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70 comments on Biomimicry and Ocean Generated Energy: Are Humans Smarter Than Sea Sponges?
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70 comments on Biomimicry and Ocean Generated Energy: Are Humans Smarter Than Sea Sponges?
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Without huge quantities of fuel something as commonplace as cement can become 'unobtainium'.
I suppose a wind turbine factory could use the electricity generated by wind turbines. Getting to this point is a chicken and egg paradox though, the initial turbine fleet would have to be made using more traditional FF methods.
The industrial complex comprises; mining for raw materials, refining, transport, material processing, shipping, manufacture into sheets and rods etc. Factory machines are themselves made in other factories as are the computers that are now used at every stage. These places need educated people with skills implying a high level social structure and systems to support that. And none of that looks to be running on wind power or SPV any time soon.
Renewable energy sources are mostly used to generate electricity which does not compare to our current diversity of energy sources.
Gadgets like wind turbines, solar PV, OTEC, batteries, ultracaps and so on breakdown after a number of years and must then be replaced, implying a capable industry which may very well not exist beyond 2050, or be prohibitively expensive. Again UnObtainium.
The only truly long lasting renewable energy sources I see are a) hydromechanical. b) animal. Assuming humans maintain the ability to saw trees into planks we can make water wheels to power a shaft to do some work.
best regards
MyrddinWen- peak oil will have been a distant memory in 2050. we will have moved on to PHEVs or EVs or whatever else by then. the problem is mining machines and the like will all be focused on conserving fuel. we'll move to hybrid mining trucks in a few years. the mine will powered by CSP or wind mills or even geothermal.
it's not the difficult to make two turbines for one factory that will make more turbines. don't forget we still have 1/2 of our oil left. there are many conservation methods. the prices of metals follow oil up so mining needs higher oil prices.
The following item (last week) was the best news I've heard on low-greenhouse cement production for a long time... Maybe it's "obtainium" at last...
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2244816.htm
At this point in time 'green' cement seems to be dependent on fossils fuels. Like liver extract for vegans it doesn't help to look at the ingredients. Fly ash comes from coal fired power stations and the slag appears to come from iron furnaces fired by coke. If the slag contains much silica it will be a lot of work to grind into powder. Therefore when coal burning and steel making nosedive they could take 'green' cement with them.
Although its a bit of spin to label it "green" I think you are missing the point.
At least we can use the waste product of coal fired power to make cement AND therefore not have to burn any more coal to produce the clinker!
It interests me that you discount this because the slag, a concentrated by product, needs to be ground, but in other posts you advocate the grinding of vast quantities of ore and rock to extract uranium, currently a diesel intensive process.
Before you try the acid leach escape clause... where DOES all that acid come from?
If using fly ash and slag as a substitute for concrete is bad... then I guess using sulfuric acid derived from sour oil must also be bad... not to mention nitric acid derived from oxidising ammonia which used natural gas as the energy source for its synthesis... or hydrochloric acid produced by electrolysis of salt.
It's not much but its a step in the right direction. Use our waste streams to produce other materials where we can before mining more material with consequently greater energy use.
I didn't say it was bad just not 'green' in the sense of being indefinitely renewable. The rationale for indirect CO2 in uranium mining is the large net savings. I haven't yet seen such an estimate for 'green' cement but it might assume business as usual for the coal and steel industries. Both those industries are likely to peak within a generation.
We have quite a bit of coal and nuclear energy to help us over the transition, you know, and at the moment we waste vast quantities of energy.
As a sidenote, batteries aside EV's last just about forever, as they haven;t got most of the things in an ICC that go wrong.
Some of the latest batteries from the likes of Altairnano are rated at a likely 15,000 or so charges/discharges, so it seems likely that durability will be much better than currently.