Seaweed cultivation, To The Gore, forest products and cleanliness of mounts

After my long absence some news emphasized from the sector of the energy and environment:

New association with seaweed producer for bifuels

After the last associations between companies that investigate and develop technologies of cultivation of seaweed for the biofuels production and after the long list although incomplete of companies that chase this target (someone have already failed), now the company PetroAlgae specializing in the cultivation of microseaweed has come to an agreement of collaboration with the counsel of engineering Foster Wheeler (both of the USA). With the time some companies that were chasing the cultivation of seaweed like Eldorado for the biofuels manufacture have been closing or collaborating other companies that have injected funds to continue with his investigation hoping to achieve a viable system at industrial level to use the biomass of the cultivation of seaweed as a source of biofuels that substitute the derivatives of the oil. They claim many of these technologies to make biodiésel that it could be used without need to modify the current engines. You index: Ecoticias.

To the Gore caught in a lie

Making use of the Copenague summit on the climate change mister Al Gore contributed a few information catastŕoficos on our nearby future based on the studies of an eminent scientist. The scientist, on having been asked on these declarations, affirmed that it has never contributed the information that To The Gore it has used and that it has been a finished invention of the most famous manipulator of images of our times.

The Galician forest sector falls down 60 %

The production maderera of Gallicia is spending bad moments for the decrease of the wooden demand for the sectors related to the construction and the furniture, falling down in production and prices about 60 %. And I wonder: would not it be a good moment to make use and to open the market of the biomass? Referncias: Farodevigo.

Monetes cleanliness to prepare fires

I take a lot of time wondering if there are carried out plans of cleanliness of mounts to prepare forest fires, although some of them do not understand the concept of cleanliness of the mounts but then they complain about that the fires propagate in spite of looking at them. The Community of Madrid has announced That the works in this matter to which 330 persons will devote themselves until May 31 in 1.500 There is of the community, with a budget for 11,5 million euros. You index: Madrid.org.

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Madeira and biomass, the things are changing

After my long absence I hope that this 2010 should allow a regular update of the blog.

The sector of the industry of the wood happens in moments of change, with the descent of the price of the wood of a very marked way as for example in Gallicia and Cantabria, concerning 50 % of fall.

The wood industry has to renew his image and his productive methods to be supported, and this is what they have done nuevosmoradores.com. It is a question of an inicitiva impelled by the Foundation Center of Services and forest promotion and of his Industry of Castile and León (Cesefor), for the commercialization of products of sustainable wood, preferably certified. Although I believe that online must improve the commercial aspect, the motive for which I mention this initiative is because the presentation and philosophy do not answer to a commercial stereotype but to an exposition of sostenibilidad and protection of the environment.

In this line I believe that the certification of the sustainable extraction of wood is very necessary to guarantee, not only that there is not imported wood of countries in which deforestation is caused, but also for the wood of national origin. One of my recent worries walking along a forest exploited for the wooden extraction has been observing that there is no arboreal renewal of the species that is extracted. This undoubtedly is an untenable development, and it will only lead to the deterioration of the forest and to the disappearance of the activity maderera.

The sustainable development of the wood industry is an environmental priority and we should turn it into a commercial priority.

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Nuclear cemeteries

The mass media general practitioners mention, but without big enthusiasm, that in the Yebra locality a plenary meeting has been summoned in the Town hall to decide if it is accepted or not that there the nuclear cemetery is located, or how there is called he now euphemistically “a centralized temporary store” (ATC). Yebra is approximately 15 km of Zorita, whose closed nuclear power plant will be dismantled.

The decision is important for the fact that it will be the first ATC as such (although there is already some temporary radioactive wastes store). But it is not of interest that one speaks too much of this topic, because inevitably the debate makes arise concerning the nuclear energy, and in Spain we are in an indefinite moratorium of that no politician dares to go out.

Half of the locality that probably will lodge the nuclear cemetery is in favor and another half in against. The curious thing is that those who are in favor do not use safety arguments, and those who are against only use safety arguments, but quite based on a confidence or interior suspicion, not informed, not pondered, not justified.

