Megadeth's 'Rust in Peace' 20th anniversary tour concert at Austin, TX

I happened to attend Megadeth's Rust in Peace 20th anniversary concert at Stubb's BBQ amphitheater at Austin TX on Friday 26th March. It was honestly the one freaking awesome concert. With the return of David Ellefson, the current lineup is probably the best one after the original RIP lineup. The venue, Stubb's is again one hell of a place for metal. This is my first concert here and I fell in love with the place straightaway.

Megadeth played the whole Rust in Peace album as promised and also played almost all their old kick ass stuff. In addition to their usual regulars, they played Skin o' my teeth as also Headcrusher and The right to go insane from the Endgame album.

The concert also featured Testament and Exodus. I have not listened to much of Exodus before. All I can say is that they were real heavy and had the dedicated in the crowd moshing and head banging. But, Testament was a different world altogether. Being one of my favorite thrash metal bands (after megadeth, metallica and slayer), I thoroughly enjoyed their show. They played some of my favorites like Do not resuscitate and 3 days in darkness from the gathering album as also Alone in the dark and First strike is deadly.

All in all it was one hell of a concert, definitely the best one I have been to. Here are some of the videos I recorded during the show.

Oil shales: Opportunity and challenges

Right from the 1970s, oil shales have been touted as the solution to substantially reducing or even eliminating America's dependence on foreign oil. The US has the world's largest reserves of oil shales, with recoverable reserves of about 800 billion barrels^5,7 (about 3 times Saudi's conventional oil reserves), mainly located in the Green river basin in the states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. These form about 70% of the world resource of shale oil. However, before, oil shales can be developed on a commercial scale, a plethora of technical, policy as well as economic challenges need to be overcome.

Extraction of oil from shales requires methods very different from those used for conventional oil production. They contain solid kerogens (precursors to crude oil) and need to be retorted to high temperatures to convert the solid kerogen to liquid hydrocarbons. Oil shales are extracted mainly through two processes, surface mining and underground mining. In surface/open pit mining, the kerogen is mined and then retorted in external retorting plants. In in-situ retorting, the oil shale is retorted in-situ and the generated hydrocarbon is produced and refined. In addition to this, oil shales have historically been (even today in countries like Estonia) as fuel and used to generate electricity.

The most important policy challenges to the commercial development of oil shales are with respect to the substantial environmental impacts associated with them. The primary among these is the disturbance of land during mining and the associated damage to the ecology and biodiversity, which is more severe in the case of surface mining. There would be permanent topographic changes due to the surface disposal of spent shale. An environmental impact assessment needs to be done to determine the impact of oil shale development on the eco-system and suitable policies need to be formulated.       

In addition to this, development of oil shales results in increased greenhouse emissions compared to even fossil fuels, primarily due to the huge amount of energy required for the retorting process. However, newer technologies¹ have reduced this to about the same level as coal. It also results in degradation of the water in the surrounding areas, besides competing for water use for residential industrial and commercial purposes.

New technological developments like Shell's thermally conductive in-situ conversion process, addresses many of the problems described above by minimizing the impact on land use and also reducing the energy requirement, thereby reducing the net greenhouse gas emissions of the process. It is also estimated³ that this process would be viable at an oil price less than $30 per barrel as compared to the older oil shale mining and retorting techniques which require an oil price of above $70 to $95 per barrel. Shell has demonstrated⁶ that this process is technically viable on a small scale and is working on its commercialization and sustainability.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005^2,4 passed by the Congress provided for the commercial leasing of federal land for oil shale exploitation and increased the size as well as the number of land tracts leased. These were often a constraint for companies in getting efficient recovery in their tests. Further policy incentives like these, supporting R&D to overcome these challenges and possibly providing federal funding to some of these projects, especially those that study the environmental impact of the development of oil shales are urgently required.

Oil shales thus hold an enormous potential, provided we can overcome the above challenges. The size and richness of the US shale oil reserves combined with the evidence of possible commercial viability warrents a collaborative government-industry-public effort to augment US petroleum supplies. It should be a priority now to build a consensus to initiate an oil shale industry in the near future.

References

1.      EASAC, "A study of the EU oil shale industry" (May 2007)

2.      Bartis, J T; LaTourette, T; Dixon, L; Peterson D J; Cecchine, G; "Oil shale development in the United States, Prospects and policy issues"report by RAND for the NETL of the DOE

3.      "Shale oil extraction technology Economically viable?", Futurepundit.com

4.      Andrews, A; "Oil shales, History, incentives and policy" (April 2006), CRS report for the Congress

5.      Fine, Daniel; "Oil shales: Towards a strategic unconventional fuel supplies policy" (Mar 8, 2007), Heritage.org

6.      Shell US - In-situ conversion process page

7.      Bunger, J W; Crawford, P M; "Is oil shale the answer to America's peak oil challenge? "Oil and Gas Journal (Aug 9, 2004)     

V2G technology: Power stations on wheels

Imagine turning your car to a power station when it is lying idle at the parking lot when you are off to work and actually getting paid for it. That is V2G technology for you. V2G technology or vehicle to grid technology enables an electric-drive motor vehicle to export electric power to the grid when the vehicle is not in use for transportation. It can be used with gridable vehicles, like battery operated electric vehicles (BEVs), fuel cell run vehicles and plug in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs). Figure 1 below shows the V2Gtechnology as it is envisaged when fully developed.

