As someone who works in the energy field, I have been stoked to see these types of advancements in the past few years. When I first got into this field and would research green energy products, there was a limited field of players. Now there are so many start ups coming up with brilliant products that I can't even keep track! What a wonderful problem to have.
One of my favorite books is "The Wizard and the Prophet", and it's great to see more and more companies following in Norman Borlaug's footsteps and finding new ways the science/tech fields can serve humanity.
If anyone out there is feeling a bit down about the general state of the tech industry, I highly encourage you to look into jobs in the green energy field. It's an exciting space filled with lots of passionate, mission-driven folks. (And, in case you're wondering, most of us aren't the neurotic, perpetually angry types that dominate the activist space. We're pretty chill people who just want a healthy and affordable planet.)
> If anyone out there is feeling a bit down about the general state of the tech industry, I highly encourage you to look into jobs in the green energy field. It's an exciting space filled with lots of passionate, mission-driven folks. (And, in case you're wondering, most of us aren't the neurotic, perpetually angry types that dominate the activist space. We're pretty chill people who just want a healthy and affordable planet.)
I’d second this - I’m not in green energy, but I am in a field that looks to have a substantially positive climate/environmental impact. If you’re feeling particularly existential about the world right now, there’s a real sense of relief from knowing your work is aligned with your values and where you want the world to go.
i'd love to have your optimism. whenever i looked at the job market in this area ("green" tech) most, if not all, of what i found was around carbon offsetting, which is something that has failed to convince me so far
If anyone out there is feeling a bit down about the general state of the tech industry, I highly encourage you to look into jobs in the green energy field.
There are so many things this world needs smart people doing. A slowdown in the tech sector might just be the catalyst.
I'd love to know as well, especially for software engineers.
I'm wondering if there are opportunities in this field for distributed systems experts, but not a necessity.
From my reading of the press release, the novelty in this work is that they've found a process that works with "ordinary" chemicals, temperatures and pressures, so it can be scaled up economically.
I say "ordinary", because it might very well be working with mildly toxic chemicals at 80°C and 7 bar pressure or whatnot, so far outside the range of (at least economic) feasibility in the home lab.
That should not worry anybody though, the fabrication process is at least as dangerous. I've worked a lot with various kinds of epoxy (and yes, also to make windmill blades) and reading the MSDS on your typical resin is enough to make you wonder if you even want to use this stuff at all.
Looking in my workshop, nearly 100% of the "stuff in solution" there have solvents you do not want to breath. Then you do a bit of skiing and you see the composition of the waxes. You do a bit of woodworking and home improvement and you look at the composition of the glues. They are full of deadly compounds. So yes, we should not worry but still handle with care.
My simple advice: if you see on the product that it should be used in a well ventilated place, do it!
That is very true. I'm surprised many people seem not to care.
I use mostly safer compounds in my workshop (platinum-cure silicones, polyurethane resins, and occasionally good grade epoxy), but I still put on a proper mask, glasses, and gloves. Especially when working with my daughter. Those half-mask respirators are surprisingly comfortable (I found them easier to wear than N95/FFP2 masks).
Carbon fiber wind turbine blades are the future - see this from DOE at Sandia researchers (US national labs have a very good materials science development program):
> "Wind blades containing carbon fiber weigh 25% less than ones made from traditional fiberglass materials. That means carbon fiber blades could be longer than fiberglass ones and, therefore, capture more energy in locations with low wind. A switch to carbon fiber also could extend blade lifetime because carbon fiber materials have a high fatigue resistance."
Carbon fiber could plausibly be made without reliance on any fossil fuel inputs. The chemical synthesis pipeline is (working backwards):
atmospheric CO2 + H2O -> CO + H2 (Fischer-Tropsch) -> -> butane
This is basically replacing petrochemistry with aero/hydro-chemisty to generate all the feedstocks. Once you get past the initial step (CO2 capture, conversion to carbon monoxide, and reduction with water-sourced hydrogen at high temp & pressure) it's basically just providing simple hydrocarbon feedstocks (non-fossil-sourced) into existing chemical processes developed by organic chemists over the past century or so.
