Global Oil Storage Close To Being ‘Overwhelmed’
The title of this post is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Ships, pipelines and storage tanks holding surplus oil could be “overwhelmed” within weeks as the coronavirus pandemic causes unprecedented drops in fuel usage, the International Energy Agency warned yesterday.
So what are we going to do?
I can’t see Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States cutting oil production.
But that is what must happen!
HS2 Phase One Given The Green Light
The title of this post is the same as that as this article on Rail Magazine.
This is the two introductory paragraphs.
Government confirmed today (April 15) that work can now start on building Phase 1 of HS2 from London to Birmingham.
Until now, only preparatory work had been carried out. But the Department for Transport has now given approval for HS2 Ltd to issue Notice to Proceed (NtP) to the four main works civils contractors, to commence full detailed design and construction of the railway.
The article also gives this quote from the Chief Executive of HS2 Ltd; Mark Thurston.
In these difficult times, today’s announcement represents both an immediate boost to the construction industry and the many millions of UK jobs that the industry supports, and an important investment in Britain’s future – levelling up the country, improving our transport network, and changing the way we travel to help bring down carbon emissions and improve air quality for the next generation.
Perhaps, we should give the go-ahead for more big infrastructure projects, to create the employment we need.
It would only be enacting one of the principles of Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s New Deal.
There is a section called Public Works in the Wikipedia entry for the New Deal.
This is said.
To prime the pump and cut unemployment, the NIRA created the Public Works Administration (PWA), a major program of public works, which organized and provided funds for the building of useful works such as government buildings, airports, hospitals, schools, roads, bridges and dams. From 1933 to 1935 PWA spent $3.3 billion with private companies to build 34,599 projects, many of them quite large.
Under Roosevelt, many unemployed persons were put to work on a wide range of government-financed public works projects, building bridges, airports, dams, post offices, hospitals and hundreds of thousands of miles of road. Through reforestation and flood control, they reclaimed millions of hectares of soil from erosion and devastation. As noted by one authority, Roosevelt’s New Deal “was literally stamped on the American landscape”
Wouldn’t this be good for the UK to offset the damage caused by COVID-19?
The current government has already flagged up several suitable projects, since they were elected.
- High Speed Two
- Northern Powerhouse Rail
- East-West Rail
- City Light Rail Systems
- Decarbonisation of the Rail Industry
- Offshore Wind Farms
- Energy Storage
- Reversal of the Beeching Cuts
- Improvements to and decarbonisation of bus services
- Flood relief schemes
There are many more.
One difference to the United States in the 1930s, is that some of these projects can be funded by financial institutions like Pension Funds and Insurance Companies. In World’s Largest Wind Farm Attracts Huge Backing From Insurance Giant, I talk about how Aviva will have invested a billion pounds in offshore wind by the end of 2018, to fund pensions and insurance.
Fruit And Veg Self-Sufficiency Ahead Thanks To Heat From Sewage Farms
This headline caught my eye on an article in today’s Times.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Britain will become far more self-sufficient in tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other produce under plans to tap heat from sewage farms and pipe it to giant greenhouses.
The idea of using waste heat to grow fruit and vegetables is not new.
The technique is used at Drax power station and at various Scottish distilleries.
Low Carbon Farming just intend to do it with heat from sewage works.
- They have identified 41 sites in the UK.
- The greenhouses will be larger than the O2.
- The first two sites are in East Anglia and are being built near two of Anglian Water’s sewage works.
- Fully developed, they could make the UK self-sufficient in tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers and for most of the year.
- It would be a £2.67 billion investment, that would create 8,000 jobs.
Intriguingly, if they need more heat, they’ll use a fossil-fuel combined heat and power unit. The carbon dioxide produced will be fed directly to the fruit and veg, as it makes them grow faster.
Another Source Of Heat
In Exciting Renewable Energy Project for Spennymoor, I wrote about a Durham University project to use the waste heat in old coal mines to heat housing.
Could this heat be used to grow fruit and veg?
Brain Boost: Lockdown Puzzles
The title of this post, is the same as that of a little section in the online copy of The Times, which says this.
Every day, Monday to Thursday, a printable page of extra puzzles to keep your brain trained during the lockdown
It’s funny, but the extra puzzles I got in the on-line copy were ones that I commonly do.
Does the Times server, look at the puzzles I do and give me ones I like as extras?
If they do, it is surely good marketing.
I think they’ll be giving out extra puzzles for a long time.
I Only Ran Out Of Deoderant
For about three years, I’ve not bought deodorant or toothpaste in the normal manner, in say a shop in the High Street or locally.
