“Renewable” Future?
There
is a hope/belief among many “renewable” energy promoters that these
technologies can reproduce themselves along with many of the needs of our
present living standard. I have been down these paths with
people who want to believe we can and should continue business as usual.
They
avoid hard questions and they answer with vague engineering possibilities or
tomorrow's technology or human brilliance or innovation or you can't know the
future replies. Looking at the whole picture is out of the question because it
challenges their solution.
This
essay challenges that hope which is really a continuation of consumerism and
the status quo.
This
essay looks at the energy used in copper, glass and other common tools of
everyday life. There are also videos of
other necessay parts of our life styles - WINDOW SCREEN – A SYRINGE – MEDICAL
PLASTIC TUBING - A CPU FOR YOUR COMPUTER – AN ELECTRIC MOTOR – A FAN (GLOBAL
WARMING) - FARM MACHINERY.
LOOK AT ALL THE MACHINERY NEEDED FOR THESE VARIOUS PARTS OF OUR
LIFESTYLE AND CONSIDER THEM BEING MINED, FABRICATED, CONSTRUCTED, RUN AND
REPAIRED USING “RENEWABLE” ENERGY SOURCES AS WE NOW DEFINE THEM.
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COPPER
Copper has been in use at least 10,000
years,
but more than 97% of all copper ever
mined
and smelted has been extracted since
1900.
FROM CHART ABOVE
Tonnes – a unit of weight equal
to 1,000 kilograms (2,205 lb).
19,100,000 Tonnes in 2015
gj to btus = 947,817 btus
1 GJ = 277.78 kWh
21,057,750 tons in 2015
(converted)
IN 2015
1 GJ = 277.78 kWh
Electricity 41.08 GJ/T
Equals 11,411.2024 kWh per Ton
Equals 240,294,247,338.60 kWh
1 GJ = 9.48043 therms
Natural Gas 13.83 GJ/T
Equals 2,760,847,910 Therms or 27,608,479.1
cubic feet
1GJ to btus = 947,817 btus
Diesel/Oil 7.60 GJ/T
Equals 151,687,590,081,300 BTUs
or 27,324,377 Barrels of Oil
In 2014, around 34 percent of domestic copper was recovered from
recycled material with the rest generated from newly mined ore. While wire
supply is produced predominantly from newly refined copper, nearly two-thirds
of the amount used by other segments of industry, including copper and brass
mills, ingot makers, foundries and others comes from recycled material.
Copper in materials
Currently, a total of around 9 million tonnes of copper per year
come from the recycling of “old” scrap (copper contained in end-of-life
products) and “new” scrap (generated during production and downstream
manufacturing processes).
http://copperalliance.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ica-copper-recycling-1405-A4-low-res.pdf
RECYCLED COPPER
106.8 GJ/TONNE
1 GJ = 277.78 kWh
EACH TONNE REQUIRES 29,666.904 kWh
SO 9 MILLION TONNES
REQUIRES 267,002,136,000 kWh
energy is used by the metals sector,
and consumption will increase due to falling ore grades.
http://www.metalbulletin.com/events/download.ashx/document/speaker/6489/a0ID000000X0jDyMAJ/Presentation
The U.S. produces roughly 8 percent of the world’s copper
supply.
In 2014, U.S. recyclers processed 820,000 metric tons of copper
for domestic use and export.
Given a single family home of approximately 2,100 square feet,
the copper content is estimated as follows:
195 pounds –
building wire
151 pounds –
plumbing tube, fittings, valves
24 pounds –
plumbers’ brass goods
47 pounds –
built-in appliances
12 pounds –
builders hardware
10 pounds – other
wire and tube
The copper content associated with household appliances can be
generalized as follows:
52 pounds – unitary
air conditioner
48 pounds –
unitary heat pump
5.0 pounds –
dishwasher
4.8 pounds –
refrigerator/freezer
4.4 pounds –
clothes washer
2.7 pounds –
dehumidifier
2.3 pounds –
disposer
2.0 pounds –
clothes dryer
1.3 pounds – range
Copper in materials
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=xx&v=81
Read
more: How copper is made – material, used, processing, steps, product, Raw
Materials, The Manufacturing Process of copper, Quality Control,
Byproducts/Waste, The Future http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Copper.html#ixzz1eeSJyEum
03/ica-copper-recycling-1405-A4-low-res.pdf
From:
It is well known that there is no
such thing as a free lunch. However, it is somewhat less known that there is no
such thing as free energy, either.
