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Olduvai III: Catacylsm
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Another Lone Genius Saves the World with his Invention: How Naive can People be?

September 13, 2019

Another Lone Genius Saves the World with his Invention: How Naive can People be? 

Another lone scientist ready to save the world
When I stumbled into this article, I thought it was a joke. You know, the kind that goes, “Scientists find a solution to stop forest fires in the Amazon: all that’s needed is to cut the trees and turn it into a giant parking lot!” 
But no, it was supposed to be serious. The author of the post informs us in all seriousness that “A self-taught French scientist bankrolled by a French actor has come up with a brilliant solution to the problem of plastic waste. His machine — dubbed “Chrysalis” — converts hard-to-recycle plastic trash into 65% diesel, 18% gasoline, 10% gas and 7% carbon.” 

In case you are perplexed, let me explain to you what this guy is proposing to do: 1) you extract oil and gas from the ground. 2) send it to a refinery and turn into plastics 3) manufacture plastic items and sell them, 4) throw away the plastic objects. 5) collect and separate the plastic waste 6) send the stuff to the machine developed by the self-taught French scientist, above. 7) Turn the stuff into liquid/solid/gaseous fuels. 8) separate the fuels. 9) Sell the fuels. 10) Burn them in inefficient thermal engines. And that’s called a “brilliant solution to the problem of plastic waste.” 
Now, what is the efficiency of this 10-step process? We have no data about the efficiency of the Chrysalis process, nor about how the inventor deals with the pollution it must necessarily produce. But, just looking at the number of steps involved, would you think that the whole chain could have an EROEI larger than one, the minimum needed for an energy-producing process to be viable? More likely, it would be way lower.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mineral depletion need not be always a problem: the case of aluminum

December 17, 2017

Mineral depletion need not be always a problem: the case of aluminum

In my book “Extracted” (2014) I make the case that mineral depletion is one of the main problems the industrial system faces today. Slowly degrading ore grades make the production of mineral commodities more expensive and this worsens the performance of the whole system. This is especially true for fossil fuels, although in this field it is not customary to speak in terms of “ore grades” but in terms of EROI (energy returned on energy.invested). But the depletion issue for a specific mineral commodity has to be considered in view of the whole production process, not just the extractive phase, and some commodities are much less affected than others. This is the case of aluminum, where the main production cost is not extraction but by far it is electrochemical smelting. There follows that if we can have energy that doesn’t come from depletable resources – that is, renewable energy –  we won’t face depletion problems for aluminum for the foreseeable future, quite possibly never if we use care in recycling it. In the following post, Sgouris Sgouridis examines the current situation of aluminum smelting and the perspectives of transitioning the production system to renewable energy. (UB)

Steering the Aluminum Industry in the face of the Energy Transition

By Sgouris Sgouridis

The post below was inspired by my participation at the ARABAL 2017 conference in Muscat, Oman to discuss the options for renewable energy integration in the aluminum industry. It addresses a seeming reluctance I encountered during the discussion to adopt RE with some initial considerations on how the industry can be transformed away from utilizing fossil inputs. It provides an overview of the industry’s products, scale and impacts, before discussing transition opportunities.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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