On Oct 11, 2010, at 5:29 PM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Keith Henson wrote:
Since the 1970s, US politicians have given lip service to "National
Energy Self-sufficiency." The US has failed to achieve anything,
largely because nobody had a good idea of how to make it work at the
same or lower cost than importing oil. This method might not work
either. However, it passes first-order physics and economics
analysis and seems to deserve serious further study.
You (USA) might be closer to self-sufficienty than you (Keith) think.
Deepen the crisis (and reduce energy expendidure) and get a little
more of shale gas, and you get there.
Alberto Monteiro, minion of evil oil companies
I still want to see someone work out a production scale process for
seafloor methane->syngas->syncrude. Or even convert from flaring off
natgas in the oilfield to field-scale syncrude production. If we have
a finite amount of methane available, the least we can do is stop
wasting it in production. Once you get to syncrude, you have
perfectly reasonable refinery feedstock.
Obviously it's a stopgap solution, but it would buy time to get off of
a petroleum-based energy economy before the worst aspects of post-peak-
oil economy start to kick in.
(I would *really* like to see petroleum production start to migrate
more toward plastics feedstock, and plastics in turn migrate away from
"disposable packaging" -- the dreaded PETE water bottle included --
and more toward durable materials engineering. There's time yet to
consider that. But that's later on in the plan. Along with
recovering a lot of what's already been tossed into landfills .. which
can be mined, if it comes down to it.)
"'How do I print, Mr. Kahn?’ ‘How do I save?’ It’s Control-S! It’s
ALWAYS Control-S!!” — Kahn Souphanousinphone
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