Reply #32: I throw in a closed system because of Peak Oil [View All]

[JohnyCanuck]

Once Peak Oil occurs, world oil prices will start to rise and oil production will drop and continue to drop in perpetuity. The age of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels will be gone for good and while today we can use the TDP process to manufacture oil from various feedstocks ignoring the energy costs of producing those feedstocks, that will not always be the case. Making oil from sewage sludge sounds like a good deal, but consider that sewage sludge is human waste derived from plant material grown mainly with our very energy intensive factory farming methods.

As fossil fuel production decreases a greater and greater proportion of the oil used in agriculture, industry and in the manufacturing of TDP feedstocks will have to come from the TDP process itself and the energy costs of producing the TPD feedstocks will start to become more and more significant.

Before we ever got to a closed system, we would find ourselves using more and more TDP oil (due to the shortage of fossil fuels) to produce the feedstocks that are then turned back into TDP oil. At some point we will start running into the effects of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and find that EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) is no longer the great deal that it was when we could ignore the energy costs of producing TPD feedstocks ( because the feedstocks were made with cheap and plentiful fossil hydrocarbon based oil).

I used the example of a closed system to help convey the message that I did not believe the TDP process was by itself a self-sustaining process and that therefore inputs of energy would be needed from outside the TDP process. While we would never reach the point where the TDP process becomes a completely closed system, we will be moving in that direction and the closer we get to a closed system the more the constraints imposed on us by the nature and the laws of physics will become apparent and the less efficient the TDP process will become.

I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to convey. I never said that we should not produce TDP oil. I was just trying to convey my concerns that we should not regard TDP as a panacea for all our energy problems in perpetuity. While TDP oil might delay the impact that peak oil will have on our energy intensive economies and societies. I see it as only delaying the consequences of Peak Oil not negating the effects of Peak Oil.