Anaerobic Digestion (AD) and biogas industry
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- Written by: J C Burke
- Category: What is CHP
- Hits: 7815
The World needs quick and practical 'fixes' to avoid a gathering storm of crises, most immediately the energy supply crisis, and potential farming/food production crises.
The Anaerobic Digestion (AD) and biogas industry is recognised as one of the required quick fixes. The reasons are many:
- AD’s ability to mitigate methane emissions from rotting organic wastes, positions it among the ‘fastest, most immediate and cost-effective’ ways to solve the issues raised above - "low hanging fruit" as it were, and will play a crucial role in delivering the Global Methane Pledge.
- AD produces natural fertiliser, a ready organic replacement for its petro-chemical counterpart, where a 20% slump in supply, forecast to last for several years, has led to ‘famine’ warnings.
- AD produces renewable energy, that cuts costs of manufacture, allows governments to insulate economies from international price hikes.
- AD can produce biomethane as clean transport fuel – dramatically reducing so-called 'carbon (dioxide) emissions and cutting air pollution in our cities ( as a replacement of diesel fuels), delivering health benefits valued in the billions of dollars/pounds.
- AD and biogas are the readily available, ready to deploy at scale, solution to these global challenges. With the right enabling environment AD can deliver millions of skilled jobs, especially potentially transitioning from the oil and gas industry, rural sustainability, energy and food security.
- As a circular solution the deployment of AD has a ripple effect – stimulating sustainable practices across society. That is why the International Energy Agency (IEA) says AD sits at the heart of a circular economy and is the poster boy for net zero.
- AD sits at the heart of an integrated energy response to the challenges we face, delivering immediate results and ushering in an era of flexible energy management systems that integrates technologies across different energy vectors (electricity, heat and gas) and Supporting Food Production with the by-products (Compost etc).
Developing the enabling environment to unleash the power of biogas is what global thought leadership summit's explore, with industry leaders addressing best practice to de-risk and short-circuit AD deployment.
In summary: Some key features of bioenergy:
- Available now
- Applicable in all energy sectors (electricity, direct heat, transport)
- Readily integrated with existing infrastructure
- Store-able – it can support expansion of intermittent renewables
- It can deliver negative emissions when linked to Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS): BECCS / Bio-CCS
Bioenergy contributes to climate change mitigation when:
- Biomass is based on waste/residues
- Converted to energy products efficiently
- Used to displace GHG-intensive fuels
Bioenergy encompasses many potential feedstocks, conversion processes and energy applications. It interacts strongly with the agriculture, forestry and waste management sectors, and its prospects are linked to the growth of a broader bioeconomy. Bioenergy can only expand if supplied and used in a sustainable manner.
Server Farms And Cooling
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- Written by: J C Burke
- Category: Alternative Energy
- Hits: 7332
Servers Designed for Immersion (SDI) – An Alternate Approach
If you’ve already implemented or are considering a “white box” solution – building your own servers – or you want to truly maximize space, power and budget, then SDI may be your best choice.
Immersion cooling technology addresses the key concerns of thermal design and hardware reliability that are common with air-cooled, white box servers. Further, engineering purpose-built servers from the ground up allows more than just design them for cost and performance, but also for space and power utilization.
Key Benefits of Servers Designed for Immersion:
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Purpose-built for application
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Mix and match components without worrying about thermal design limitations and reliability
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No extraneous components, such as integrated fans, heat sinks and oversized power supplies, reduce cost and e-waste
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More power-efficient – up to 30% lower energy use vs air-cooled servers
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Maximized rack density with simplified, modular chassis that utilize much higher immersion cooling capacities
SDI are an ideal match for micro-modular, rack-based immersion cooling system and immersion-cooled, modular data centres.
Anaerobic Digestion for CHP Fuels
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- Written by: J C Burke
- Category: What is CHP
- Hits: 11925
Yes AD combined with CHP or even CHCP. What is all this acronym stuff eh?
AD is Anaerobic Digestion, its the sort of process that happens in a sewage works where all that nasty stuff is broken down by 'good' bacteria. What is left is largely safe but has given off lots of methane gas and CO2, along with some other trace stuff. Anaerobic means 'without Oxygen'.
So to create bio-methane by digestion of waste products has to be "Carbon (dioxide) Negative" as it is removing methane from being released into the atmosphere! See article below about atmospheric methane - CLICK HERE
Now that Methane is what we need. Its almost the same as Natural Gas that you buy at home. So it can be 'cleaned up' and sent down pipes to the gas mains or it can run a gas fired electricity generator.
But rather than just generate electricity, we also need to look at how effective the burning of gas in an engine really is. When gas is burned in say a modified car engine to drive a shaft to turn a generator to produce electricity, there are loses. These loses affect the efficiency of turning the energy value of gas into electricity. It is disappointing to discover that only around 20-25% of the gas burnt produces the electricity. The rest is 'low grade' waste heat.
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| The Chinese have over 2 million of these AD-CHP Units |
Motor Fuels and Duty
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- Written by: J C Burke
- Category: Current Developments
- Hits: 6898
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Type of fuel - source Government 24th Mar 2022 |
Rate |
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Petrol, diesel, biodiesel and bioethanol |
52.95 p per litre |
5p reduction in budget |
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Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) |
28.88 p per kg |
reduced in budget |
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Natural gas used as fuel in vehicles, for example biogas |
22.57 p per kg |
reduced in budget |
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‘Fuel oil’ burned in a furnace or used for heating |
9.78 p per litre |
reduced in budget |
Transport Fuel Duty and Heating Fuel Duty
Firstly, looking at these tables, one wonders at the logic applied by those Civil Servants to arrive at such numbers? Was it a gallons to litres issue? Who can tell.
With the reduction of 5p on Petrol and Diesel it must be stressed that LPG, CNG and LNG powered vehicles already had a big advantage in respect of “fuel duty” and have further been slightly reduced in this year's budget too [see table]. With Natural gas /bio gas at less than 50% [42.6% in fact] of even the new Petrol/Diesel duty. Also LPG [Liquefied petroleum gas] is only 54.5% of the ‘normal’ [petrol/diesel] fuel duty.
Also please note the Bio-diesel and Bio-ethanol both attract FULL duty per litre. This makes little sense given the processes involved to create these fuels – although growing crops to make these is not ideal.
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