Conserve To Greatness---Energy Resource Efficiency and The Future (3 of 5)
Conserve To Greatness---Energy Resource Efficiency and The Future (3 of 5)
ENERGY AGAIN--AVOIDING TRAVEL
Another transportation approach may be the best, avoid it altogether! James Martin wrote about "the wired society" in the 1970s. Martin described possibilities of replacing much commuting with communicating, and Martin's wired society is developing now. Many jobs can are done at home. Employees simply call in to send and receive data.
Communication has already decreased the energy costs of a small number of telecommuters. If applied widely, it can save energy for roads and vehicles and materials for the work places that are no longer needed.
Most important, telecommuting to work is distance insensitive. Once society adjusts to telecommuting, telecommuters can be across town or across the continent...or on another continent...or across space. One effect of this is that peasants can get good jobs without leaving their land. Nature lovers can homestead in the wilds while still holding jobs.
A related effect is that major cities are no longer necessary. Any place in the world that a telecommuter likes is a suburb close enough to his job. That means that the developed countries will not have to strain to keep supporting the great megalopolis areas, sprawling cities around a central core. These overcompacted areas require extravagances: skyscrapers, double-decked freeways, massive aquaducts. These overcompacted areas will also be vulnerable to the small primitive fission bombs that will be available to many countries in the coming decades.
Back in space, people are expensive. Besides themselves, they require the mass of food, water, air, sundries, living area, and return transport. How much handier it would be if many tasks, even much of the manual labor, were done remotely by a telecommunications feed. Teleoperators are an established and rapidly improving area of technology (Uttal). A worker in an orbiting factory could operate via remote "waldo" fingers. A worker might live in Sioux City, Iowa and work in orbit.
Computers and computing already represent more than ten percent of the U.S. economy, more than the auto industry (Dertzous). Allowing the development of a data interchange is an efficient means of extending the range of work areas and the reach of workers' hands.
MATERIALS
There are vast oceanic deposits accreting at rates faster than any society could conceivably use them (Dillon; Mero; Rona). There are cubic miles of iron-nickel asteroids that also contain large amounts of gold, platinum, and rare-earth elements.
However, this essay is limited to efficiency, and efficiency alone is sufficient to supply all materials needed for centuries. The great potential of efficiency comes from the nature of the market, more efficient mining, recycling, changing processes, materials substitution, dematerializing, and synthetic materials.
The nature of the market is that minerals are a small part of the price of finished products. A $10,000 car may contain $300 of iron, aluminum, glass, and plastic. The preponderance of costs are from fabricating those materials into parts and assembling those parts into a car. Thus, minerals other than fuels and and basic construction minerals can increase drastically in price with little effect on overall costs. This would allow mining of ores poorer than those used today. At present, copper ores of 1% and gold ores of 3 ounces per ton can be profitable. Ultimately, people could improve processes enough to mine ordinary rocks and clays (Clarke, Profiles, p. 147):
One hundred tons of average igneous rock such as granite contains 8 tons of aluminum, 5 tons of iron, 1,200 pounds of titanium, 180 pounds of manganese, 70 pounds of chromium, 40 pounds of nickel, 30 pounds of vanadium, 20 pounds of copper, 10 pounds of tungsten, and 4 pounds of lead.
Mining methods are improving in that direction.
Although aluminum is one of the commoner elements in the Earth's crust, pure aluminum was a rare metal in the 1880s. It was often used in jewelry. Then the Hall-Heroult process allowed cheap aluminum production from bauxite, and aluminum became an industrial metal. Questions in the 1970s about bauxite availability and price led to research into other ores. (Patterson).
In 1972 Alcoa purchased a large tract of the Laramie Range in Wyoming. The range is estimated to have as much as 30 billion tons of anorthosite within a hundred feet of the surface, and one third of that rock is aluminum. Deposits of alunite in the Wah Wah Mountains of Utah may be as large as 270 billion tons, which would also yield about a third aluminum. (Patterson)
High-gradient magnetic separation of nonbauxite aluminum ores was demonstrated on a lab scale in 1980 (Method). The same year, an analysis suggested that another process that uses coal fly ash could profitably replace as much as 90% of U.S. aluminum imports (Aluminum).
The only bar on development of these processes is the low price of currently available bauxite. Even that might not stop production from coal ash if social pressures increase costs of coal ash disposal.
