Making the search for gas easier

Gas and oil deposits in shale have no place to hide from an Oak Ridge National Laboratory technique that provides an inside look at pores and reveals structural information potentially vital to the nation's energy needs. Researchers were able to describe a small-angle neutron scattering technique that, combined with electron microscopy and theory, can be used to examine the function of pore sizes.

Using their technique at the General Purpose SANS instrument at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, scientists showed there is significantly higher local structural order than previously believed in nanoporous carbons. This is important because it allows scientists to develop modeling methods based on local structure of carbon atoms. Researchers also probed distribution of adsorbed gas molecules at unprecedented smaller length scales, allowing them to devise models of the pores.

While traditional methods provide general information about adsorption averaged over an entire sample, they do not provide insight into how pores of different sizes contribute to the total adsorption capacity of a material. Unlike absorption, a process involving the uptake of a gas or liquid in some bulk porous material, adsorption involves the adhesion of atoms, ions or molecules to a surface.

This research, in conjunction with previous work, allows scientists to analyze two-dimensional images to understand how local structures can affect the accessibility of shale pores to natural gas. Together, the application of neutron scattering, electron microscopy and theory can lead to new design concepts for building novel nanoporous materials with properties tailored for the environment and energy storage-related technologies. These include capture and sequestration of human-made greenhouse gases, hydrogen storage, membrane gas separation, environmental remediation and catalysis.

Meanwhile, after 10 years of production, shale gas in the United States cannot be considered commercially viable, according to several scientists presenting at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver on Monday. They argue that while the use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling for "tight oil" is an important contributor to U.S. energy supply, it is not going to result in long-term sustainable production or allow the U.S. to become a net oil exporter.

Pollution kills more than accidents!

Automobile pollution kills more people than automobile collisions do. A recent study on the subject done by researchers at MIT says that the 34,080 American lives that were ended in 2012 by automobile collisions are completely eclipsed by the number of people who died as a result of the pollution from those same automobiles — 58,050. Authored by five researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the study found an estimated 200,400 premature deaths attributable to combustion emissions in the US last year. Of those, a bare majority were due to either road transportation or electric power generation.

The study primarily focused on fine particulate matter, or particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less. These minuscule particles are most likely to cause illnesses like lung cancer and premature deaths more generally.

The researchers found 52,800 yearly premature deaths attributable to emissions related to road transportation, with a similar number — 52,200 — due to electric power generation. They also looked at ozone exposure, but found much lower numbers: 5,250 due to motor vehicles, and another 1,700 caused by electricity production. These represented just more than half of all premature deaths caused by fine particulate matter, with other large contributors being industry (40,800 deaths in 2005) and commercial and residential buildings (41,800 deaths).

The new research was just published in the journal Atmospheric Environment. You can find the abstract here.

E Asia cities at risk from rising sea levels

About 12 million people in 23 East Asian cities are at risk from rising sea levels, severe storms, and more intense drought caused by climate change that could jeopardize $864 billion in assets, a new report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warns.

Economics of Climate Change in East Asia notes that while climate adaptation investments can be large, the aggregate cost to protect the most vulnerable sectors -- infrastructure, coastal protection, and agriculture -- would be less than 0.3% of East Asia's gross domestic product every year between 2010 and 2050. The report recommends the People's Republic of China (PRC), Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Mongolia together to invest an annual average of $22.9 billion for climate-proofing in the infrastructure sector, $4.2 billion for coastal protection, and $9.5 billion for the agriculture sector.

The report projects that severe weather related to climate change will intensify, with one-in-20-year flooding predicted to occur as frequently as every four years by 2050. When combined with rising sea levels, this is expected to cause massive swaths of land to disappear, forcing millions to migrate, and wreaking havoc on infrastructure and agriculture. Since 1970, economic losses to the four countries from climate-related natural disasters have amounted to more than $340 billion.

Why is CCS not taking off?

Four large-scale carbon capture projects were launched this year, but regulatory and cost barriers for the technology threaten the world's ability to prevent temperatures from rising to dangerous levels, a new report warns. The annualreport of the Australia-based Global CCS Institute cited a few signs of progress in 2013 -- the four new projects, along with eight existing ones in operation, are preventing 25 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from reaching the atmosphere annually. Yet all of the world's existing and new projects are on natural gas processing plants or other facilities that separate CO2 as part of a normal industrial procedure.

