Aluminium – the dullest of metals gets interesting
November 21, 2010
In my recent comment to NERN I said that more attention should be shown to the life-cycles of the major industrial metals such as aluminium, zinc, copper, nickel as a major source of energy savings. I’m going to go through the case study of Al to demonstrate that a metal doesn’t have to be rare to be big news.
Aluminium is a dull metal. Its uses are dull. Its geology is really dull. Its chemistry is dull. In fact its only really its processing that makes Al stand out and that’s because it is so energy intensive. You need vast amounts of electricity (for example Alcan Lynmouth has its own 420MW power station built adjacent to it) plus sources of sodium hydroxide and of fluorine (usually synthetic cryolite made from fluorspar these days) to get from the raw bauxite through semi-processed alumina to the metallic aluminium.
To give some scale; Alcan, probably the world’s single largest vertically integrated aluminium producer, ships 30 Million tonnes of raw ore a year to its refineries and it takes 4 tonnes of bauxite to produce 1 tonne of metallic Al. Global metallic Al production is between 35-40Mt depending on when you take the measurement which means that somewhere between 30 and 160Mt of material is shipped each year within the aluminium life-cycle before the metal even gets to the manufacturing stage. Of course the energy embodied in getting to metal is only one step.
UK estimates show that the difference in energy footprint between 1kg of primary production and 1kg of recycled production is 14kWh. The UK consumes around 1 million tonnes of Al per year representing an embodied energy of somewhere around 14M Mwh or 1.2M toe. Again to give some scale 4GW Drax produces around 25M MWh each year or 7% of the UK’s total consumption of electricity which implies that the amount of energy required to provide the UK with its Al needs is equivalent to roughly 4% of total electrical consumption (or 1 1/2 Sizewell B’s). Of course we don’t mine bauxite in the UK and much of the refined metal we use is produced elsewhere, so a lot of that energy is offshored to areas where we have no influence on the energy system employed. For example Australia, the world’s largest Al producer and exporter has grids dominated by coal, Guinea is a classic macro-hydro development story and former Eastern-bloc countries mostly use the Al smelter/nuclear power station combo that is also present at Wylfa on Anglesey. So we can pick our own baddies from that list 
Currently the UK uses roughly 50% recycled Al, about half of which is old scrap (mostly packaging) and half industrial new scrap, but still landfills 3 billion drinks cans a year.
So that all gives some idea of the scale of the aluminium industry in the UK and the world. The thing is that there is a new technology available that could cut energy requirements of primary Al production by 40% and cuts out the Bayer pre-production process with all its nasty caustic wastes. It also allows a higher percentage of recycled Al to be used within primary production so removing a step in the recycling chain and allowing for a smaller modular smelter. Its inventors claim that Al costs would be roughly 25% of current costs (down from $2,000 to $500/tonne) if their system were commercialised. Its essentially a conventional smelting technology that uses a flux, instead of the complex Hall-Heurot process that uses electrolysis.
In itself 40% of 14Twh is not even a 1GW conventional power station, but that isn’t the point. If you can drop the cost of Al by 75% you can massively increase its use in the automotive sector effectively swapping all steel chassis parts for Al and reducing overall rolling weight by 20%+. This is where the investment really starts to kick in because you can now structure the supply chain in the same was as the steel mini-mills with manufacturing close to consumption and a high % of recycling without excessive pre-processing. All of a sudden over the life-time of a car you have dropped the embodied energy by 50% and the daily energy consumption by 20%. This is a multiplier when taken with the drop in primary processing cost. I can’t claim to know what that multiplier would be but the 1 1/2 Sizewell B’s are joined by many oil wells (or however you are powering you personal transport these days).
So swapping Al for steel in cars is a realistic prospect. It needs investment to get it going on a national scale because it requires both new car production facilities and new Al processing capacity but on an energy basis it looks a stone cold winner. The best thing is that the process is exothermic so you can recover energy off the back of the smelter and optimise the process even further than the inventors have as yet.
Forging Ahead. Not you Sheffield !
June 21, 2010
In the past it was usually considered an advantage to have someone at the top of government fighting for their constituency and its interests. The member for Sheffield Hallam appear to wish to buck this trend and make his constituency suffer for voting for him.
