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Search results for: “direct air capture”

  • Energy security: volcanos versus solar panels?

    Energy security: volcanos versus solar panels?

    Every 30-years on average, a giant volcano erupts, ejecting >10km3 of debris, including aerosols that dim the sun and temporarily cool the planet by 0.5-1C. After Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, US solar insolation fell by 20% in 1992. What implications for global energy security and energy transition?

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  • Cyanide production: the economics?

    Cyanide production: the economics?

    Hydrogen cyanide is a chemical intermediate, used for making perspex, nylon-6,6 and sodium cyanide, which in turn is a crucial chemical for extracting gold and silver from precious metal ores. Marginal costs are usually $1,500-1,650/ton and CO2 intensities are 2-3 tons/ton.

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  • Froth flotation: the economics?

    Froth flotation: the economics?

    The costs of froth flotation are aggregated in this data-file, building up the typical capex costs (in $/Tpa), energy costs (in kWh/ton) and other opex lines (in $/ton) of one of the most important processes for the modern metals and materials industry. A good rule of thumb is $10/ton costs to concentrate a material by…

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  • Energy history: how much wood can be cut in a day?

    Energy history: how much wood can be cut in a day?

    How much wood can be cut in a day? We review 500-years of industrial history. In medieval times, a manorial tenant might have gathered 250kg of fallen branches in a day. A modern feller-buncher is 150x more productive. But a modern energy analyst is little better than a medieval peasant, and harvesting wood as a…

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  • Refrigerants: leading chemicals for the rise of heat pumps?

    Refrigerants: leading chemicals for the rise of heat pumps?

    This data-file is a breakdown of c1MTpa of refrigerants used in the recent past for cooling, across refrigerators, air conditioners, in vehicles, industrial chillers, and increasingly, heat pumps. The market is shifting rapidly towards lower-carbon products, including HFOs, propane, iso-butane and even CO2 itself. We still see fluorinated chemicals markets tightening.

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  • Methane slip: how much gas evades combustion?

    Methane slip: how much gas evades combustion?

    Methane slip occurs when a small portion of natural gas fails to combust, and instead escapes into the atmosphere. This data-file reviews different technical papers. Methane slip is effectively nil at gas turbines and gas heating (less than 0.1%). It rises to 0.5-3% in cookstoves and some dual-fuel marine engines. However, the highest rate of…

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  • NEL: green hydrogen technology review?

    NEL: green hydrogen technology review?

    NEL is a green hydrogen technology company, headquartered in Oslo, listed on the Oslo Bรธrs since 2014, and employing 575 people. It has manufactured 3,500 electrolyser units, going back to 1927, historically weighted to alkaline electrolysers, and increasingly focused on PEMs and hydrogen fuelling stations. This NEL technology review explores its patents.

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  • Diesel power generation: levelized costs?

    Diesel power generation: levelized costs?

    A multi-MW scale diesel generator requires an effective power price of 20c/kWh, in order to earn a 10% IRR, on c$700/kW capex, assuming $70 oil prices and c150km trucking of oil products to the facility. Economics can be stress-tested in the Model-Base tab.

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  • Energy intensity of fiber optic cables?

    Energy intensity of fiber optic cables?

    What is the energy intensity of fiber optic cables? Our best estimate is that moving each GB of internet traffic through the fixed network requires 40Wh/GB of energy, across 20 hops, spanning 800km and requiring an average of 0.05 Wh/GB/km. Generally, long-distance transmission is 1-2 orders of magnitude more energy efficient than short-distance.

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  • Polyester: production process?

    Polyester: production process?

    Polyester is the most produced textile fiber on planet Earth. Of the world’s 8GTpa of oil and gas production, 80MTpa, or 1% ends up as PET, via eleven chemical processing stages that span naphtha-reforming, BTX separation into paraxylene, oxidation to PTA, plus ethane cracking, ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol. This data file covers the polyester…

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