Guest post by Ric Werme
The folks at Lawrence Livermore Natl. Labs produce a fascinating look at all the energy production in the US, from energy in (as quadrillion BTUs, or quads for short) to energy out:
This was featured in a post at Grist.org which has been picked up by several other sites. Even though the graph refers to “rejected energy,” Grist and other posters referred to it as “wasted energy.” I was pleased to see that commentors at Grist quickly pointed out that the inconvenient Laws of Thermodynamics say you can’t get 100% efficiency from thermal systems. (Well, you can, but only if the heat sink is at absolute zero, and we don’t have one.)
I pointed that out at the newspaper blog, and was going to include the link to the discussion here for a previous year’s graphic, but I can’t find it here or at chiefio, or other place I would have been. [NOTE – quite possibly it was my post “Constructal GDP“. – willis]
I think we need a good discussion here, this seems tailor made for an eclectic group like ours.
A LLNL starting point for more information is https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/index.html which includes links to detailed descriptions and similar information for 2008.
Comparisons between the two years are interesting. I hadn’t realized that natural gas usage fell. Most of that was due to declining industrial use, it did go up at power plants. Another referrer to these graphics noted that “Wind power increased dramatically in 2009 to 0.70 quads of primary energy compared to 0.51 in 2008.” They didn’t note that several more dramatic increases are necessary for wind power to be a significant source of electricity.
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“. . . you can’t get 100% efficiency from thermal systems. (Well, you can, but only if the heat sink is at absolute zero, and we don’t have one.) “
Mighty picky, there. We’re radiating all our excess into space, which has a background temperature of only 2.7 K.
What leaps off the chart and smacks me in the face is that a good way to reduce petroleum use is to convert vehicles to natural gas. Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is a favorite of government agencies, but suffers the problems of compressing the gas and the wasted energy in doing that. Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) doesn’t have this problem, but can’t be stored indefinitely in a vehicle (it boils off if not used every few days). Trucks buses, and railroad locomotives could take advantage of plentiful LNG.
Plus we in the US have to stop penalizing Diesel cars. Using EPA measurements as a source on car mileage rating http://www.edmunds.com/ cars that are available with Diesel engines get 25% more mileage than Otto engine (gasoline burners) cars of the same make and model. Look at the Volkswagen Jetta that is available in either. Diesel is more expensive here only because of the higher taxes that promote petroleum consumption.
If you want the charts different, request of LLNL and their federal grantors.
Power dropped by five quads from 08 to 09. Bummer! It might be cool if these were efficiency gains, but no. The drops were due to lost work, production, and wages. Thus, increases in energy costs and other dire consequences.
Here is an Australian energy flow chart for comparison purposes:
http://www.australianminesatlas.gov.au/mapping/files/australian_energy_flows_2006-07.pdf
They haven’t updated it for a while … note the vast majority of Australian energy is exported. We also export copious amounts of energy embodied in other goods (mostly metals such as aluminium, which you call aluminum for some strange reason … don’t get me started on Btu’s).
Gosh, thermodynamics. Thermo 201 is one of the three college courses I took that I’ve actually found useful. (think extra attic insulation)
As a reminder, here are the three laws of thermo (simplified) –
1. You can’t win
2. You can’t break even
3. You can’t get out of the game
I was blocked from posting this on facebook!
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Mike McMillan says:
As a reminder, here are the three laws of thermo (simplified) –
1. You can’t win
2. You can’t break even
3. You can’t get out of the game
<<
I prefer:
1. You can’t win. You can only lose or break even.
2. You can only break even at absolute zero.
3. You can’t reach absolute zero.
Jim
There is a way to win!! If you can store heat, through insulation, and collect all waste heat from the thermo. process, and put most of it back into the heat store; you can achieve 60 to 80% thermo. efficiency! [Preheat the input to the heat store.]
What you were taught in school is correct; but it leaves out additional cycles. If the additional cycles are available, efficiency can be 60 to 80% or more.
Example:
1) heat your home with a 95% efficient furnace.
2) if your home has 2 feet of insulation top, bottom, sides; you will have very little loss. Seal windows with insulted shutters when not in the room!!
3) you must bring in fresh air via a low temperature heat exchanger (second cycle).
4) efficiency approx. 80-90% !!!!!! Far better than an old furnace, leaky home (30 to 50%).
Our government is the box!! To get outside of the box, one must explore other alternatives.
Mike McMillan @April 10, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Or:
1: There is no such thing as a free lunch;
2: The better lunch is, the more it costs; and,
3: You have to eat something sometime.
🙂
Nuke says:
April 10, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Tom Fuller says:
April 10, 2011 at 10:58 am
Not much discussion then about 2008 being 100 quads and 2009 being 95….
It’s because of reduced economic output and reduced demand. Millions of people are unemployed and millions more under employed. If we can get the government out of the way, a strong economic recovery will lead to increased consumption.
