An interesting graphic on biologically derived carbon utilization in lithium battery anodes.
In general, I do not approve of carbon dioxide waste dumps (sequestration) called "CCS" - carbon capture and storage - but I do approve of "CCU" - carbon capture and utilization.
There is a widely believed rumor going around that batteries will save the world. I recently had a discussion in this space - perhaps a more than a little hostile - that this is a highly questionable belief, since it is a law of physics - a law that cannot be repealed by any legislature (or for that matter, any dictator) anywhere on the planet - in which I stated the fact that a battery is a device that wastes energy.
Facts matter.
Since wasting energy requires the use of more energy and no form of energy is environmentally benign - although we can minimize the environmental impact by being sensible - batteries raise the environmental impact of energy. They will not save the world, they will make it worse.
There is a widely believed rumor going around that so called "renewable energy" will save the world. However, massive investments in this belief have experimentally - experiment overrules theory and/or belief - shown that even with the expenditure on so called "renewable energy" on a multiple trillion dollar scale in this century, things are getting worse not better. Working with the weekly data recorded at the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory, which I check every week, I calculate the 12 month running average of increases using week to week comparisons of present data with the same data ten years previous.
This week's data:
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 414.37 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 391.49 ppm
Last updated: August 28, 2022
The 10 year comparator data exists in my weekly updated spreadsheet going back to 1984; the weekly readings go back to 1975. In late August 2000, (the week beginning August 20, 2000) this 12 month running average of ten year week to week comparators was 15.09 ppm/10 years = 1.51 ppm/yr. This week it comes in at 24.49 ppm/10 years = 2.45 ppm/yr. For the most recent particular week, the concentration compared to 10 years ago is 25.07 ppm higher than 10 years ago. Of the top 50 individual readings, ranging from 26.53 ppm to 24.73 ppm, 14 have occurred this year. All of the top 50 such individual readings have occurred since 2019.
It's immediately clear - or at least should be immediately clear - that all this talk of solar/wind/batteries/electric cars ad nauseum hasn't done jack shit to address climate change, isn't doing jack shit to address climate change, and - at least I'm convinced - won't do jack shit to address climate change.
But here's a graphic from a paper in the scientific journal Energy and Fuels I came across as I work to catch up on my reading. We can, apparently, make lithium battery electrodes - at least on a lab scale - using waste from coconut agriculture. This would be "CCU" of which I approve. The paper is this one: High Graphitic Carbon Derived from Coconut Coir Waste by Promoting Potassium Hydroxide in the Catalytic Graphitization Process for Lithium-Ion Battery Anodes, Fredina Destyorini, Windi Cahya Amalia, Yuyun Irmawati, Andri Hardiansyah, Slamet Priyono, Fauzan Aulia, Haryo S. Oktaviano, Yu-I Hsu, Rike Yudianti, and Hiroshi Uyama, Energy & Fuels 2022 36 (10), 5444-5455.
Here's the graphic in question.
The caption:
Note the temperatures of these processes. All include 500 °C for an hour, followed by 1200 °C for 3 hours.
Whence the heat for this process might come in the much anticipated solar and wind nirvana that people have been predicting for my whole adult life (and I'm not young) just as some people have been predicting the return of Jesus for a longer period? We are going to heat coconut coir in ovens powered by unreliable solar and wind energy and batteries, along with a million other things people not living in energy poverty do?
Really?
What has come (as predicted) - in contrast to Jesus and the "renewable energy" nirvana - is a climate disaster. Much has already been lost; much is being lost (at an accelerating rate) and more surely will be lost.
It's time to think anew. This faith based belief in a reactionary approach to energy - making our access to energy dependent on weather precisely at the time we have destabilized the weather - has failed.
It's time to "go nuclear" against climate change, and that is not at all a metaphor; it's a clear cut reality.
Have a nice Sunday afternoon.