#Sustainable Fuels | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

formulatrash · 2 years

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hi hazel, after asking the question abt logistics, I'm here to ask abt sustainable fuel.

Why wec is already using 100% sustainable fuel and all cars are performing ok, but F1 only uses 10% and some team struggles? Why can't single seaters use 100% sustainable fuel immediately?

Don't know much abt ICE but I guess they are not so different?

Thx!

so it's sort of two different things. WEC is using a bioethanol-derived petrol fuel, which is designed to the spec of what WEC would normally use. so in theory it's a very similar petrol mix to whatever the cars need just it's made from the runoff of wine making (well, the one for Le Mans was anyway - yes, I do know how French that is) but to the same formula as an LMP2 or GT car or whatever would normally need.

inevitably, sustainable fuels generally have less energy in than fossil fuel equivalents because less energy, by necessity, has gone into making them. it's why charcoal has less energy than coal even though it's kind of in principal the same thing because charcoal has undergone a quick roasting process from wood, whereas coal has been crushed by gravity and immense pressure for hundreds of years, the earth having put all the energy into that in addition to the biological material coal originally comes from.

it's why fossil fuels have been so irresistibly attractive to us since we discovered them; this source of incredibly high energy stuff that's just lying around. of course, we also have the sun and wind and tidal all the time but also humans are a bunch of basic bitches who basically discovered fire and keep circling back to it for some kind of primordial safety.

anyway, so: F1 is currently using fossil fuel petrol for 90% of its fuel mix (give or take some additives) and then also uses 10% (as of 2022, previously 5%) sustainably sourced ethanol.

although the WEC fuel is from ethanol it's turned into a petrol via some kind of process of adding more hydrogen. there's a few ways it's done. Total seem to be using ETBE "from the circular economy" (not sure what this really means, ETBE is used in oil refinement but it's from acidified ethanol) as well as the wine-derived ethanol which is all to say: a bunch of alcohols that get jiggled around molecularly until they've become a petrol.

that's different from F1's, where the ethanol is still ethanol. it's just diluting the petrol. so the shift to E10 from E5 has been significant because it means another 5% of the fuel that F1 is trying already to extract the absolute maximum energy from is now starting with a lower energy density, hotter burn and more acidic chemistry.

in a normal car that basically doesn't notice at all but obviously F1 power units are not normal cars, so things like the higher burn temperatures in the chambers and tiny amounts of difference in the speed for it to ignite, different management of the engine cutting, etc, are huge both in terms of the way that the car drives and mechanically in the endurance and resilience of the power unit. the ICE has less to work with, so more to do and the turbocharger, exhaust and MGU-H are dealing with different air circulation within the aspiration system. (because chemically it's a different mix burning, it has different oxygen requirements)

so basically: there's two different issues. one is adapting to a sustainably-sourced fuel that will overall have a lower energy density and might be a little different in behaviour to a fossil fuel but is basically made to the same spec that petrol would have been refined to, in WEC. and then there's adapting to a different fuel mix, with different chemistry, as in F1 this year.

when F2/3 move to 55% sustainable fuels next year I do anticipate some problems because god knows, it's not been straightforward currently. but in theory that 55% will still be petrol, it will just be petrol that's either been synthetically refined from captured carbon and hydrogen or from adding hydrogen to bio-ethanol. then the other 45% will be from regular old fossil stuff. there will, calorifically and in terms of how it works in the engines, absolutely be some differences and I am very cynical about using series that drivers pay to compete in and which can affect their careers so seriously with just one unreliable season, to experiment with that. but nonetheless, in principle it'll just be a petrol that's come from two different sources.

if you think this is bad you should try asking me about this in person after two wines lol

#f1 asks #motorsport asks #sustainable fuels

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reasonsforhope · 5 months

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No paywall version here.

"Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated...

In the end, I said yes, but reluctantly. Frankly, I was sick of admonishing people about how bad things could get. Scientists have raised the alarm over and over again, and still the temperature rises. Extreme events like heat waves, floods and droughts are becoming more severe and frequent, exactly as we predicted they would. We were proved right. It didn’t seem to matter.

