Cheesecake Energy Collects £9.4m Government Funding
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on UKTN.
These two paragraphs outline how they will use the grant.
Cheesecake Energy will use the government funding to install its energy storage solution as a microgrid in Colchester to help with local grid limitations.
University of Nottingham spinout Cheesecake Energy’s installation will collect energy made by a solar farm with a capacity of 8MW and a central heat pump that supplies a district heat pump network.
Cheesecake Energy have been on my list of possible successful energy storage systems for some time and this sounds like a very neat application for energy storage.
Cheesecake Energy bill themselves on their web site as The World’s Greenest Battery, which is a big claim to make.
This outline of their technology is given on their Our Technology page.
Cheesecake Energy’s eTanker energy storage system is a stationary, medium to long-duration energy storage solution which delivers cheap, reliable, efficient energy storage in a modular, containerised package.
The technology stores energy in the form of heat and pressurised air, re-tasking ex-service truck engines to become zero-emission electrical power-conversion machines for putting energy into storage and recovering it from storage. The resulting system does not use diesel or any fuel. It is safe, straightforward to operate, has a lifetime of up to 25 years and can deliver turnaround efficiencies of around 70%.
I like the idea of using recycled truck engines at the heart of the system.
Conclusion
The World’s Greenest Battery could be right!
H&M Move Partners With Lanzatech To Launch Capsule Collection Using Captured Carbon Emissions
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from H & M.
This is the sub-heading.
This is the stuff of science fiction: LanzaTech diverts carbon emissions heading for the atmosphere, traps them, and turns them into thread. In a leap towards innovating sportswear, H&M Move partners with the breakthrough material science company for a drop arriving at hm.com/move on April 6.
And this is an H & M image of some of the clothes on a young lady.
Not bad considering that the polyester thread was made using carbon emissions from a steelworks.
Lanzatech’s Process
This paragraph from the H & M press release outlines the process.
Using three simple steps, LanzaTech captures carbon emissions from steel mills, traps them in bioreactors and converts them into the same building blocks that conventional polyester is made of. This revolutionary solution helps reduce pollution and limits the use of virgin fossil resources needed to make new products.
So does this mean that lots of products made from polyester can use the polyester made by Lanzatech?
As I worked for ICI Plastics Division, who had a polyester plant, that was used to make Melinex film, I suspect the answer is yes from the knowledge I picked up at the time.
Out of curiosity, I typed “polyester underwear men’s” into Google and there’s quite a lot of it about. Including some from Marks and Spencer that I own. Marks and Spencer also do a similar product for the ladies. Both products have a high proportion of polyester and could best be described as everyday.
I must find mine comfortable, as I have been buying them for some years now!
So it looks like it might be possible to replace a proportion of the fossil fuel-based polyester with one made from captured carbon dioxide.
And this can this be used in the same way as the fossil fuel-based polyester.
The Wikipedia entry for polyester is full of useful information and is very much a must-read.
This table gives world PET (polyethylene terephthalate) production for 2008 in millions tonnes/year
- Textile – 39
- Resin, bottle – 16
- Film – 1.5
- Special – 2.5
Note.
- Bottle includes, the bottles used for soft drinks, washing up liquid etc.
- Film is high quality and was used as recording tape, but now it’s mainly for packaging.
- Special includes engineering plastics.
Wikipedia has this section on recycling, where this is said.
Recycling of polymers has become very important as the production and use of plastic is continuously rising. Global plastic waste may almost triple by 2060 if this continues. Plastics can be recycled by various means like mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, etc. Among the recyclable polymers, polyester PET is one of the most recycled plastic. The ester bond present in polyesters is susceptible to hydrolysis (acidic or basic conditions), methanolysis and glycolysis which makes this class of polymers suitable for chemical recycling. Enzymatic/biological recycling of PET can be carried out using different enzymes like PETase, cutinase, esterase, lipase, etc. PETase has been also reported for enzymatic degradation of other synthetic polyesters (PBT, PHT, Akestra™, etc) which contains similar aromatic ester bond as that of PET.
Note that PET is one of the most recycled plastics.
So it looks like the LanzaTech process can not only use carbon dioxide, it can also create a product that can be recycled.
