Energy Demand and Climate Change E-Book

Franklin H. Cocks

• Herausgeber: Wiley-VCH
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 505

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This scientifically sound, yet easily readable book provides the fundamentals necessary to understand today's energy and climate problems and provides possible answers based on current technology such as solar, water and geothermal power. Moreover, it introduces the reader to new concepts that are already or may soon be realized, such as nuclear fusion or a hydrogen-based economy. Aimed at a wide readership ranging from educated laypeople and students to practitioners in engineering and environmental science.

Leseprobe

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Part I Questions

Introduction

Recommended Reading

1 Ancient Days and Modern Times

Recommended Reading

2 Ice Ages - Past and Future

The Discovery of Ice Ages

The Heat Balance of the Earth

The Sun and Its Spots

Earth’s Orbit

The Discovery of Elliptical Orbits

Precession

Nutation (Wobble)

Volcanic Dust

The Cyclical Nature of Ice Ages

The Croll-Milankovic Theory of Ice Ages

Recommended Reading

3 Global Warming Versus Returning Glaciers

Infrared Radiation and Absolute Temperature

Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming: Fourier, Tyndall, and Arrhenius

CO2 and Methane

The Big Picture

Recommended Reading

4 Earth’s Fossil Fuel Supply

Limits of Fossil Fuels

Coal

Natural Gas

Hydrated Natural Gas

Oil

Sequestration of CO2

CO2 Level Calculations

The Unending Carbon Cycle

Recommended Reading

5 Nuclear Power

Origin of Fuel for Nuclear Fission

The Energy in Nuclear Fuel

Nuclear Energy

Isotopes

Limits of Nuclear Fuel

The Basics of Nuclear Fission

Evolution of Nuclear Reactors

Present-day Nuclear Reactors and Power Plants

Used Fuel Rods

Radiation, Radioactivity, and Health

Natural Radiation and Radioactive Waste

Disposal and Storage of Nuclear Waste

Recommended Reading

Part II Answers

Introduction

6 Solar Energy

Using Solar Energy

Development of Solar Cells

How Solar Cells Work

Multiple-layer Solar Cells

Solar Concentrators and Solar Thermal Systems

Solar Ponds

Solar-powered Air Conditioning

Solar Updraft Towers

Solar Power Towers

Other Thoughts and Possibilities

Recommended Reading

7 Wind, Waves, and Tides

Wind

Characteristics and Limits of Wind Machines

Tides

Newton, the Moon, and the Tides

Harnessing Tidal Power

Usable Tidal Energy

Tidal Currents

Waves

Recommended Reading

8 Going with the Flow: Water, Dams, and Hydropower

Basics of Hydroelectric Power

Water Turbines

Hydropower Problems

Hydropower Schemes

Dam-less Hydropower: Evaporation Schemes

Dam-less Hydropower: Flowing Water

Recommended Reading

9 Geothermal Energy: Energy from the Earth Itself

Geothermal Energy

The Structure of the Earth

Carnot’s Unbreachable Thermodynamic Limit

Using Water and Soil in Heating and Cooling Systems

Recommended Reading

10 Efficiency, Conservation, and Hybrid Cars

Efficiency of Fossil Fuel and Nuclear Power Plants

Cars, Trucks, Trains, Ships, and Planes

Conservation

Recommended Reading

11 Energy Storage: Macro to Micro

Pumped Hydropower

Compressed Air

Batteries

Flywheels

Capacitors and Dielectrics

Inductors: Storing Energy with Magnetic Fields

Recommended Reading

12 Green Fuel: Biodiesel, Alcohol, and Biomass

Biodiesel

Recommended Reading

Part III Dreams

Introduction

13 Breeding Nuclear Fuel

Fast Breeder Reactors

Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project

Thermal Breeder Reactors

Breeder Technology Today and Tomorrow

Recommended Reading

14 Nuclear Fusion: Engine of the Sun

Cold Fusion versus Cool Fusion versus Hot Fusion

Making Fusion Happen

ITER, Tokamaks, Magnetic Fields, and Fusion

The Combined Fusion-Breeding-Fission Process

Inertial Confinement Fusion

Accelerator Fusion

Fusion of Helium-3 and Deuterium

Lunar Resources of Helium-3

Recommended Reading

15 Power from the Ocean: Thermal and Salinity Gradients

Electric Power from Ocean Thermal Gradients