What I’ve tended to do, is just pack my toothbrush and a few other things in my travel bag and buy new travel ones, once I’ve gone through Customs.
Consequently, I’ve only bought small travel roll-on deodorants. I’ve used roll-on ones for many years, as I didn’t like to use aerosols with all their noxious gases.
On Friday my last one ran-out and I needed a new one. The only one I could buy in a local shop, was an aerosol powered by butane. In other words it’s a flame-thrower in all but name! Search the Internet and you’ll find lots of pictures.
I find this very sad, as I funded a development of a totally-safe aerosol, that used compressed nitrogen as the propellant! The development was sold to a US company and I got a return on my money! Obviously, the product wasn’t cheap and nasty enough! But it was good enough though to be discussed at the Montreal Climate Change talks in 2005.
I actually found the butane-powered flame-thrower impossible to use, due to the damage to my left hand.
- Was it the break to my humerus caused by the school bully?
- Was it the stroke?
- Was it the recent damage caused by my fall?
I just needed to find a roll-on deodorant. But had they been discontinued?
This morning, thankfully, I found one at the Angel.
So I will smell better tomorrow!
I won’t leave this post before telling this tale.
I used to work for ICI Mond Division, who used to make the hydro-fluoro-carbon gases, that used to power aerosols in the 1960s and 1970s.
One of the guys in a nearby lab, where I worked at Runcorn Heath, used to formulate the propellants for possible products.
His standard joke was that he’d get baked beans into an aerosol, even if they had to come out one by one.
Every so often, he’d bring round samples that he’d made for various companies and one day I obtained an aerosol hand cream.
What make it was, no-one had a clue, but C always swore, it was the best hand cream, she’d ever used.
Thoughts On Powering Electrification Islands
In The Concept Of Electrification Islands, I didn’t say anything about how electrification islands would be powered. Although, I did link to this post.
The Need For A Substantial Electrical Supply
Electrification can use a lot of electricity.
This was illustrated by the electrification of the Midland Main Line, where a high-capacity feed from the National Grid had to be provided at Market Harborough.
But then the Government cancelled electrification North of Kettering leaving a twelve mile gap to be filled. I wrote about the problem in MML Wires Could Reach Market Harborough. In the end the sensible decision was taken and the electrification will now reach to Market Harborough station.
So places like Cambridge, Darlington, Doncaster, Leeds Norwich and York. which are fully electrified and on a main route probably have enough electrical power to charge passing or terminating battery-electric trains on secondary routes.
In Thoughts On The Actual Battery Size In Class 756 Trains And Class 398 Tram-Trains, I quoted the reply to a Freedom of Information Request sent to Transport for Wales, which said.
A four-car Class 756 train will have a battery capacity of 600 kWh.
A Class 756 train is similar to a Greater Anglia Class 755 train, which in Battery Power Lined Up For ‘755s’, I estimated weighs about 135 tonnes when full of passengers.
Weights for the Hitachi trains are difficult to find with a figure of 41 tonnes per car given for a Class 801 train on Wikipedia. In Kinetic Energy Of A Five-Car Class 801 Train, I estimated a full weight of a five-car Class 801 train at 233.35 tonnes.
Based on the Stadler figure, I would estimate that every train passing an electrification island will need to pick up as much as somewhere between 600-1000 kWh.
An Electrification Island At Sleaford
In The Concept Of Electrification Islands, I proposed an electrification island at Sleaford station.
- Sleaford is a market town of around 18,000 people.
- I doubt the power in the town has much surplus capacity.
- This station is served by four trains per hour (tph), one to each to Lincoln, Nottingham, Peterborough and Skegness.
- So it looks like a feed of three to four MW will be needed to charge passing trains.
Can the electricity supply in a town like Sleaford provide that sort of power for perhaps eighteen hours a day?
The only ways to provide that sort of power is to build a new power station or provide energy storage capable of boosting the supply.
Could Highview Power Provide The Solution?
I have been following Highview Power and their CRYOBatteries for some time.
They have already built a 5 MW pilot plant in Manchester and are currently aiming to build a plant with 250 MWh of energy storage, that can supply up to 50 MW. The company and this plant is discussed in this article on The Chemical Engineer.
One of these CRYOBatteries, would surely be ideal to power an electrification island, like the one at Sleaford.
- It could be scaled to the electricity needs of the town and the railway.
- It would be charged using renewable or excess energy.
- There is a lot of wind power in Lincolnshire and just off the coast, which needs energy storage.
- Similar systems could also be installed at other electrification islands at Cleethorpes, Lincoln, Skegness and other places, where the grid needs strengthening.
