Q-1. What is the net system efficiency from renewable energy to liquid WindFuels?
The mid- term system efficiency should be about 55% (HHV), and higher efficiency will eventually be possible.

Q-2. How expensive must oil be for WindFuels to compete?
In some cases only $50/bbl. Read more.

Q-3. How does WindFuels solve the grid stability and energy storage challenges?
The grid stability challenge arises from changes in grid supply not being able to follow the changes in grid demand quickly enough. Wind power is often greater in the middle of the night when demand is minimal. “Clean coal” and nuclear power plants take many hours to turn down, and with most of the good sites for pumped hydropower already developed, there is no cost effective method of storing energy. (See our discussion of compressed air energy storage, CAES.and our recent ASME paper on Energy Storage.)

WindFuels will only draw power during off-peak hours when there is excess renewable energy available at very low cost. Off-peak power rates are often under 15% of peak rates to encourage more use of it. WindFuels can respond within milliseconds to changes in supply and demand. It will completely solve the grid stability problem by temporarily storing the excess peak grid energy in hydrogen and then converting the hydrogen into liquid fuels (which are easily stored and distributed) at a fairly steady rate around the clock. See our Economics page and our discussion on Stabilizing the Renewable Grid for more information.

Q-4. Why is 50-60% efficiency something to get excited about?
First of all, WindFuels will beat any other renewable fuel in the market place by a wide margin within 7 years. Secondly, it’s twice as good as any expert thought likely just three years ago.

Q-5. How are WindFuels nearly 100% carbon neutral?
Absolutely no new fossil carbon is removed from the Earth. All the carbon comes from the effluent CO₂ from fossil-fueled power plants. All energy input is from the cheapest renewable resource – off-peak wind.

Q-6. Well, the coal’s CO₂ is eventually released into the atmosphere, so how can WindFuels have a climate benefit?
That CO₂ is being created and exhausted anyway. Almost no fossil power plants have CO₂ sequestration, so their CO₂ emissions are a reality. Using that CO₂ to create fuels means the CO₂ eventually gets exhausted, but those fuels would offset the production of deep-water drilling, tar sands, oil shale, and coal-to-liquids fuels; all of which are far more carbon intensive and environmentally destructive than “conventional” oil fuels.

Q-7. Do you have a working demonstration?
Not yet, but we have some preliminary experimental data, and more will be coming quickly. We have developed the necessary innovations and simulated the plant in great detail using commercially available chemical engineering process software; but we are a small company with a limited R&D budget. The demonstration plant that is planned will require additional funding.

Q-8. How do you respond to old-timer “experts” who say “Major breakthroughs in energy are impossible” ?
Scientific progress and creativity are hard to predict, but both happen. Who would have predicted commercial jet travel in the 1940’s, or lasers in the 1950’s, or cell phones in the 1970’s, or Blackberries in the 1980’s, or PV installed at under $4/W in the 1990’s?
“Necessity is the mother of invention.” The near-term need for WindFuels wasn’t completely clear until about three years ago.
A number of industries have demonstrated the kind of scale-up needed here. They have had the same basic common denominators: high profitability, no resource limitations on raw materials, and sufficient demand or rapidly escalating demand to accommodate growth.
WindFuels will not require large numbers of highly skilled workers outside of factory settings – as in nuclear energy. WindFuels will not require large areas of land and a quintupling of the number of farmers – as in biofuels. WindFuels will not require complex solid-phase separations – as in algae oil and cellulosic ethanol. (One of the first rules in scalable chemical engineering is to avoid solid-phase handling, separations, and processing.)
The RFTS plant is mostly based on the kinds of chemical engineering processes that scaled up at lightning speed between the late-1930’s and the early-1960’s – and transformed modern society.
About 70% of the subsystems and components needed (or very closely related components) are currently in production at the multi-billion-dollar level by multiple, international companies. And there are fairly close relatives of most of the rest of the components currently in production at the multi-billion-dollar level.
Scale-up will require large investments, but they will come because there will soon be no question about the profitability of the WindFuels plants. Scale-up will also take time, mostly because big investments are seldom made quickly. However, scale up of the processes used in Windfuels will be much easier than those in algal oil, cellulosic ethanol, batteries, CSP, hydrogen, PV, geothermal, superconducting transmission, .... Read more.

Q-9. What do you think about cellulosic ethanol?
Trees, shrubs, and grasses sequester two orders of magnitude more carbon above the ground than is being released annually by burning fossil fuels, and an even greater amount is sequestered in soils. When forests are harvested for cellulosic ethanol, about 20% of the above-ground carbon ends up in the ethanol. (Much is left to decay rapidly on the forest floor. Most is emitted from the cellulosic ethanol plant.) When new land is tilled, much of the carbon that has been sequestered in the soil for centuries is released over the next few years. This “carbon debt” can take more than a century for the biofuels to repay.

Grasslands predominate naturally in regions where rainfall is inadequate to support forests. “Range Fuels” may be a catchy name, but any attempt to produce cellulosic ethanol from most range land will result in a huge release of sequestered carbon and not enough energy to matter.

Q-10. How can WindFuels compete with tar sands?
Products from heavy oil (such as the tar sands in Alberta) have 60% to 90% greater total carbon emissions than conventional oil and a huge environmental footprint (orders of magnitude greater than that of oil platforms in ANWR). Processing heavy oil requires an enormous amount of natural gas. Tar sands and extra heavy oils (from Venezuela) are abundant, but utilizing them will become very expensive as emissions regulations (to save the planet) become more stringent. The IEA says we need a $50-$60/bbl tax on heavy oil products to have any chance of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2050. WindFuels will be cheaper than heavy-oil products within 5 years. Read more.

Q-11. Why does the DOE still not admit to Peak Oil?
Actually, they now do. It’s just some sections of the media that haven’t gotten with the program.

Q-12. Wouldn’t it be better to just replace coal power plants with wind?
Perhaps, if (a) there was a cheap method of storing the energy for when it was needed, (b) there was an adequate transmission grid, and (c) someone would pay for all the wind farms. All of these are show-stoppers beyond a certain point. We agree: put as much wind into the grid as the market will justify, and use the excess off-peak wind to make transportation fuels.

(If you’re not a scientist or engineer, you might want to skip this next one.)

Q-13. How would you boil down your major technical breakthroughs into a few sentences for the general chemical engineer?
To start with, we’ve doubled the efficiency of producing syngas (the feed mixture of CO and H₂) from H₂ and CO₂ by making the RWGS reaction practical. (This requires, among other things, an order of magnitude advance in cost-effectiveness of gas-to-gas recuperators.) Secondly, we’ve reduced both the energy and effluent losses normally seen in recycling of un-reacted reactants and byproducts in high-pressure FTS processes by an order of magnitude. (This takes too much space to explain further here.) Thirdly, we’ve nearly eliminated the big losses normally seen from isenthalpic expansions in the standard product separations processes. Fourthly, we’ve improved by 50% the efficiency of conversion of low- and mid-grade waste heat to electrical power. (Our friends in geothermal and CSP may find this hard to believe, but it’s real. See the published DORC pending patent.)

Q-14. How does Doty Windfuels expect to make money?
Here’s our vision in a nutshell.