Electric Power from Ocean Salinity Gradients

Recommended Reading

16 Fuel Cells: Hydrogen, Alcohol, and Coal

Fuel Cells and Hydrogen

Fuel Cell Efficiency

Fuel Cells and Cars

Storing Hydrogen

Producing Hydrogen

Technologies for Hydrogen Production

Fuel Cells and Coal

Fuel Cells and Alcohol

What Happens Now?

Recommended Reading

17 Magnetohydrodynamics and Power Plants

Faraday Induction and the Hall Effect

Benefits of MHD Power Generation

Recommended Reading

18 Thermionics and the Single-Fuel Home

How a Thermionic Converter Works

Engineering Thermionic Systems

Recommended Reading

19 Artificial Photosynthesis and Water Splitting

Plant Chemistry

Artificial Photosynthesis and Water Splitting

Recommended Reading

20 Planetary Engineering and Terraforming

Changing Earth’s Albedo: Atmospheric Aerosols

Tinkering with Planet Earth

Parasols, Artificial Sunspots, Space Mirrors, Solar Sails, and Space Dust

White Roads, Reflecting Roofs, and Shiny Balloons

Back to Clouds Again

Feeding Algae

Terraforming Mars (and Maybe Venus)

What Can Be Done?

Recommended Reading

21 Space Solar Power: Energy and the Final Frontier

Lagrange and His Famous Points

Geosynchronous Orbits and Solar Sails

Beamed-power Microwave Transmission

Space Elevators

Electromagnetic Launching

Recommended Reading

Part IV Nightmares

Introduction

22 Alternative Futures

Epilogue: ORBITuary

Credits

Appendix I

Units for Energy and Power

Appendix II

Radiation Units

Index

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The Author

Prof. Franklin Hadley CocksDuke UniversityPratt School of EngineeringDurham NC 27708USA

All books published by Wiley-VCH are carefully produced. Nevertheless, authors, editors, and publisher do not warrant the information contained in these books, including this book, to be free of errors. Readers are advised to keep in mind that statements, data, illustrations, procedural details or other items may inadvertently be inaccurate.

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© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

All rights reserved (including those of translation into other languages). No part of this book may be reproduced in any form–by photoprinting, microfilm, or any other means–nor transmitted or translated into a machine language without written permission from the publishers. Registered names, trademarks, etc. used in this book, even when not specifically marked as such, are not to be considered unprotected by law.

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ISBN: 978-3-527-32446-0

To the memory of my parents, Ruth and Charles

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the following people (in alphabetical order), for their help far above and beyond the call of friendship and for their patience in reading and enhancing a panoply of subject matter: Frank Gayle, Ulrich Goesele, Charles Harman, George Hatsopoulos, George Hurley, See-Whan Kang, J.D. Klein, Ian Pollock, Bob Rose, Neal Simmons, Craig Tedmon, Steve Vogel, Seth Watkins, and David Wong.

Charles Harman, George Hurley, and Bob Rose deserve special thanks for helping me with this project almost from its very beginning. Special thanks also are due to Ulrich Goesele, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany, who provided a place for me to work during my sabbatical leave from Duke University in the autumn of 1999, when this book had its genesis, and who has helped enormously in bringing it to publication. Linda Martinez, Head of the Vesic Library for Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics at Duke University, used her unparalleled information-retrieval expertise unstint-ingly to locate innumerable hard-to-find documents.

My sons, Josiah and Elijah, have provided steadfast encouragement, patient proofreading, and insightful perspectives. My wife, Pamela, has been my confidante, inspiration, spur, and friend par excellence through all the trials and tribulations in completing this book. To all of you I am deeply grateful. Any errors are mine and mine alone.

