hpd.
"In energy-poor societies, the energy cost of
pregnancy and of bringing up another child is negligible compared to its labor
contribution, which can start at a very early age. According to Seavoy (1986,
20), “Having many children (an average of four to six) and transferring labor to
them at the earliest possible age is highly rational behavior in peasant
societies, where the good life is equated with minimal labor expenditures, not
with the possession of abundant material goods.”
- Smil, Vaclav. Energy and
Civilization: A History (MIT Press) (Kindle Locations 2455-2458). The MIT Press.
Kindle Edition.