The world’s appetite for transportation fuels will steadily grow at a rate greater than can be met by conventional fossil fuels and alternatives, so the price of oil will rise steadily until a competitive alternative becomes available. There is currently no competitive alternative. We will be able to make fuels from CO2 and H2O at a much lower price than any other sustainable alternative. These Windfuels will be carbon neutral, so the public will embrace them.

We have a very strong patent and proprietary position, as well as an enormous head start. We will probably have no serious competition for at least a decade.
We first need to build a small pilot plant. When it starts producing fuels (two years after funding) we will demonstrate production of more carbon-neutral fuels in a few weeks than the total cumulative global production of photosynthetic algal oil and direct solar fuels combined. That comparison will generate enormous media attention, and investors will be beating a path to our doors.

We will begin producing and selling the modular plants that will make fuels from CO2 and off-peak wind energy. No one else will be able to do that, so we will be able to command strong profit margins on these plants.

The payback on the Windfuels plants will be about 2 years. They will sell for $5M to $35M each, depending on their size. There will be hundreds of thousands of wind farm owners all over the world standing in line to buy them, as fast as we can make them.

We expect be a multi-billion-dollar company 7 years after first funding, and growth will go on from there. The market for the Windfuels plants we’ll be making will eventually be trillions of dollars.

Q-15. How certain are you that your simulations are correct?
The WinSim Design II software has been well validated in thousands of similar simulations in the petrochemical and chemical process industries over the past two decades. We’ve collaborated with outside experts in the field during our entire research and development process.

We waited to release the information until enough time had passed that we could be comfortable with our patent positions. So we have released more information in greater detail than any other alternative energy company we’ve ever seen. Our designs and calculations are available for any and all members of the scientific community to assess and critique, and at this point our designs have been thoroughly scrutinized by thousands of interested scientists and engineers. No one has yet found a significant error or oversight. (Some critics – perhaps with vested interests in other technologies – described perceived problems, but none of their technical challenges have proven to be valid.)

Q-16. Chemical processing plants have a reputation for being dirty. Won’t the same apply to WindFuels plants?
The inputs to the WindFuels process don’t contain noxious contaminants as seen in fossil fuels (especially in heavy oils). For example, the sulfur and heavy metals contents will be at least 10,000 times lower. That, along with the numerous process advances, make 100% recycling practical. Emissions will be similar to those seen at major highway junctions.

Q-17. What is the current status of your patenting activities?
Three pioneering PCTs are pending, and others are in progress. Based on Written Opinions from the International Searching Authority, it now appears that the probability that all of our pending patents will be quite valuable is very high.
Q-18. Have you published WindFuels papers in peer-reviewed journals?
We’ve published eight peer-reviewed technical papers in just over a year. Read more...


Q-19. Why not just stop with your hydrogen production from off-peak wind energy and use it in fuel cells?
One of the main reasons hydrogen will not be used in much of the transport sector is that the density of energy storage in hydrogen is less than 10% that in jet fuel or gasoline. (Hydrogen storage tanks must be very large and heavy.) No informed person today thinks there is any another plausible long-range alternative than sustainable, carbon-neutral, liquid-hydrocarbon fuels for air, rail, ship, and truck transport – nor for a large fraction of private transportation. After a decade of intensive development, fuel cells are still ten times more expensive than internal combustion engines. Read more...


Q-20. I’ve heard that Los Alamos Laboratories has a new process they call “Green Freedom” for making all the renewable methanol we need to power our cars?
There’s nothing there that’s of real significance for our current crisis. They might have a better way of separating CO₂ from the atmosphere (though the details have not yet been released), but they disregard economic and political realities. The latest research shows that electrical energy will cost $35/GJ ($100/MWhr) from new nuclear plants that would be ordered next year in the US – or five times as much as off-peak wind energy. If we assume 55% conversion efficiency and add (very conservatively) about 25% for a few other cost components, the “nuclear methanol” from their process will cost $1.40/kg. The mean price of methanol in 2010 was ~$0.38/kg, and in 2011 it may be around $0.45/kg. Who would pay three times as much for “nuclear methanol” as for methanol from natural gas or coal? Their “nuclear gasoline” would cost over $10/gal – and there are still all the political problems associated with nuclear energy.

How could Martin and Kubic be so divorced from reality when it comes to the cost of nuclear energy? Apparently, they think nuclear energy in the future will cost little more than it did in the early 1970’s when the federal government was paying most of the bill for the development, the fuel, the plant construction, the waste storage, and the litigation – and when many materials cost only one-tenth what they will cost within a few years. It is certainly possible that the cost of nuclear power plants can be brought back down after a decade of experience rebuilding the industry, but public support for nuclear is waning.

One of the byproducts from WindFuels will be cheap carbon-neutral methanol, and the amount produced will be sufficient for all industrial needs.

Q-21. Are there any limitations to the types of chemicals that can be made from WindFuels?
Not really. Some of the products coming directly from the FTS process will be ethylene, propylene, and methanol, which today serve as the basic building blocks for most chemicals. Of course, some other inputs will sometimes be required (like nitrogen, salt, etc.), but the point is that fossil fuels are not essential for any chemicals.

Q-22. What do you intend to do next at Doty Windfuels?
Proceed with experiments and demonstrations as expeditiously as possible. We expect to be producing modular WindFuels plants and selling them to wind farm owners within five years. Ultimately, we intend to license the WindFuels technology to all qualified, interested companies at reasonable fees. Read more.

Q-23. Won’t it be extremely costly and difficult to build long CO₂ pipelines from the coal power plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio to the wind farms in Texas, the Dakotas, and other high-wind states?
There’s plenty of CO₂ produced in the high-wind states: The most wind-blessed states are the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Kansas. All of these states have at least 80% of their power derived from coal, and there are lots of bio-ethanol plants being built there, which release enormous amounts of CO₂.

But that is not all the wind that is available in the U.S. There are also other excellent wind resources throughout America. For instance: the major industrial regions of Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, Northeast Ohio, Northwest Indiana, Northeast Illinois, Eastern Wisconsin, and all of Michigan are all within 200 miles of the extraordinary winds available on the great lakes. This map from the DOE shows the projected wind potential at 50m across America.

The amount of CO₂ being released from point sources in the U.S. (coal power plants, cement factories, ammonia plants, biofuels refineries, other industrial sources) is sufficient to make twice as much transportation fuel as we currently consume.

It will not be difficult or costly to transmit electrical power a few hundred miles from wind farms to the RFTS plants, and it will not be difficult to lay CO₂ pipelines a few hundred miles long (at least if they don’t cross more than one state border). The total amount of coal currently consumed within 350 miles of high-wind areas in the U.S. (and not requiring more than one state border crossing) is about 400 million tons per year. The coal and gas power plants in these areas generate enough CO₂ to make nearly half the transportation fuels consumed in the U.S. Longer CO₂ pipelines and power lines would eventually be needed, but work on the CO₂ pipeline infrastructure is already underway for enhanced oil recovery– and eventually for sequestration. Over 3500 miles of CO₂ pipelines have already been built, and the CO₂ is currently available from them at over 120 bar, 97% purity, for only $65/ton. Further purification to the level needed for the RFTS plant will add under $15/ton. See the pages under Economics for more information on the CO₂ market.

Q-24. How do the water demands for WindFuels compare to those for biofuels and nuclear?
At least an order of magnitude less. The WindFuels plant design simulations have assumed dry cooling. It should also be noted that reverse-osmosis (water purification) processes have become much cheaper in the past six years, and they’ll get cheaper yet over the next six years.