There still are no carbon capture projects operating in the power sector, and there is little movement toward implementing the technology on big industrial emitters like cement manufacturers. Since last year's report, 12 projects were either canceled or put on hold, largely because of the high cost of the technology.

The report noted, for example, that the current CO2 pipeline network will need to be expanded 100 times to carry enough captured greenhouse gas to hold global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. Countries that are not members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will account for most of the growth in primary energy demand through 2035, according to the IEA, but there are few projects far along in the planning stage in many of those countries.

Meanwhile, funding support for CCS globally has fallen by more than $7 billion from 2009, "reflecting either changing government priorities or a reliance on carbon price support that has subsequently collapsed," the institute said. In Europe, there have not been new operational projects since 2008.

Cost is not the only challenge. Siting new pipelines to carry CO2 is a "phenomenally difficult" task in many countries, including India. India emits roughly 6 percent of the world's carbon dioxide, according to U.S. EPA.

To boost the number of projects, the report recommends additional financial support for both construction and research, to reduce the cost of CO2 capture. It says there is no one-size-fits-all option -- capital grants, subsidies and ratepayer cost recovery agreements all have been used effectively to boost the technology.

Detractors of CCS say the technology is far too energy intensive to be feasible. The jury is still out on that!

What a waste

The world today dumps over 70 percent of food waste into landfills, rather than harnessing it for fuel and electricity. An average city in the developing world generates around 4000 tonnes of waste daily! Over the next 25 years, global energy demand will grow by 50 percent, while global oil supply dwindles at a rapid pace. Waste-to-energy is an obvious solution to meet the world’s burgeoning energy demand, believe experts. The technology is well-known and the only problem is to organise collection, segragation and transportation.

A recent report “Waste-to-Energy Technology Markets”, which analyzes the global market opportunity for WTE, expects waste-to-energy to grow from its current market size of $6.2 billion to $29.2 billion by 2022.

Currently there are some 800 industrial-scale WTE plants in more than three dozen countries around the world, and likely thousands of smaller systems at individual sites. Most employ anaerobic digesters, which make use of microorganisms to break down and convert organic waste into a fuel such as biogas, biodiesel or ethanol. With some 70 percent of food waste around the world still going into landfills, there is a lot of potential feedstock to keep this environmentally friendly carbon neutral fuel source coming. The waste from small slaughterhouses, breweries, dairy farms and coffee shops can power hundreds of typical homes each day if the infrastructure is in place to sort, collect and process the flow of organic material.

If we cannot control the waste we generate, especially food waste, the next best option is to use it effectively instead of letting it go to rot or polluting land and air.

Chemicals in the e-soup!

Ever think what happens when you discard your one year old phone for a new model? It probably adds to the e-waste heap.
The consumer electronics industry is now a multibillion-dollar juggernaut that churns out new products year-round. In 2012, sales of electronics in the United States topped $200 billion, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry group that represents 2,000 companies, including Sony, Samsung, and Apple. The average American household now owns 24 electronic products, many of which will be rendered obsolete within a few years.
In 2009, the most recent year for which the EPA has data, 2.37 million tons of electronics were ready for “end-of-life management,” yet only a quarter of them were collected for recycling.
Every year, heaps of American e-waste, from smartphones to computers to stereo systems, are shipped to India, China, Ghana, Pakistan, Peru, and other developing countries. By some estimates, 80 percent of the U.S. e-waste collected ends up on foreign shores, where regulations are lax and incentive for risk high.
The goods are generally auctioned off in bulk to scrap companies and smelters. These companies pay locals—often including children—meager wages to strip smidgens of gold, copper, and palladium from the discarded devices. Sometimes, this involves concocting a noxious stew of cyanide and nitric acid, then burning the remaining plastic in crude firepits. Throughout the process, workers are exposed to lead, mercury, and cadmium, among other toxic substances.
From mining to manufacturing to recycling, consumers, corporations, and governments need to rethink the life of our devices from beginning to end.
The European Union is ahead in the game and from last year imposed a strict directive requiring that by 2019 member countries collect 65 percent of the weight of all electronics put on sale in the preceding three years or 85 percent of all e-waste generated per year. Under the EU’s policy, retailers will be required to take e-waste from consumers. Companies—retailers, manufacturers, and recyclers—found to be in violation could be hit with stiff fines.
But some believe that the first step is to make manufacturers come out with a list of chemicals used in the process of manufacture. Nobody knows the number of chemicals used in the manufacturing of electronic products. It’s probably in the range of several thousand. Some are very standard, run-of-the-mill chemicals, but others are exotics … and many are extremely hazardous.