Our report, which was released on Tuesday, contains more dire warnings. There are plenty of new reasons for despair. Thanks to recent scientific advances, we can now link climate change to specific extreme weather disasters, and we have a better understanding of how the feedback loops in the climate system can make warming even worse. We can also now more confidently forecast catastrophic outcomes if global emissions continue on their current trajectory.

But to me, the most surprising new finding in the Fifth National Climate Assessment is this: There has been genuine progress, too.

I’m used to mind-boggling numbers, and there are many of them in this report. Human beings have put about 1.6 trillion tons of carbon in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution — more than the weight of every living thing on Earth combined. But as we wrote the report, I learned other, even more mind-boggling numbers. In the last decade, the cost of wind energy has declined by 70 percent and solar has declined 90 percent. Renewables now make up 80 percent of new electricity generation capacity. Our country’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling, even as our G.D.P. and population grow.

In the report, we were tasked with projecting future climate change. We showed what the United States would look like if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius. It wasn’t a pretty picture: more heat waves, more uncomfortably hot nights, more downpours, more droughts. If greenhouse emissions continue to rise, we could reach that point in the next couple of decades. If they fall a little, maybe we can stave it off until the middle of the century. But our findings also offered a glimmer of hope: If emissions fall dramatically, as the report suggested they could, we may never reach 2 degrees Celsius at all.

For the first time in my career, I felt something strange: optimism.

And that simple realization was enough to convince me that releasing yet another climate report was worthwhile.

Something has changed in the United States, and not just the climate. State, local and tribal governments all around the country have begun to take action. Some politicians now actually campaign on climate change, instead of ignoring or lying about it. Congress passed federal climate legislation — something I’d long regarded as impossible — in 2022 as we turned in the first draft.

[Note: She's talking about the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act, which despite the names were the two biggest climate packages passed in US history. And their passage in mid 2022 was a big turning point: that's when, for the first time in decades, a lot of scientists started looking at the numbers - esp the ones that would come from the IRA's funding - and said "Wait, holy shit, we have an actual chance."]

And while the report stresses the urgency of limiting warming to prevent terrible risks, it has a new message, too: We can do this. We now know how to make the dramatic emissions cuts we’d need to limit warming, and it’s very possible to do this in a way that’s sustainable, healthy and fair.

The conversation has moved on, and the role of scientists has changed. We’re not just warning of danger anymore. We’re showing the way to safety.

I was wrong about those previous reports: They did matter, after all. While climate scientists were warning the world of disaster, a small army of scientists, engineers, policymakers and others were getting to work. These first responders have helped move us toward our climate goals. Our warnings did their job.

To limit global warming, we need many more people to get on board... We need to reach those who haven’t yet been moved by our warnings. I’m not talking about the fossil fuel industry here; nor do I particularly care about winning over the small but noisy group of committed climate deniers. But I believe we can reach the many people whose eyes glaze over when they hear yet another dire warning or see another report like the one we just published.

The reason is that now, we have a better story to tell. The evidence is clear: Responding to climate change will not only create a better world for our children and grandchildren, but it will also make the world better for us right now.

Eliminating the sources of greenhouse gas emissions will make our air and water cleaner, our economy stronger and our quality of life better. It could save hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives across the country through air quality benefits alone. Using land more wisely can both limit climate change and protect biodiversity. Climate change most strongly affects communities that get a raw deal in our society: people with low incomes, people of color, children and the elderly. And climate action can be an opportunity to redress legacies of racism, neglect and injustice.

I could still tell you scary stories about a future ravaged by climate change, and they’d be true, at least on the trajectory we’re currently on. But it’s also true that we have a once-in-human-history chance not only to prevent the worst effects but also to make the world better right now. It would be a shame to squander this opportunity. So I don’t just want to talk about the problems anymore. I want to talk about the solutions. Consider this your last warning from me."

