ICYMI

Solving The Biggest Problem With Wind Energy

By Brian Westenhaus - May 06, 2023, 

• Scientists came up with a process to disassemble the epoxy composite of wind turbine blades.
• 
  
• The process can contribute to establishing a potential circular economy in the wind turbine, aerospace, automotive and space industries.
• 
  
• Wind turbine blades mostly end up at waste landfills when they are decommissioned, because they are extremely difficult to break down

Danish researchers at Aarhus University have developed a chemical process that can disassemble the epoxy composite of wind turbine blades – and simultaneously extract intact glass fibers as well as one of the epoxy resin’s original building blocks in a high-quality. The recovered materials could potentially be used in the production of new blades.

The research paper has been published in the leading scientific journal Nature, and Aarhus University, together with the Danish Technological Institute, has filed a patent application for the process.

The new chemical process is not limited to wind turbine blades but works on many different so-called fiber-reinforced epoxy composites, including some materials that are reinforced with especially costly carbon fibers.

Thus, the process can contribute to establishing a potential circular economy in the wind turbine, aerospace, automotive and space industries, where these reinforced composites, due to their lightweight and long durability, are used for load-bearing structures.

After six days of catalysis in the laboratory, a piece of a wind turbine blade was dissolved into intact glass fibers and bisphenol A, which can be used in the production of new blades – in addition to a fraction of various oligomers, which cannot be recycled. The metal piece was cast into the wing as part of the wind turbine’s lightning protection. Image Credit: Alexander Ahrens, Aarhus University. Click the press release link for the largest view.

Being designed to last, the durability of the blades poses an environmental challenge. Wind turbine blades mostly end up at waste landfills when they are decommissioned, because they are extremely difficult to break down.

If no solution is found, we will have accumulated 43 million metric tons of wind turbine blade waste globally by 2050.

The newly discovered process is a proof-of-concept of a recycling strategy that can be applied to the vast majority of both existing wind turbine blades and those presently in production, as well as other epoxy-based materials.

Specifically, the researchers have shown that by using a ruthenium-based catalyst and the solvents isopropanol and toluene, they can separate the epoxy matrix and release one of the epoxy polymer’s original building blocks, bisphenol A (BPA), and fully intact glass fibers in a single process.

However, the method is not immediately scalable yet, as the catalytic system is not efficient enough for industrial implementation – and ruthenium is a rare and expensive metal. Therefore, the scientists from Aarhus University are continuing their work on improving this methodology.

Troels Skrydstrup, a professor at the Department of Chemistry and the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO) at Aarhus University and one of the lead authors of the study commented, “Nevertheless, we see it as a significant breakthrough for the development of durable technologies that can create a circular economy for epoxy-based materials. This is the first publication of a chemical process that can selectively disassemble an epoxy composite and isolate one of the most important building blocks of the epoxy polymer as well as the glass or carbon fibers without damaging the latter in the process.”

The research is supported by the CETEC project (Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites), which is a partnership between Vestas, Olin Corporation, the Danish Technological Institute and Aarhus University.

***

This is interesting news. While not economical by a description not explained, there is a known way now to answer the bedeviling problem of what to do with the blades that aren’t useable.

There’s going to be a catalyst hunt to replace the ruthenium and there might need to be quite an engineering effort. Toluene isn’t something we should allow to simply evaporate into the atmosphere. They’re going to need robotic handlers in a gas-tight facility and very likely a way to reliquify the toluene and other chemicals.

But it can and should be done. A facility is just going to need big treatment tanks and the process will be far more expensive than anyone thought. There are a lot of blades now and its likely a huge number are going to be built.

By Brian Westenhaus via Newenergyandfuel.com

The Time Is Finally Right For Nuclear Fusion

70 YR OLD SCI FI TECH

By Haley Zaremba - May 06, 2023,

• The outlook for commercial nuclear fusion has changed drastically in recent years, with growing investment, more breakthroughs, and plenty of governmental support.
• The most important breakthrough yet came in December when a team of researchers finally created net positive energy from a fusion reaction. 
• There are still plenty of hurdles to overcome, most notably the cost of nuclear fusion and the constant delays in projects.

