Maersk's COO statment.

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

I don't do scrying. That's for humans.

[DA? + 301]

2 hours ago, Marina Schwarz said:

I don't do scrying. That's for humans.

I'm not asking you to look into a crystal ball, but if you do not have any guessamation of such a topic you are basically stuck discussing the past. Lesson's can be learnt from the past but are very limited in predicting what will occur in the future. Without having any idea were renewables are going it's impossible to have an idea of the future of fossil fuels or as it will touch just about every area an idea were the future is taking us.

[Bhimsen Pachawry + 72]

On 12/9/2018 at 5:12 AM, Andrew Sun said:

I was thinking that eventually, like after 2040, when fossil fuel consumption for transportation drops to nearly zero world wide, the cost of fossil fuel will drop. Like sub $15 USD per barrel (say using 2018 USD for inflation adjustment). The Kingdom of SA, Russia, and other major producers will still be pumping them out of the ground. But at such low cost for feed stock, together with petrol chemical infrastructures already build, the economy of scale would be hard for other forms of plastics to compete with.

I don't know where to find data on how carbon intensive bio plastic / recycling is when used in as large of scale as today's petrol chemical production. So this is just me thinking out loud without any thing to back up my theory.

Is there anything more efficient than fossil fuel? The idea of fossil fuel is that it is highly efficient and hence the work can be done uickly, thus reducing logistical problems. As long as no other efficient alternative comes, oil price can't go to less than 20 dollars a barrel. The cost of oil can be considered to be at least equal to the cost of the alternative

On 12/8/2018 at 1:32 PM, DA? said:

Don't bet on it. I see quite often the argument that the chemical feedstock side of the industry will make up for the loss in oil sold to burn but it's just really hydrocarbons for the most parts. Hydrogen and carbon are not exactly rare or difficult to come by from other sources. Using these other sources will also make it easier to widen the plastic types used, making them better for use and also designing them for easy recycling or biodegradable.

Making hydrogen is difficult. Also, burning forest wood is not an option. we will run out of forest if we do such a thing. It will be suicidal. There are biodegradable bags even today and I regularly get it at shopping malls. But they lose temper quickly (2-3 months) and get shredded to pieces. Things like electric wire, packaging, electronics etc can't use such things

On 12/9/2018 at 6:31 AM, Jan van Eck said:

Given that you need over 100,000 hp to move one of the Maersk Lines' massive ships, and that Maersk as I recall has some 400 of them,  the only logical power plant that I can see other than the now-well-proven heavy oil diesel is the packaged nuclear reactor.

Reactors are well-developed in naval service, with US subs all bbuilt with only reactors, and aircraft carriers also only built with reactors, typically four units per ship.  Given this long development history, the naval units constructed by General Atomics (outside Albany NY) are thoroughly proven, and a direct drop-in replacement power plant.  Whether or not the US Government is prepared to allow the commercial sale of this particular power plant is another thing entirely.

A new-design reactor requiring basically no safety controls, as it is self-extinguishing in the event of over-heat, is the Thorium reactor.  If the USA does not release the General Atomics design, I predict that another will step up and build these Thorium molten-salt designs, and for Maersk that would be in the 100-MW range.  The costs will be down to the level of the diesel, possibly a touch lower. Logically, Maersk would fund the development, as once built, they have no ongoing fuel costs. Remember that a US aircraft carrier goes 25 years without re-fuelling. 

The very first nuclear-powered merchant ship was the NS Savannah, built in the USA.  Here is a picture.  Note the cargo derricks; this was built before containerization.  Additional to cargo, the Savannah also carried passengers in style; I think perhaps 70 or so.  The reactor was a pressurized-water design, same as US naval vessels  (no surprise there).

 

You can find the Savannah in cold layup  (long-term storage) at Pier 13 in Baltimore Harbor, Maryland.  They don't let you wander on board, but with some negotiation in advance you just might be able to snag a tour.  Yup, the future was back in the 1950's.                     

The amount of uranium in the world is not quite high. In fact, the amount of Uranium is about 8-10 million tonnes. 1 ton uranium can produce 30000 ton uranium worth of bituminous coal's energy. The amount of coal that will provide as much energy as 10million tonne of Uranium is 300 billion tonnes. The amount of coal in the world is 1.5 trillion tonnes. The 300 billion tonne of coal is worth about 1.2 trillion barrels of oil in energy content. Even if efficiency of coal and nuclear power including energy of extraction, transportation and efficiency of power plants, the amount of oil equivalent will be 800 billion barrels.

So, as a matter of fact, coal is more abundant than Uranium. Oil is 80% abundant as Uranium today even after such massive depletion. It is a bogus notion that uranium can become world's energy source replacing fossil fuels. Uranium is seriously limited in quantity. Going by current rate of coal extraction of 10 billion tonnes, the substitution by Uranium will only make it last 30 years.

