Resource Scarcity vs. Human Ingenuity

Humans have been quite adept at finding solutions to the problem of scarce natural resources: finding more abundant substitutes for various natural resources, exploration for and discovery of new reserves, recovery and recycling of materials, and, perhaps most importantly, the development of new technologies that economize on scarce natural resources or that allow the use of resources that were previously uneconomical. _Krautkraemer2005PDF

Predictions of resource scarcity and accompanying doom have become common among late 20th and early 21st century pseudo-intelligentsia. And yet predictions of doom with fixed due dates invariably fail.

In 1980, Julian Simon, the recently deceased economist and author of The Ultimate Resource, offered to environmentalists a wager based on his assertion that the price of any raw material would indefinitely decline on a future date. The wager was taken up by Paul Ehrlich, author of the best- selling 1968 book, "The Population Bomb," which predicted that during the 1970s "the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death...

"In October 1980, Ehrilch and Simon drew up a futures contract obligating Simon to sell Ehrlich the same quantities which could be purchased for $1,000 of five metals (copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten) ten years later as 1980 prices," writes Ronald Bailey in his book EcoScam. "If the combined prices rose above $1,000, Simon would pay the difference. If they fell below $1,000, Ehrlich would pay Simon. Ehrlich mailed Simon a check for $576.07 in October 1990." During the 1980s the combined prices of the metals selected by Ehrlich declined by over 50 percent. Simon easily won because he knew that the supply for resources was not becoming more scarce but more abundant, since the economic history of predominantly free capitalist nations had demonstrated how the prices of most major commodities have declined over time.

While Simon was proven correct, Ehrlich went on to win a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant -- based on his career of fantastic apocalyptic predictions that never came true. _Capmag

Human ingenuity in the face of resource scarcity is an old story, dating back many tens of thousands of years, at least. A fascinating ongoing chapter in this story involves a fantastic new field of chemistry that is enticingly close to "alchemy":

According to the authors of the paper, it is possible to mimic certain properties of precious metals as platinum and palladium using combinations of far more mundane materials. And that opens up the prospect of replacing expensive strategic metals in many industrial applications by much cheaper alternatives.


...Now the team is working its way across the big central block of the Periodic Table, consisting of so-called transition metals from scandium – used in aerospace alloys – to gold. Their aim is to discover other superatoms, and to gauge the extent of their similarities to standard atoms.


Not surprisingly in view of the commercial implications of success, the Penn State team is not alone in its quest. Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University recently announced that a cluster of eight caesium atoms plus a vanadium atom mimic the magnetic strength of manganese. The research team has also predicted that superatoms of gold and manganese will be magnetic while not conducting electricity – a combination making them useful in some biomedical applications.


Such discoveries suggest we are witnessing the birth of a whole new branch of chemistry, and one that could not have arrived at a better time – for many critical technologies are crying out for a breakthrough in material science. _TheNational

Julian Simon's book, "The Ultimate Resource 2:People, Materials, and Environment" is free online and worth a look.

A look at "The Ingenuity Gap"

Never Wash Another Diaper or Menstrual Rag

Sure, I know that most people use disposable diapers and sanitary napkins or tampons. But now, using new titanium diapers and sanitary rags, they can keep using the same ones over and over. Why? Because the new titanium oxide nanocrystal materials obliterate organic material. You may have read earlier this year about the titanium dioxide nanocrystal-impregnated wool fibers that literally consume red wine stains. But those voracious nanocrystals will not just drink wine. They'll eat or drink virtually any organic material you care to feed them. They positively love colonic bacteria, and bacteria of all kinds.

When exposed to sunlight, these exciting wee crystals will even split water into oxygen and hydrogen. And now, it is becoming much easier and cheaper to create these diminutive crystalline obliterators, thanks to work done in Australia and China.

The new crystals - which are more than five times more effective at splitting water than unmodified anatase - were made by adjusting the crystal structure on the surface of the crystals. These surfaces, known as facets, typically form in the most thermally stable configuration, designated {101}, which contains mostly 6-coordinate titanium atoms.

However, an alternative surface configuration called {001} where most of the titanium atoms are only 5-coordinate, has been found to be far more reactive. 'The high percentage of "unsaturated" titanium atoms in {001} allows stronger interactions with adsorbed molecules, such as water, resulting in a surface that is many times more reactive,' explains Max Lu, the leader of the team at the University of Queensland, Australia.

...The team demonstrated their results by making crystals at a uniform size of about one micrometre. Whereas only a few percent of the facets in naturally-occurring anatase crystals are the more reactive {001} kind, around 50 per cent of the facets in the new crystals are of this type. __RSC__via__NextEnergyNews

So you may actually want to buy two titanium diapers for your next baby. One for it to wear, and the other to filter your home water, and to generate hydrogen for your home and automobile fuel cells.

But you will only need to buy one titanium sanitary napkin or tampon, unless you have multiple menstruating females in your home with synchronised menstrual cycles. Babies are too young to question your judgment when you provide them with hand-me-down, never-washed titanium diapers from earlier siblings. But teenaged daughters can be a bit fastidious about things like that, so be forewarned.

For the cost of one more titanium diaper, you can provide clean air for your household by duct-taping one of the diapers over your central air and heat outlet. Think of it. Clean air, clean water, free hydrogen . . . and endless recyclable nappies. Not a bad deal.

New Fuel Cell Technologies

A UK company, Acal Energy Limited, has demonstrated a new fuel cell approach that replaces expensive platinum cathodes with a liquid metal "flow" cathode.