While what is done is to fan the achievements of the wind power, commenting on every new mark of production, installation or management. Repeating with insistence every a little time, the quantity of energy that give us the windmills and it renewable that are.

More official information about ATC.

Energy 100 % sustainable YOU GO (wind, water, the sun)

I do not know if the concept is very widespread YOU GO of the energies, that is to say, which origin is the wind, the water and the sun. I believe that it is a populist concept of those who advocate a renewable energy to 100 % short-term.

And this what they think Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi in an artíulo published in the magazine Investigation and Science.

These two investigators affirm that it is possible for 2030 that all the energy of the world, incluída the energy of the transport comes from renewable origins. They have put a series of determinants to this affirmation, it is true, with what they do not move away from the reality theoretically. But such determinants are so enormous that the affirmation turns in impossible short-term (year 2030) and therefore it turns out to be a little ridiculous that do it.

Impossible premises up to 2030 to obtain 100 % of the energy of renewable sources:

• it is possible to replace all kinds of heating with electrical systems
• it is possible to modify the motor-car industry so that they make only electrical vehicles
• one will manage to design batteries that simplify the recycling of the lithium
• the solar cells of thin layer will be optimized
• the silver needs will diminish in the solar badges and the silver will retrain
• solar cells of thin layer will be optimized without recrazy
• drummers will be designed for the vehicles that simplify the recycling of the platinum
• wind turbines will develop without cogwheels that they will not need neodimio

Also in his calculations they commit another two important errors:

• of the needs for wind turbines they have not thought that it is necessary to have an equivalent potency installed in another type of energy source for when there is no wind.
• in the needs for solar energy and his installation in roofs they have considered that a “modest house” with tiled, that is to say, they are thinking about single-family housings.

Finally, the energy supplying exclusively with renewable energies is not possible short-term (2030). I believe that it is possible to improve very much in the mid term (2050), and perhaps for 2100 let's have the technology that allows us to re-use the worn-out fuel of the nuclear power plants. This whenever our leaders were said to create the ATC (in which investigating this posibilida) in some place instead of playing the mouse and the cat between citizens, mayors, presidents of autonomous regions and varied political blackmails.

Surpluses of energy and electrical vehicles enchufables

Last week a reader was asking me on the possibility of being useful excentes of energy in the night for that it recharges with the electrical cars enchufables. The question arose from one words of the Minister of Industry, Mr. Sebastián.

I have wanted to answer to this consultation with an article (thank you Jaime). The minister said the following thing, more or less:

“an energy that is already there, and that now we do not use, that is the electricity that takes place in the night”

In other occasions I have spoken about the energy surpluses. In fact it is very strange that electric power takes place in excess, since REE has a few consumption forecasts and the production is adapted to these forecasts, modulating the production with each of the available sources as the necesidade and the production capacity of the above mentioned sources.

For example, the nuclear energy as source will be always used and his electric power production is constant, since the reactors cannot stop. The sources more modulables as for production are the wind power (whenever there is wind) and the hydraulics (with the wealth changes for periods).

Thus in the night it is possible to allow producing hydraulic power and it is possible that the production capacity of the wind one is major than it is used (it is not possible to allow producing completely with other energy sources if we attend on the whole national territory). To these renewable energy sources they are to those that we can refer like “surpluses“ although in fact it does not take place any more than it is needed.

This aptitude to produce more energy by means of renewable sources does not mean that it has no cost, but I will obviate this topic in this article.

The question is that we can increase a little the night electrical demand to recharge the electrical cars, and on having used renewable energy, we would be quite clean.

The question that always arises when we think that we have major energy production capacity in hours vale by means of renewable energy sources, it is if we might store this energy to use it in the rush hours.

The answer to this question is simple: it is already done what one can. In the hydroelectric power stations that allow it (reversible calls), when in hours vale can produce to itself energy that is not needed, it is used to pump water towards the top reservoir later to use to produce energy again in schedules top.