Also, if you just bury the worn-out carbon-fiber blades in stable landfills, they don't degrade over time, so it's also removing carbon from the atmosphere (very slowly, of course, and not really enough to be very noticeable).
That's very interesting, but is it cost effective to get carbon out of the atmosphere rather than to drill it out of the ground?
Put another way, you can either build 10 wind turbines with atmospheric carbon fiber, or 11 turbines with carbon fiber made from petrochemical feedstocks. Which option ultimately has a bigger reduction in CO2 emissions over the lifetime of the turbines?
It seems obvious that if synthesizing butane from atmospheric CO2 was anywhere near economic after applying a carbon tax, global warming would not be an existential threat. I'd love to be wrong, obviously...
Climate change isn't an existential threat if all governments and international corporations follow a carbon (more precisely GHG) pricing scheme.
The crisis is that its politically hard to coordinate that agreement and transition and we've not made as much use of the last four decades as we could have. Potentially passing irreversible tipping points.
Depends on where you are! On Mars, for example, it's going to be far more cost effective to get carbon from the Martian atmosphere and water from the subsurface than to ship carbon feedstocks from Earth.
Currently, these technologies are approaching parity on cost fairly quickly. It's basically at the prototype stage presently, so much more expensive, but widespread adoption and economies of scale could change that within several decades. The upfront costs are quite high, similar to any petrochemical complex, i.e. in the multi-billion-dollar range for any facility capable of significant industrial-scale output.
I know spacex had trouble finding autoclaves big enough for carbon fiber tanks. I would expect windmill blades need to be even bigger and hence need a bigger autoclave. So that would be a major challenge.
Then again this is a huge market, and the mentioned gains are quite big. So the economic benefits might be big enough that someone dares build an autoclave for carbon fiber windmill blades.
I kind of doubt it. carbon fiber has pretty bad impact resistance which is necessary because the blades are spinning quickly enough that dust over time erodes the leading edge
> "Leading edge erosion (LEE) is a phenomenon where the leading edge of a wind turbine blade is eroded due to rain, hail, UV, sand, dust, and numerous airborne particulates. Since wind turbine blades are built to last over 2 decades, this erosion exposes the fiberglass beneath and ultimately impacts the blade’s life causing the turbine to produce less energy over time."
Hmm, we make aircraft, including supersonic ones, out of carbon fiber. So surely the problem is manageable somehow? If nothing else, put some metal plates on the leading edges?
> Also, if you just bury the worn-out carbon-fiber blades in stable landfills
I think it's probably better to just burn the carbon fiber. As you point out, it's not a significant amount of carbon, and it's a tidier solution with less risk of unintended consequences. If you want to capture and store carbon, burn it in a trash burning power plant that captures CO2. Then you have a more general-purpose solution for CO2 capture that you can feed any other carbon-based waste. (Of course, Reuse, Reuse and Recycle first, but eventually everything degrades to the point where it's best to burn it. This also helps pull out environmental toxins and heavy metals from materials we've made)
There's an interesting project in Norway to test trash burning with pure oxygen. The gas in the chamber will in effect be a mix of O2 and CO2. The released CO2 is recycled and the O2/CO2 mixture is controlled to optimize the temperature. This makes the trash burning, the cleaning of the exhaust and the CO2-capture more efficient.
Carbon fiber is indeed superior in many ways, but it’s also very expensive. At least that’s the impression I get from it being used only in expensive cars.
So it seems to only be worth it if it doesn’t increase the total cost of a new wind turbine by too much compared to the added efficiency.
It is more expensive, because the process to produce it is less mature than metal alloy based solutions.
For example BMW invested a lot of money into carbon fiber production development and can now use some of the knowledge and technology in more mainstream products starting with iX SUV.
Carbon fiber certainly has advantages vs. fiberglass. But this article was about the resin material, which forms, depending on the application, maybe around 50% of the weight. But maybe it's possible to produce epoxy resin by starting from atmospheric CO2 and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis as well, IDK.
Of course, glass fiber wins here, being just molten rock extruded through a nozzle (well, quite simplified, but you get the idea). No expensive hydrocarbon synthesis required.
The important magic is that carbon and hydrogen given enough pressure will form hydrocarbons (basically as dead plankton deep below the tectonic plate did), so doing it the brute force way is simple, but very energy intensive.