Q-25. Most of the world is not blessed with good wind resources. How realistic will it be for Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), nuclear, and Geo-thermal to make renewable liquid fuels using your RFTS process in places like India, China, Africa, and Iceland?
Glad you asked. CSP and enhanced geo-thermal still have a long ways to go before it will be practical for them to compete with wind in a Class-4 (or better) wind site, but progress is being made. We’ve shown that a 50% improvement in thermal conversion efficiency will be possible where both good geo-thermal and CSP resources are available fairly close together – within about 20 miles of each other. More details on this can be found in our DORC ASME paper.

There is another possibility, called dry reforming, for making liquid fuels using CO₂, methane, and high-temperature CSP. Our analysis shows it won’t compete with WindFuels in North America, but it might eventually make sense in some countries.

Nuclear energy can be used if nuclear power plants can be built at affordable prices. Energy from new nuclear power plants in the U.S. will be 2-6 times more expensive than off-peak wind for at least the next decade. Read more.

Q-26. What do you see as the greatest challenges in making WindFuels a reality?
The biofuels community may be very reluctant to admit that there is a better alternative. The “not invented here” attitude at many institutions may limit their enthusiasm. Most Green Tech research and funding institutions have already fully committed their resources and focus to what seemed to be the best alternatives a few years ago. The DOE seems oblivious to the spiraling costs of nuclear, microalgae, shale oil, cellulosic ethanol, sequestration, coal, and CTL; and some at the DOE will have a hard time admitting the “Hydrogen Program” needs to be re-named the “WindFuels” program.

Most energy scientists and engineers focus very narrowly on one particular aspect of a particular resource or alternative. Very few are comfortable doing system-level analyses of complex chemical plants, and few are willing to support anything that has not yet been advocated by high-level officials at the DOE.

There hasn’t been a new oil refinery built in the US in over 30 years, so there are very few chemical engineering programs with the expertise needed in novel, complex plant simulations to provide the kind of support needed quickly.

Q-27. I’ve heard that cellulosic ethanol will be under $1.20/gal?
Those estimates are still assuming the feedstocks will be cheap, and those are not total costs. (Remember, the DOE was saying in late 2006 that oil would average $30/bbl in 2011 (now, $110/b seems more likely). Most agricultural products today are more than twice what they were in 2006.) Even the advocates saying cellulosic ethanol will be produced at $1.20/gal are saying that means it will be $2.50/gal at the pump. Distribution costs of liquid fuels are normally about 5% of total costs, so clearly these optimistic estimates are nothing close to what is normally included in production costs.

When the push for cellulosic ethanol began in 2002, most cellulosic feedstocks were $25/ton. Demand for wood pellets in heating stoves has increased by an order of magnitude in the past 8 years, and another order of magnitude increase is expected in the next decade. Wood pellets are currently about $180/ton, but after the 500,000 km² of dead pine forests in North America (killed by the pine beetle) are consumed in forest fires over the next five years, wood pellets are likely to be over $300/ton

There won’t be enough low-cost cellulosic feedstocks available within 5 years to supply more than a few dozen ethanol plants, as there will be a much more lucrative market for most feedstocks. Burning cellulosic feedstocks for heat is 2 to 3 times more efficient and an order of magnitude less expensive than making ethanol from it. You do the math!

There will be explosive growth in the demand for wood (both raw logs and pellets) for home heating and co-firing in power plants over the next decade and beyond. These fuels can be transported long distances to the markets and easily distributed to the consumers. That is not true for switchgrass unless processed into something similar to wood pellets. Some low grade straw and hay currently sells for under $60/ton, but that for which there is a real market is selling for $70 to $120/ton. Light feedstocks such as grasses and corn stover will not be viable because of transport and handling costs. The price of corn tripled as demand for it from ethanol producers grew, and the same can be expected for hay and forest wastes if it becomes practical to make cellulosic ethanol from such materials

If high-grade cellulosic feedstocks are $300/ton in 2015 and the plant achieves 50% efficiency (as both Range Fuels and Coskata expect), the cost of the feedstock alone will be $3 per gallon of ethanol produced. Plant capital and O&M costs will add another $1.50/gal. Some feedstocks may still be under $150/ton in 2015, but not most – if there is a cellulosic-ethanol plant nearby.

The best use of biomass is in power co-generation. Over 40% of its energy gets converted into electricity, and most of the rest of its energy can be used in local heating. All the CO₂ exhaust could be sent to a WindFuels plant to be re-used in transportation fuels. The next best use of waste wood is for domestic heating with advanced wood stoves. (Published recently in Science, but posted here a year earlier.)

Cellulosic ethanol has been much more expensive than corn ethanol for the past decade. It may at some point be cheaper for a few years, but it will be more expensive again, soon after the first dozen cellulosic ethanol plants come on-stream and consume all the cheap feedstocks.

The DOE and private investors committed $1.2B to build six demonstration cellulosic plants in 2008. However, it now appears that only two or perhaps three of them will be built, and the total annual cellulosic ethanol production from these plants (in late 2011) is likely to be under 50 Mgal/yr, which would have the energy content of about 0.02% of our current transportation fuel usage. Growth in cellulosic ethanol beyond 2011 is extremely speculative, as delivered feedstock prices will be an order of magnitude more expensive than what was projected about 8 years ago.

WindFuels upfront costs will be less than cellulosic ethanol plants (per value of products produced), and WindFuels don’t require expensive feedstocks or have any troublesome wastes to deal with. Hence, WindFuels will give a much better return on investment. Read more.

Q-28. Why aren’t you optimistic about nuclear fission, shale oil, Space-Based Solar Power, thermonuclear fusion, hydrogen fuel cells, algae oil, dimethyl ether, high-altitude wind, atmospheric vortex engines, and roof-top solar PV?

Hydrogen. Take a look at our analyses and track record. We stick with science, engineering, and economics. As a case in point, in 2000 the DOE was saying there would be 50,000 fuel cell vehicles on the road in the US by 2006. In 2002 we distributed one of the first technical analyses showing that hydrogen would never compete in cars (and 3 years later we were finally able to get it published as a letter to the editor in C&EN). Perhaps there will be 100 new hydrogen cars (costing about $500K each) delivered in the US next year – at tax-payer expense to cities and individuals wanting to make a statement.

Nuclear. Energy from nuclear power plants that would be ordered next year in the US would be over 3 to 6 times as expensive as off-peak wind energy.

Shale Oil. Our analysis shows there will be very few veins from which clean shale oil (i.e., with full on-site CO₂ sequestration) will be able to compete a decade from now if petroleum is under $150/bbl. The Bakken formation is not shale oil in the normal sense of that word. But as far as it’s concerned, the USGS expects the total amount of oil produced from the Bakken over the next half century will be little more than the U.S. uses in half a year. The Bakken could continue to provide 1% of our fuel needs for the following two centuries. That’s a lot of oil, but it’s not a solution.

Algal oil. We have not seen any viable plan that is likely to lead to algae oil being under $60/gal a decade from now.

PV. It’s easy to show that roof-top solar PV will generally be much less competitive than large PV farms, and one of the larger of these in North America has a contract to sell its energy at $0.44/kWhr. That’s about four times the average cost of electrical energy in the US. PV has a long way to go before it really competes in America.