Nucor Introduces Elcyon(TM), First Sustainable Steel Product Engineered Specifically For Offshore Wind Energy Applications
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from Nucor Corporation.
This is the first paragraph.
Nucor today introduced Elcyon™, the Company’s new sustainable heavy gauge steel plate product made specifically to meet the growing demands of America’s offshore wind energy producers building the green economy and its necessary infrastructure. Nucor will manufacture Elcyon at the company’s new, $1.7 billion state-of-the-art Nucor Brandenburg steel mill in Kentucky , which produced its first steel plate at the end of December 2022.
It sounds impressive, but it should be if $1.7 billion has been spent.
This paragraph, says more about the process.
Elcyon is a clean, advanced steel product made using Nucor’s recycled scrap-based electric arc furnace manufacturing process. Nucor’s circular steelmaking route has a greenhouse gas emissions intensity that is one fifth the global blast furnace extractive steelmaking average, based on Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Utilizing Thermo-Mechanical Controlled Processing (TMCP) at the new mill, Elcyon, the only steel of its kind in the United States was created specifically to meet the rigorous quality standards of offshore wind energy designers, manufacturers and fabricators. Along with meeting Euronorm specs, Elcyon is characterized by larger plate dimensions, improved weldability and excellent fracture toughness, as compared to competing products.
What more can a steelmaker want?
- It uses steel scrap to make new steel.
- The process could be powered by green electricity.
- The process cuts emissions to twenty per cent.
- The steel is what customers want.
- The steel has better properties than competing products.
These two paragraphs talk about the prospects for Elcyon.
Nucor Steel Brandenburg is the first steel plant in the world to pursue certification under LEED v4 from the U.S. Green Building Council, the highest standard for sustainable building design, construction, and operation. The new mill is located in the middle of the largest steel plate-consuming region in the country and will be able to produce 97% of plate products consumed domestically, with a potential output of 1.2 million tons of steel annually.
Elcyon and the Brandenburg mill both draw upon Nucor’s 50 years of industry leadership in sustainable steel production. From last year’s launch of Econiq™, the world’s first net-zero steel available at scale, to recently becoming the first major industrial company to join the United Nations 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Global Compact, Nucor has consistently worked to meet the needs of its customers and other stakeholders while protecting the well-being of our planet.
Nucor have certainly done their market research and appear to be very scientifically green.
In the About Nucor section of the press release, this is the last sentence.
Nucor is North America’s largest recycler.
This is some statement to make, if it weren’t true! Wikipedia says this about the company.
Nucor operates 23 scrap-based steel production mills. In 2019, the company produced and sold approximately 18.6 million tons of steel and recycled 17.8 million tons of scrap.
The home page of the Nucor web site also makes this claim.
North America’s Most Sustainable Steel And Steel Products Company
Perhaps, the UK government needs to ask Nucor to build one or more of their scrap-based steel production mills in the country to produce all the steel plate we will need for our growing offshore wind industry.
We certainly have the GW to power the arc furnaces.
Conclusion
Nucor is a big beast to watch!
European Company To Make All Wind Turbine Blades 100 % Recyclable, Plans To Build Six Recycling Factories
The title of this post, is the same as that, of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This sub-heading outlines what the company plans to do.
A Denmark-based company Continuum plans to make all wind turbine blades fully recyclable and stop landfilling and their emissions-intensive processing into cement with six industrial-scale recycling factories across Europe, backed by investment from the Danish venture capital firm Climentum Capital and a grant from the UK’s Offshore Wind Growth Partnership (OWGP).
Other points in the article include.
- Continuum plan six factories.
- The first factory will open at Esbjerg in Denmark in 2024 and will be able to accept end-of-life blades this year.
- The second factory will be in the UK and it will be followed by others in France, Germany, Spain, and Turkey.
- Each factory will have the capacity to recycle a minimum of 36,000 tonnes of end-of-life turbine blades per year.
This paragraph describes, what will happen to the recycled turbine blades.
The company will recycle wind turbine blades into composite panels for the construction industry and the manufacture of day-to-day products such as facades, industrial doors, and kitchen countertops.
Looking at their description of their mechanical separation process, I suspect that they could recycle other products and manufacture lots of others.