Prologue

Global warming will pluck the strings of Nature’s many instruments, but we may not like the melody they play. Much has been said about climate and the interdependence of civilization and energy. Numerous writings advocate particular aspects of the problems that climate change and energy shortages will cause. Some people take the position that there is no problem at all. The book now in your hands presents the facts–the scientific and engineering rules ofthe game–that govern the chess match now underway between humanity and nature, so that you may judge for yourself what is happening and the validity of the various positions being advocated. Science and engineering truths are independent of political viewpoint or vested interest.

A huge knowledge base envelops every facet of the energy and climate debate. The goal of this book is to pull together the fundamental facts of this ongoing saga and to present the near-term and long-run choices ahead of us and their consequences. The temperature of our planet has changed repeatedly in the past and is in the process of doing so again, with far–reaching and complex effects that will slowly unfold. Knowing what has happened in the past can help us to understand what is underway now. The fossil, nuclear, and renewable resources of our planet are a guide to planning what might be done, while there is still time.

Part I gives an overview of the human use of energy as it has evolved through the ages as well as the astronomical and atmospheric factors that have dominated our planet’s climate. Earth’s slow but inevitable orbital changes have an enormous and long-term influence on global climate, especially the periodic onset ofice ages. Humanity’s ever-expanding consumption of energy has contributed greatly to the betterment of living standards, which depend critically on fossil fuels, whose supply is not infinite. Earth’s nuclear fuel resources are large, but making use of them generates its own special problems.

Part II presents energy options that can be called into being with the technology that exists right now. Increased efficiency of energy usage and energy from renewable resources including wind, sunlight, and many others offer a variety of possibilities, each having different potentials and limits.

Part III discusses the energy and climate-changing possibilities that are only dreams now but might someday come to be. Thermonuclear fusion, breeding nuclear fuel, artificial changes in planetary albedo, magnetohydrodynamic electricity production, power from ocean thermal and salinity gradients, and other technologies are possible. Each of these also has both potentials and limits.

Part IV offers a glimpse of the devastating energy and climate possibilities that might envelop us if we just keep going along the way we are.

Our age is filled with problems and promises. The more people there are who understand the basic facts of the energy and climate events now underway and the options we have for dealing with them, the better chance there is for all of us to find a path that leads to a more abundant future for ourselves and our posterity. The choices we make now may determine whether or not our age marks the onset of Nature’s checkmate move.

Part I

Questions

Introduction

Civilizations come and go, but why? There are many reasons, especially the proverbial four horsemen of the Apocalypse–war, famine, disease, and death. Battles have been won or lost. Droughts have desolated rich agricultural lands, and animals have been hunted to extinction. Epidemics have waxed and waned. In the 21st century our planet supports a larger population than ever before in its long history. The climate of the world has begun to change, and that unfolding event will affect everyone. Those four horsemen might begin to saddle up, armed now with nuclear weapons and virulent diseases. The number of mouths to be fed and the world’s demand for energy grow larger with each passing day. The Earth is not infinite in extent, and neither are its resources. How is this to end?

Recent history shows that average birth rates may decline as living standards improve, and in many lands living conditions have been progressing. Before the advent of chemical means of birth control, better living conditions usually led to an increased rate of population growth, except under particular conditions. The French aristocracy in the 1811 century, for example, made special attempts to limit any increase in their numbers in order to decrease difficulties associated with inheritance and the subdivision of estates. But as a general rule, increased prosperity can reduce population growth by making birth control and education available to more men and women, who have a greater expectation that their children will survive to adulthood. Overpopulation, posited in 1798 by the English demographer Thomas Malthus in his Essay on the Principle of Population, has been kept at bay by improved farming technology, genetic manipulation of crops, better education, birth control, greater prosperity, and the increased use of energy. In the year 2000 the world’s population was 10 times higher than it was 300 years earlier. The population of the Earth has increased from 2.5 billion to more than 6 billion since 1950 alone, and average energy consumption per person more than doubled in that same period. The peril of runaway population growth might be eliminated if the world’s economic output could increase sufficiently. Standards of living and energy consumption rise in unison. The energy from fossil fuels is the horse out in front pulling the world’s economic wagon, but fossil fuels are not inexhaustible. Petroleum is especially limited in its total planetary supply. When there is demand for more oil than the Earth can readily yield, its cost will increase until supply and demand balance. Living standards may be depressed by the weight of higher energy costs.