Despite all the hoopla about new
renewable energy sources being “free” and “practically unlimited” in a sense
that no one owns the Sun nor the wind, the fact remains that in order to
harness these energies, we need an immense construction effort. This,
unfortunately, is neither free nor unrestricted in the material sense. As
the above graph taken from a recent study commentary by Vidal,
Goffé & Arndt in Nature Geoscience (2013) shows, projected
renewable energy deployments would very soon outstrip the current global production
of several key materials. By the author’s estimates, if we are to follow the
lead of renewables only-advocates, renewable energy projects would consume the
entire annual copper, concrete and steel production by 2035 at the latest,
annihilate aluminum by around 2030, and gobble up all the glass before 2020.
Certainly, material efficiency can
improve greatly, substitutes can be found, and production can be increased.
Nevertheless, the scale of the challenge is nothing less than daunting: the
authors also provide a handy overview of material requirements per installed
capacity, from which I calculated a range of figures for energy production.
If we compare renewable energies to
that other low-carbon alternative, nuclear power, per energy unit produced,
wind and solar electricity production requires
▪
16-148 times more concrete
▪
57-661 times more steel
▪
43-819 times more aluminum
▪
16-2286 times more copper
▪
4000-73600 times more glass.
(The figures assume a lifetime of
20-30 years for renewables and 60 years for nuclear, and the following capacity
factors: wind 0.3, solar PV 0.15, CSP 0.4, nuclear 0.8.)
For economies of
scale and energy use
Some common continuous processes are the
following:
·
Chemicals
·
Fertilizers
They run 24/7 365
days
GLASS
Let’s take a look at this wonderful
material.
Float
glass for windows improves homes and other buildings enormously. Think about what your home would be without
glass. So this is not an essay against
glass. It isn’t even an essay against
using glass for solar energy collecting devices whether they are for heating
hot air, hot water or making electricity.
These
devices use low iron hardened stippled glass.
It is important to understand the components of the energy collecting
devices so we don’t designate them with false labels such as green, renewable
or sustainable. This essay looks at the
energy, equipment and the economies of scale in making float glass.
The
process to get glass is to find silica deposits, dig them up, crush them, move
them to the factory, powder them in a ball mill, then put the powdered material
through the production line. Here is
some of the process and equipment. This
is big, expensive and energy intensive equipment.
> CLICK THE YOUTUBE LINK TO VIEW VIDEO <
THIS IS A FOUR MINUTE FILM THAT WALKS YOU THROUGH
THE MAKING OF FLOAT GLASS FROM MINE TO FINISH PRODUCT
Float
Glass Manufacturing Process
4 minutes
ONE SHEET FOR SOLAR PANEL
27 MJ/kg for Hardened Float
Glass
1 MJ = .28 kWh
Possible solar glazing energy
One 77” x 39” pane = 50 lbs = 22.6796
kg
One pane = 171.46 kWh
TOTAL FLAT GLASS 2009 PRODUCTION
52,000,000 tonnes = 52,000,000,000
kg
1 MJ = .28 kWh
2009 production = 390,000000,312.00 kWh
VIDEOS
So I
sit here at my computer looking out the window.
It is cool outside so the window isn’t open. During the summer, with the window open the
screens keep the bugs out. I would have a small fan blowing air around the room.
Don’t
look at the product. Consider the
equipment and energy necessary to make the product. Consider the equipment and energy required to
make the equipment and energy that made the product.
I ask
how do I get these comforts and devices from a total “renewable” world?
> CLICK THE YOUTUBE LINKS
TO VIEW VIDEOS <
Making window screen
1.24 minutes
Stainless steel wire
mesh manufacturing(stainless steel weaving machine)
.56 minutes
How a CPU is made
10:15 minutes
How Electric Motors are made
https://youtu.be/bCwu5KPVv541>
4.50 minutes
Electric fan
production process
https://youtu.be/pH95KZos-q0
2.14 minutes
We haven’t even considered growing food !
Big farming machines
1.38 minutes
OUR MEDICAL WORLD IS A MAJOR
PART OF OUR LIFESTYLE
X RAY MACHINES, CT SCANNERS,
PHARMACEUTICALS
AND SO MUCH MORE.
Syringe production from glass melting to the clean
room
1.18
I AM ON OXYGEN SO THIS TUBING IS A CRITICAL PART OF
MY LIFE
High Speed Medical Tubing Line running
at 153m/min (500ft/min) on a PAK350 medical extruder. Cincinnati Milacron can
supply a variety of Medical Extruders and Medical Extrusion Lines across a wide
range of applications from small catheter, single lumen tubes, draw-down tubing
for vascular applications and multi lumen tubing running at low speeds to
Dialysis and Drug Delivery tubing running at high throughputs up to 200 metres
per minute.
1.46
IT FALLS TO THE
PROMOTERS OF A FUTURE FOR “RENEWABLE” ENERGY TO
SHOW HOW THESE AND SO
MUCH ELSE CAN BE PROVIDED.