A powerful combination of scientific breakthroughs, private and public funding, and governmental support has drastically changed the outlook for commercial nuclear fusion. Just ten years ago, reporters and industry experts alike were still joking that “Nuclear fusion is 30 years away...and always will be.” Now, seemingly very suddenly, the narrative has shifted from a conversation about “if” to one about “when.” Instead of postulating that we may possibly see reliable and scalable ignition in our lifetimes, experts are now saying that we could see pilot nuclear power plants within a decade.

In the last three years, everything has changed. Scientific breakthroughs have increased exponentially overnight. All of them have been key to the evolution of the nascent technology, but three in particular have combined to tip the commercial nuclear fusion scales from pipe dream to possibility. First, in 2021, researchers at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, China shattered previous records for a sustained steady-state fusion reaction, achieving fusion for a groundbreaking 1,056 seconds, or nearly 20 minutes. Just a few months later, The Joint European Torus (JET) in Oxfordshire more than doubled its previous fusion record (set way back in 1997) when it produced 59 megajoules of fusion energy in a single experiment.

But the most important breakthrough came last December, researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California made a massive breakthrough when they became the first team to finally overcome what is still nuclear fusion’s most significant barrier: creating net positive energy from the fusion reaction. The now legendary experiment laser-beamed 2.05 megajoules of light onto an amount of fusion fuel about the size of a peppercorn, sparking an impressive explosion producing 3.15 MJ of energy – around the equivalent of three sticks of dynamite. 

The building momentum in scientific breakthroughs has been enabled by – and in turn has enabled – a massive increase in funding. Historically, the vast majority of fusion experiments have been publicly funded, as governments were more or less the only entities with deep enough pockets to afford the massively ambitious experiments. But in recent years the private sector has gotten increasingly involved in fusion funding thanks in large part to a veritable flood of venture capital, with considerable success. The shortlist of private investors includes such heavy hitters as Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Legal & General, and Chevron. 

But the public sector, too, has kept pace. Still, the majority of the most significant fusion reactors are publicly funded and managed, and some of the most promising new fusion projects are indeed public enterprises. The Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy have recently partnered with private firms such as General Atomics, marking an important development in the marriage of private and public sectors. And policy measures to support the advancement of nuclear fusion research and experimentation has also increased in recent years. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, for example, earmarked $280 million for fusion projects.

But it’s not all good news. Fusion remains enormously expensive, and the achievement of net energy production remains elusive. Even ITER, the world’s biggest (and most promising, according to some) fusion experiment co-funded by 35 nations in the South of France, is currently vastly over budget and behind schedule. Unsurprisingly, Covid hasn’t helped. ITER had originally projected that first plasma would be achieved in 2025. That has now been pushed back by a full year – at the very least. 

Furthermore, the sector faces significant regulatory challenges. “Beyond the engineering and financial issues, fusion will also need a regulatory framework,” Power recently reported, before going on to note that, currently, “both the industry and the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] agree that the current framework designed for fission reactors is not appropriate for fusion power plants.”

Despite the significant setbacks and challenges facing scalable nuclear fusion, the outlook is definitively better than it's ever been. In the words of Power, “The large number of projects working in parallel suggest that net energy could potentially be achieved via magnetic fusion in the late 2020s, which would conveniently coincide with the forthcoming NRC regulatory framework. Should that occur, it is likely that funding will be available for the first FPPs, which could come online as soon as the early 2030s.”

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

THE COUNTRY NOT THE STATE

Georgia Arrests Man Who Tried To Sell Uranium In Tiny Bottle For $2 Million

By Eurasianet - May 05, 2023

Georgia's counterterrorism police have arrested a man who carried around uranium in a tiny glass bottle. Ilia Belkania, a 52-year-old living off social benefits, was planning to sell the little batch of nuclear material for $2 million, the State Security Service said on May 1. 

State security officials released a video of a little bottle with a bright, greenish-yellow substance being checked with a radiation detector. The video also showed officials in balaclavas arresting Belkania at an unspecified wooded location and retrieving the vial from him. The seized material "contains the radioactive substance uranium and belongs to the category of nuclear materials," said Davit Kutateladze, spokesperson for the State Security Service. 

The unemployed Belkania lived in a rural home in the western region of Samegrelo and was detained in the vicinity of the Black Sea port town of Poti. His elderly parents told news media that police raided their house shortly after the arrest. "I don't think my boy could have done such a thing," Belkania's ailing mother told reporters. 

