Category Archives: Current Events

Take Control of Hydrocarbon Consumption

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The US petrochemical industry has had many challenges post WW-II.  The restructuring of Europe and Japan as well as the US after the war lead to an unprecendented network of markets.  Add to the economic map a whole new spread of advanced technologies resulting from the war effort itself.  Advances in piston and jet engines, rocket propulsion, aeronautical engineering, RADAR, and nuclear energy were a direct result of the war or were highly accelerated therein. 

Postwar, the aforementioned technologies were exploited in the private sector and contributed to an unprecedented economic engine driving the growth of cultures and nations. Generous US spending on cold war military hardware added somewhat to the creation of jobs and spending.  The overall explosion of goods and services not only met the demands of consumers, but raised the expectation that technology would provide an endless parade of new things. 

For the present, the range of frontier for paradigm expansion is dramatically different compared to 50 years ago.  In the context of economics, to a large extent we now live in an age of refinement rather than an age of discovery. Most of what we regard as “new” is actually derivative of more fundamental tools. Transistors, penicillin, and fission can only be introduced to the market once as new technology platforms.  Subsequent innovations are derivative. Excited speculation of the future as a place of flying cars and a cure for cancer gives way to the pragmatic adoption of cars that parallel park themselves  and treatment of cancer as a chronic condition.

Today, hucksters promote ethanol or hydrogen as fuels of the future without a syllables worth of consideration for conservation.  The search for the replacement of fossil fuels is really the search for convenient, high energy density combustible fluids that can be mass produced and shipped in the present distribution system for low unit cost. Instead of finding a new fuel stream, why not try to figure out how to get 2x performance (or 1/2 consumption) out of the hydrocarbons we are already using?

One objection might be that we have already squeezed maximum fuel performance out of the internal combustion engine. Further technological improvements to the Otto Cycle engine going forward are going to be hard to capture.

Another objection is that higher material efficiences are always being sought by the marketplace. A 2x jump in efficiency probably is generally not possible across the board, though isolated exceptions do exist.

But the easy fix, the one that no one mentions is to simply burn less hydrocarbons/ethanol by driving fewer miles. The answer is in the hand that holds the car keys. Consolidate trips. Avoid hopping in your Hummer and driving to 7-11 for cigarettes. Car pool. Demand less cheap-plastic-crap from Big Box Mart.

The main stumbling block is this:  how does a market embrace reduced consumption? I think the answer is that it cannot. But it seems clear that our US consumption trajectory cannot continue indefinitely.

The insatiable demand for hydrocarbons has brought out the worst in us. Our oilman White House has lead us into a thicket of foreign entanglements that may well get much worse before there is any relief.

Thorium and Methanol

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As we track down the back side of the petroleum curve, we will see a transition from the alkane/alcohol fueled Otto engine to a greater reliance on electric conveyance. Here is some wishful thinking-  Ethanol as a direct petroleum replacement will collapse under the weight of scrutiny as better cost data becomes available. Eventually, ethanol will be prized foremost as an oxygenate additive replacement for MTBE. 

Methanol and Fischer-Tropsch hydrocarbons from coal and biomass will provide high energy density fuels for the carbon-neutral future as petroleum scarcity drives other technologies into play. The Fischer-Tropsch liquified fuels technology from 20th century pariah states (Nazi Germany and South Africa) will assume a greater role in the post-petroleum age.

Fermentation of starch-derived glucose to ethanol and CO2 is too wasteful in the end to be attactive.  Fermentation of cellulosic material to acetate is more mass efficient. Esterification and reduction of ethyl acetate affords ethanol. One company, ZeaChem, (former coworkers, actually) is already working to bring this technology on stream. It remains to be seen how it will go over. I wish them well.

Electric power for the future will come from many sources. Distant, centralized power plants will channel energy across the grid to home-charged automobiles. Electrons travel fast and quietly over the lonely wire. They do not require fleets of ponderous 18-wheelers to move them around in limited quantities.

I see a future heavily reliant on electrons supplied from nuclear plants. Uranium-235 infrastructure will continue to supply fuel to nuclear plants for a long time. But the low abundance of U-235 (o.7 %) and the ever present proliferation potential of Pu-239 from this fuel cycle raises questions as to the wisdom of building U-235 nuke plants in the third or fourth tier states.