Back in March I commented on the government loan guarantee of £80m to the Sheffield Forgemasters in order to build a world-leading 15kt forge press that would enable Britain to become a significant player in nuclear manufacturing for decades to come. The cost to the tax payer about £20m over 5 years in opportunity cost (things that we could have done with the cash).
Well the recent announcement that this loan guarantee is to be cut shows exactly what our new government thinks of UK manufacturing – it couldn’t care a toss. What Nick Clegg thinks of Sheffield – he’d rather kick them in the nuts than stand up to his public school buddy. How far our new chancellor looks when he tries to balance the books – no further than two years out. How much influence that DECC has on energy system planning – zero. And how bloody stupid partisan government can be when faced with a choice that involves long term thinking.
The argument is that this loan constitutes a subsidy to the nuclear industry and the new govt has said no public money to that industry. They are still quite happy to pile cash into windmills, solar panels for the top of your house and subsidise coal and CCS, but building an export capacity that would bring in millions every year from outside our shores. Apparently thats bad news. Not to mention how long it will take to wait for any new nuclear build within the UK with the only other forge press in Japan booked up years in advance.
Even Chris Goodall at Carbon Commentry thinks its a bad idea.
I’m not prone to swearing, but this is a bloody stupid idea and if I were in Sheffield (or staying at my Gran’s old house 10 miles away) I would be demonstrating outside Clegg’s front door irrespective of whether he’s now in his grace and favour mansion or not.
Falmouth Energy Week 2010 May 24-25
May 29, 2010
What a difference a year makes !
Last year was full of hope. Openness and interdisciplinarity was part of the deal. Media exposure was integral to the design of the event.
This year the doors closed. Chatham House rules were imposed (and this report is composed under those restrictions). No media were there to report (though some did attend).
So what did we discuss at this exclusive event ?
Well. It became apparent that attendees saw the exclusivity as part of a wider trend (though they didn’t apparently see themselves as contributary to that trend). The phrase ‘decisions made in smoke filled rooms’ was one that was heard in more than one session. Speakers seemed less open to suggestions and there was a definite sense of ranks closing.
Partly this was put down to the relative success of the climate skeptic movement and the failure of COP15, but also to the new government’s policy set and approach so far. However, as a newcomer to this ‘scene’ I can’t help feeling this is the way that the regulars prefer it.
Fuel poverty seems to be taking a back seat with some kind of diluted concept of equitable apportionment of cost taking over. A greater focus on real politique and economics rather than innovation was evident. Argument rather than advance you could say. Calls for quick action, some action, any action seemed like a call to spend money rather than a call to change systemic conditions. Gone was the rhetoric of radical progress. In came the mumbled apologies of compromise.
Superconductors – Part Four A New Hope
January 11, 2010
Superconductors have been around in the labs for decades now. They have been a mainstay of high-end scientific research and niche medical applications for decades, but on the industrial scale they have always been a bit to expensive to run in mass market applications, like the energy sector. Theirs has been a story of potential energy efficiency boosts, power savings, zero transmission losses and all the first order energy system changes that no-one is against. Its time to take a look at them a little closer since I dismissed them so off-handedly in my previous post regarding the North Sea super grid.
Crash course
Superconductivity was discovered 99 years ago.
Different materials become superconductors at different temperatures.
HTS (High Temperature Super-Conductors) are defined as having a transition temperature above 30K (-243C), and the highest temp superconductors have a validated operating temperature around 135K. The boiling point of liquid nitrogen is 77K, so this has made HTS much more accessible and practical as nitrogen is commonly used as a liquified gas.
However, recently an HTS material that operates at 254K (-19C) has been claimed. This would clearly be a massive leap forward as standard compression-cycle refrigeration techniques could be used rather than immersion in liquified gas. Obviously these are lab findings and there is no guarantee that production of these materials could be scaled up to industrial quantities (they use some relatively commonplace elements, so there shouldn’t be any resource availability problems for once). The standard 10 years+ from first publication warning applies here i.e. no field application will arise from a lab discovery within 10 years of first publication.