-via New York Times. Opinion essay by leading climate scientist Kate Marvel. November 18, 2023.

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earaercircular · 6 months

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Austrian oil company OMV is building a plastic sorting plant in Walldürn

OMV reveals plastic waste to synthetic crude oil pilot

As a building block for its desired plastics circular economy, the Austrian oil, gas and chemicals group OMV is investing a three-digit million sum in the construction of a large sorting plant in the Neckar-Odenwald district. The plant in Walldürn[1], with a capacity of up to 260,000 tons per year, will use chemical recycling to return previously unusable plastics to the material cycle, said OMV boss Alfred Stern on Tuesday 31-10 in Vienna. Production should start in 2026.

OMV[2] is investing 170 million euros in the joint venture with the waste specialist Interzero[3] and will hold 89.9 percent of the company in the future. According to the information, Interzero operates five sorting plants for lightweight packaging in Germany and sorts around a third of Germany's lightweight packaging waste with over 800,000 tons per year. The company has the largest sorting capacity in Europe and is considered a technology leader, it said.

The sorting system will be the first of its kind to provide raw materials for the OMV Group's ReOil [4]t echnology on a large-scale industrial scale, said Stern[5]. A new ReOil plant with a capacity of 16,000 tons per year is currently being built at the OMV Schwechat[6] site in Austria. The fully automatic sorting system is a significant step towards giving raw materials that were previously incinerated a second life, said Interzero board member Axel Schweitzer. With around 22,000 employees, OMV is one of the largest listed industrial companies in Austria.

The sorting system will be the first of its kind to provide raw materials for the OMV Group's ReOil technology on a large-scale industrial scale, said Stern. A new ReOil plant with a capacity of 16,000 tons per year is currently being built at the OMV Schwechat site in Austria. The fully automatic sorting system is a significant step towards giving raw materials that were previously incinerated a second life, said Interzero board member Axel Schweitzer. With around 22,000 employees, OMV is one of the largest listed industrial companies in Austria.

Source

dpa-infocom, Ölkonzern OMV baut Kunststoff-Sortieranlage in Walldürn, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 31-10-2023; https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/kreislaufwirtschaft-oelkonzern-omv-baut-kunststoff-sortieranlage-in-wallduern-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-231031-99-769942

[1] Walldürn is a town in the Neckar-Odenwald district, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated 23 km southwest of Wertheim. The town of Walldürn consists of the ten districts Walldürn-Stadt, Altheim, Gerolzahn, Glashofen, Gottersdorf, Hornbach, Kaltenbrunn, Reinhardsachsen, Rippberg and Wettersdorf.

[2] As one of Austria's largest listed industrial companies and a global energy and chemicals group, OMV is working on answers to address the challenges of climate change. The agenda is to become a leading supplier of sustainable fuels, chemicals and materials with a focus on circular economy solutions by 2030, and to be climate neutral by 2050 at the latest. This is the mission of our approximately 22,400 employees. https://www.omv.com/en/about-us

[3] Our company has over 30 years of experience in the development and implementation of serviceable solutions for the prevention and recycling of waste. We are currently setting new standards as an international full-service environmental services provider – and together with our partners, we are advancing the transformation towards a resource-conserving circular economy. Since our foundation in 1991, we have provided customised environmental and system services for more than 50,000 customers in every sector – with a turnover of one billion euros (2021). About 2,000 employees work for us at more than 40 locations in 7 countries. We work together with considerable dedication and know-how for our vision – a world without waste. https://www.interzero.de/en/our-company/about-us/

[4] OMV, the international, integrated oil, gas and chemicals company headquartered in Vienna, has taken the final investment decision to build a chemical recycling demo plant, based on its proprietary ReOil® technology. With this, OMV is taking the next step toward an industrial-scale plant planned for 2026. The patented chemical recycling technology, developed by OMV, converts plastic waste into synthetic feedstock, under moderate pressure and normal refinery operating temperatures, which is then primarily used to produce again high-quality plastics. https://www.omv.com/en/news/221220-omv-scales-up-innovative-reoil-recycling-technology-at-schwechat-refinery

[5] Read also: https://bioenergyinternational.com/omv-reveals-plastic-waste-to-synthetic-crude-oil-pilot/

[6] Schwechat is a city southeast of Vienna known for the Vienna International Airport and Schwechater beer. The city is home to the refineries of the Austrian national oil company OMV.