Officials have not elaborated on the provenance of the uranium or its prospective buyers, but the nation has long grappled with the smuggling of radioactive materials. Three men were arrested last year for storing unspecified radioactive substances at two different locations. The year before, police interdicted an attempt to sell americium 241, a radioactive isotope, for 300,000 euros. 

Georgia uncovered a spate of radioactive smuggling cases in 2015 and 2016, including two attempts to sell uranium and one attempt to offload cesium-137, a by-product of nuclear fission. In none of these cases were the sources of radioactive materials ever publically disclosed. The region's only nuclear power plant, an aging Soviet-era facility, operates in next-door Armenia. 

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, branches of Soviet research institutions folded in Georgia, and the nation became strewn with orphaned radioactive leftovers. This offered rich picking grounds for smugglers. At that time all across the post-Soviet space "potatoes were guarded better" than nuclear fuel, to quote one Russian military prosecutor. 

With funding from the United States, Georgia recovered hundreds of radioactive materials from abandoned research facilities in the 1990s. Late in the decade, the US removed uranium fuel of Soviet origin from a research reactor in Mtskheta, just outside capital Tbilisi. The US Defense Department has been equipping Georgia's main transportation nodes with radioactive detection equipment and providing training for the police forces. 

Yet Georgia's borders remained porous to smugglers, not least because of the unstable situation around the boundaries of breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Smuggling continued through the 2010s, with petty peddlers hustling around bits of expensive and dangerous materials in whatever packaging they found handy. For the most part, substances carried were small in quantity but huge in potential consequences. In 2006, a Russian smuggler was famously arrested for carrying 100 grams of bomb-grade uranium in a sandwich bag. 

With international, primarily American help, Georgia's defenses against nuclear materials peddling have improved significantly, but cases of smuggling persist suggesting that the nation is still part of a radioactive route.    

By Giorgo Lomsadze via Eurasianet.org

 

Singapore Says Ammonia Requires Study and 2023 Pilot is Not Realistic

Singapore skyline courtesy of Visit Singapore

PUBLISHED MAY 3, 2023 5:21 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) is calling into question reports suggesting that the port is ready to conduct the first transfers of ammonia in a trial to support the development of bunkering processes for ammonia as a marine fuel. The agency, which oversees and regulates the port's operations including the world’s largest marine bunker market, says it does not view a timeline before the end of 2023 for the first pilot tests of ammonia as realistic.

“The MPA welcomes studies, pilots, and collaborations that contribute to the maritime sector’s decarbonization efforts,” they wrote in a statement released on May 1. “These efforts must, however, be accompanied by thorough validation of the studies, calibration of models to assess the impact of incidents, and rigorous procedures to ensure the safety of the port, port community, and ship crew.”

While only citing the media coverage and not the authors of the study in question, the MPA is calling out the statements that “the risks identified for conducting (ammonia-related) pilots in the Port of Singapore were found to be low or mitigable, thus paving the way for a pilot project.”

“These views do not represent the assessment of MPA and other government agencies – the timeline before end-2023 is not realistic,” the MPA said in response to the media coverage of the release of a report commissioned in January 2022 by the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) and its appointed consultant, DNV Maritime Advisory supported by management consulting firm Surbana Jurong and the Singapore Maritime Academy at the Singapore Polytechnic. The sponsors announced that they had completed their study identifying more than 400 potential risks and assessed the technically feasible of operational concepts. While acknowledging the toxicity and associated risks of green ammonia the study concluded the safety risks can be mitigated.

While reiterating its commitment to decarbonizing the maritime sector and international shipping, the MPA is saying the results of the newly announced study should not prejudge the outcomes of its independent efforts, including further assessments and standards development by the MPA and the relevant agencies. Pilots and trials they noted require comprehensive preparations, safety procedures, bunkering standards, operation and risk assessments, and safety audits.

Various ammonia-related studies the MPA notes were presented during Singapore Maritime Week. They highlighted that the Maritime Energy & Sustainable Development Centre of Excellence, a jointly funded program by the Singapore Maritime Institute and Nanyang Technological University, concluded in its presentation that more dispersion and release studies are needed to better understand the impact of a potential ammonia release under various environmental conditions and scenarios. That study contends that available mitigation and response measures will require further work.

Professor Lynn Loo, CEO of the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation, had said in presenting the findings of their study that their group is “aiming for the first transfer of ammonia to take place by end 2023, subject to obtaining the green light from the relevant regulatory agencies.”