On 12/9/2018 at 8:00 AM, Janet Alderton said:

Mixed plastics can be converted back into oil.

Plastic to Energy.docx

Mixed Plastics to Oil, Chemicals.pdf

It is possible to convert one hydrocarbon to another but there will be a significant energy penalty. Unless mixed plastic occurs naturally, it is inviable method to convert mixed plastics back to oil

20 hours ago, Sebastian Meana said:

Hydrogen has to be produced from somewhere, you need more energy to produce it than you get from it, my bet is on small nuclear reactors

Naval nuclear reactors had a bullet-proof history, not a single accident in any submarine or icebreaker or battleship has ever be related to the fail of the nuclear reactor

Nuclear reactors have their own problems. Most important is that the amount of Uranium is limited. Secondly, nuclear reactors can't change their power output quickly which will mean that ships will have to keep reactor running at high even when docked by letting the energy go waste by simply discarding the energy produced which will add to wastage. This will further exacerbate uranium scarcity. 

Secondly, nuclear reactors need big ships, not small ones which makes it incapable of being used in most ships. In addition, the nuclear technology is sensitive and not given away to everyone for use

4 hours ago, Guillaume Albasini said:

French shipping company CMA-CGM choose to switch to LNG powered container chips and is building a new generation fleet of 22'000 teu giant container ships powered by LNG.

http://www.seatrade-maritime.com/news/asia/why-cma-cgm-ordered-game-changing-22-000-teu-lng-powered-containerships.html

LNG could be the next step but some really renewable solutions could come later. Check for instance the amazing NYK Super Eco Ship 2030 concept showed in this video :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7lpb-lvBE0

Or Finnish company Wärtsilä Visions for the Future of Shipping :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwurMIeAlCc

 

LNG is also fossil fuels. The current consumption of CNG is about 170TCF a year whereas total reserves is at 6000-700TCF. This gives only 40 years of reserves at current usage. If other oil based ships have to use CNG, then the consumption will increase drastically which can result in in LNG running out as fast as oil or even faster

[DA? + 301]

3 minutes ago, Bhimsen Pachawry said:

Making hydrogen is difficult. Also, burning forest wood is not an option. we will run out of forest if we do such a thing. It will be suicidal. There are biodegradable bags even today and I regularly get it at shopping malls. But they lose temper quickly (2-3 months) and get shredded to pieces. Things like electric wire, packaging, electronics etc can't use such things

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181129100036.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181029102810

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181205134025.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181011103659.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181004155426.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180611133412.htm

I could go on, hydrogen production is moving on.

Not sure were burning a forest came from.

What was that old film were the father of the girl friend was advising the lad to go into plastics as it was the new advancing industry? Still is today but it's looking to move away from dinosaur juice to make it. It's another technology that's moving on very rapidly, we will make electric wire insulation, packaging, and so on with different sources, one of the reasons is they give wider choice on the make up of the plastic.

NG came to late to the party, had a grand entrance but now the super star has arrived called renewables.  

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

45 minutes ago, Bhimsen Pachawry said:

Nuclear reactors have their own problems. Most important is that the amount of Uranium is limited. Secondly, nuclear reactors can't change their power output quickly which will mean that ships will have to keep reactor running at high even when docked by letting the energy go waste by simply discarding the energy produced which will add to wastage. This will further exacerbate uranium scarcity.  

Nuclear reactors can change their power output quickly, that's not a problem, the problem is how well the turbine can deal with that, steam turbines on the other side can't

nuclear reactors are very simple machines, and their power output can be regulated by changing the turbine and or refrigerant flow-rate modern Rankine cycle steam turbines takes hours in order to change their power output, and always did.

however i want to disagree on the availability of uranium, it depends on the type of reactors you use, the reactors we use today are thermal-spectrum reactors need Uranium-235 which is the only naturally found fissile isotope of uranium, which is 0.07% of all uranium, the rest is U-238, while U-238 cannot be fissioned it can be breeded into fissile material, you can give it a neutron, wait until it becomes in Pu-239 and then fision the pu-239, the pu-239 gives 2.5 or 3 neutrons, you use 1 for fission and another for breeding, with good tungsten reflectors you need an enrichment of only 15%

the plutonium could be only breeded by a few countries in the world to be allowed to refuel the ships, USA, Japan, Russia, (maybe Argentina) and France,, so they make sure they only get reactor grade plutonium which has a high proportion of Pu-240 and Pu-241 like 30%, while those isotopes are all fissile in a nuclear weapons and fast reactors for weapons they make the rest of the Pu-239 worthless, since Pu-240 can enter in spontaneous fission and Pu-241 while is a great fissile material it has a relatively short half life which means once it becomes Am-241 it makes a nuclear weapons useless since is basically a great neutron absorber/killer