Technological breakthroughs have steadily increased efficiency of materials production. Polyethylene, a third of all U.S. plastics produced in 1989, was first produced in the early 1940s. Then it was made under 12,000 atmospheres of pressure. By the 1970s, a low-pressure gas-phase process used was much safer because of lower pressure and used only a quarter as much energy as the earlier process. (Ross and Steinmeyer)
An experimental direct steelmaking process would combine four separate steps of pelletizing ore, coking coal, reduction of ore to iron in a blast furnace, and making the steel. Capital savings would be enormous and energy savings would be about 25%. (Ross and Steinmeyer)
Still, a more efficient materials option is to recycle. The initial materials-processing steps of manufacturing are the most energy intensive, so recycling materials is energy efficient as well. Aluminum recycling in the U.S. is roughly 50%. However, glass, plastic, paper, and other metal goods are are only 20% while 50% could be recycled with staggering savings (Ross and Steinmeyer).
"Materials in an ideal industrial ecosystem are not depleted any more than those in a biological one are; a chunk of steel could potentially show up one year in a tin can, the next year in an automobile and 10 years later in the skeleton of a building. Manufactruring processes in an industrial ecosystem simply transform circulating stocks of materials from one shape to another; the circulating stock decreases when some material is unavoidably lost, and it increases to meet the needs of a growing population. Such recycling still requires the expenditure of energy and the unavoidable generation of wastes and harmful byproducts, but at much lower levels than are typical today." (Frosch and Gallopoulos)
Recycling is not an issue of technology, although advancing technology increases recycling potential. Recycling is a societal issue of intent and economics. A popular intent for recycling has not yet been reflected in economics.
In the 1970s, a wave of environmental consciousness broke on the fact that taxes and other government incentives are stacked in favor of virgin materials (Brookman). In the late 1980s, another surge of recycling collapsed the market for recycled paper (Breen; McDermott). Markets must be an integral part of any recycling.
Fortunately, ecological concerns are causing society to stumble into recycling and other efficient options. Curtailing trash burning increased the flow of wastes to landfills. Then ecological concerns closed 70% of U.S. landfills within a 10-year period (Cook, Not in). The resulting $27/ton average for normal trash and more than $2,000/ton for toxic materials is providing an economic driver (Simon).
That economic driver is spurring recycling and inherently more efficent processes. The U.S. Navy now uses sandblasting grit in asphalt (Olesen). Boeing recovers and sells aluminum hydroxide from a chemical milling operation, and 3M former waste materials become fuels, coat hangars, flower pots, and other salable products (Simon). Cities are pursuing recycling to avoid rapidly rising landfill costs (Cook, Not in).
That same driver can encourage more efficient industrial processes. For instance, solvents including those in paints and varnishes cause nearly a third of the hydrocarbon emissions in the air of Southern California. Many of those coatings are used by furniture makers. Coatings being developed would cure under ultraviolet light. Curing would be rapid and without emissions. (Olesen)
Substitution of plentiful elements for scarce ones is another efficient approach to materials supply. In "The Age of Substitutability," Goeller and Weinberg used mercury to demonstrate how much substitution can be done. They noted that a third of mercury used was for caustic chlorine production, but that the diaphragm-cell process uses only common materials. They cited batteries as another quarter that could be replaced by other methods, although the zinc-magnesium dioxide dry cell alternative was not as good as batteries available now. They listed alternatives for most of the major uses of mercury, and they argued that most uses for the relatively rare elements could be served by more common elements.
Even better, synthetic materials can substitute for rare elements (Hillig). Synthetic materials include plastics, ceramics, alloys, and composites of metal, plastics, glass, and epoxy. Composites already provide superior performance in many applications. Steel belts and plastic belts have almost eliminated the need for the spare tire because blowouts have become rare. Those tires use less rubber because they last twenty to forty thousand miles and use less fuel because they roll better. Composite parts are finding places in aircraft because they can be lighter and stronger, consuming less fuel.
Lead-acid batteries are made with a number of thin lead plates in an acid bath. An improved design of this battery uses composite plates coated with metal to allow a much lighter battery. This saves fuel with a lighter battery, saves materials, and lessens the amount of lead potentially entering the environment.
Another approach is to eliminate metals entirely. Fiber-optic cables can carry millions of times more data than copper cables, yet fiber-optic cables are silicon dioxide, sand.
Still, the efficiency of greater carrying capacity is more important than the copper saved. Fiber-optic nets have the massive data-carrying capacity and consequent low prices to make Martin's wired society practical.
Organic conductors might do similar things for power lines and batteries. Organic batteries under development would be light and could be molded into almost any unused space in a vehicle.
Improved organic batteries might fulfill an idea of both Joseph Henry and Thomas Edison, separate independent appliances. Those appliances could run on discontinuous power sources just as the handheld calculator does now. Improvements in existing photovoltaic cells and batteries are extending that concept to yard lights, phone booths, microwave relays, and cathodic protection of metal structures.
It is only a matter of degree scaling up to independent households and down to miniature robots for monitoring and influencing events within the body and within chemical processing on a mass scale. It is only a matter of development time to applications from the ocean depths to outer space.