A more obscure nuclear fuel that is more abundant than uranium will see a phase-in as demand on the present nuclear fuel infrastructure exceeds supply.  That fuel is Th-232. Thorium-232 is  generally more abundant that uranium and has the additional benefit that it’s major isotope, Th-232 , is the nuclide of interest. Th-232 is not a fissile nuclide, but is a “fertile” isotope instead. Th-232 absorbs a neutron in a reactor seeded with U-235 or Pu-239 to provide an initial neutron flux to become Th-233, which beta decays to Pa-233 which further beta decays to U-233.  It is U-233 which is the fissile nuclide.  U-233 then participates in the fission chain reaction that generates the heat.

You can’t make a nuclear weapon out of Th-232, though in principle you could make one from U-233. The downside of a U-233 bomb is the high specific activity of this isotope.  U-233 is intensely radioactive and poses extra problems in handling.

The economics of thorium energy is advantageous in many ways to that provided by uranium/plutonium infrastructure. Thorium is abundant in monazite formations- reportedly up to 16 % thorium oxide.  The present problem with the thorium cycle is handling the intensely radioactive U-233 that remains in the spent fuel elements. Separate processing infrastructure will have to be put in place to supply reactors that burn thorium before this fuel can go forward.

An HTGR  Brayton cycle reactor with a helium turbine could provide up to 50 % thermodynamic efficiency.  Combine this reactor design with the potential cost savings of the more abundant Th-232, and you have a technology that is well set to provide power to keep the lights, cable TV, and the internet going into the post-petroleum age.

Check out the blog dedicated to Energy from Thorium. I’m writing about thorium because I think it is an important fuel and it needs to find its way to mainstream thinking.  

American Parliament, part II

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In a previous posting, I daydreamed about an American system that more resembled a parliamentary system. The motivation for this is that our executive branch has apparently gone astray with the presidents military ambitions in nation building under the guise of the war against terrorism. The ability to dissolve a government off the election cycle and repopulate it with different characters seems like a desirable attribute.

Viet Nam and GW-II are examples of ideological pageantry lead by stubborn presidents. Like the fighter pilot who is so target fixated on his opponent that he follows him into the ground, we cannot allow our presidents to drag the country into self-inflicted disaster.

As suggested by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the noises now coming from the White House concerning Iran resemble the noises made by the same White House about Iraq.  What is strange about this distressing circumstance is this: The checks and balances that are provided by the constitution seem to be inadequate to restrain the executive.  The congress seems to be genuinely flummoxed.

Despite popular sentiment and wise counsel by very well regarded citizens, the president continues to press for ideological conquest in the middle east.  Despite the floundering dollar, no-child-left-behind-except-for-4-million-uninsured-kids, and tera-dollars of debt accumulated in the “War Against ______”, our executive continues to press on within the bounds of the constitution.

The question is this: Does the US Constitution provide adequate checks and balances against the abuse of power?

I suppose it is inevitable that a president would be elected who didn’t have both oars in the water. Who knows if this guy really is disturbed. But the executive retains substantial control of the military.  The president is able to amass a vast force of civilian security contractors who seem to be beyond the audit of the congress.  Does your view change when they pack weapons and answer only to the executive branch? Did the framers miss this possibility?

The US has a president that is hell-bent on performing a script that is neither transparent nor mandated by anything other than the enchanting voices of a few dark characters who are temporarily burrowed in the White House. We’ve had 2 terms of a war president. It’s enough.

Kunstlers Most Excellent Rant

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If you don’t read Jim Kunstlers blog, Cluster***k Nation, you’re really missing out on some juicy stuff. Thanks to the all-seeing eye of Uncle Al for this particular post.  Kunstler writes with a manic urgency rather like Hunter S. Thompson (and … Uncle Al).  I’m not calibrated for the negative spin on the mortgage disaster that he makes.  Perhaps others can comment.

Tempest Down Under. Bush-Roh Row.

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It is funny to read about the minor presidential dust-up between the Bush and Roh. The fracas is now being blamed on poor translation. That could be true.  But how do you focus on a fuzzy picture? The translators art is to precisely translate ambiguous language. There are too many degrees of freedom- it’s like pushing a rope. The presidents walk away as the translator falls on his sword.  I think I’d rather work with hazardous chemicals.

