Do You Believe In Fairies ?  

Following on from my disparaging yesterday of conspiracy theorists who believe that engines generating vast amounts of energy from water will smoothly transition us away from oil dependence, The Guardian has an article by a entrepeneur claiming that he can liberate vast amounts of energy by making the electron in a hydrogen atom move closer to the proton (why this never happens naturally isn't specified).

While I don't claim to be an expert on quantum mechanics I'm more than a bit skeptical about this - I suspect the only miraculous discovery will end up being that some investors lose all their money - but lets wait and see what the coming months bring.

It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.

Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation.

The problem is that according to the rules of quantum mechanics, the physics that governs the behaviour of atoms, the idea is theoretically impossible. "Physicists are quite conservative. It's not easy to convince them to change a theory that is accepted for 50 to 60 years. I don't think [Mills's] theory should be supported," said Jan Naudts, a theoretical physicist at the University of Antwerp.

What has much of the physics world up in arms is Dr Mills's claim that he has produced a new form of hydrogen, the simplest of all the atoms, with just a single proton circled by one electron. In his "hydrino", the electron sits a little closer to the proton than normal, and the formation of the new atoms from traditional hydrogen releases huge amounts of energy.

This is scientific heresy. According to quantum mechanics, electrons can only exist in an atom in strictly defined orbits, and the shortest distance allowed between the proton and electron in hydrogen is fixed. The two particles are simply not allowed to get any closer.

According to Dr Mills, there can be only one explanation: quantum mechanics must be wrong.

Moving from Neverland back somewhere closer to reality, the IEA says that energy demand will rise by 50% over the next 25 years, and that greenhouse gas emissions will rise with it. Even they recognise that something will have to give eventually though.

Global greenhouse gas emissions will rise by 52% by 2030, unless the world takes action to reduce energy consumption, a study has warned.

The prediction comes from the latest annual World Energy Outlook report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). It says that under current consumption trends, energy demand will also rise by more than 50% over the next 25 years.

The IEA adds that oil prices will "substantially" rise unless there is extra investment in oil facilities. It says the world has seen "years of under-investment" in both oil production and the refinery sector. The organisation estimates that the global oil industry now needs to invest $20.3 trillion (£12 trillion) in fresh facilities by 2030, or else the wider global economy could suffer.

"These projected trends have important implications and lead to a future that is not sustainable," said IEA chief Claude Mandil. "We must change these outcomes and get the planet onto a sustainable energy path."

And here's the latest from Jim Kunstler, observing that the hurricane induced supply disruptions to North American oil supplies haven't gone away, even if everyone seems to have forgotten about them (then following up with some Old Europe bashing that I'm rather dubious about).

The American public's failure to pay attention reached supernatural levels this week as our mass media gloated over falling gasoline prices -- down 24 cents, average, to pre-hurricane levels. The news media took this to mean that all the end-of-the-summer trouble is over with and things can now get back to normal, including especially an economy based on trade in suburban houses.

What they failed to notice is this: since the hurricanes shredded our Gulf of Mexico oil and gas capacity, Europe has been sending us 2 million barrels of crude oil and "refined product" a day from its collective strategic petroleum reserve. The "refined product" includes 800,000 barrels of gasoline, plus diesel, aviation, and heating fuel. Meanwhile, US domestic production has fallen to around 4 million barrels of conventional crude a day. America uses close to 22 million barrels of oil a day. Bottom line: post-hurricane, total imports have accounted for 80 percent of America's oil consumption.

Now, the important part of all this is that last week the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe's energy security watchdog, declared that it would now end the 2 million barrel a day shipments to the US. Not because they are hateful meanies, but because, after all, it is Europe's strategic reserve and they can't sell it all to us because, well, some strategic emergency might come up for them, too.

It will take a few weeks for the last of Europe's tankers to offload supplies and for the various fuels to work their way through the US fuels retail system. With US production and refining still crippled, we can look forward to watching the price of gasoline, heating oil, diesel and aviation fuel kick back up through Thanksgiving and on into the heart of the Christmas shopping season. At the same time, homeowners will be getting their first substantial heating bills of the season.

This will be very bad news to the guys in charge. The Hooverization of George W. Bush will resume and accelerate.

The Energy Blog has a look at a new vertical windmill design which apparently offers dramatically improved efficiency.

Privately held Tera Moya Aqua unveiled there new vertical windmill which it says is more efficient than traditional propeller designs. They claim their windmill creates up to 80% more power from the same wind as conventional wind turbines. They claim several advantages for their design including:

* Less dangerous to birds
* Very quiet operation
* Lower maintenance costs because their critical equipment is more accessible
* Lower capital costs due to simpler design
* More acceptable because of lower profile - less visual pollution
* Superior handling of high gusts of winds

The turbine assembly consists of two primary components, the rotor and a set of air foils/stators. The gearbox, generator and controls for the unit are housed in the building at the base of the unit.The company plans to sell turbines generating from 500 watts to 1 megawatt. The smaller ones are portable and can be used by farmers, the military and remote cabin owners.

The Energy Blog also has a post on a US fertilizer plant that is being converted to produce liquids from coal instead (probably a wise move as north american gas supplies deplete and coal-to-liquids becomes more desirbale to make up for oil depletion).

Rentech (RDC) announced today that it would purchase Royster-Clark Nitrogen of East Dubuqe, IL, a fertilizer producer, and convert the existing natural gas-fed plant to coal-fed gasification plant. The conversion calls for two gasification trains and a spare, standby gasifier, to process 5,200 tons per day of coal. The conversion will increase the capacity of the plant from 830 tons per day to 900 tons per day of nitrogen (in the form of ammonia) as well as producing 87 million gallons per year of Fischer-Tropsch (FT) liquid fuels and a surplus of electricity. The conversion is estimated to take three and one-half years.

RDC will use the Conocco-Phillips gasification process with its slurry reactor, iron-based catalyst FT process. Rentech believes that when the project is completed it will be the first U.S. plant to produce commercial quantities of fuel using coal-to liquids (CTL) technology.

And to close, Mobjectivist has performed his latest act of modelling, this time taking a look at the depletion curve for the Former Soviet Union states.