#plastic waste #synthetic oil #sustainable fuels

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hope-for-the-planet · 2 months

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#clean energy #green energy #sustainability #climate change #environment #good news #hope #climate anxiety #fossil fuels

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alpaca-clouds · 9 months

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Solarpunk is not archievable under Capitalism

Okay, let me make one thing very clear: We will never have a Solarpunk future as long as we live under capitalism. Again and again I will find people, who have fallen in love with the idea of Solarpunk, but are unwilling to consider any alternative to capitalism. So, please, let me quickly explain what that just is not gonna work out that way. There will be no Solarpunk under capitalism. Because the incentives of capitalism are opposing anything that Solarpunk stands for.

So let me please run over a few core points.

What is capitalism?

One issue that a lot of people do seem to have is understanding what capitalism even is. The defining attribute of capitalism is that "the means of production" (e.g. the things needed to create things) are privately owned and as such the private owners will decide both what gets created through it and who will get a share in any profits created through them. The ultimate goal in this is, to generate as large as a profit as possible, ideally more and more profit with every year. In real terms this means, that most of those means of productions in the way of companies and the like are owned mostly by shareholders, that is investors who have bought part of the company.

While capitalism gets generally thaught in schools with this entire idea of the free market, that... actually is not the central aspect of capitalism. I would even go so far to argue something else...

The market is actually not free and cannot be free

The idea of the free market is, that prices are controlled by the concept of supply and demand, with the buyer in the end deciding on whether they want to spend their money on something and being able to use that power to also enact control on the supplier.

However... that is actually not what is happening. Because it turns out that the end consumer has little influence, because they are actually not actively participating in the market. The market mainly is something that is happening between multimillionaires. It is their demand (or the lack thereoff) that is the influence. Investors, mainly. Which is logical. In a system, where the power to buy is deciding, the person who can spend multiple millions is gonna have a lot more power, than the person who has twenty bucks to their name.

Hence: 99% of all people are not participating in anything resembling a free market, and the remaining 1% are not interested in such a system.

Money under capitalism

One thing everyone needs to understand is, that for the most part money under capitalism is a very theoretical concept. It might be real for the average joe, who for the most part will not have more than maybe ten grand to their name, but it is not real to multi millionaires, let alone billionairs. Something that is going to be thrown around a lot is the concept of "net worth". But what you need to realize is that this net worth is not real money. It does not exist. It is the estimated worth of stuff these people own. Maybe houses and land, maybe private jets, maybe shares in companies and other things. These people's power and literal worth is tied to them being able theoretically able to sell these assets for money.

In fact a lot of these very rich people do not even have a lot of liquid money. So money they can spend. In fact there are quite a few billionairs who do not even own a million in liquidated money. The money they use in everyday life they borrow from banks, while putting their assets up as a security.

Why capitalism won't abolish fossil fuels

Understanding this makes it quite easy to understand why the capitalists cannot have fossil fuels ending. Because a lot of them own millions, at times billions in fossil fuel related assets. They might own a coal mine, or a fracking station, or maybe an offshore rig, or a power plant burning fossil fuels. At times they have 50% or more of their net worth bound in assets like this. If we stopped using fossil fuels, all those assets would become useless from one day to the next. Hence it is not in the interest of these very rich people to have that happen.

But it goes further than that, because politicians cannot have that happen either. Because the entire economy is build around these assets existing and being used as leverage and security for other investments.

Why capitalism won't build walkable cities and infrastructure

The same goes very much for the entire infrastructure. Another thing a lot of people have invested a lot of money into is cars. Not physical cars they own, but cars manufacturing. So, if we were building walkable cities with bikelanes and public transportation, a lot less people would buy cars, those manufactoring factories becoming worthless and hence once more money... just vanishing, that would otherwise be further invested.