Fusion. Our analysis indicates fusion energy is likely to be 300 times more expensive than wind energy in 2040.

Space Solar. We do not see any way it would be possible to implement Space-based Solar Power (SBSP) for less than 100 times the cost of wind energy, and more likely SBSP would be over 500 times as expensive as wind energy.

We do our level best to avoid the hype that has permeated the field of renewable energy. We think our 29 years of experience developing and manufacturing complex instruments gives us a useful perspective that many researchers lack. Outside the US and Northern Europe, we’re most optimistic about wave energy, Geo-CSP hybrids, and next-generation nuclear fission. Read more.

Q-29. What size of a global investment are you talking about to cut global oil and gas usage by 60% over the next 50 years?
The near-term (2 to 10 years) investment would be quite modest, as there will be no shortage of off-peak wind energy for the next decade. However, to replace 60% of global oil and gas with WindFuels over the next 50 years may cost 40 trillion US$, but businesses will embrace it because it will be profitable and enduring. The IEA has recommended CO₂ be taxed at over $80/ton (or $300/ton-C). That would amount to $2T per year – and it (in itself) would not produce any more fuel. That would also amount to a tax of $30/bbl for conventional oil. For synfuels from heavy oil and coal, the tax would be over $50/bbl and $60/bbl respectively with current processes.

Q-30. How much of your process is commercially proven, and how much is high risk?
We’ve simulated all the critical processes in WindFuels in great detail using commercial, well validated software. Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) fuel production (chemically, the most complex part of the WindFuels system) was used by the Germans during WW-II and in South Africa during the blockade of the Apartheid regime. Several major breakthroughs and a number of minor improvements have allowed us to double the RFTS system efficiency over what was seen in related demonstrations a few years ago. We’ve published and patented many of the critical scientific and engineering details. We don’t think any part of it classifies as “high risk” from a scientific perspective, though we admit there are managerial, funding, competitive, technological, and market risks.

Q-31. You’re starting with water electrolysis. Isn’t that very inefficient and extremely expensive?
Commercially available electrolyzers have achieved 84% efficiency, and laboratory experiments have exceeded 94% efficiency. Yes, they’ve been expensive, but the DOE projects their price will drop by a factor of six over the next decade and efficiencies will steadily improve. Read more.

Q-32. Are WindFuels better than CO₂ sequestration?
WindFuels will be the quickest technology to stop the growth of coal power plants because of the strong stimulus WindFuels will provide to the growth of wind energy. The wind energy during periods of peak demand will go to the grid, and excess during off-peak periods would go to WindFuels. We have already seen that wind energy has stopped the growth of coal in the U.S. and northern Europe. When WindFuels come online in any country, the growth of coal in that country will come to an abrupt end. The price of grid energy will even drop enough to begin shutting down the less efficient coal power plants. The wind resources are sufficient to enable this scenario in North America, China, Russia, Northern Europe, Northwestern Africa, Australia, Brazil, and some other countries.

Sequestration, on the other hand, at existing power plants will be very expensive. It would increase consumer power bills by 60-80% in many cases and reduce the efficiency and output of coal and natural gas power plants, requiring more fossil power plants by 30-40% to come online. Recent peer-reviewed studies have shown that pumping very high pressure CO₂ into most of the types of formations that could hold it for centuries will likely cause seismic activity.

WindFuels, on the other hand, will cause no additional burden for consumers, and actually serve to make current power sources more competitive, so there will be no public resistance to their development. Since WindFuels will be market driven, they will grow as quickly as the industry can scale up, and any support from government will be embraced by the power industry and consumers.

Because WindFuels will be market driven, it can quickly cut the use of ultra-high-carbon options, such as coal-to-liquids, tar sands, and shale oil – which, without WindFuels, would be supplying a large fraction of our transportation fuels within 20 years.

WindFuels could eventually utilize CO₂ from the atmosphere rather than from power plants, but it may be three decades before taking CO₂ from the atmosphere is affordable. (We return to this issue in more detail in question 41.)

We agree that CO₂ separation should be required on all new power plants, whether coal, natural gas, or biomass; and retrofitting should be implemented on some existing power plants. The CO₂ should be either sold to WindFuels plants or sequestered. CO₂ separation processes will now be justified on many existing coal plants within 400 miles of WindFuels plants because there may be a good market for their CO₂. Also, new fossil-fueled power plants within 400 miles of WindFuels plants will want to buy the waste O₂ from the WindFuels plants for oxy-combustion to simplify their CO₂ separations.

The fastest growing source of CO₂ emissions in the U.S., Brazil, and some other countries is from bio-ethanol production. The amount (mass) of CO₂ released at the process plant making ethanol from corn is similar to the amount of ethanol produced. The amount of CO₂ released when making cellulosic ethanol is more than twice the amount of ethanol produced. Separation of this CO₂ from the exhaust streams is much easier than in existing power plants, and the penalty in plant efficiency is much less. Hence, CO₂ separations should begin with bio-ethanol plants and new fossil-fuel power plants. The current global CO₂ release from bio-ethanol plants is about 60 million metric tons per year and growing rapidly. Emissions from bio-ethanol will likely be more than will be practical to sequester and utilize in WindFuels for at least the next 15 years.

The $100M spent by the coal lobby over the past few year has convinced many consumers that “clean coal” is a reality. The fact is, the total amount of CO₂ sequestered from coal plants in the US by 2012 is likely to be less than 0.03% of the amount of CO₂ they’ll release.

The DOE has recently announced funding for three big carbon capture projects that are expected to be operating by 2012. The total cost of these projects will be $1B, with over 60% coming from the DOE. These projects are expected to be capturing CO₂ at a combined rate of about 6.5 Mt/yr by 2013. The projects selected for funding were low-hanging fruit – an ethanol plant, a methanol plant, and a steam-methane reformer – no power plants. The captured CO₂ will be used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) – which means it is not being sequestered – its half-life in the ground is only 15 years. The CapEx for this capture is not very high – only about $10/t-CO₂. The operating cost is under $25/t-CO₂. For comparison, the CapEx for real CO₂ sequestration projects using CO₂ from power plants and pumping the CO₂ into formations that will hold it for centuries is about $30/t-CO₂, and their operating cost is about $40/t-CO₂. At $70/t-CO₂, sequestering the emissions from point sources would represent an enormous economic burden – about $300B dollars per year in the U.S.

WindFuels can provide the market needed to make CO₂ separation happen quickly, and WindFuels can stop the growth of tar sands. This would dramatically reduce CO₂ emissions.

All sequestration ideas make the energy challenge worse, while WindFuels will address both the energy and the climate challenges. Oil and gas account for over 60% of the global fossil CO₂ emissions. Replacing petroleum and natural gas with WindFuels^TM reduces greenhouse gases more than eliminating coal. Neither will happen quickly, but we have to think long range. Read more.

Q-33. I’ve taken a close look at your cost estimates for WindFuels, and they look low? Can you explain this discrepancy?
We’re glad you’re checking us. Yes, at first glance it might look like our estimates of the cost of wind energy are too low. First of all, keep in mind that for the next 12 years or more there will be an abundance of very cheap off-peak grid power in areas where a lot of wind farms are being built. WindFuels will be providing a market for this off-peak energy and thus providing a strong stimulus to the wind energy market. See our Economics page and our discussion on Stabilizing the Renewable Grid and the paper we presented on Deployment Projections at the ASME ES2010 conference.