Split CO2 to CO and O, split H2O to H2 and O.
CO + H is syngas, used as feedstock for synthetic fuels.
Then using a metal catalyst (iron or cobalt for example) and heat and pressure good old "organic chemistry" does the rest, various hydrocarbons form (and water as residual by product). This reaction itself gives off heat, so at least this part doesn't need that much energy.
I read somewhere that the waste from old recreational boats hull is several order of magnitude higher than from wind turbine even if we install as much as needed to produce all of our electricity.
Not to be a contrarian but I would just like to note that we can't install wind turbines to produce all electricity needed. Wind turbines only produce electricity when the wind blows and thus can only be part of the energy infrastructure. Even countries like Denmark who has invested heavily in wind since early 90s still only gets a low total amount from wind and has coal powered power plants as backbone energy source. The sensationalist headlines showing 40% electricity production (not total energy) from wind is only in peak periods.
I doubt it is possible to cover the total energy needs without a reliable source like a power plant. I am all for green energy, but reliability and cost are equally important parameters.
It looks like it could be used for any purpose that requires some form of cover. Bus stop for example. Why not even use it for housing, given the materials are inert enough.
According to TFA, this method works not only on existing in-operation blades, but means landfilled blade material can be repurposed for remanufacture. That means less extraction of raw materials in the first place—presuming the chemical process isn’t obscenely resource-intensive.
This would also be interesting for custom car shops, aircraft manufacturers, and many other industries which work with composites, which create a significant amount of epoxy waste.
Readit News
One of my favorite books is "The Wizard and the Prophet", and it's great to see more and more companies following in Norman Borlaug's footsteps and finding new ways the science/tech fields can serve humanity.
If anyone out there is feeling a bit down about the general state of the tech industry, I highly encourage you to look into jobs in the green energy field. It's an exciting space filled with lots of passionate, mission-driven folks. (And, in case you're wondering, most of us aren't the neurotic, perpetually angry types that dominate the activist space. We're pretty chill people who just want a healthy and affordable planet.)
I’d second this - I’m not in green energy, but I am in a field that looks to have a substantially positive climate/environmental impact. If you’re feeling particularly existential about the world right now, there’s a real sense of relief from knowing your work is aligned with your values and where you want the world to go.
There are so many things this world needs smart people doing. A slowdown in the tech sector might just be the catalyst.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsapm.1c00896
From my reading of the press release, the novelty in this work is that they've found a process that works with "ordinary" chemicals, temperatures and pressures, so it can be scaled up economically.
I say "ordinary", because it might very well be working with mildly toxic chemicals at 80°C and 7 bar pressure or whatnot, so far outside the range of (at least economic) feasibility in the home lab.
MSDS: Material Safety Data Sheet
Looking in my workshop, nearly 100% of the "stuff in solution" there have solvents you do not want to breath. Then you do a bit of skiing and you see the composition of the waxes. You do a bit of woodworking and home improvement and you look at the composition of the glues. They are full of deadly compounds. So yes, we should not worry but still handle with care.
My simple advice: if you see on the product that it should be used in a well ventilated place, do it!
I use mostly safer compounds in my workshop (platinum-cure silicones, polyurethane resins, and occasionally good grade epoxy), but I still put on a proper mask, glasses, and gloves. Especially when working with my daughter. Those half-mask respirators are surprisingly comfortable (I found them easier to wear than N95/FFP2 masks).
https://www.sandia.gov/labnews/2021/01/29/carbon-fiber-for-w...
> "Wind blades containing carbon fiber weigh 25% less than ones made from traditional fiberglass materials. That means carbon fiber blades could be longer than fiberglass ones and, therefore, capture more energy in locations with low wind. A switch to carbon fiber also could extend blade lifetime because carbon fiber materials have a high fatigue resistance."