The world economy is now interconnected as never before, and changing energy prices and economic crises spin rapidly around the globe. Coal remains abundant, but burning it releases carbon dioxide and a host of pollutants, including mercury, sulfur dioxide, radioactive isotopes, and many others. Natural gas is also abundant, and burning it produces much less carbon dioxide than burning coal, but its supply also has limits. Nuclear generation of energy produces radioactive waste, which must be stored indefinitely somehow, but has little effect on the atmosphere. Advances in engineering and science may yet meet ever-growing energy needs, if proper measures are adopted and steps taken in good time. Unlike the steady growth of population predicted by Thomas Malthus, primitive societies, especially those on isolated Pacific islands, sometimes suffered rapid declines in population as local resources were depleted. In modern societies, energy problems might develop rapidly, with accompanying disruptions of the social order, some of them violent. The current rate of growth of the world economy and extrapolated demographics based on increasing living standards indicate a topping out of world population at just over 10 billion souls. What if energy shortages cause the world economy to decline? Living standards would very likely degrade, throwing us back upon the tender mercies of Thomas Malthus.

How will these intertwined factors evolve in the years to come? There is always the unlikely possibility of changing human nature, but inventing, working, and thinking our way to a prosperous and sustainable future is a more achievable goal. Properly applied, science and engineering can offer solutions to humanity’s ever-increasing need for energy, which might otherwise be our Achilles heel. The next four chapters give a planetary-scale view of the energy and climate problems we face over a time frame long in human terms, but short in the lifetime of the world on which we live.

Recommended Reading

Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking/Penguin, 2005.

Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. Abridged edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1926.

1

Ancient Days and Modern Times

But I [Zeus] will give men as the price for fire an evil thing inwhich they may all be glad of heart while they embrace theirown destruction.Hesiod, Works and Days c. 800 B.C.

In the mythology of ancient Greece, fire was enshrouded in the legend of Prometheus, who stole its secret from Zeus and gave it to mankind. Because fire was not intended for us, humanity was punished for accepting it by the advent of Pandora, who opened the great box of woe, releasing disease, toil, and sorrow upon the world, saving only the gift of hope. This legend strikes a chord even now, as our use of energy expands seemingly without limit even as consequences begin to appear. Prometheus suffered greatly for giving fire to humanity, and we may yet suffer greatly from our overwhelming dependence upon it. Only time will tell if the gift of Prometheus turns out to be the blessing in the future that it has been in the past.

There is no limit to the amount of energy humanity may want. But there are certainly limits to the amount available from fossil fuels. Through the rise and fall of successive civilizations and empires, the energy needs of the ancient world were supplied by renewable sources, including food, firewood, wind, flowing water, draft animals, and slaves, with only tiny amounts from coal and oil. The 18thcentury witnessed the invention of steam engines that could turn heat into useful work. Because of this advance in technology, energy usage for the first time began to grow faster than population. The heat from burning coal powered the industrial revolution. Soon afterward it was discovered that devices such as steam engines are limited in the fraction of heat they can convert into work. By immutable laws of thermodynamics, steam turbines like those used in power plants typically waste more than half the energy they consume. Although work can be converted completely into heat, the reverse is not true. Heat cannot be converted completely into work, no matter how many engineering advances are made.