We have a number of innovations in the early stages of the patenting process that will dramatically reduce the costs of the major components of the RFTS plant. Some additional detailed information may be found in RFTS-DetailedDesign-1, for more information and the more details can be found in the papers presented at the last two ASME conferences.

Q-34. Will WindFuels compete with Coal-to-Liquids (CTL)?
Yes. Synfuels from Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) currently have twice the carbon emissions of conventional oil. Typically, one kilogram of coal will yield about 0.3 kg of diesel and 2.2 kg of additional CO₂, which is released at the synfuels plant. Sasol (the biggest name in CTL) is the largest point source of CO₂ emissions in the world.

The latest published estimates we’ve seen indicate oil needs to be above $100/bbl for CTL with partial on-site sequestration (perhaps 65%) to compete. Those estimates are still dated and hence extremely optimistic. We expect oil will need to be above $170/bbl for CTL with full sequestration to compete a decade from now. Any estimate of energy-related costs published before the BP oil-rig disaster on April 20, 2010 is probably of very little value. Judging from the recent volatility in commodities markets, it may be another year before it will be possible to make many energy cost projections with accuracy better than 25%. Read more.

Q-35. T. Boone Pickens wants to replace our natural gas electric power with wind power and convert our cars to run on compressed natural gas (CNG). Could that work?
You aren’t going to convince the companies that own the natural gas (NG) power plants to power down their plants prematurely unless the price of NG triples. Even with the increased availability of shale gas, we would see the price of gas in the U.S. increase quickly if we tried to use it for more than a very small segment of transportation (such as airport buses). Until WindFuels plants begin to come online, the growth rate of utilization of wind in the grid will be limited by transmission and storage costs.

There are a number of additional factors that are discussed in more detail elsewhere (CNG Vehicles) and are summarized here.

1. There won’t be much fuel-cost savings for CNG vehicles 8 yearsfrom now. (The rapidly growing international trade in liquefied natural gas, LNG, will entice US producers to begin exporting LNG to this lucrative market. This will drive the price of NG up.)

2. Upgrading existing gasoline service stations to be able to re-fuel CNG vehicles would cost about $400K per station. Few station owners will do this just to service a few CNG vehicles in their area.

3. CNG vehicles have lower performance, less driving range, and less trunk space,than liquid-fueled vehicles, so consumers will be reluctant to buy them. (Of course, CNG vehicles would be much more attractive to most consumers than electric vehicles or hydrogen-fueled vehicles.)

CNG has made small inroads into fleets of trucks and buses in the U.S, where their ranges stay close to central re-fueling stations. Encouraging more usage here makes sense. However, converting all our long-haul trucks to CNG would increase our use of NG by 25%, which would require an unrealistic increase in domestic production.

US NG resources are nothing close to limitless, as the advocates would have us to believe. The latest official estimates indicate that if we could recover all possible and probable gas resources (most of which will be quite expensive), they would be sufficient to supply all our energy demands for about 18 years – and nothing beyond that. Another useful number is that total U.S. resources are less than 4% of global gas resources.

WindFuels, on the other hand, by offering improved profitability for wind energy in areas far from where grid power is needed, will enable massive growth in wind for decades. But wind will not shut down existing natural-gas power plants in a free market for many years.

The amount of energy potentially available from domestic wind resources over the next century exceeds that from natural gas by a factor of 50, and wind is 20 times cleaner!
Case closed.

Q-36. What about electric vehicles (EVs), or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)?
Pure electric vehicles will never be the first choice for most consumers as a primary vehicle due to their range restrictions. With pure EV, traffic jams and unexpected errands will result in more cars running out of power. A 40-mile range is not acceptable for most drivers. (Remember, you simply can’t stop in somewhere for a quick recharge.)

The Volt will be a small compact car with substandard performance, costing over $40,000. Whether the reduced operating costs can ever actually recover the up-front cost is questionable, especially once you factor in additional interest on the more expensive car. A recent study by Carnegie Mellon has concluded that the Chevy Volt will never be viable under any conceivable scenario.

The cost savings per mile are much less than the EV advocates claim, as they still often assume an electricity cost of $0.04/kWhr when the current average residential rate is $0.12/kWh (equivalent to gasoline at $4.36/gal). A reasonable estimate is that charging costs for the Volt would be similar to fuel costs for the Prius if gasoline were $2.70/gal. If you drive the Volt 8500 miles per year (and you won’t be able to drive it much more than that without being left stranded), and gasoline is $4.70/gal, your annual savings is $400.

At $40,000, the Volt will cost ~$24,000 dollars more than the Honda Fit, though the Fit has much more passenger space and over twice the luggage space. The $500/yr fuel savings doesn’t even pay the extra interest, not to mention principle. Of course, if gasoline goes to $12/gal in 2016, the Volt might save you $2500/year. Then, it might pay for itself in 15 years.

Hype sells when economics doesn’t, so there will be a few sales. The first run is only going to be 20,000-40,000 vehicles. Only a few hundred were sold in the first quarter of 2011. Scale up will certainly be much slower than for the Prius, as fuel savings with the Prius pay for the extra upfront costs in 3 to 4 years.

To give some perspective on the timelines of vehicle release and scale-up, the Toyota Prius was released in 2002, and sold its 1 millionth car in April 2008. Even now only ~3% of the new vehicles sold are hybrids, and less than 0.5% of the vehicles on the road are hybrids. Due to the cost and other negatives, EVs and PHEVs will not see rapid market penetration.

In 2016, even with gasoline at $6-$10/gallon, it is highly unlikely that EVs and PHEVs combined will exceed more than 0.5% of the U.S. fleet.

John Peterson has some of the best expertise and insights into the battery and EV markets. We highly recommend his articles, where are available here:
http://seekingalpha.com/author/john-petersen/articles


Q-37. How likely do you think it is that there will be a better alternative than WindFuels for transportation in the next four decades?
On a scale of 0 to 10, about 0 in the US. In countries where neither good wind nor wave resources are available, the best option may be dry reforming – if both methane and excellent solar resources are available. This is a process in which high-temperature concentrated solar power (above 1100 K) can be used to make liquid fuels from a combination of methane and CO₂. There are lots of challenges with this process, and we don’t see it being competitive unless oil is above $200/bbl for many years. Moreover, the carbon in the fuels it produces will probably be only about 40% from the CO₂. The rest will be from the fossil methane.

Q-38. If wind energy is so much cheaper than solar energy, why has solar received more attention (from investors, the media, and the DOE) than wind?
Wind has been at a strong disadvantage with respect to solar because solar can often work well without energy storage. (The peak electrical power demand is at the same time the sun is shining strongly.) There hasn’t been a good energy storage solution until now – WindFuels. Also, the best wind resources are not close to where most electrical power is needed. (People would rather live in a sunny area than a very windy area.) Read more.

Q-39. What do you think about cold fusion, Blacklight Power, water fuel, NuEnergy.org, radiant energy conversion, Genesys LLC, Cosray Research Institute, radio-frequency dissociation of water... ?
Sorry. We’re serious scientists and engineers. While we can’t really say with 100% certainty that the first two concepts listed above (and possibly some other equally crazy sounding ideas) will never have any validity, we can say that ideas that are completely outside currently accepted science have zero chance of helping to solve our energy needs in the next six decades.

