Elevated Radium Activity in a Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Aquifer

[NNadir]

7. OK,I have a few minutes; I'll propose a new energy unit, "A California" corresponding to "homes..."

...that stupid journalists use whenever they report on new projects to industrialize wilderness, destroying it, for solar and wind industrial parks.

A "California" as I showed in this post, Cheers and More Cheers! The US is set to add 41 GIGAWATTS of solar power in the next 12 months, applying something called "data" from the California Energy Commission, is 34,886 GWh or 0.125 Exajoules, the latter conveniently but coincidently close to 1/8 of an Exajoule.

Thus we would require 8 "Californias" to produce 1 Exajoule of Electricity, this after half a century of wild cheering for solar energy in California, but the electricity would only be available sporadically because of the effect of a rumored astronomical effect called "night."

I think the "California" is more useful than an equatorial theoretical solar plant, because California has vast stretches of desert ecosystems being converted into industrial parks, as noted in this Guardian article:

How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea

A picture of the destroyed desert ecosystem from the article:



I don't know if this picture disgusts the hydrogen morons who fly around here all the time - I expect it doesn't - but it sure as hell disgust me.

For convenience, we'll ignore the cost of shipping water to the ruined solar landscape.

Electrolysis systems are subject to hysteresis, which is a time lag between the time that a electrolyzer first has current applied to it so operational efficiency when the system has been running for a time is further degraded in a temporal sense.

Electrolyzers vary in efficiency in use, but let's use this page from the International Energy Agency, as a yardstick:

IEA, Electrolyzers

This page from 2022 includes the following text:

Tracking the evolution of electrolyser efficiencies is equally complicated, as efficiency is closely dependent on the system design and optimisation goals. Alkaline systems deployed in the chlor-alkali and fertiliser industries decades ago were already optimised for high efficiency under continuous operation. However, efficiency improvements have continued to focus on reducing cost systems using high current densities, achieving higher efficiency across the load curve, and minimising voltage degradation over time. In the past few years, new electrolyser designs have reported very high efficiencies, such as Hysata’s capillary technology (80% efficiency on a low heating value basis) and Sunfire’s high-temperature electrolysers (84% efficiency on a low heating value basis). The electrical efficiency of electrolysis can be further improved by supplying part of the energy input in the form of heat from external sources. This is especially the case with SOEC electrolysers, which use water in the form of high-temperature steam.

We'll ignore for a moment that PV solar cells do not produce high temperatures - some years ago I covered a class of neodymium based electrodes for the high temperature electrolysis of steam on another website where I was banned for telling the truth - and settle on 85% thermodynamic efficiency as a working figure, ignoring the related but different concept of Faradaic efficiency.

We are now at 8/.85 = 9.4 Californias.

As it turns out, the US EIA has a nice webpage showing the theoretical minimum energy cost of the compression and liquefaction of hydrogen, as opposed to the real cost but I'm going to this open source paper, Aziz, M. Liquid Hydrogen: A Review on Liquefaction, Storage, Transportation, and Safety. Energies 2021, 14, 5917, which gives a figure of 10 kWh (36 MJ) per kg of hydrogen, consistent with other references indicating about a 30% energy loss to produce liquid hydrogen having an energy content of roughly 120 MJ/kg.

Since except in places like Greenpeace, where addition and subtraction are considered useless, this means about 70% efficiency since 1.00-0.3 = 0.7.

This suggests that to produce 1 EJ of liquid hydrogen about 9.4/.7 = 13.4 Californias to produce 1 EJ of liquid hydrogen.

Now the hydrogen morons flying around here all want to tell us we also have to pay attention to their useless wilderness destroying wind junk that becomes landfill in about 20 to 25 years, although they love to prattle on about energy intensive (heat requiring) recycling of this junk, which is hardly a wide spread industrial practice for wind and solar junk.

Let's play pretend and say that half of the world energy demand comes from solar hydrogen and half from wind hydrogen.

In 2021 world energy demand was 624 EJ, and is almost certainly higher now. Let's say that world energy demand stabilizes - it won't - at 650 EJ, because in solar and wind speak we can say whatever the fuck we want since soothsaying trumps reality.

This means 325 EJ of solar hydrogen or 2.7 trillion kg of solar hydrogen, 2.7 billion tons. Since 1 EJ of liquid hydrogen is 13.4 Californias, it would take "only" 4,370 Californias (for solar) to produce this very, very, very, very popular scheme.

The number of wind Californias to produce the other 325 EJ is left as an exercise.

I have omitted the embodied energy cost of ripping out all of the world's pipelines and replacing them with pipelines not subject to hydrogen embrittlement.

I think we should get right on it; it should only take a few weeks, no?

We're saved!

I rather enjoyed this calculation and will add it to my journal, like I added the Jimmy Carter adventure in being a nuclear liquidator in the 1950's to my journal, another post you inspired.