Furthermore, even stuff like investing into EVs is a touch call to get to happen, because the investors (whose theoretical and not real money is tied to those manufacturers) want to see dividents at the end of the quartal. And if the manufactuerer invested into changing their factories to build EVs for a while profits would go down due to that investment. Hence, capitalism encourages them not doing that.

Why capitalism won't create sustainable goods

A lot of people will decry the fact that these days all goods you buy will break within two years, while that old washing machine your grandparents bought in 1962 is still running smoothly. To which I say: "Obviously. Because they want to make profits. Hence, selling you the same product every two years is more profitable."

If you wonder: "But wasn't that the same in 1962?" I will answer: "Yes. But in 1962 the market was still growing." See, with the post war economic boom more and more people got more divestable income they could spend. So a lot of companies could expect to win new costumers. But now the market is saturated. There is not a person who could use a washing machine, who does not have one. Hence, that thing needs to break, so they can sell another one.

The market incentive is against making sustainable, enduring products, that can be repaired. They would rather have you throw your clothing, your smartphone and your laptop away every two years.

Why workers will always be exploited under capitalism

One other central thing one has to realize about capitalism is that due to the privitization of the means of production the workers in a capitalist system will always be exploited. Because they own nothing, not even their own work. Any profit the company makes is value that has in the end been created by the workers within the company. (Please note, that everyone who does not own their work and cannot decide what happens to the value created by it is a worker. No matter whether they have a blue collar or a white collar job.)

That is also, why there is the saying: All profit is unpaid wages.

Under capitalism the profits will get divided up under the shareholders (aka the investors), while many of the workers do not even have enough money to just... live. Hence, good living standards for everyone are explicitly once more against the incentives of capitalism.

Why there won't be social justice under capitalism

Racism, sexism and also the current rise of queermisia are all a result of capitalism and have everything to do with capitalist incentives. Because the capitalists, so the people who own the means of production, profit from this discrimination. This is for two reasons.

For once having marginalized people creates groups that are easier exploitable. Due to discrimination these people will have a harder time finding a job and living quarters, making them more desperate and more likely to take badly paid jobs. Making it easier to exploit them for the profit of the capitalists.

A workforce divided through prejudice and discrimination will have a harder time to band together in unions and strikes. The crux of the entire system si, that it is build on the exploitation of workers - but if the workers stopped working, the system would instantly collapse. Hence the power of strikes. So, dividing the workforce between white and non-white, between queer and straight, between abled and disabled makes it easier to stop them from banding together, as they are too busy quaralling amoung themselves.

Why we won't decolonize under capitalism

Colonialism has never ended. Even now a lot of natural ressources and companies in the former colonies are owned by western interest. And this will stay that way, because this way the extraction of wealth is cheaper - making it more profitable. Colonialism has never ended, it has only gotten more subtle - and as long as more money can be made through this system, it will not end.

There won't be Solarpunk under capitalism

It is not your fault, if you think that capitalism cannot end. You have been literally taught this for as long as you can think. You never have been given the information about what capitalism is and how it works. You have never been taught the alternative mechanisms and where and when they were implemented.

You probably look at Solarpunk and think: "Yeah, that... that looks neat. I want that." And here is the thing: I want that, too.

But I have studied economics. Literally. And I can tell you... it does not work. It will not create better living situations for everyone. It will not save the world. Because in the end the longterm goals are not compatible with a capitalistic system.

I know it is fucking scary to be told: "Yeah, change the world you know in massive ways - or the world will end." But... it is just how the things are standing.

You can start small, though. Join a local party. Join a union. Join a mutual aid network. Help repair things. Help people just deal. Our power lies in working together. That is, in the end, what will get us a better future.

#solarpunk #anarchism #anti capitalism #unions #environmentalism #save the planet #explanation #sustainability #renewable energy #end fossil fuels #communism

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