I have used Highview Power in this example, but there are other systems, that would probably boost the electricity just as well.
De Beauvoir Square
This is my local square, which is about fifteen minutes walk.
Note.
- C and I tried to buy one of the Dutch style houses in the square from the screenwriter; Alun Owen in about 1971.
- It would have cost just £7,500. Now a hundred times that, wouldn’t buy it!
- There was a gardener at work.
De Beauvoir Town is not what you’d expect in Hackney.
Queuing For Marks And Spencer In Dalston
I took this picture of the orderly queue waiting to get into Marks and Spencer in Dalston.
It does appear that everybody was obeying the rules and I only took twenty minutes to enter the store.
- The store was well-stocked, although there were very few ready meals with long Best Before dates.
- Gluten-free bread, biscuits and cereals were at near normal levels.
- There were about a dozen bottles of Adnams low-alcohol beer on the shelves, which I reduced by a couple.
- There were no gluten-free cakes. Not that I buy them often.
- Some lines like gluten-free sandwiches seem to have been dropped. Not that I wanted any, as I won’t be travelling.
- The staff were being very professional.
I was able to get enough food in my bag to get me through to the middle of next week.
Hydrogen Islands
I found this concept on the ITM Power web site.
This was the sub-title.
Islands tend to have abundant renewable resources yet they rely heavily upon importing fossil fuels, often at relatively high cost.
And this was the body of the page.
The integration of renewables into an island’s power grid soon creates substantial balancing and curtailment problems. These can be overcome by deploying controllable rapid response electrolysers to produce green hydrogen for the island’s transport, heat and power sectors. Projects such as BigHit are demonstrating how this may be achieved.
It would create a zero-carbon island for an Internet tycoon or a Bond villain.
I’m certain that the concept would work for somewhere like a farm or even a small village, which is effectively a landlocked island, with perhaps wind turbines or solar panels.
ITM Power and Ørsted: Wind Turbine Electrolyser Integration
The title of this post is the same as that of this press release from ITM Power.
This is the introductory paragraph.
ITM Power (AIM: ITM), the energy storage and clean fuel company, is pleased to share details of a short project sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), in late 2019, entitled ‘Hydrogen supply competition’, ITM Power and Ørsted proposed the following: an electrolyser placed at the wind turbine e.g. in the tower or very near it, directly electrically connected to the DC link in the wind turbine, with appropriate power flow control and water supplied to it. This may represent a better design concept for bulk hydrogen production as opposed to, for instance, remotely located electrolysers at a terminal or platform, away from the wind turbine generator, due to reduced costs and energy losses.
Some points from the remainder of the press release.
- Costs can be saved as hydrogen pipes are more affordable than underwater power cables.
- The proposed design reduces the need for AC rectification.
After reading the press release, it sounds like the two companies are performing a serious re-think on how wind turbines and their links to get energy on-shore are designed.
Will they be using redundant gas pipes to bring the hydrogen ashore?
I think, that they could go further than that!
- Imagine a very large wind farm built over a cluster of redundant gas-fields that are suitable for the storage of gas.
- The wind farm will produce hydrogen, which could be either sent to an onshore terminal or stored in one of the redundant fields.
- When hydrogen is needed onshore, it can come from the turbine/electrolysers in the wind-farm or from offshore storage.
- The pipeline to the shore would probably also be reversible and used to take carbon dioxide offshore for storage.
- If more electricity is needed onshore, the hydrogen is used as fuel for a gas-fired power station.
It sounds complicated, but hydrogen gives a lot of flexibility, as it is easily converted to and from electricity.
Controlling this network is a classic problem for Control Engineers and sophisticated computers will make sure, there is both enough electricity and gas.
The other application for combined wind turbines and electrolysers is where there is a need for moderate amounts of gas in the middle of nowhere.
Uses could include.
- Large farms all over places like East Anglia, much of North America, Australia and Serbia, where it would be used for motive power and heating.
- Islands like the Orkneys to decarbonise heating and transport and especially aviation and small ships like tugs and ferries.
- Hydrogen filling stations for trucks and other vehicles in places like the Mid West and large parts of Africa and Asia.
- Large transport depots, that switch from diesel to hydrogen might install their own combined wind turbine and electrolyser.
- Ports of all sizes will switch to hydrogen and smaller ports may well use combined wind turbines and electrolysers.
- Will isolated villages and small towns have their own combined wind turbines and electrolyser to bring a much needed gas supply?
I used to own a farm and I would certainly have looked at the technology to see, if it was worth installing.
It is my view, that combined wind turbines and electrolysers are one of those enabling technologies, that will find lots of different applications.
The Anonymous Widower 