Wake up chemists! The DHS is on the Case.

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While American chemists have been busy going about their lives, making and analyzing molecules, the legislative and executive branches of the government have also been busy making things more complex for the chemical industry. Procedures, protocols, rules, guidelines, and consequences for inaction have been drawn up for our “safety” by the Department of Homeland Security, DHS. Even the American Chemistry Council (ACC) has bought into the changes.

I remember as an adolescent boy in the 70’s daydreaming with friends about how much trouble we could cause society.  We would scheme about how easy it would be to crash the power grid or interefere with traffic or a hundred other things that would amuse idle teenagers.  These were mischievious thought experiments that we would titter about, but would have never actually done.  Some fellows discovered marshal arts and others developed a fascination with weapons and personal protection. 

For a few of these fellows, the teenage obsession with weapons and security has grown into an adult paranoid lifestyle whose world view features a threat environment squirming with risks. To be sure, there are risks. But the 9/11 attack and chronic Islamic terrorism have stimulated the fight or flight bundle of neurons in the brainstem and they are firing alert signals everywhere.  It is worth noting that some of this threat is push-back stimulated by a century of unintelligent foreign policy by petroleum importing states.

Some of these righteous-yet-paranoid youth have grown up and gone into government.  The politics of fear mongering is everywhere. Security at all costs. Monitor telecommunications. Control everything. Worry about everything.  Restrictions on liberty are always justified because we are trying to protect liberty. We’re the good guys, right?

<<< Sigh >>>

One of the most intellectually challenging things for humans to do is to quantitate and plan for risk. Few people walking around on earth have a true grip on what probability really means, and only a few of those folks have an idea of how to devise plans based on it. Good data is scarce so planners have to make assumptions.  Most people, when faced with a perceived risk, will assume and plan for the worst. It seems defensible.  After all, isn’t the satisfaction of the complete excision of risk worth any price?

A more mature and nuanced view must balance risk with the cost to liberty and make choices about what kinds of failures are acceptable. But this is the choke point. It is difficult to come to agreement on acceptable risk in a democracy because votes have no logic test. For the chemical industry, it would appear that choices are being made for us by someone else.  Chemical incidents have a fair likelihood of exiting the perimeter of a plant, so the authorities naturally become involved. This is not unreasonable.

What is unreasonable in my view is the newly enacted statutory control of useful or even critical industrial substances.  The military considers chemical weapons to be largely ineffective owing to the point source nature of the release and unpredictable factors such as wind direction and speed. Somehow we’re worked ourselves into a lather over imagined improvised terrorist chemical calamities at US manufacturing facilities. 

US chemical industry should audit for weaknesses in security. But the path we’re on with the security state imposition of controls on materials is a bad trend and is likely to harm an industry that is already in a precarious competitive position.

[Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are solely those of this writer and do not represent opinions and policies of any organization the writer may be associated with.]

Russia Goes Deep

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Our Russian friends have apparently “claimed” the seabed under the north pole by planting their specially crafted Deep Sea Flag.  (Is it still a flag when it is underwater or is it just a stick with a wet cloth on it?)  In the grand tradition of empirialist land grabbing, these folks believe that they have staked a claim to the vast untold, untapped mineral riches of the arctic floor. Of course, the Canucks were not impressed-

Peter Mackay, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, dismissed the voyage to the Arctic floor as “just a show.”

“Look, this isn’t the 15th century,” he said, according to the Web site of Canadian Television. “You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say ‘We’re claiming this territory.'” 

According to Douglas Birch at Forbes magazine, the flag was planted in the sea floor 2 1/2 miles below the surface on what is called the Arctic Shelf.  [Th’ Gaussling didn’t realize that a shelf could be that deep. Sounds like an abyssal plain to me, but, hey… I’m not in real estate.]  The basis of the claim, Birch reports, is that the region is a part of the Eurasian continental shelf.  Russia’s public claim seems to be based on a kind of geographic tidiness.  But like all big issues today, it is really about resources.

In December 2001, Moscow claimed that the ridge was an extension of the Eurasian continent, and therefore part of Russia’s continental shelf under international law. The U.N. rejected Moscow’s claim, citing a lack of evidence, but Russia is set to resubmit it in 2009. 