We’ll devote a little more space here to a recurrent theme in many hydrogen scams, including several of the above – that it is somehow possible to magically tune an electromagnetic (EM) radiation spectrum to achieve water splitting using much less energy than required by normal water electrolysis. First of all, it is true that water has a number of strong absorption bands in various parts of the EM spectrum. The first (lowest frequency) strong absorption band is at ~190 GHz (~1.6 mm wavelength), and there are numerous additional absorption bands at shorter wavelengths (e.g., 0.9 mm, etc). So, if it were possible to efficiently convert EM radiation from a thermal source (where the photons have mean wavelength of about 9 microns, corresponding to mean photon energy 180 times greater than of a photon at 190 GHz) to another desired frequency, it might be possible to device a method of splitting water using thermal radiation. But there are several show stoppers.

First of all, efficient down (frequency) conversion is not possible – in any part of the EM spectrum. Efficient up-frequency conversion can occur at the atomic or molecular level (simultaneous absorption of multiple photons), but that’s the wrong direction. (Extremely expensive devices, such as gyrotrons, which require superconducting magnets, are available for producing EM radiation at 190 GHz, but efficiencies are below 30%.) Secondly, efficiently splitting water into H₂ and O₂ would accomplish nothing if it also resulted in raising the temperature above hydrogen’s autoignition temperature (~250C), as the gases would promptly recombine into water – explosively. Thirdly, any device that could split water into separate hydrogen and oxygen streams much more efficiently than hot alkaline electrolyzers would be violating the laws of thermodynamics, as hot alkaline electrolyzers are currently coming within 8-15% of theoretical limits at their operating temperatures.

The Genesys patent is pure garbage. It proposes to heat water vapor to a very high temperature using microwave energy, separate the hydrogen ions from the plasma, and cool the hydrogen ions to produce hydrogen gas. Perhaps something similar could actually be done (after enormous development), but it would probably achieve efficiency below 0.1% and cost orders of magnitude more than conventional electrolysis.

In principle, it is possible to reduce the electrical input energy required for electrolysis to nearly zero by operating the electrolyzer at about 1300 C, in which case the input energy is provided almost entirely by heat. At proportionally lower temperatures, an increasing fraction of the energy must come from electricity and a decreasing fraction from heat. The DOE has been supporting high-temperature steam electrolysis, at temperatures in the range from 500-1000 C using ceramic electrolytes, for about three decades. The best of these results are still two orders of magnitude away from being economically competitive with hot alkaline electrolysis.

Q-40. What about the claims by the company Carbon Sciences that they have a breakthrough process for making fuels from CO₂ and mine slime (whatever that is)?
Carbon Sciences keeps changing and embellishing their stories. First, they were going to make valuable commodities from mine scum. This is essentially in the same category as the scams mentioned in the previous question. The slight difference is that there probably will be some opportunities to make a few low-value products from some mine trailings, and some of these processes may utilize some waste CO₂. However, no one will ever make fuels from materials in a low-energy state (such as CO₂, H₂O, CaCO₃...) without an enormous amount of energy input.

Lime (CaO) does not exist freely in naturein significant quantities. It is usually made by heating limestone (calcium carbonate, CaCO₃) to drive off the CO₂. (Some silicates contain a few percent CaO and MgO. See our response to question 53, on other sequestration ideas.) As soon as CaO is cooled, it begins re-absorbing CO₂ from the atmosphere. It also reacts with water to form the hydride, Ca(OH)₂. These were some of the first chemical reactions discovered by prehistoric man, and they are the basis of most plasters, mortars, and cements.

Mining often dredges up enormous amounts of magnesium silicates, which can react with CO₂– over hundreds of millennia – to produce carbonates; but they would be of no value. See question 53 for more comments on this reaction with respect to CO₂ sequestration.

When reading the Carbon Sciences website, one has the impression that this is a scam. The Popular Mechanics article suggests they may be planning to send some CO₂ into an algae pond, which has nothing to do with magically turning CaCO₃ into fuels. Algae is just another idea that has proven to be impractical, as we explain here.

Their latest claim is that they have developed a miraculous new catalyst that will turn CH₄ and CO₂ into gasoline via the following highly endothermic reaction:

12CH₄ + 12CO₂ –> 3C₈H₁₆ + 24H₂O

One can calculate (from Gibbs energies) that the equilibrium constant K_P for the above reaction at all temperatures and pressures is extremely low. At 50 bar, octane yield peaks at under 0.3% at 490 K – assuming an ideal catalyst.

Of course, CO₂ reforming of methane into syngas may eventually be practical using high-temperature concentrated solar heat, but our analysis shows it will be an order of magnitude less competitive than Windfuels in most cases.

Q-41. Why not just take CO₂ from the atmosphere and sequester the carbon from power and biofuel plants?
Because it would cost too much. All the promise of true carbon neutrality does nothing if the process is too expensive to deploy.

Presently, the technology to remove CO₂ directly from the atmosphere is in its infancy. Our analysis indicates using CO₂ from the atmosphere would increase the cost of WindFuels by 40%.

WindFuels could eventually utilize CO₂ from the atmosphere rather than from power plants, but it may be four decades before CO₂ from the atmosphere competes with CO₂ from smokestacks. In the meantime, WindFuels can cut the use of synfuels and eventually help reduce the rise in the price of oil. This helps the economy while doing more for the environment because it would be implemented much faster.

Q-42. Why focus on ethanol? Isn’t it less desirable than some other fuels?
We initally focused on ethanol, propanol and butanol because they are the least toxic fuels known and our simulations showed they could ultimately be made from waste CO₂ at higher efficiency than other fuels. Also, next-generation small engines optimized for mixtures of gasoline, ethanol, and methanol will be able to achieve higher efficiency, lower noise, and much lower emissions than diesel engines. (See, for example, recent works by RJ Pearson, of Lotus Engineering.) The mid-alcohols are fully compatible as oxygenates and extenders in all current gasoline engines. Contrary to what ethanol detractors say, it is not difficult to store, distribute, or dispense ethanol, and it is not bad for modern engines.

At this point in time, we expect our first demo will be for gasoline deisel, and jet fuel production, as the catalysts for such are better developed. We’ll eventually be able to make virtually all fuels and chemicals efficiently from waste CO₂ and wind energy, including diesel, alcohols, lubricants, other automotive fluids, plastics, and fertilizers.

Q-43. Can WindFuels help solve the global food crisis?
Yes. Demand for use of food for fuels will be reduced, and some WindFuels plants will make renewable fertilizers. Read more.

Q-44. Do we need to eliminate our use of fossil fuels?
No. The planet can easily handle some responsible use of fossil fuels for many centuries. It’s not yet clear whether the long-term goal for global CO₂ emissions should be under 4 GtC/yr or under 2 GtC/yr. However, business-as-usual could lead to 10 GtC/yr within 20 years, and there is no doubt that would be devastating.

Q-45. Do we risk running critically low on any fertilizer component (phosphates, ammonia, potassium, sulfur, etc.) when we cut our use of fossil fuels by a factor of three?
Not in the next few centuries, though phosphate fertilizers may become fairly expensive within six decades.