The MPA concludes that additional ammonia research is required while noting that it is also proceeding with other decarbonization efforts. They highlighted preparations underway to conduct the first methanol bunkering operation in the port of Singapore. They expect the methanol pilot to start in the third quarter of 2023.

Europe's Ambitious Hydrogen Plans Face Challenges

By Tsvetana Paraskova - May 05, 2023

Europe is betting on hydrogen to cut the use of fossil fuels and achieve climate neutrality by 2050, but the hydrogen industry faces challenges in making the sector a scalable and cost-effective replacement for natural gas.

The EU's renewables strategy includes the ambition to produce 10 million tons and import 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen in the EU by the end of this decade. The European Commission has outlined a 'hydrogen accelerator' concept to scale up the deployment of green hydrogen, which, the EC says, will contribute to accelerating the energy transition and decarbonizing the EU's energy system.   

In March, the Commission set out new plans to incentivize and support investment in sustainable hydrogen production through a European Hydrogen Bank (EHB), an initiative aimed at accelerating investment and bridging the investment gap for the EU to reach its ambitious hydrogen targets under the REPowerEU plan.  

Last month, the leaders of some of Europe's biggest economies pledged to turn the North Sea into an offshore wind, hydrogen, and carbon capture energy hub. 

But scaling up hydrogen production and imports would need the creation of an entirely new market, which could face challenges in offering and pricing, experts tell Energy Voice.

European ports could play a part in a future hydrogen economy, and the Port of Antwerp-Bruges plans to capture a part of this new market, the port's hydrogen program manager Maxime Peeterst told Energy Voice.  

Industry officials believe that the EU needs to revise some provisions in the hydrogen regulation in the coming years to make Europe's hydrogen industry globally competitive. The complexity of EU regulations compared to other jurisdictions makes Europe less competitive in hydrogen project advancement, Daryl Wilson, executive director of industry body the Hydrogen Council, told Hydrogen Economist in an interview last month.

"In terms of the raw number of projects proposed and announcements, there are many more projects in the EU versus the US. But there are more projects moving to FID in the US," Wilson said.  

Moscow offers new subsidies for Arctic hydrogen

Natural gas company Novatek will get major tax relief for its projected hydrogen and ammonia project in the far northern Yamal Peninsula.

Natural gas production in Yamal Peninsula. Photo: Atle Staalesen


By Atle Staalesen
April 24, 2023

The natural gas that is spent on production of hydrogen and ammonia in the Arctic will be exempted tax, the Russian government decides.

The measure follows a request from Novatek, Kommersant reports. It could significantly benefit the company’s plans to build a hydrogen and ammonia plant in the region.

Novatek has long planned to develop its Ob project, but international sanctions introduced against Russia following its war against Ukraine has halted progress.

The company initially planned to produce up to 5 million tons of LNG in the project, but then instead decided to go for ammonia.

Contracts were signed with international companies Uniper, RWE and Mitsui in 2021. Few months later, the partners pulled out.

The Russian government now seeks to stimulate a resumption of plans. The bill that this week was sent from Government to the State Duma proposes to remove the production tax on natural gas used to generate hydrogen and ammonia.

The Ob project includes the annual production of 2,2 million tons of ammonia and 130,000 tons of hydrogen. The first part of the project was originally planned launched in 2026 and the second in 2027. It is all based on the natural gas resources of the Verkhnetiuteyskoye and Zapadno-Seyakhinskoye, and later also the Neytinskoye and Arkticheskoye, fields.

Included in the project plans are also the catch and storage of up to 4 million tons of CO2 per year, which was to make the ammonia and hydrogen attractive for the EU market.

There are currently several more Arctic projects on hydrogen and ammonia production.

In northern Norway, company Horisont Energi plans to use natural gas from the Snøhvit field for the production of up to 3,000 tons of blue ammonia per day. In the Norwegian town of Berlevåg, the company Varanger Kraft is in the process of building a plant on the production of green hydrogen based on its local wind power farm. Similar plans have also been discussed in Murmansk, at the Kola Wind Farm.

As international energy have markets increasingly turned towards new and renewable sources, Russian authorities have highlighted hydrogen as a priority area. On the 15th of October 2021, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin confirmed that 9 billion rubles (€110 million) over the next three years will be invested in new and domestically developed technology for production, transportation and storage of hydrogen.

The plan was based on Russia’a vast natural gas reserves, as well as nuclear power and renewable energy sources.