So industrially we are looking at the 135K materials, which is still OK, but not the massive jump that we’d all like to see.
Energy Applications
Cabling – Zero transmission losses over long distances, or high capacity transmission without the current massive infrastructure (overhead pylons) are the main lures.
Power:Weight improvements – instead of copper conductors, using HTS in motors greatly increases their power:weight ratio. The applications in electric vehicles are obvious, so I won’t labour that point, but also consider all those static motors in air-conditioning units, factory assembly lines, and my personal favorite the conveyor belt. The infrastructure to hold these in place could be smaller and lighter, their maintenance quicker and safer as well as their operating costs lower.
For ‘motors’ also read ‘generators’ and you see the application for wind turbines and other renewable generating technologies. Smaller lighter nacelles means smaller lighter towers, means cheaper generating capacity and lower maintenance costs.
Renewable Energy Focus has done this two parter (Part One & Part Two) which covers all these much better than I ever could. You’ll need to subscribe for free to access the full articles, but its worth it.
The take home from these two articles is that super conductors should be on the shopping list of industry. I was too quick to dismiss them for the North Sea grid. With 150 times the carrying capacity per unit weight and 1/3 of the transmission losses superconducting cabling should be the first option for mega projects, not the last.
When/if those properly room temperature super-conductors reach the supermarket shelves a revolution will take hold.
Smart, sassy (and just a bit too forward) electricity and water meters
November 20, 2009
I am on record as having big reservations about smart meters. I’m going to tell you why.
I love the idea that by allowing people more access to data on their own energy footprints they can, if they so wish, target specific behaviours of their own that waste energy and/or water and so bumping up their bills unnecessarily. For example; if you can see from your bill that running your washing machine after 8pm saves £1 per wash as opposed to running it straight after you get in from work at 6pm, why wouldn’t you change that ? There is no cost to you and you save £50 per year if you do the laundry once a week. The energy that you use is no longer peak, so the expensive to run, marginal power plants don’t have to spark up so often. Those tend to be gas-fired in the UK, so that’s less emissions too. There are no losers expect the gas producers. Everything’s lovely in smart meter land !
But that’s not what is being proposed. You can do that with a really dumb smart meter that just allows charging banding by the hour, rather than what the UK has right now which is just a peak/off-peak/Economy 7 tariff distinction. Those dumb smart meters are known as AMR+ (Automated Metering Reading +). They allow the meter to work on a time resolution of the utility’s choosing (they generally choose hourly metering) and can be read remotely (various solutions here include power line communications, wifi, radio, telephone lines, its really not that important). The important thing is that the time resolution allows utilities to match charges to gross usage, meaning that they can plan their generation much more efficiently and reduce overall costs. In most places, you’d expect that saving to be passed on, so encouraging customers to shift usage to lower tariff periods, creating a virtuous circle until consumption self-optimises. Its up to the customer to react to the price signals in the way that best suits their lifestyle, if they do it at all, and some may not choose to.
The proposals that are being touted by most governments and industry in the industrialised nations go much further than this. They mostly use a system called AMI (Automated Metering Infrastructure) which allows utilities to ‘speak’ in real time to each house and under some proposals to each appliance, so that best use of available power and water may be made. Of course you have to take the utility’s word that this is happening since you can’t verify it in real time without access to their mission critical data. Most proposals include a degree of remote control extending from the grid into the house and past the meter to the appliance. The most often cited, and least intrusive remote control would be the switching off of refridgerators, where it doesn’t really matter when they work so long as they do work. But washing machines have been proposed, tumble driers, electric heaters. I’ve even seen a proposal to downshift the current available to lighting circuits as a response to voltage drops in the distribution grid, not turn them off, just make them slightly dimmer, though I’ll admit that this may have been referring to street lighting, not domestic since I can’t now find the reference.
This is granular and pervasive control of technologies that directly impact our everyday behaviour. Most significantly to me though is the psychological effect of chronic loss of control of our home environment. Once the power switch doesn’t necessarily mean ‘on-off’ any more we lose a significant degree of certainty in precisely the place that we consider safe and certain – our home.
