CHON World

By Ian Page – 2022.01.14 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04269-6 This paper explains that in a type of cress, under conditions where over 1 million mutations were recorded, certain critical regions of DNA were protected from mutations by being wrapped in a special way around certain proteins, which seems to result in DNA repair being much more effective. A lovely example of evolution developing a way to control evolution.

By Ian Page – 2022.01.14 Michael J. Lee, Junghun Han, Kyungbin Lee, Young Jun Lee, Byoung Gak Kim, Kyu-Nam Jung, Bumjoon J. Kim, Seung Woo Lee. Elastomeric electrolytes for high-energy solid-state lithium batteries. Nature , 2022; 601 (7892): 217 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04209-4 This is very similar to the Bristol university announcement of an aerogel battery. The basic problem with electrodes is that as lithium enters and leaves, they expand and contract and break down.  Lithium nickel cobalt batteries bolster a structure like layers of sheets of paper, lithium iron phosphate use a very strong crystal, with tubes that hold the lithium. Polymers, especially elastomers that expand and contract without wear are an obvious way to go but don’t conduct electricity which makes them useless. Conductive elastomers have been investigated both in Bristol and this group, embedding some kind of conductive plastic or organic crystals in the organic matrix to carry the current. These seem to be ...

By Ian Page – 2022.01.13 My understanding of sodium ion batteries is that they will be heavier, not last so long, be lower energy density, and lower cost. Several papers have recently come out which suggest this may be wrong. Bristol University have made an electrode out of an aerogel with controllable pores, by freezing an ice polyethylene oxide cellulose mixture and then sublimating off the ice to leave pores, and an aerogel containing cellulose crystals. This apparently performs well with either sodium or potassium replacing lithium. Its potentially a cheap electrode, made from sustainable materials, and strong and flexible enough to handle the large sodium ions moving in and out. Uni Austin has a mechanism that layers sodium metal on a thin substrate then folds it multiple times (shades of Damascus steel!). Apparently, this achieves longevity, fast charging, and a higher energy density than lithium iron phosphate, close to lithium nickel cobalt used in Tesla performance cars. This ...

By Ian Page – 2022.01.07 https://cleantechnica.com/2022/01/05/exxon-refinery-in-norway-closes-down/ In two years (with strong government action) Norway has increased from 50% EVs to nearly 90% EV's. EXXON has decided to close its refinery, due to lack of demand for oil, and it's the 5th to close in Europe since covid. During Covid, EVs have been the only growth market for cars in Europe generally. I'm not sure there is any relationship between the two since people were travelling less, which shifts the cost balance towards ICE's! Closing refineries is a very significant signal. They are built in the expectation that they will run for 50 years and are a major investment in ports and infrastructure. It's also not easy to start a new one as they have multiple environmental aspects and are usually grandfathered in some way by regulators to minimize the impact of these on local employment taxes  This also suggests that oil companies are moving into the dreaded inverse of...

By Ian Page – 2022.01.04 I've just been listening to an interview with a very knowledgeable and experienced gas engineer. He raised a very interesting point about the idea of substituting natural gas with some amount of hydrogen in existing gas pipes and systems There is a maximum of about 20% hydrogen in the mix caused by pipe diameters burners etc. The difference in energy density means more volume must be moved, i.e., a higher pressure, to get the same energy value at the burners. The extra pressure costs energy Even 20% hydrogen only saves about 7% of the CO2 emissions So where does hydrogen make sense if this avenue doesn’t? Basically, we can exclude energy to gas to energy due to the large losses. The Only possible use would be as the last-ditch solution for 2-week gaps in VRE when money doesn't matter so much as the grid is desperate. However, there are other solutions. We can exclude most vehicle traffic on the same cost grounds when compared with batteries and recharge...

By Ian Page – 2022.01.03 The politics are confusing but the classification system to be used by the EU for evaluating energy sources slipped out on Jan 1 when no one was interested! It's a draft but if accepted would allow green investment funds to go into nuclear and gas. There are caveats. Gas must release not more than an unspecified amount of CO2 per Kwh, nuclear must have plans for effective storage of waste. Note my BOLD weasel words which imply either flexibility or more negotiations depending on your level of cynicism' However, for nuclear, given that only Finland has a plausible active solution for nuclear disposal (the US, the UK have failed) I had to look up France which has the biggest feet of nuclear in Europe, ambitions to build more despite the disaster of their gen 3, and is probably the main player behind the classification of nuclear as green. Their solution is Cigeo- Wikipedia is more informative than the Cigeo site. This is a 25 billion euros tunnelling acti...

By Ian Page – 2022.01.01 In yesterday's note I recorded that a recent paper Joule 5 2077-2011 Aug. 18, 2021, has proposed that the cheapest long duration storage for electricity would be HDV PEM salt which is heavy duty fuel cells for vehicles and storing hydrogen in salt caverns. This is around the same cost as natural gas combined cycle with full carbon capture and storage for periods up to at least 7 days and the cost increase with time is almost flat. This makes it the most significant since even natural gas with carbon capture has been shown to make a considerable contribution to global warming due to leakages of natural gas which is a very bad global warming gas. Unfortunately, in the last 48 hours it has become apparent that Hyundai, which has over many years invested heavily in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, has decided to close it down (put on ice, return to research?)  due to intractable technical problems and lack of market potential. I read this as batteries are now good ...