ENERGY AGAIN--AVOIDING TRAVEL
Another transportation approach may be the best, avoid it altogether! James Martin wrote about "the wired society" in the 1970s. Martin described possibilities of replacing much commuting with communicating, and Martin's wired society is developing now. Many jobs can are done at home. Employees simply call in to send and receive data.
Communication has already decreased the energy costs of a small number of telecommuters. If applied widely, it can save energy for roads and vehicles and materials for the work places that are no longer needed.
Most important, telecommuting to work is distance insensitive. Once society adjusts to telecommuting, telecommuters can be across town or across the continent...or on another continent...or across space. One effect of this is that peasants can get good jobs without leaving their land. Nature lovers can homestead in the wilds while still holding jobs.
A related effect is that major cities are no longer necessary. Any place in the world that a telecommuter likes is a suburb close enough to his job. That means that the developed countries will not have to strain to keep supporting the great megalopolis areas, sprawling cities around a central core. These overcompacted areas require extravagances: skyscrapers, double-decked freeways, massive aquaducts. These overcompacted areas will also be vulnerable to the small primitive fission bombs that will be available to many countries in the coming decades.
Back in space, people are expensive. Besides themselves, they require the mass of food, water, air, sundries, living area, and return transport. How much handier it would be if many tasks, even much of the manual labor, were done remotely by a telecommunications feed. Teleoperators are an established and rapidly improving area of technology (Uttal). A worker in an orbiting factory could operate via remote "waldo" fingers. A worker might live in Sioux City, Iowa and work in orbit.
Computers and computing already represent more than ten percent of the U.S. economy, more than the auto industry (Dertzous). Allowing the development of a data interchange is an efficient means of extending the range of work areas and the reach of workers' hands.
MATERIALS
There are vast oceanic deposits accreting at rates faster than any society could conceivably use them (Dillon; Mero; Rona). There are cubic miles of iron-nickel asteroids that also contain large amounts of gold, platinum, and rare-earth elements.
However, this essay is limited to efficiency, and efficiency alone is sufficient to supply all materials needed for centuries. The great potential of efficiency comes from the nature of the market, more efficient mining, recycling, changing processes, materials substitution, dematerializing, and synthetic materials.
The nature of the market is that minerals are a small part of the price of finished products. A $10,000 car may contain $300 of iron, aluminum, glass, and plastic. The preponderance of costs are from fabricating those materials into parts and assembling those parts into a car. Thus, minerals other than fuels and and basic construction minerals can increase drastically in price with little effect on overall costs. This would allow mining of ores poorer than those used today. At present, copper ores of 1% and gold ores of 3 ounces per ton can be profitable. Ultimately, people could improve processes enough to mine ordinary rocks and clays (Clarke, Profiles, p. 147):
One hundred tons of average igneous rock such as granite contains 8 tons of aluminum, 5 tons of iron, 1,200 pounds of titanium, 180 pounds of manganese, 70 pounds of chromium, 40 pounds of nickel, 30 pounds of vanadium, 20 pounds of copper, 10 pounds of tungsten, and 4 pounds of lead.
Mining methods are improving in that direction.
Although aluminum is one of the commoner elements in the Earth's crust, pure aluminum was a rare metal in the 1880s. It was often used in jewelry. Then the Hall-Heroult process allowed cheap aluminum production from bauxite, and aluminum became an industrial metal. Questions in the 1970s about bauxite availability and price led to research into other ores. (Patterson).
In 1972 Alcoa purchased a large tract of the Laramie Range in Wyoming. The range is estimated to have as much as 30 billion tons of anorthosite within a hundred feet of the surface, and one third of that rock is aluminum. Deposits of alunite in the Wah Wah Mountains of Utah may be as large as 270 billion tons, which would also yield about a third aluminum. (Patterson)
High-gradient magnetic separation of nonbauxite aluminum ores was demonstrated on a lab scale in 1980 (Method). The same year, an analysis suggested that another process that uses coal fly ash could profitably replace as much as 90% of U.S. aluminum imports (Aluminum).
The only bar on development of these processes is the low price of currently available bauxite. Even that might not stop production from coal ash if social pressures increase costs of coal ash disposal.