That’s a totally different relationship between utility and customer. It hands the control to the utility and makes the end-user (you can’t really call someone who has no choice a customer) a passive recipient of whatever the utility deigns to allow.
OK, that’s hyperbolae.
In practice most countries have regulators that would provide oversight and try to make sure that consumer rights are protected, the problem with that is that some countries have liberalised markets for utilties and private companies will always try to find a way to maximise profit. It is in their design and they are legally obliged to do so if they have shareholders who want dividends.
The argument is that by time-shifting appliance operation you get the same effect as with AMR+, only you do it automatically, and therefore you can rely on it to provide bigger savings in terms of infrastructure, generating and emissions costs. I’m not actually convinced that the last one is terribly relevant here, the power or water will still be used after all, the only benefit may be in the marginal efficiency of the peaking plant, but I don’t believe that the degree of difference between AMR+ and AMI in terms of emissions is going to be the biggest driver. Its all about cost.
So here’s the problem; because only a very few countries have installed AMR+ at a national scale the pressure is on to jump right up to AMI because it fits in really nicely with the whole smart grid concept of providing stable voltage by a dynamic relationship between generation and consumption as all the proposed new energy generating and saving technology is rolled-out. The meters all have the 20-25 year life so no-one wants to have to do this twice if they discover something that requires AMI.
I haven’t seen any compelling evidence that you actually require AMI to establish a smart grid and there are some really knotty issues around privacy and data use once you put in the more advanced AMI.
There has just been a great report published into these issues by the Canadian group Privacy by Design.
I think that its interesting that if you want really secure data you divide it up, store it and use it in different ‘locations’. I think the spooks call this compartmentalisation. In the financial industry its called Chinese Walls. If you want to work out what’s going on, what behaviours are happening, you bring data together. So bringing water usage data together with electricity and gas. How much insight does it need to put a water use increase together with an immersion heater being switched on and a fan heater being turned on in the bathroom to tell that someone is having a bath or shower ?
I also like the postman analogy in the report mentioned above. You don’t expect the postman to read your mail, so why should your utility know when you are having a shower ?
Or, as the report suggests, it makes so much economic sense to direct the charging of your electric car to your utility bills, but it means that they know where you are or have been.
I’d like to suggest another comparison. When researchers carry out a new piece of work they have to consider the ethics involved in both the collection and the use of the data that they find. In some cases, for instance those involving children or the mentally ill, special vetting or training may have to take place to ensure a full understanding of the researchers responsibilities. The sanction being dismissal, possible professional ruin and even jail. I’d like to know what the proposed safeguards and sanctions are for a full implementation of AMI ?
It turns out that we don’t all play by the rules when it comes to other peoples data, as we found out this week when T-Mobile came under investigation for one of its employees allegedly selling swaths of personal details for personal gain.
I think smart meters, of the AMI type, can be implemented, but only when houses have smart controls that can exert pressure back on the utility and protect the household’s interests.
If the utility wants to switch off your fridge, it should have to negotiate a price for doing so with each house.
Switching appliances on and off is a major cause of electrical component wear. If the utility wants to degrade the performance of appliances that I have worked hard to afford I’d like some recompense.
Using your washing machine may actually be necessary. You’ve run out of nappies or spilt a drink down your best shirt just before an interview. You may not want to sell the utility the ability to time-shift that demand. You may actually want the utility to service your needs.
Or if you’ve done you washing but the utility doesn’t want to let you dry those fresh sheets before your new girlfriend arrives, you may be willing to sacrifice the meadow fresh scent for one more night or not. It all depends ….
AMI is a great bit of kit, but so is AMR+. Not quite as flashy, but very servicable and we know that it works. What isn’t up to standard is the home automation to enable AMI to be rolled out without loss of privacy or loss of personal control.
I will support every move towards what the Italians have already achieved – a roll-out of 27 million forward-compatible AMR+ meters that resulted in potential savings of $100 per household on bills and an estimated 3GW of power plant not being built. After that I think that it should be a personal choice over whether to hand your home over to the utility or not. If the meters are forward-compatible then you can download new software remotely when that choice is made without fannying around with full the privacy and control issues around full AMI.