The FlowCath system replaces the standard—and expensive—platinum cathode found in conventional fuel cells with a liquid, non-precious metal catalyst system. This not only reduces the cost of the cell, but also humidifies the membrane naturally, eliminating the need for additional hydration systems, and better manages the heat which is generated....ACAL’s core technology is the liquid catalyst chemistry. The company currently uses a polyoxometallate inorganic association complex that is very stable and robust, and offers the same power density as platinum (unpressurized), with an additional 100% performance improvement possible.

For its next-generation system, the company is developing a transition metal-ligand complex. This is a higher potential catalyst, capable of delivering 2-3x the performance of platinum, according to ACAL. ___GCC

Fuel cells appear particularly promising for stationary applications--such as home combined-heat-power (CHP), plus for industrial and commercial CHP and backup power applications.

No matter how reliable electrical power grids are made to be, grid failure is always a possibility. By decentralising power generation, and by providing backup power supplies to critical industries and services, society is made more resistant to accidents and terror strikes that cripple the power supply.

More about ACAL technology PDF

Fuel Cell Revolution: DCFC's Run On Biomass!?!

Biomass can easily be turned to "bio-coal" carbon. Now, that biomass carbon can be used to drive fuel cells. The only output is pure CO2--the favoured food for plants!

Last year, the director of the Department of Colloid Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Prof Dr Markus Antonietti, developed an innovative technique with which any type of biomass can be converted into renewable and climate friendly 'designer coal'. Uses for the carbon are plenty, but professor Antonietti confessed that he and his researchers are part of a growing group of scientists who dream of a Direct Carbon Fuel Cell (DCFC) and a green carbon economy. As its name implies, a DCFC converts elemental carbon into electricity directly, and in a hyper-efficient way - the cells have almost twice the efficiency of most other types of fuel cells and double that of fossil fuel power plants.

...The reaction yields 80 percent of the carbon–oxygen combustion energy as electricity, yet no burning of the carbon takes place. DCFCs for stationary applications provide up to 1 kilowatt of power per square meter of cell surface area — a rate sufficiently high for practical applications. Some developers are designing DCFCs for mobile applications that can deliver energy densities in the range of 1,000–2,000 Wh/kg, far higher than any advanced battery.

...DCFC technology has several potential benefits over other fuel cells. First, it can use a wide variety of very abundant low cost carbonaceous fuels including coal, coke, tar, biomass and organic waste. Conventional fuel cells typically operate on gaseous fuels. The fuel (natural gas, propane, ethanol, etc.) is reformed to a hydrogen syngas, which is fed into the fuel cell stack. The DCFC, however, can operate directly on solid carbon fuel, which is stable, easy to store, handle and transport. DCFCs don't require the construction of an entirely new and expensive infrastructure - which is the case for hydrogen - nor do they lose the energy needed to turn fuel into gas.

Secondly, unlike hydrogen or methanol fuel cells, DCFC use no catalyst or costly noble metals like platinum. This cuts costs, and should increase reliability.___Biopact

This development has all the makings of a fuel cell revolution. Hydrogen has always been a bad bet for mobile and de-centralised fuel cell applications. It is time to grow out of that childish hydrogen fantasy.

Sugar to Hydrogen Conversion Promises Renewable Hydrogen Energy At Low Cost

Everyone knows that fuel is more expensive. It is important to turn to alternative, renewable energies, to substitute for non-renewable petrochemicals. Jim from the Energy Blog has provided an intriguing report on a new catalytic energy process for creating renewable hydrogen from sugar, glycerine, glycols, and sugar alcohols. This new process promises to reduce the cost of hydrogen production by up to two thirds.

The process (US. Patent No. 6,699,457) will enable localized production of hydrogen using readily available sugar-based feedstocks effectively eliminating hydrogen transport, storage and safety roadblocks that impede adoption of hydrogen fueled power systems. Due to the low temperature operation of APR, the economics are scalable to small home and office use applications. Depending on the feedstock, the process is capable of producing green hydrogen at a total cost of between $1.80-$4.00/kg. This is dramatically less than alternative renewable sources, such as wind and solar, and very competitive with mature, capital intensive hydrogen production methods such as natural gas reformation, coal gasification or electrolysis.

For comparison the energy contained in a kg of hydrogen is comparable to the energy in a gallon of gasoline, thus the cost to operate an internal combustion engine (ICE) on this hydrogen, produced from a distributed production system would be competitive to an ICE running on gasoline and the cost of operating a fuel cell would be about one-third that of an ICE.

....Dumesic and his team tested more than 300 catalysts to find a nickel-tin-aluminum combination that reacts with biomass-derived oxygenated hydrocarbons to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide without producing large amounts of unwanted methane.

When the sugar or alcohol molecules touch the surface of the catalyst, chemical reactions break and rearrange many of the carbon bonds, causing the atoms to be “reformed” into new configurations and liberating hydrogen in the process. In fact, about half the product is hydrogen gas. The researchers estimate that, if the system is fully developed, it will be able to turn a liter of biomass into about 1,000 watts of power.

....Because of the tremendous cost and energy advantages that the APR process has shown, Virent is targeting smaller [operations due to fast payback potential].

Much more information at the source.

These diagrams show all the hydrogen atoms contained within a few typical small organic molecules. Of course, if you can make hydrogen from glycerol---a major byproduct of biodiesel production---you can make biodiesel production that much more efficient. And if you can then produce cellulosic ethanol from the cellulose of the plant, efficiencies go up further, for total plant use.
This means of producing energy is relatively kosher, in comparison with the energy source profiled in yesterday's post.