Will The EPA Choke Oil Shale Production?

Investors.com (h/t Al Fin Energy and Instapundit)

quote:

The Gulf Coast energy industry has never fully recovered from a similar moratorium and a new glacial permitting process.

Similarly, the job-creating Keystone XL pipeline project to bring Canadian tar sands oil to American refineries is stalled on environmental grounds.

So, this administration is all about jobs?  Or destroying jobs?  As long as it is a government job that costs billions, they are all for that.

The Obama administration postpones XL pipeline decision – probably until after the 2012 election

Keystone XL pipeline delayed: Does that help Obama?

excerpts from The Christian Science Monitor

• The Obama administration announced Thursday that it is delaying the Keystone XL pipeline, a Canadian-backed project that promised to create thousands of American jobs, generate billions in annual state tax revenues, and increase Canadian crude oil imports to America by as much as a quarter billion barrels per year.
• While the project’s promised benefits seem to make its eventual go-ahead virtually certain, delaying it would rescue President Obama from having to make a politically difficult decision a year before he stands for reelection.
• According to the pipeline operator, TransCanada, the pipeline extension is designed to bring an additional 700,000 barrels per day of crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, the largest crude reserves in North America, across America’s heartland to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas.

Radical Environmentalism trumps jobs.  This was a project that would cost no taxpayer funds- in fact it would help economic growth and create new revenues.  This was a concession to the environmentalist lobby.  The Republicans should remind voters every day until election day of what Obama has just done.  That makes his jobs rhetoric just a lot of empty meaningless words.

Could you run a car with something like this?

This Stirling Engine is rated at 55 kW (electrical) which is designed for use as a CHP.  The combined heat and power part isn't needed for cars, but the amount of power generated is more than enough.  Here is what I wrote recently when I wrote about fuel cell/ battery combos.

I figured that a 19 kW power source would power a Nissan Leaf down the highway with the air conditioner running.  You could have a lot of range if you can just keep the battery charged.   Now, if you can mate an E-cat with a smaller version of this Stirling Engine pictured above, you just might be able to roll down the road for as long as the fuel holds out while never depleting the battery.  Since the fuel needed for an E-cat is rather small for its output in energy, your driving range could be quite long indeed.

Essential facts about the E-cat

This may be a bit presumptuous of me, as well as premature.  So, I fiddled around with the title of this post.  Rather than to tell everybody else who reads this, I will just say it for myself.  Therefore, the question is not what you should know about it, but what I think I should know about it.  If it matches what you think, then perhaps you can benefit from it too. Also, I am learning new things all the time.  Not everyone will agree on this list.  It is my list, perhaps you, as the reader, may want your own list.

Here's the list, in no particular order.  It reflects what I think are important points about it.

• The reaction is claimed to be self sustaining.
• The reaction is claimed to produce heat, but not electricity.
• It has been examined by qualified people.  
• Not everyone is impressed with the credentials of those who have seen it.
• Not everyone who has seen it is convinced.
• Qualified people who have seen it have not denounced it as a fraud.
• Therefore, it is still controversial.
• The science about it is not established, but there are theories.
• At least one who has posited a theory is well qualified.  The theory has insufficient laboratory experimental data which can verify the theory.
• The market potential of the device, assuming that it works, does not appear to be that great, in my opinion.
• Even though the market potential, assuming that it produces as it is claimed, is not great, it still would be a great achievement.
• Nothing that I know of would be a roadblock to it having a greater success potential than it would seem to be the case at the moment.  This would assume the potential of great improvements to the device.

This post may not be music to the ears of E-cat supporters.  This is not to say that I think that it isn't any good.  I do think something is missing.  I also think the missing parts can be filled in.  I have no idea of when that may occur, but I would hope that it happens sooner, rather than later.

I hope this is not a disappointment to some, but that is how it seems to me, in my honest opinion.

Graphite + water = the future of energy storage

A combination of two ordinary materials – graphite and water – could produce energy storage systems that perform on par with lithium ion batteries, but recharge in a matter of seconds and have an almost indefinite lifespan.

 Key point:

“The reason graphene isn’t being used everywhere is that these very thin sheets, when stacked into a usable macrostructure, immediately bond together, reforming graphite. When graphene restacks, most of the surface area is lost and it doesn’t behave like graphene anymore.”

Now, Dr. Li and his team have discovered the key to maintaining the remarkable properties of separate graphene sheets: water. Keeping graphene moist – in gel form – provides repulsive forces between the sheets and prevents re-stacking, making it ready for real-world application.
 

The Amazing Properties of Thorium

Could Thorium solve the world's energy problems? See NextBigFuture for the answer.

I think it could and it wouldn't require new technology.