The good news is that there won’t be any aboriginals to cruelly displace.  Seems to me that the Palestinians missed another big opportunity here- their sub must have been in the shop.  I would offer the suggestion that they give Putin an office on site there so he can keep an eye on the place.

National Treasure: H.R. 3043 and Scientific Publications

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On page 14 of the July 30, 2007, issue of C&EN, an article entitled “Bill Mandates Public Access” by David Hanson describes a section of a bill recently passed from the House to the Senate. The relevent text from the bill is as follows-

SEC. 217. The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law. 

Hanson’s article states that the Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers has asked members of Congress to reconsider this bill, or at least the mandatory submission to PubMed. Hanson reports that the PSP claims that-

“This language could serve to undermine the existing system of peer review and scholarly publication which disseminates high-quality research findings throughout the scientific community,” … 

Further down, Hanson gets to the real issue-

Brian D. Crawford, chair of the PSP committee and senior vice president of the Journals Publishing Group at the American Chemical Society (which publishes C&EN), says the House language violates fundamental copyright principles. The bill “would essentially force authors and publishers to, in essence, forfeit their copyrights” without compensation for their investments and would have many negative impacts on private-sector publishers, he says. [Italics by Gaussling]

What is telling is the quote by Brian D. Crawford, who suggests that the publishers stand to lose their copyright on the copy submitted by the NIH funded researchers.  If you are a publisher, should you be worried about this?  Probably.  The gravy train may be leaving the station.

Yes, the publishers have invested large sums in building publishing and distribution systems for the profitable dissemination of information.  But I would add that they have built these publishing engines on a system that hands voluminous copy to them for free.  Unlike other publishers who have to pay their authors for content, academic publishers do not pay contributors who, I might add, provide some incredibly valuable content. Academic publishers have built publishing businesses using content paid for by government granting agencies, and by extension, the public.

It’s easy to fault publishers for taking advantage of a system that hands them publishable content for free. But, on the other hand, circulation numbers for most publications is quite modest.  Even if advertising is used, the typical low circulation of any given specialized scientific journal is so low that only very modest advertising rates could be obtained. Many journals survive on subscription fees alone.  Examples of journals that have come to terms with advertising are J. Chem. Ed., Nature, and Science. 

The scientific publishing system is a sort of a deal with the Devil- the scientist gets the grant, does the work, and then what?  After dinner talks at the Elks Club? Of course not. A manuscript is prepared and in exchange for free printing and distribution, the publisher obtains the copyright. The copyright is the key.  It is a cash cow in the same way that the copyright to the Beatles songs are a cash cow, only with smaller numbers.

I think that Sec. 217 of H.R. 3043 is the right idea. The public has already paid for the research. Why should it be intercepted at no cost by printers who then have an everlasting copyright and control of what is rightly national treasure? The citizens have to pay taxes for the research and then turn around and pay commercial interests for the right to read it.  That is wrong.

If commercial interests want to make a profit on scientific publishing, then they need to find a better model.  The public shouldn’t be barred from access to what they have already paid for. Advertising may be the way to do it.  Perhaps the funding agency should have the copyright and publishers pay a fee to print and distribute it?  Comments?

An American Parliament?

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There is an interesting post at the Daily Kos by Mentarch detailing the “Eight Principles of Incompetence“. Now, I’m not sure that this list constitutes a manifesto, guiding light, or even a footnote in a Polysci text of the future.  But the author has cogently reduced to writing some observations that I have struggling to put into words. I tip my hat. 

Much has been said about the growing problem with Cheney.  There is precious little to say about this fascist that is new. Cheney is doing a fine job of self destructing without my input. Mentarch has highlighted many of Cheney’s questionable actions over time with links to www references.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that the electorate is collectively incompetent sometimes.

But I would like to observe that the USA might have been well served by a parliamentary form of government, especially in this present troubled stretch of history. I think there are merits to a system that can vote out troublesome and destructive executives like Bush-Cheney without having to wait for the election timer to run out.  Impeachment is not the same as a vote to form a new government.  And if ever the USA needed to have a different executives in government, it is now.