________________________
Energy use is a beneficial use. It is required to support billions of people. Just providing food consumes a large amount per capita. Is this bad? Not at all. We just need to generate the power in better ways.
Renewables are not up to the task, and never will be. We’ve been over this ground a lot, so I won’t bother getting into it again.
A natural gas -> nuclear roadmap is a good start. In CA, it is illegal to construct natural gas power plants (SB 1037 Kehoe 2005 [1]), the authority to decide the energy mix and control over fuel contracts goes to the Energy Commission. A 1976 law restricting construction of new nuclear power plants until high level waste storage issues are resolved remains in force [2].
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are very close to being the solution. The older Molten Sodium Reactors that had trouble seem to be ones that used a solid form of fuel rather than liquid ThF6 [3]. MSRs with fuel rods can melt down. Also problems affect the Pebble Bed reactors [4]. The fuel pellets need to be reprocessed in order to burn a large percentage of the fuel. An all liquid reactor design can be constantly reprocessed and neutron absorbers removed automatically by outgassing from the liquid fluoride medium.
It seems that manufacturers need a requirement for elaborate fuel packaging in order to make a profit. Profits are not a bad thing, however, when you make a system too complicated unnecessarily and create inherent engineering flaws and process challenges, it seems to me there is an ethical problem involved.
References
1) ftp://leginfo.public.ca.gov/pub/05-06/bill/sen/sb_1001-1050/sb_1037_bill_20050929_chaptered.html
2) http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf65.html
3) http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
As wind continues to rise as a percent of total generation, so to will the percentage of natural gas that goes to electricity production. You can’t have wind power without something to back it up due to the variability and unpredictability of wind (and we won’t even talk about the inconsequential energy and power density of this ‘energy source’). Gas generation, both peaker turbines and CCGT units are the most flexible when it comes to wind following. Here in Ontario in 2010 wind had a load factor of 25.3% and a median capacity factor of only 14% So far from reducing CO2 emissions (their big selling point) they save none or actually increase CO2 emissions and require electrical ratepayers to pay for the construction of 1MW of gas generation for every 1MW of Wind installed. Since wind is at least twice as expensive as gas that means each MWh of power produced costs 2 to 3 times what it should cost. And that doesn’t include the costs to strengthen the distribution grid and build new transmission lines. Nor does it include the cost of loss of bio-diversity and the environmental impact. Welcome to Renewistan!
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Scottish Sceptic says:
April 10, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Whilst I know what you are trying to say, the truth is that you can get 100% efficiency, you just have to redefine “waste” heat as “useful” heat. L
<<
Not by using thermodynamics. The classical thermodynamic definition of thermal efficiency is:
eta = 1 – QL/QH
Of course, this is the maximum theoretical efficiency. Thanks to Lord Kelvin we have the following definition for heat engines using the Carnot cycle:
QH/QL = TH/TL
This gives us:
eta = 1 – QL/QH = 1 – TL/TH
and we can use the absolute temperature scale named after Lord Kelvin.
The only way to get waste heat to be useful is to find a heat sink that is at a lower temperature than TL.
Jim
Tesla_x says
Basically he says use more natural gas. I say yes and lots more and now. The US is loaded with it and a new site has been discovered in Louisiana that dwarfs most fields. In Texas I know of some that are capped and not used mainly because there are no transmission pipes available. All government trucks and cars can be converted cheaply from what I understand and lots of other things too. We just need a leader to urge us on and -that we lack.
Here’s another link from LLNL with further information on this graphic:
https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2010/NR-10-08-05.html
I’m surprised to see that Biomass, at 3.88 Quads, is about 10% of Petroleum at 35.27 Quads! That’s a substantial contribution.
Under the EPA’s “Tailoring Rule,” utilities have limited options for reducing greenhouse gases including increase energy efficiency.
One of my utility clients scoffs at that, saying that “we are a business and are doing everything we can to increase efficiency!” Amazing folks, I believe ’em.
One thing that stands out in the chart, solar plays a very tiny part of the electrical generation. We appear to be a long way off from solar electrical making a dent in electricity generation.
Solar, hydro, wind, and biomass are all just different ways of harvesting the same thing. Solar can heat water for a boiler or directly generate electricity from photovoltaics. Or it can evaporate water and lift it to a higher elevation where it becomes potential gravitational energy that can spin a turbine as it falls to generate electricity. Biomass is just solar energy recently stored in chemical bonds of recently growing plants.
All the rest, except nuclear, are harvesting energy from the sun that was put into storage millions of years ago. So just about all the energy we consume is generated by solar power – the only difference is how and when that solar energy is stored and harvested.