Carbon fiber could plausibly be made without reliance on any fossil fuel inputs. The chemical synthesis pipeline is (working backwards):
acrylonitrile -> polyacrylonitrile -> carbon fiber
propylene + NH3, O2 -> (catalytic ammoxidation) -> acrylonitrile
butane -> (dehydrogenation, olefin conversion) -> propylene
atmospheric CO2 + H2O -> CO + H2 (Fischer-Tropsch) -> -> butane
This is basically replacing petrochemistry with aero/hydro-chemisty to generate all the feedstocks. Once you get past the initial step (CO2 capture, conversion to carbon monoxide, and reduction with water-sourced hydrogen at high temp & pressure) it's basically just providing simple hydrocarbon feedstocks (non-fossil-sourced) into existing chemical processes developed by organic chemists over the past century or so.
Also, if you just bury the worn-out carbon-fiber blades in stable landfills, they don't degrade over time, so it's also removing carbon from the atmosphere (very slowly, of course, and not really enough to be very noticeable).
Put another way, you can either build 10 wind turbines with atmospheric carbon fiber, or 11 turbines with carbon fiber made from petrochemical feedstocks. Which option ultimately has a bigger reduction in CO2 emissions over the lifetime of the turbines?
It seems obvious that if synthesizing butane from atmospheric CO2 was anywhere near economic after applying a carbon tax, global warming would not be an existential threat. I'd love to be wrong, obviously...
The crisis is that its politically hard to coordinate that agreement and transition and we've not made as much use of the last four decades as we could have. Potentially passing irreversible tipping points.
Currently, these technologies are approaching parity on cost fairly quickly. It's basically at the prototype stage presently, so much more expensive, but widespread adoption and economies of scale could change that within several decades. The upfront costs are quite high, similar to any petrochemical complex, i.e. in the multi-billion-dollar range for any facility capable of significant industrial-scale output.
I know spacex had trouble finding autoclaves big enough for carbon fiber tanks. I would expect windmill blades need to be even bigger and hence need a bigger autoclave. So that would be a major challenge.
Then again this is a huge market, and the mentioned gains are quite big. So the economic benefits might be big enough that someone dares build an autoclave for carbon fiber windmill blades.
https://www.lmwindpower.com/en/services/the-problade-ultra
> "Leading edge erosion (LEE) is a phenomenon where the leading edge of a wind turbine blade is eroded due to rain, hail, UV, sand, dust, and numerous airborne particulates. Since wind turbine blades are built to last over 2 decades, this erosion exposes the fiberglass beneath and ultimately impacts the blade’s life causing the turbine to produce less energy over time."
I think it's probably better to just burn the carbon fiber. As you point out, it's not a significant amount of carbon, and it's a tidier solution with less risk of unintended consequences. If you want to capture and store carbon, burn it in a trash burning power plant that captures CO2. Then you have a more general-purpose solution for CO2 capture that you can feed any other carbon-based waste. (Of course, Reuse, Reuse and Recycle first, but eventually everything degrades to the point where it's best to burn it. This also helps pull out environmental toxins and heavy metals from materials we've made)
There's an interesting project in Norway to test trash burning with pure oxygen. The gas in the chamber will in effect be a mix of O2 and CO2. The released CO2 is recycled and the O2/CO2 mixture is controlled to optimize the temperature. This makes the trash burning, the cleaning of the exhaust and the CO2-capture more efficient.
So it seems to only be worth it if it doesn’t increase the total cost of a new wind turbine by too much compared to the added efficiency.
For example BMW invested a lot of money into carbon fiber production development and can now use some of the knowledge and technology in more mainstream products starting with iX SUV.
Of course, glass fiber wins here, being just molten rock extruded through a nozzle (well, quite simplified, but you get the idea). No expensive hydrocarbon synthesis required.
Nice one! Is there any literature on this without beeing a PhD in Chemistry (but in another Natural Science)?
Split CO2 to CO and O, split H2O to H2 and O.
CO + H is syngas, used as feedstock for synthetic fuels.
Then using a metal catalyst (iron or cobalt for example) and heat and pressure good old "organic chemistry" does the rest, various hydrocarbons form (and water as residual by product). This reaction itself gives off heat, so at least this part doesn't need that much energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/06/nautical...
Interested if someone finds out a reference on how much waste is expected from recreational boats.
I doubt it is possible to cover the total energy needs without a reliable source like a power plant. I am all for green energy, but reliability and cost are equally important parameters.
[0] https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1623295579542659072
Forget a banana, "bike for scale"
https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/carbon-rivers-make...