Apart from this the storability of energy is limited. Nevertheless we can quote other ways of doing it as I have commented in previous articles:

• underground in compressed air: energy wears out in compressing the air but it is an energy that takes place in abundance and when his use is needed it is used generated by the compressed air
• giant batteries (they can give service from 15 minutes until several hours)
• hydrogen: apart from the accident control measures for his storage later we will have the problem of his catalización. Supposing that we could store in hydrogen all the energy that we wanted, might we use it later without problems?

In answer to Jaime, the hydrogen theoretically is a good alternative of storage of energy. At present it is used thinking about the vehicles moved by batteries of fuel, and like energy reservoir about some isolated facilities where they depend on the proper energy production to be supported.

Anyway the hydrogen at the moment has the disadvantage of which the fuel batteries are expensive and use a few very scarce metals as catalysts, and therefore it has to improve the technology so that it is an alternative of extensible use.

Market of the biomass: of big or of children?

The origin and the use of the biomass has multiple variants. To understand the possibilities that the biomass offers us as sustainable energy source, we can contemplate the following uses or ways of consuming it, and diverse ways of being present on the market of the biomass. Finally we are before diverse markets related between themselves:

• Pellets: for domestic cauldrons, single-family housings, neighbors' communities, state buildings … The pellets can have diverse origins and thermal capacities; from remains of prunings, garbage of the wood industry, remains lignocelulósicos of the agriculture, wood proceeding from cultivation for biomass, etc.
• Bones and rinds of fruits: in gross like combustible for cauldrons
• Cauldrons: installation and maintenance of cauldrons (domestic or industrial status)
• Facilities of cold and centralized heat
• Electrical production from the gasification of the biomass

About all these questions one will speak in V Congress of Bioenergy inside the frame Expobioenergía 2010 that will be celebrated in Valladolid in next October, both from the technical point of view and from the business point of view. For whom is it more profitable?: for the consumer for the economic saving, for the fitter / president of the calederas, for the producer of pellets, for the electrical companies that use the biomass to generate electricity …

Meanwhile we are present at contradictions as in the Basque locality of Errigoiti where the citizens are opposed to the installation of a head office of biomass to produce electricity. The reasons are the contamination by smokes of the head office and the noise that it would produce. It surprises me that the noises are a problem, in any case, as for the contamination, if we all put in the attitude of quela ours electricity it is generated by others that here it bothers, we are going to end up by illuminating ourselves with sails.

In León they use 1500 tons of pruning of the city to produce compost, but they have thought that better if they can use them to make pellets. I wonder where from they will extract later the compost.

And finally in a locality of Corunna Natural gas considers to install a head office of electrical generation with biomass whenever he could have the quantity of necessary biomass during the whole year.

It is already time to speak about Biodiversity

I have been late a few months in mentioning that we are in the year of the Biodiversity. The habitual readership knows that occasionally I speak on biodiversity, and that I have always said that it is a hanging subject in the civil environmental campaign to raise public awareness of the world.

This year that the UNO has declared it of the Biological diversity, the half general practitioners are making diffusion work enough. It suits very much to speak about tigers or lynxes in danger, about the polar bear and the climate change, and the photos can be very spectacular, so the topic sells enough.

To try to show the complexity of the meaning of the biodiversity I am going to mention a pair of examples. A few months ago I commented on the extravagant proposal of a few scientists of reforestar the whole Sahara desert to finish with the climate change. The atrocity of this proposal has many variants, but one of them is to finish with the ecological diversity that supposes a warm desert as the Sahara and therefore with his biodiversity; because a desert is not a dead place.

The interrelations between the living species and the environment are very complex and we cannot control them. For this motive we cannot also control the conservation of certain animal or vegetable species creating artificial preserves or cultivating / breeding in captivity. The proof that the things do not work this way is that the lynxes raised in captivity in Spain suffer from a renal illness that does not observe in the lynxes that they live at large. It is necessary to preserve the natural biodiversity without degrading the environment, without crushing it and later to try to recover it of artificial form, because the most probable thing is that we could not do it.

Finally I leave to you a web of reference that selects a species every day to speak about her in this international year of the biodiversity.