Uranium and Thorium are not scarce, all of the geothermal power comes mostly from those isotopes, you need like 2000 tons of uranium or 8000 tons of thorium in order to produce a single watt of heat by their decay, and the earth generates like how? 47,000Gw of it?

indeed it can be extracted from geothermal wells or even from shale oil as a waste products, and remember a reactor with a power output of 2GWth needs around 785Kg of Uranium or thorium during an entire year taking in mind a capacity factor of 100%

http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/DR_Winter2010.pdf

Edited December 10, 2018 by Sebastian Meana

[Bhimsen Pachawry + 72]

5 minutes ago, Sebastian Meana said:

Nuclear reactors can change their power output quickly, that's not a problem, the problem is how well the turbine can deal with that, steam turbines on the other side can't

nuclear reactors are very simple machines, and their power output can be regulated by changing the turbine and or refrigerant flow-rate modern Rankine cycle steam turbines takes hours in order to change their power output, and always did.

however i want to disagree on the availability of uranium, it depends on the type of reactors you use, the reactors we use today are thermal-spectrum reactors need Uranium-235 which is the only naturally found fissile isotope of uranium, which is 0.07% of all uranium, the rest is U-238, while U-238 can be fissioned it can be breeded into fissile material, you can give it a neutron, wait until it becomes in Pu-239 and then fision the pu-239, the pu-239 gives 2.5 or 3 neutrons, you use 1 for fission and another for breeding, with good tungsten reflectors you need an enrichment of only 15%

the plutonium could be only breeded by a few countries in the world to be allowed to refuel the ships, USA, Japan, Russia, (maybe Argentina) and France,, so they make sure they only get reactor grade plutonium which has a high proportion of Pu-240 and Pu-241 like 30%, while those isotopes are all fissile in a nuclear weapons and fast reactors for weapons they make the rest of the Pu-239 worthless, since Pu-240 can enter in spontaneous fission and Pu-241 while is a great fissile material it has a relatively short half life which means once it becomes Am-241 it makes a nuclear weapons useless since is basically a great neutron absorber/killer

Uranium and Thorium are not scarce, all of the geothermal power comes mostly from those isotopes, you need like 2000 tons of uranium or 8000 tons of thorium in order to produce a single watt of heat by their decay, and the earth generates like how? 47,000Gw of it?

indeed it can be extracted from geothermal wells or even from shale oil as a waste products, and remember a reactor with a power output of 2GWth needs around 785Kg of Uranium or thorium during an entire year taking in mind a capacity factor of 100%

http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/DR_Winter2010.pdf

Breeder reactor has failed in Japan France, India etc despite repeated tries. So, breeder reactors are not an option as of now. Considering the failure rate in last 30 years, I would not count on it in future either

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

1 hour ago, Bhimsen Pachawry said:

Breeder reactor has failed in Japan France, India etc despite repeated tries. So, breeder reactors are not an option as of now. Considering the failure rate in last 30 years, I would not count on it in future either

i do not agree, in russia the Bn-800 reactor has proven quite successful and they even plan to make it bigger up to 1200MW, india is experimenting with breeders reactors too, in the US case the EBR demonstrated to work well despite requiring a better refinement in design

the main problem of breeders reactors isn't if they do work or not, is the refrigerant, is a sodium potassium alloy that explodes with water and liberates caustic soda and potash, those problems can be solved using molten salts, which are less corrosive than liquid alkaline metals if they are pure, or by using a lead-bismuth refrigerant.

[Janet Alderton + 124]

On 12/7/2018 at 6:03 PM, Andrew Sun said:

I think chemical batteries (lithium, vanadium, etc.) will be the way to go for the next 20 years. In this time, fossil fuels will still be the fuel of choice to move big things like container ships. As soon as fuel cell batteries become reliable, cost effective, and have the needed infrastructure, they will take over the world. Hydrogen probably will be the eventual winner in the end.

But I suspect fossil fuels will still be consumed in massive quantities even when we no longer use it as transportation fuel. Plastics of all types are just too hard to be replaced by another material.

What do you guys think?

"Mixed plastics can be converted back into oil."

The rational for converting mixed plastics back to oil is not as a significant energy source, but instead to lessen the pollution of our oceans with plastic waste that breaks down into smaller and smaller fragments that enter the food chain. The hydrophilic nature of plastic fragments attracts toxins that are carried via the plastic into filter feeding marine animals and on up the food chain into fish. Anyone who eats salt-water fish is ingesting plastic-borne toxins. 

If we give waste plastics an economic value, they will not end up in the oceans.