Q-46. Where can I find more technical information on your RWGS RFTS WindFuels process?
We have a WindFuels Primer, a slightly more detailed explanation, a technical-breakthrough-summary, and for those that are interested in a very detailed design summary, the RFTS-DetailedDesign-1 can be purchased in hard-copy. Eight peer-reviewed technical papers and three pending patents are currently available for download. Download Papers. Download Patents.

Q-47. What are the unique benefits of WindFuels for the United States?
America has abundant wind energy resources – far beyond what we can use for electricity. America is also emitting a lot of CO₂ from coal power plants – which can be recycled into fuels to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and our total CO₂ emissions.

America can go from importing petroleum to exporting carbon-neutral fuels and chemicals within 35 years. WindFuels can be the basis for the biggest economic expansion in the US since the post WW-II boom.

Q-48 What about hybrid engines, ultra-light materials, smaller cars? Won’t these do more than new fuels?
They’ll help, but they won’t do as much as truly carbon-neutral liquid fuels. One study (John M. Polimeni) has even concluded that just improving mileage would increase CO₂ emissions because usage would go up faster. While usage may not increase that quickly, the point is still important. If people can afford to drive more, they will. Only increased fuel prices, carbon neutrality in the fuels, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) will reduce the CO₂ emissions from cars. See question 36 for some more comments on PEHVs.

Q-49. The grid is interconnected, and there are always coal plants producing power, so how can it make sense to use grid energy to make liquid fuels, even if the conversion efficiency is 60%?
We partially answered this question in some of the earlier responses (see questions 6 and 32).

A. When WindFuels come online in any area, they will stimulate rapid build up of wind energy, and the growth of coal in that region will come to an abrupt end. The price of grid energy will even drop enough to begin shutting down the less efficient coal power plants.

B. WindFuels will only draw power during extreme off-peak hours when most of the energy on the regional grid is coming from wind, nuclear, and hydro, so it will be very clean.

C. Windfuels will stop the growth of the high-carbon fuels, like tar sands, coal-to-liquids, deep-water, and very heavy oils.

Q-50. Why are you so pessimistic about biofuels?
The best recent scientific studies have concluded that most biofuels (including corn ethanol, some Brazilian sugarcane, and most biodiesels) are overall worse for the planet than using conventional oil. Run-off from agriculture is creating many dead zones in oceans around the world. Biofuels are currently only 25% carbon neutral on average, and that’s not counting carbon emissions from changes in land use. When carbon emissions from the land cultivation are included, most biofuels are only 5-15% carbon neutral.

Cellulosic ethanol will not be much better. It will likely result in much of the biocarbon that is currently sequestered in soils and forest floors being released much more rapidly. If all gasoline used were E15 based on cellulosic ethanol (and 100% E15 is probably more than the planet could support), CO₂ emissions from transportation fuels would be reduced less than 5%. (Cellulosic ethanol advocates may disagree, but they haven’t been properly considering its effect on reduced carbon sequestration in soils.)

WindFuels, on the other hand, can be 90% carbon neutral. We can’t reduce CO₂ emissions nearly enough without having transportation fuels that are over 70% carbon neutral, and WindFuels are our only, scalable option.

Q-51. I’ve heard there’s lots more oil to be found. Shouldn’t we just start drilling for it?
That seemed to be the popular opinion before April 20, 2010. The BP oil-ring disaster has changed everything.

All previous projections assumed deep-water oil would be providing much of the growth in oil production. While some new deep-water projects that are at advanced stages will undoubtedly go forward again, it’s now hard to imagine any new deep-water projects getting approval by corporate boards (forget governments and regulators) – at least before oil has been over $150/bbl for several years.

There’s a little more of conventional oil (the stuff we’re used to) yet to be developed and discovered in America. The US Geological Survey estimates (which are double the estimates of six years ago) are that even with full-out off-shore drilling we would have enough recoverable domestic oil (60B bbl) to supply all our oil needs (without imports) for only 9 years, and two-thirds of that will be very expensive and take many decades to recover. (read, deep-water and the Bakken formation). We have a more in-depth discussion here. It is “penny-wise but pound-foolish” to consider draining our very limited conventional (easy) resources over the next 10 years. Our great-grandchildren may need them for a true emergency far more than we need them today. We simply must get accustomed to $6 to $12/gal gasoline for most of the next two decades.

If we have reduced our CO₂ emissions sufficiently 30 years from now (from WindFuels), some remaining conventional off-shore oil could then be tapped for a true emergency without much concern about its effect on the climate.

Q-52. Where do you see the price of oil going over the next few years and beyond?
The best, recent analysis is the Nov 2010 update from the Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Security (ITPOES, commissioned in part by Sir Richard Branson http://peakoiltaskforce.net/ ). Their conclusion: By late 2013, we’ll see a more severe supply-demand crunch than we saw in early 2008, which drove prices above $140/b – until the world economy crashed.

What about beyond 2015, the limit of the study by ITPOES? The only currently pursued alternative that have a chance of making a large contribution to increasing fuel supply over the next two decades is tar sands. Environmental regulations, taxes, and scale-up challenges will probably limit growth of Canadian tar sands to about 4M bbl/day by 2025. Production from Chinese-Venezuelan tar sands could increase from the 2010 level of 0.3 Mb/day to 1 Mb/day by 2015, and possibly 5 Mb/day by 2025. China will eventually own Venezuela and will be the world’s largest oil producer. (There could be more Chinese speaking than Spanish speaking people in Venezuela by 2025.) This will help keep oil prices below $200/b after 2025, though it would be bad news for the climate.
Still, even Chinese-Venezuelan tar sands developments will not keep up with rising world demand, and oil could hit $400/bbl before 2020 if major investments are not made soon in WindFuels.

Q-53. What do you think about other ideas for sequestering CO₂ – like spreading crushed silicate rocks over the desert, or making cement from natural dolime?
A number of other sequestration ideas have been advocated, but none seems likely to be cost effective. One that has received far more attention than it deserves is grinding certain igneous rocks into fine sand and dusting them over hundreds of thousands of square miles of the deserts. Many abundant magnesium silicates, such as olivines and serpentines, are in a higher energy state than their carbonates and thus they will naturally (but extremely slowly) react with CO₂ to form the solid carbonates. We calculated that it would take several hundred thousand years to see any benefit – see geo-engineering. Naturally, there would be adverse environmental effects, both at the enormous rock quarries and in the deserts, as most of these magnesium silicates poison soils from their high chromium and nickel contents.

A variation on the above theme that avoids spreading the dust over deserts and speeds up the reaction from hundreds of thousands of years to days is pulverizing the sand to an extremely fine powder (micron sized) and reacting it in carbonic acid at over 150^oC and pressures above 100 bar. This would prevent poisoning of the deserts, but it would be much more expensive than other sequestration options.

Another idea that has received far too much attention is finding a miracle method of separating dolime (an admixture of CaO and MgO) from igneous rocks (where it is often present in small amounts, see question 40) and using that to make Portland-like cement. No one yet has a clue as to how to improve on the current process (firing carbonates, such as limestone, or calcite) to get the CaO needed to make cement.

The ideas proposed by Constantz, CEO of Calera Corporation, for making cement actually increase total CO₂ release. We had planned to write a detailed scientific analysis on the Constantz-Calera cement scam, but that is probably no longer necessary. Ken Caldiera has begun to expose it, and others are also beginning to speak up: http://cleantech.com/news/4327/you-say-caldera-i-say-caldiera
For more discussion of these and other supposedly CO₂-sucking processes, see geo-engineering.