In fact, one has to answer the question of why parliamentary systems proliferated during the 20th century while the American model as set forth by the US Constitution remains largely limited to the USA.  Why hasn’t our system been more closely copied? Could there be a better way?

The US needs a president that is less showhorse and more workhorse. We need administrators who can manage the executive branch more effectively. And we need executives who are not beholden to absolute doctrines and are willing to re-examine their fundamental assumptions on occasion.

The Bush-Cheney epoch has had a retrograde effect on American civil liberties, privacy, the freedom of assembly, and America’s credibility as a leading force for the advance of civilization. This damage will take many people a long time to make right. 

Obviously we will not change the structure of government in the next 25 years. We will not be able to yank bad executives out of office midterm for incompetence.  Bad executives will hold on to their office for the duration, enacting laws that benefit subscribers of their particular creed. They’ll have to commit a felony and be shamed into resignation like Nixon. 

The USA needs better checks and balances to protect the republic and its diverse constituency from Trojan Horse carriers of fringe doctrines and monotonic ideologies.  I’d rather have a president who cracks the books once in a while rather than one whose sole intellectual reflex is to whisper to iron-age deities.  I’d prefer to have a president who thinks analytically rather than devotionally.

Contrarian Views on Corn-Based Ethanol

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If you travel through the American midwest, you cannot help but notice that corn-based ethanol is in the news. Over at the Oil Drum blog there is a good post on the merits of corn-derived ethanol (EtOH).  One of the important points that was made is that EtOH will be replacing MTBE as an oxygenating additive. This is an important point. For the near term, as MTBE is phased out EtOH is taking its place.  Therefore, the net effect on imported oil volumes may be nil. 

Then there is the matter of the energy balance for EtOH production.  There is no clear consensus on whether or not corn EtOH production is a net gain in BTU’s.  And then there is the matter of unintended consequences in shunting large mass flows of corn into energy production.

Modern agriculture has been characterized as the process of converting diesel fuel into food. High yield crop production also requires large machinery for efficient cultivation, soil amendments, advanced corn breeding, crop rotation, and specialized pesticides.  And this is just the farming part. Modern grain production requires substantial distribution infrastructure as well as financing for the upfront seed and fuel costs.

By unintended consequences the writer of the Oil Drum post means the possibility of ecological insult resulting from intensification of corn production.  Intensified corn production may result in reduced soybean production in the US, resulting in increased production in Brazil. US farmers may simply choose to grow fewer soybean acres. Increased soybean production in Brazil could result in accelerated deforestation to meet the demand uptick. 

What the writer did not mention is that reduced US soybean production could mean reduced crop rotation, placing increased demand on synthetic ammonia (NH3) production to make up the demand for fixed nitrogen.  Ammonia production uses natural gas (CH4) as the source of hydrogen, and the carbon is lost as CO2.  Increased nitrogen fertilizer use may result in greater run-off into the watershed, placing the aquatic ecosystem under increased stress and polluting drinking water supplies. 

Increased ammonia demand will stress the natural gas market to some extent and result in increased greenhouse gas emissions. 

In addition to ecological insult, there will be a shift of wealth associated with increased diversion of corn to fuels.  If corn yields and acreage cannot be increased to make up for increased fuels demand on corn supplies, the food product chain could be subject to greater scarcity with an increase cost to consumers for everything associated with corn- corn oil, high fructose corn syrup, starch, beer production (!!) with corn starch, cereal products, animal feeds and the associated price uptick that would cause for meat products. 

It is worth remembering that corn is one of the major inputs to our food manufacturing complex. It enters directly as whole corn or as separated corn germ and corn starch, and indirectly as food for hogs, cattle, and poultry.

Many of the choices we have in the supermarket are largely based on what you can do cheaply and on a continuous process basis with grain products.  Stress on this supply will be passed along to the consumer.

One fresh approach is from a start-up company called Zeachem who aims to produce cellulosic ethanol from biomass other than just the corn kernel.  In this process, all fermentable sugars as well as cellulosic hydrolyzates can be converted to acetic acid by fermentation and the lignin sidestream can be processed to yield hydrogen.  Esterification with process ethanol to afford ethyl acetate followed by hydrogenation yields EtOH.  This process is currently in scaleup and may prove to be a major improvement in the otherwise anemic economics of EtOH.