Real enviromental thinking and engineering
update 01/01/2024
It is not easy being an enviromental thinker , change in some of the subject areas that enviromental thinkers will affect , are not easy to convey to people , and we also have the problem of finding good solutions that really consider what may or may not happen in the future.
COP28 I felt was a failiure ,in part because the technical discussions about technology selections , were nearly completely absent , there was lots of about clean technology , but no comparative measures or agreement on what that technology should be. The final draft communique seemed to kick the can down the road, and i very much doubt that this delay in a proper exchange of which technology will lead mankind through the next 100yrs , just didnt feature. There is every chance the 1.5oC ave temp increase , has already occurred in 2023 , which leaves some future scenarios both wide open and particulalry in ice loss , all too predicatable. The oceans are a massive heat sink , and i think we are now on a course where they will continue to build heat , and the cold of the polar seas will gradually weaken.
I dont know how you can claim to be a leader or head of state , when you start to contemplate the changes in sea surface temperatures we are currently seeing. Some scenarios on ice sheet loss are being modelled , and these may take longer than 100yrs , but none the less it is possible some areas may well go quicker than others and even the most conservative ice melt and sea level rise figures are 15cm in the next 40yrs , but if the 1.5oC ave temp standrd is already broken ,then the higher sea level rise scenarios are possible in 100-150yrs and at 500cm ,the losses of crops and property could be very dmamaging to pretty much every economy around the globe , just taking a a common example for tourist economies with beach holidays ,500cm or 5m , would cover most of the beaches people visit , the rivers would also rise creating inland problems too.
Most people are concerned about food quality and pollution in river and ocean water bodies , has been a feature of many government efforts , but there are still rivers around the world that are carrying industrial activity chemicals to places of human agricultural and aquaculture production , let alone the depletion of aquifers and safe clean water for drinking and bathing.
I dont think i have seen such a time when the evidence is saying , we have to change , and even when we do change we will still be living with the problems , we should have thought about decades ago , I hope my designs are good solutions and I think we are pretty close to ensuring we have energy , and clean industrial systems and for viewers of my web page , i want to show my ideas and work towards this better future.
Update:-15/10/2024
The new labour government has just celebrated 100days in office , and so far its not very green/eco thinking, very little on materials and definitions , we also have COP 29 coming up and it doesn't look like much is going to change there. The recent Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the USA look to have costs of around $60bn and the question is , if we should be moving faster on removing fossil fuels from the energy systems.
The Sequential Oxygen combustion system which i have designed offers a great leap in electricity generation efficiency , even beating the H class gas turbine . There are a few differing views on what exactly the real eco/green technology future should look like , but the most alarming thing is lack of comparison between technologies . In 2010 i did advocate massive roll out of nuclear fission , but by 2016 i could see that this wasn't such a good solution , as it wastes a lot of materials as well as storing the spent fuel problems.
The wind array and solar pv arrays are ok for some energy demands , but using them for a national energy solution has a number of risks and management problems , and having power stations of constant output has advantages.
I have improved the efficiency of the waste burning plants and am confident they should deliver the most efficient sorted waste burning system yet seen , I still think we are looking at 300-500MW size boilers and USC steam turbine parameters. Other advantages are converting Co2 into fuels and other products that can be made from Methanol ,including lubricants and oils , offering a far more circular recycling system for many products used in human living , which is something wind and solar pv arrays cannot do , which is why i think this is an important technology in Eco/green thinking , its use is greater than just cheaper electricity.
The modalities of the power stations ,offer various interesting possibilities , including making Hydrogen and large scale battery store , which change management of the power stations , dependent upon demands to grids being encountered .
The electrical grids of the future , are a more complex problem , I estimate the uk distribution grid looses 1000mw due to having lower efficiency transformers and cables, all of which have appeared over the last 10-20yrs , however simply replacing old equipment with new equipment is not really the future thinking , the distribution grid for the fully electric home ,is straight forward enough but would require far more electricity generation ,in the cold months , commercial and industrial switches from gas to fully electric are more difficult , as the power flows at the more central parts of distribution are much higher , to enable more power to be sent to the furthest points , the maths is very challenging , but its not just a maths calculation , its getting good cabling , as underneath roads and pavements there are other utilities competing for the space , and you often find cabling compromises , which I don't think is how we should be thinking , if we are to replace cables with vital increased power cables . That's the trouble with the politicians thinking this is just maths and money , you can open a trench in the road and find unexpected things. There are underground works standards , but somehow i think we need how to create priorities and standards for electricity cables.
The fuel standard for the waste burning power stations , does mean wastes will need to be sorted , but I hope that we can develop a system where no wastes go to landfill , current recycling for the uk is around 40% , but even so materials come to an end of life and will need a waste disposal route and high temperature combustion is a good route , and my design i believe can give a zero CO2 direct emissions to atmosphere power station , as i can use the CO2 to either make CH4 or other products
as glimpse of calculations so far 400MW using 64 tonnes/hr of a fuel at 18000kj/kg .
Thanks for reading John Jackson