Q-54. What motivated you the most to begin development of WindFuels: an attempt to provide a fuel source, or an attempt to reduce global carbon emissions?
I’ve been active in both energy and environmental science and engineering for nearly 4 decades. For about 2 decades, I’ve been deeply concerned by what I saw as an absence of real scientific leadership toward practical solutions of either mega-challenge. I haven’t looked at either issue independently, and I’ve always kept practicality and competitiveness uppermost in my thinking. I was never a fan of carbon sequestration or hydrogen, because neither went to the root of the problem – the need for clean, renewable energy. For a while, I thought cellulosic ethanol and microalgae had a lot of promise – until I looked at the details of the science and engineering for myself (instead of accepting what others, who were not doing the needed calculations, were saying).

I realized that we at Doty had a unique combination of skills that needed to be focused on looking for real solutions outside the boundaries of existing DOE programs. (This is difficult for most researchers to do because the DOE doesn’t fund unsolicited proposals. They always specify exactly what they want to fund.) So in early 2007, we decided to make the needed commitment. The solutions didn’t come in a single flash, but most of the key pieces were largely worked out (from a large number of flashes) over the first year. (One of the major flashes of inspiration came when I saw the most spectacular meteorite I’d even seen, while driving home from a Christmas eve service in 2007. No relationship between the insight and the event. Just an interesting coincidence.)

So the answer is "yes". :) We were looking for a way to produce carbon-neutral fuels and a way to reduce greenhouse emissions that wouldn't hurt the world economy.

Q-55. How can I get involved and help make WindFuels a reality sooner?
Contact your congressman. Contact a DOE program manager or a GreenTech investment fund manager that you know. Tell them to check out our website.

Q-56. What is the best single, comprehensive introduction to the science of sustainable energy?
The recent book by David MacKay, “Sustainable Energy – without the hot air”. It’s available for free download here:
http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html

Of course, it has limitations. Most notably, MacKay didn’t know about WindFuels, and the book is somewhat focused on what he thinks will work best for the UK. There are a few other minor problems, especially when it comes to some of the economics, but overall, it’s sound, accessible, and comprehensive.

Q-57. Why are you still worried about global warming when the best data show there hasn’t been much for the past decade?
Indeed, a recent article in Science (Oct 2, 2009) concludes there wasn't much global atmospheric warming over the past decade. Also, Prof. David Rutledge (CalTech) has made a very convincing case that only the surface temperature records over the oceans can be trusted, as most of the land temperature records have been heavily distorted by warming from increased urban energy utilization (fossil and nuclear). His analysis, with the unreliable data excluded, shows global warming over the last four decades to be considerably less than the widely accepted value.

Most of the excess heat absorbed by the CO₂ has been going into deeper waters in the oceans because of changes in ocean currents. The decrease in solar output has also been significant. There’s no question about the long term threat of global warming if we don’t switch to sustainable, carbon-neutral transportation fuels. There will also be tragic, short-term consequences, such as polar bears going the way of the mammoth.

Q-58. Is there any substance to the recent claim by EEStor that they have made a major breakthrough in ultra-capacitors that makes them far superior to any of the most advanced batteries?
NO. The patents they keep talking about (7,033,406, and 7,466,536) are mostly hypothetical. What they describe there, with numerous irrelevant calculations, is not an ultra-capacitor. It’s a conventional multi-layer ceramic (MLC) barium titanate capacitor with a different method of making the ceramic dielectric. The best MLC capacitors have had energy density of 0.007 Whr/kg; the best electrolytic capacitors are about 0.3 Whr/kg; ultra-capacitors can exceed 10 Whr/kg; carbon-lead-acid batteries are 70 Whr/kg; and lithium-ion batteries can be 150 Whr/kg.

Have they improved on the multi-layer, high-voltage, Y5V-type ceramic capacitor? Perhaps. Barium titanate has been used for many decades, but their multi-layer coating and polarization process of the fine powder prior to sintering will improve voltage handling by more than it reduces dielectric constant. We’ve gone through some detailed analysis that suggests it’s likely they’ll be able to achieve about 0.1 Whr/kg with a semi-acceptable lifetime. (We at Doty Scientific have many years of experience in high performance dielectrics.) That still leaves a factor of 1000 to go when it comes to energy density, and we expect the cost of their capacitors per unit energy will be 1000 times that of carbon-lead-acid batteries (which are about $300/kWhr).

But on the subject of ultra-capacitors, it is not surprising that few people understand them. The Wikipedia article is completely confused. Their explanation is more or less the same as found at most other sites (including NREL’s), but that doesn’t make it right. The two porous nano-structured electrodes are not separated by a dielectric. If they were, you would simply have a conventional capacitor of very small value in series with two ultra-capacitors, which would be worthless. They are separated by a porous separator soaked in the organic electrolyte, which gives it very high bulk conductivity. Hence, it is not a dielectric. It is a physical separator that is a bulk ionic conductor but presents very high contact resistance between the carbon electrodes. The effective dielectric thickness at the surfaces of the electrodes is about 1 nm, and it handles about 2.5 V. Read More.

A simple, correct explanation of the ultra-capacitor is here: http://www.mpoweruk.com/supercaps.htm

(Pardon the rant, but there’s a lot of confusion out there about ultra-capacitors.)

Q-59. How can you be so sure the price of oil won’t crash again, as it did in 2008?
None of the conditions that allowed the price of oil to crash in 2008 are present in the world today. The major oil producers now understand this market is extremely inelastic, and they have the discipline to limit production when necessary. The Saudis are not investing $200-300B over the next 5 years in oil, gas, and chemicals production so they can drive the prices down. Rather, they are positioning themselves to take full advantage of their limited resources over the next 60 years.

Total oil production can continue to increase slowly because of increases in the “non-conventional oil” – deep water oil, tar sands, GTL, biofuels, etc. But these very expensive, high-emissions alternative sources cannot keep pace with the growing demand. The 3 billion people in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, and other developing countries without cars can now (or will soon be able to) buy gasoline-powered cars for $3500. That is a game changer from the demand side. We have some more perspective on the long-range oil market here.

Q-60. How can you be so dismissive of the enormous recent increase in gas reserves estimates by the IEA?
We certainly do not have better data than the IEA, and it is clear from their data and the MITEI study that there will be quite a bit more gas available at affordable prices for the next 25 years than was expected a few years ago. However, demand for gas – especially in China and Iran – is also growing much more rapidly than was expected a few years ago. Moreover, most of the shale gas has very high CO₂ content (often over 25%, and pipeline specs generally limit the CO₂ to under 3%). If carbon emissions regulations become stringent, it will be necessary to sequester this CO₂ (or make Windfuels from it) rather than simply separate and vent it. This requirement will severely limit utilization of most shale gas resources. A recent study (published 4/11) concludes that because of the extra methane release during production of shale gas, the GHG footprint benefit of shale gas compared to coal will be marginal without new regulations or incentives. We have some more perspective on the long-range gas market here.

Average energy prices – coal, oil, gas, and uranium – nearly doubled from Nov 2009 to Apr 2011, even though global economic growth was still below normal. As long as all energy prices are going up much faster than general inflation there can be little doubt that there will be a strong demand for Windfuels, and they will be extremely profitable.