Norwegian Companies To Explore Using Aluminium In Floating Offshore Wind Turbines
This is based on this press release from World Wide Wind, which is entitled WORLD WIDE WIND AS and HYDRO ASA Signs Letter Of Intent Aiming At Using Aluminium In Offshore Floating Wind Turbines.
This is the first paragraph.
Hydro, the world leading Norwegian aluminium and energy company and World Wide Wind AS, a Norwegian company developing a floating wind turbine, have signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) to explore the use of aluminium in the renewable wind industry. The two Norwegian companies are partnering up to develop floating wind turbines with a design specifically meant for offshore conditions. The goal is to use sustainable and recyclable materials in the construction, including aluminium.
In Do All Wind Turbines Have To Be Similar?, I said this about the radically different turbines of World Wide Wind.
I’ll let the images on the World Wide Wind web site do the talking.
But who would have thought, that contrarotating wind turbines, set at an angle in the sea would work?
This is so unusual, it might just work very well.
As aluminium is lighter, it might be a factor in the success of the design.
This is the last paragraph of the press release.
World Wide Wind’s integrated floating wind turbines are scalable up to 40MW – 2,5 times current wind turbines – and will use less materials and have a smaller CO2 footprint than conventional turbines. It is World Wide Wind’s ambition that these turbines will represent future design for floating wind turbine design.
40 MW is a very large turbine. This is definitely a case of handsome is as handsome does!
Why Can’t More Bags Be Like This?
I recently had my shoes fixed in Timpsons.
This was the bag that the company gave me with the shoes
Surely, paper bags score highly in many ways; practicality, affordability, recyclability and as advertising.
Why don’t we see bags like these more often?
New HS2 Pilot Project Swaps Steel For Retired Wind Turbine Blades To Reinforce Concrete
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from High Speed Two.
These are the first three paragraphs.
Worn-out wind turbine blades destined for the incinerator will instead be used to create carbon-friendly reinforced concrete on Britain’s new high speed rail network, HS2 Ltd has said today (12.03.21).
The innovative project will swap steel rebar, traditionally used to reinforce concrete, with sections of glass fibre reinforced polymer turbine blades that have reached the end of their operational lives generating low carbon electricity.
By 2023, around 15,000 turbine blades will have been decommissioned across the UK and EU. Until now, expired blades have either been ground down to be used as building materials or sent to energy-from-waste incinerators.
Replacing reinforcing steel with sections of retired wind turbine blades is claimed to cut up to 90 % of the carbon generated by steel reinforcement.
It would appear to me, that this is a worthwhile process.
- In 2018, 295,000 metric tons of steel reinforcing bars were produced in the UK.
- Retired blades don’t end up in landfill or incinerators.
- Could we export them as eco-friendly reinforcing bars, to countries with smaller wind industries.
As we have more wind farms, than most other countries, we will probably have more blades to recycle, so perhaps we should research other secondary uses for these blades.
Aberdeen Unveils UK’s First Green Hydrogen Waste Truck
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on renews.biz.
These are the first three paragraphs.
The UK’s first green hydrogen-fuelled waste collection vehicle has been unveiled in Aberdeen.
While typical waste trucks are powered by diesel and petrol, the new vehicle will use green hydrogen from existing refuelling infrastructure in Aberdeen.
The truck will start collecting waste and recycling around the city from early March and will be the first hydrogen-powered waste truck to become operational in the UK.
I feel, that this is one of the obvious applications for hydrogen trucks.
- They return to the same depot at the end of the day and if the hydrogen refuelling station is nearby or at the depot, refuelling would be no more hassle than with diesel.
- The trucks are probably too large for battery power.
- They tend to work a lot in areas, where there are a lot of people about, like residential streets and shopping centres.
- Workers will be exposed to less pollution, as they bring bins to the trucks.
Aberdeen Council have provided this video.
I can see lots of Councils at least thinking of following Aberdeen’s example, when they renew their refuse trucks.
Incidentally, I may be only 74, but I can still remember the horse-drawn waste carts that Wood Green Council used to use in the 1950s. They were used around Wood Green town centre, where trailers were parked to receive rubbish from shops and businesses. Horses were used to move them about and to the depot. In the end they horses were replaced by Scammel Mechanical Horses.
Black Mass One Of The Hottest Issues In Battery Recycling
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Recycling Magazine.
It gives a good description of black mass.
The Anonymous Widower 