Just wanted to point that out because ultimately the stored solar power in fossil fuels will run out and we’ll be forced to harvest more recent sunlight. The happy news is that there’s a million times more solar power available every minute than mankind consumes every minute. I expect that synthetic biology holds the key to harvesting it in a cost effective manner. Synthetic biology can produce direct replacements for liquid fuels and natural gas. The flaw in all alternatives is they only generate electricity and electricity is less than half our total energy consumption. In order to grow electricity’s share of energy consumption requires abandoning vast and costly infrastructure in both distrubution and consumption. It requires enormously costly added capacity to electrical grids. None of that has to happen nor will it happen. Synthetic biology is a drop in replacement for liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuels required no change in distribution or consumption infrastructure. For that reason, if nothing else, nuclear power was never a viable candidate for supplying more than half our energy consumption. Its much greater cost vs. natural gas and coal makes it even less viable which is why it’s 10% or less of global energy consumption. If it was less expensive than natural gas or coal then we’d have whole different ballgame depending on how much less expensive as the cost savings could help fund converting the ground transporation fleet from liquid to electric and pay for the added capacity in the electrical grid to deliver it to the point of consumption. It would have to be some damn big savings as electric vehicles are far more expensive than internal combustion counterparts. And you’ll never see the aviation fleet go electric. The energy density of batteries doesn’t even come close to the energy density of avgas and kerosene.
What proportion of that “waste” contributes directly to the UHI effect? Seriously, that waste is transferred directly to the atmosphere as sensible heat, surely that is a better explanation for rising air temperatures than positive feedback from a trace gas?
The critical issue is the petroleum to transport.
Our economy will decline in proportion to shortages of transport fuel.
Oil exports drop much faster than oil production.
A rapid decline in global oil exports is rapidly looming.
Alternative liquid fuels are rapidly needed.
From the little I read most of the energy consumption comes from transportation and heating. There has been more talk lately about having small power generation units in homes to help eliminate line loss and recoup energy losses from heating. So it stands to reason that more efficient compact engines would benefit not only transportation but power generation.
Unfortunately some of the comments that I have read seem to be self limiting. There are more options then the Diesel cycle, Otto cycle , and Brayton cycle engines. Don’t forget about Stirling cycle, Atkinson cycle, and Miller cycle engines.
Speaking of Brayton cycle engines I like the Star rotary engine’s prospects, unfortunately those involved in it seem more interested in having a monopoly on the technology then fast tracking it with outside funding.
http://www.starrotor.com/
-Cheers
Bulldust,
As I pointed out on JoNova’s blog a while back, one QUAD is near enough to one exajoule (1 EJ = 1018 J). The 5.5% difference between a QUAD and an EJ is probably quite small compared to the errors of assumptions (especially conversion efficiencies) used to draw the charts.
If you think Btu are annoying, consider that airconditioning/refrigeration plant is rated in “tons”. Firkin madness!
From Dr. Lurtz on April 10, 2011 at 4:19 pm:
With an appropriately sealed house, insulation, and the heat exchanger, you don’t even need a furnace.
2008 NYT article.
Wikipedia entry: Passive house.
There’s not much among the “Green tech” that I trust, especially given the number-finagling used to make things seem more impressive, even economical. But this sure looks like the real deal, with hard numbers and testing to back it up.
Although there are the usual “unreported” problems as the house ages and those super-efficient sealing and insulation methods stop working. Those much-touted double- and triple-glazing insulated gas-filled window units can fail within 10 years (see here). The cost of replacing the windows and otherwise redoing and rechecking the sealing every 10-15 years is normally not mentioned as factored into the “energy savings” of “modern” homes. But even with that, not having to feed a furnace, likely not even needing air conditioning as well, represents significant savings that should more than cover those maintenance costs.
Of course, if you really wanted to save money with the home you have then switch to a geothermal heat pump (ground source) for heating, perhaps for cooling as well. Standing column well implementation looks good. Since they yield so much more thermal energy than the electricity they consume, they have greater than 100% thermal efficiency. How can you beat better than 100%? 😉
“you can’t get 100% efficiency from thermal systems.”
I think that should read “heat engine” or “energy conversion” systems.
A room heater comprising a block of coal burning on a tray in the middle of a room is a “thermal system” with 100% efficiency.
Remember that biomass is mostly the burning of wood in homes and the burning of agro-waste in agricultural operations. Likewise wood waste in lumber. (Also keep in mind that such burning is exceptionally dirty in relative terms.) Of course, there is also the shameful conversion of our food into automobile fuel, driving food costs and starvation higher.
@Tom Fuller:
It’s called ‘a recession’… if you are not commuting to work, your gas usage drops… companies not making plastic don’t consume much petrochemicals. Etc.
BTW, Natural Gas is a major feedstock to “petrochemical” manufacture, so when industry drops off, the natural gas demand does too; both for things like drying ovens to cure the paint and for the “petrochemicals” in the paint…
@Dan in California:
The “easy way” is via Gas To Liquids. Turn the natural gas into gasoline and Diesel. It’s not hard, and then we don’t have to replace all the vehicles and gas stations…
http://www.chemlink.com.au/gtl.htm