Robert E Godes explains Brillouin energy and Los Alamos National Lab Situation

Brillouin Energy Corporation (BEC) technology uses the hydrogen in ordinary water in a nuclear process that produces no hazardous waste.  source NBF

Be sure to read this comment from Godes himself. 

It may be hard to tell, but my post about  "The Saint"  discussed Brillouin some more.  It's funny, but I looked it up myself and I couldn't find it on my own blog.  Here's what I said:

This video is very interesting in that it shows that it can be controlled at will. [emphasis added]

That's the key thing here- control.   He seems to have enough control over the reaction to turn it on and off at will.  This could be significant.   Be sure to watch that video.  You can link to it through the post above.  Don't forget to do this.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu in The Wall Street Journal:

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the prices of gasoline to the levels in Europe." The current gasoline price is about $8.50 a gallon in England and $8.80 in France and Germany.

Question:  Is he nuts?

Environmentally sensitive ass kickers

Honeywell Green Jet Fuel™ Powers U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds Demonstration

First Air Demonstration Team to Use Alternative Fuels Will Fly Using Honeywell Green Jet Fuel Made from Camelina

DES PLAINES, Ill., May 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — UOP LLC, a Honeywell (NYSE:HON) company, announced today that Honeywell Green Jet Fuel™ will power two Air Force F-16 aircraft as part of a Thunderbirds demonstration at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

The bio fuel is mixed with conventional fuel on a 50-50 basis. Maybe they can mix the fuel made from natural gas from shale, which is mentioned here.

What I was looking at last night

The Nissan Leaf , that is looking at it on the Wikipedia.  The Leaf comes with a 24kwh battery pack.

I'm looking at what kind of combination of fuel cell and battery that you would need to make it an all electric vehicle.  It looks like if you were to fit it with a 20 kwh fuel cell, that would fill the bill for most scenarios that you may encounter while driving.  Here's a chart to illustrate it

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf

The most challenging scenario was on the highway with the a/c running and outside temperatures in the nineties.  As you can see, I added some notes to the far left.  The discharge rate for that scenario is 19 kwh per hour.  With a fuel cell of that capacity, it should be able to keep the battery charged while driving under these conditions.  All other conditions are easily met.

Nissan believes it can reduce production costs of the battery in half.  That would put the battery cost at $8000 per car.  Given that Nissan is already absorbing this cost, then halving the cost of the battery would still allow it to be sold for the same price, presumably with a profit.  What about the fuel cell?

Here's an estimate of the cost per kwh of a fuel cell from a page that is undated.  The claim is $225 per kwh according to the DOE.  For a 20 kwh fuel cell, that would cost $4500.

If you used the Ford configuration, with only a 25 mile range ( 8 kwh battery), the cost of the battery goes down to about 2500 dollars.  A 20 kwh fuel cell could keep this battery charged as well.

If you were to meet Ballard's estimate of the mass produced cost of a fuel cell,  which was 73 dollars back in 2005, the price of the fuel cell drops to $1460.  The latest numbers for this estimate (50 dollars) are here.

These costs are not at all prohibitive.

The cost of the electrolyzer may not be possible to estimate here.  Let's assume that the electrolyzer is left out and the electrolysis takes place at the refueling station.  At that point, you can buy the hydrogen for $2 per kg plus the cost of compressing it or cryolyzing it.  Let's say that doubles the price.  It would then be $4 per kg.

If you get 60 mile per kg, the operating cost would be $4.00/60 mile per kg, yielding a cost per mile of 6.7 cents per mile.  That compares to 16 cents per mile at $4 gal gas for 25 mpg conventional car.  Every mile would save 9 cents in operating costs.  That means $9 thousand for every 100,000 miles.

Assuming the sale price could be held at 32000 dollars, which may be possible under mass production, the vehicle could be economically feasible.  Whatever the reason for it not being built, it probably doesn't have to be economic.

Follow up on Electrolysis of Methanol

I posted this not too long ago.  It took a little time to relocate the resource that explains this in more detail.  For your reference, here is the google search which yields the pertinent information.  Following that link yields this one, which gets the pdf that I referenced in my post.  I sense that a follow up was necessary because of my recent posts about an onboard methanol hydrolyzer electrolyzer which would obviate the need to store hydrogen on a vehicle for hydrogen fuel cell power.

Hence the need for platinum group metals.  These could be supplied from terrestrial sources, or from the Moon or asteroids.  A large source of these metals would make them more economical for the mass market.

I've done some researching this morning.  Ballard, a leading fuel cell manufacturer, says they could mass produce these fuels cells for $73 per kw (2005 prices).  Current prices are still quite high, but presumably they are not being mass produced.  I am assuming that the prices could be reduced considerably from where they are now.

Update:  shortly later:  Here's a rich source of links to research the topic.