Technological breakthroughs have steadily increased efficiency of materials production. Polyethylene, a third of all U.S. plastics produced in 1989, was first produced in the early 1940s. Then it was made under 12,000 atmospheres of pressure. By the 1970s, a low-pressure gas-phase process used was much safer because of lower pressure and used only a quarter as much energy as the earlier process. (Ross and Steinmeyer)
An experimental direct steelmaking process would combine four separate steps of pelletizing ore, coking coal, reduction of ore to iron in a blast furnace, and making the steel. Capital savings would be enormous and energy savings would be about 25%. (Ross and Steinmeyer)
Still, a more efficient materials option is to recycle. The initial materials-processing steps of manufacturing are the most energy intensive, so recycling materials is energy efficient as well. Aluminum recycling in the U.S. is roughly 50%. However, glass, plastic, paper, and other metal goods are are only 20% while 50% could be recycled with staggering savings (Ross and Steinmeyer).
"Materials in an ideal industrial ecosystem are not depleted any more than those in a biological one are; a chunk of steel could potentially show up one year in a tin can, the next year in an automobile and 10 years later in the skeleton of a building. Manufactruring processes in an industrial ecosystem simply transform circulating stocks of materials from one shape to another; the circulating stock decreases when some material is unavoidably lost, and it increases to meet the needs of a growing population. Such recycling still requires the expenditure of energy and the unavoidable generation of wastes and harmful byproducts, but at much lower levels than are typical today." (Frosch and Gallopoulos)
Recycling is not an issue of technology, although advancing technology increases recycling potential. Recycling is a societal issue of intent and economics. A popular intent for recycling has not yet been reflected in economics.
In the 1970s, a wave of environmental consciousness broke on the fact that taxes and other government incentives are stacked in favor of virgin materials (Brookman). In the late 1980s, another surge of recycling collapsed the market for recycled paper (Breen; McDermott). Markets must be an integral part of any recycling.
Fortunately, ecological concerns are causing society to stumble into recycling and other efficient options. Curtailing trash burning increased the flow of wastes to landfills. Then ecological concerns closed 70% of U.S. landfills within a 10-year period (Cook, Not in). The resulting $27/ton average for normal trash and more than $2,000/ton for toxic materials is providing an economic driver (Simon).
That economic driver is spurring recycling and inherently more efficent processes. The U.S. Navy now uses sandblasting grit in asphalt (Olesen). Boeing recovers and sells aluminum hydroxide from a chemical milling operation, and 3M former waste materials become fuels, coat hangars, flower pots, and other salable products (Simon). Cities are pursuing recycling to avoid rapidly rising landfill costs (Cook, Not in).
That same driver can encourage more efficient industrial processes. For instance, solvents including those in paints and varnishes cause nearly a third of the hydrocarbon emissions in the air of Southern California. Many of those coatings are used by furniture makers. Coatings being developed would cure under ultraviolet light. Curing would be rapid and without emissions. (Olesen)
Substitution of plentiful elements for scarce ones is another efficient approach to materials supply. In "The Age of Substitutability," Goeller and Weinberg used mercury to demonstrate how much substitution can be done. They noted that a third of mercury used was for caustic chlorine production, but that the diaphragm-cell process uses only common materials. They cited batteries as another quarter that could be replaced by other methods, although the zinc-magnesium dioxide dry cell alternative was not as good as batteries available now. They listed alternatives for most of the major uses of mercury, and they argued that most uses for the relatively rare elements could be served by more common elements.
Even better, synthetic materials can substitute for rare elements (Hillig). Synthetic materials include plastics, ceramics, alloys, and composites of metal, plastics, glass, and epoxy. Composites already provide superior performance in many applications. Steel belts and plastic belts have almost eliminated the need for the spare tire because blowouts have become rare. Those tires use less rubber because they last twenty to forty thousand miles and use less fuel because they roll better. Composite parts are finding places in aircraft because they can be lighter and stronger, consuming less fuel.
Lead-acid batteries are made with a number of thin lead plates in an acid bath. An improved design of this battery uses composite plates coated with metal to allow a much lighter battery. This saves fuel with a lighter battery, saves materials, and lessens the amount of lead potentially entering the environment.
Another approach is to eliminate metals entirely. Fiber-optic cables can carry millions of times more data than copper cables, yet fiber-optic cables are silicon dioxide, sand.
Still, the efficiency of greater carrying capacity is more important than the copper saved. Fiber-optic nets have the massive data-carrying capacity and consequent low prices to make Martin's wired society practical.
Organic conductors might do similar things for power lines and batteries. Organic batteries under development would be light and could be molded into almost any unused space in a vehicle.
Improved organic batteries might fulfill an idea of both Joseph Henry and Thomas Edison, separate independent appliances. Those appliances could run on discontinuous power sources just as the handheld calculator does now. Improvements in existing photovoltaic cells and batteries are extending that concept to yard lights, phone booths, microwave relays, and cathodic protection of metal structures.
It is only a matter of degree scaling up to independent households and down to miniature robots for monitoring and influencing events within the body and within chemical processing on a mass scale. It is only a matter of development time to applications from the ocean depths to outer space.
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