Now, at the beginning of the third millennium, the world’s average annual energy consumption per person is about 100 times higher than it was 2000 years ago, when there were only perhaps 200 million people in the world. Presently, there are more than 6 billion souls on the face of the Earth. Over the last two millennia, world energy usage has risen by a factor of more than 3000 and has been increasing at a rate of around 2% per year. This 2% increase per year is all by itself 60 times more energy than the total annual energy consumption of the ancient world. The amount of energy used per person varies enormously from country to country. If all countries consumed as much energy per person as the richest do, world energy usage would be an order of magnitude higher than it is. Such an increase in energy may be unachievable with fossil fuels alone and, in any case, is not sustainable.

Almost everyone wants a higher standard of living. Energy and living standards go hand in hand. How can continuously increasing demands for energy be satisfied? Can energy use double in the next 40 years and keep increasing with no end in sight? Right now human energy needs are met primarily through the gift of Prometheus, from fires fed by fossil fuels. But all fossil fuels contain carbon, and burning it produces carbon dioxide. As the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increases, so does the Earth’s average temperature, because carbon dioxide acts to slow down Earth’s heat loss. Changes in global weather accompanying increasing planetary temperature will become greater as energy production from fossil fuels goes up.

Beyond fossil fuels, the energy contained in certain atomic nuclei can also be set loose, as was proven dramatically by the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945. Of more peaceful potential was the earlier proof that energy locked inside uranium atoms could be released control-lably. It did not take long to demonstrate that the controlled release of nuclear energy can be used to generate electricity. Heat from the reactor built in 1943 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to demonstrate the production of plutonium from uranium, was used to generate electric power before the first nuclear weapon was detonated. (This reactor has long been decommissioned but still exists as a museum.) Although the amount of electric power produced was only symbolic, this test did prove the principle of the concept. Before the hazards and costs associated with nuclear reactors were fully realized, extravagant claims were made about the ability of this new energy source to supply electricity cheaply, notably the claim in the 1950s that electricity from nuclear reactors would become too inexpensive to meter. New technologies inevitably generate new problems as well as new possibilities, and the balance, if there is one, is always between cost and benefit.

The production of electrical energy using the heat from nuclear fission has increased far less rapidly than first expected. The combination of complex engineering, serious concerns about radioactive waste, and the role of reactors in making nuclear weapons have all inhibited the growth of nuclear-powered electricity generation. Where and how to store radioactive waste for millennia is not a simple problem. The politics of nuclear weapons are not simple either.

The impact of worldwide climate change needs scarcely to be emphasized. To understand why such climate changes are underway, it is important to know the scientific facts that determine our planet’s temperature. While the details of this issue are extremely complicated, the fundamental principles are straightforward. The next chapter gives an overview of why ice ages and global warming cycles come and go. What happens if glaciers start growing again, the next ice age begins, and we’re out of fuel?

Recommended Reading

Eberhart, Mark E. Feeding the Fire: The Long History and Uncertain Future of Mankind’s Energy Addiction. New York: Harmony House, 2007.

Thirring, Hans. Energy for Man: Windmills to Nuclear Power. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1958. (This book was one of the earliest to evaluate quantitatively humanity’s energy situation, and much of its information is still relevant.)

2

Ice Ages–Past and Future

The glaciers creep like snakes that watch their prey,from their far fountains, slow rolling on.Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mont Blanc, 1816In my opinion, the only way to account for all these facts andrelate them to known geological phenomena is to assume that atthe end of the geological epoch which preceded the uplifting ofthe Alps, the earth was covered by a huge ice sheet ...Louis Agassiz, Studies on Glaciers, 1837

Global warming is now the question for our age, but this wasn’t always so. At one time, the preeminent issue in Earth science was global cooling. The existence of glaciers has been known ever since humanity migrated toward the poles, but in 1837 the Swiss-American zoologist, geologist, and eventual Harvard professor Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) proposed the idea that glaciers could sometimes start growing and expand across large portions of the Earth’s surface. What causes the Earth to cool and glaciers to advance across the land and then retreat again towards the poles? The answer lies partly in the Earth’s periodic orbital changes, whose effects on climate were not understood until the 20 century. Even the very existence of times when the Earth was inundated with ice was not known until the 19 century.