Clean costs

Clean energy is the obvious choice for a planet faced with global warming. But going clean comes with a price – a price that can be costly.

Because electricity and heat account for 41 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, curbing climate change will require satisfying much of that demand with renewables rather than fossil fuels. But solar and wind come with their own up-front carbon costs. Photovoltaics require much more aluminum—for panel frames and other uses—than other technologies do, according to a 2011 study at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Alloys for wind turbines demand lots of nickel. Those metals are carbon culprits because they are produced in large amounts by high-energy extracting and refining processes.

The demand for metals, and their already significant carbon footprint, may grow with a switch to green energy. Given all the resources needed for new infrastructure, an analysis last year found that large solar installations take one to seven years to “break even” with coal power on the greenhouse scorecard. Wind farms take from less than one year up to 12 years. All the more reason to make the switch sooner than later??

India stepping on the shale wagon

India cleared the way for shale-gas exploration last week. The country meets nearly three-fourths of its energy needs through imports and it has been working on its coal and shale-gas policies for more than two years. The country has the world's fourth largest coal deposits as well as significant untapped shale-gas and oil potential.

In the first phase, the country seeks to allow two state-run companies—Oil & Natural Gas Corp. and Oil India Ltd -- to explore for and produce shale oil and gas in blocks they already control. Later, the government will allow other state-backed companies as well as private companies into shale-gas exploration and production, said one cabinet minister who didn't wish to be named.

India has about 63 trillion cubic feet of recoverable shale-gas reserves—more than 20 times the size of India's biggest-ever gas discovery and enough, if proven, to run the country's gas-fired power stations for 20 years or more, analysts say.

This comes at a time when concerns are rising over the environmental impacts of fracking – the process of drilling the shale deposits- in the US where shale gas is now being harvested. Worries about triggering quakes and pollution of groundwater have been some of the major areas of debate. Can India handle the same?

The heat is on!

Sea levels are creeping up at the fastest rate in 2,000 years. Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere have reached "levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years" (or before modern humans evolved). Most importantly "human influence on the climate system is clear" and "continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming." Those are some of the key messages in the "Summary for Policymakers" of the physical science of global warming from the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange released on September 27.

"The planet is red" in a global map of the change in average surface temperatures, noted Swiss climate scientist Thomas Stocker, co-chair of IPCC Working Group I responsible for this summary at a press conference. "The world is warming."
Ice all over the world is melting, particularly in the Arctic, a trend that will continue unabated. Ocean circulation looks set to change, with unpredictable effects, and the oceans will become more acidic as well.  Almost all of the world's coastlines will be affected by sea level rise. And developed countries and emerging economies have burned through more than half of the fossil fuels possible to keep total concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere at a level that gives the world a chance to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius difficult.

Interestingly, the IPCC has shifted from talking about concentrations in the atmosphere, like 400 parts-per-million, to total carbon budget in gigatons. Since 1880, 531 gigatons have been emitted and emissions should not exceed 800 gigatons of C for a better than 50-50 chance at keeping global temperature rise below 2 degree C.

"We cannot emit more than 1000 billion tons of carbon," Stocker says.

In the time since the 2007 version of this report, the human effect on the climate has grown more than 40 percent stronger, thanks to continued emissions of greenhouse gases and more precision in measurements, with carbon dioxide leading the charge. The good news is that extreme global warming by century's end, anything above 3 degrees C or more, seems "extremely unlikely," in the words of the IPCC.

The report notes that the current "pause" in new global average temperature records since 1998—a year that saw the second strongest El Nino on record and shattered warming records—does not reflect the long-term trend and may be explained by the oceans absorbing the majority of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases as well as the cooling contributions of volcanic eruptions.

Even if CO2 emissions stopped tomorrow, climate change would continue. In other words, humanity is in the process of setting the Earth's thermostat. The world has already warmed by roughly 0.85 degree C since 1880 and further heat extremes are "virtually certain." So the question is: how much hotter can we stand? Or as United Nations Secretary General Ban-ki Moon put it in a video address to the IPCC press conference: "The heat is on. Now we must act."