Fig 1: Concept of V2G

(Source: Center for carbon free integration: The University of Delaware¹)

The main advantage of using V2G technology is that it turns the car into a power plant which can supply electricity to the grid when required. It makes sense since most vehicles remain parked at any point of time (95% for an average vehicle in America and 90% even during peak hours) according to some estimates². It provides a way to supply electricity to the grid when it is required the most, during the peak demand hours like for instance the late afternoon hours while charging them during the off peak hours where fortunately in many places (Texas for instance), a lot of renewable power (like wind energy) is generated. This has the potential to spare the utility companies, at least partly of the need to invest in the creation of spare capacity to cater to the peak hour electricity demand.

The Center for Carbon free integration at the University of Delaware headed by Dr. Willet Kempton has created a system that uses this technology. In this video³, Dr. Kempton explains about this system which has been fitted on an electric car as a prototype.  Google Inc.⁵, in collaboration with P.G and E has employed this technology on Toyota Prius cars with PHEV capacity at its headquarters at Mountain View, CA.

An additional advantage is that the car, instead of supplying electricity to the grid, can also be used to power homes directly by plugging it to the mains as explained by Dr. Kempton in the above video³. This is especially useful during times of blackouts⁴. Using V2G technology also has environmental benefits as the cars themselves are emissions free. Provided we could generate a good percentage of our electricity from renewable sources⁵, they could help reduce carbon emissions. It also results in cost benefits to consumers as it would be cheaper for them to utilize electricity at a lower rate while charging  during off peak hours while either selling electricity to the utility companies or powering their homes during peak hours when the per unit rate of electricity is higher. It also makes sense for utility companies on account of savings arising due to lowered capital costs as they are spared of the need to invest in the creation of additional capacity⁴.

Further research is underway on different aspects of the V2G technology⁵, including the idea of smart charging, systems to control the amount of electricity that could be fed back to the grid, besides further trials of this system by universities, utility companies as well as car manufacturers. According to some estimates, the commercialization of this technology is at least ten years away, by which time PHEVs should have penetrated the car market to a significant extent and hence serve as the media on which this technology could potentially be deployed.

On the flip side, there is also a lot of skepticism⁶ about this technology mainly in the areas of the compatibility of the power electronics between the system fitted in the car and the ones used for the grid, the longevity of batteries, their weight as well as the number of charge and discharge cycles they could be subject to, as well as the plug in infrastructure. Further research is needed before this technology could be deployed on a large scale and it could be some years before this becomes a reality. However, one thing is for sure, V2G technology holds great promise for the future. 

References

1) "V2G concept", Center for Carbon free power integration, The University of Delaware.

2)  J. Tomi´c, W. Kempton, J. Power Sources (2007), "Using electric fleet drive vehicles for grid support", Journal of Power sources, doi:10.1016/j.jpowsour.2007.03.010 (article in press)

3)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5639ceWg0us

4) "Power to the people: Run your house on a Prius" New York Times (09/02/2007)

5)  Vehicle to grid V2G technology, www.solarnavigator.net

6)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJgRznnjYm0&e

 

Jatropha: A bio-fuel panacea?

The use of bio-fuels as alternative sources of energy has long been a subject of intense debate among its proponents and its critics.  Some of the points raised by critics of bio-fuels, like Mr. Peter Brabeck - Letmathe, the chairman of Nestle (in an article in the Wall Street Journal¹) are that,

1) Bio fuels are unreliable.

2) They have triggered a massive reorientation of agricultural land towards their production (130 million tons of corn in the US alone for bio-fuel production) having disastrous consequences on the food front.

3) Bio-fuels create water shortages in many areas and worsen them in places where they are already endemic.  

Jatropha plant is being seen by many to be an answer to the issues raised above. It is an ideal bio-fuel crop. Goldman Sachs ^[2] has rated it to be the perfect biodiesel crop. "Jatropha" in Greek literally means 'medicinal plant'. It is a traditional bush that has been found in the wild in Central America for centuries and was brought to Europe by the Portugese in the 16th century and has since spread all over the world.

Jatropha is drought resistant, thrives on virtually any kind of soil, including desert and other non-arable soils and requires minimum amounts of inputs like fertilizers, pesticides etc. Since the jatropha plant can grow in virtually any kind of soil; these lands need not be strictly agricultural. The Indian Railways^[12]  has plans to cultivate jatropha along the sides of railway tracks and other surplus waste lands under its possession and produce bio-fuels which would be used to blend with conventional diesel for its usage. Moreover, Jatropha yields many times as much bio-fuel per acre as compared to corn and other bio-fuels ^[4] (four times as much as soya and ten times as much as corn^[3]). Another important aspect of the use of jatropha as a bio-fuel is that it is virtually carbon neutral, absorbing as much carbon dioxide as that produced by its combustion. Also, the residue after the extraction of bio-fuel is a good source of bio-gas as well as biomass. It is also excellent in preventing soil erosion and the leaves it drops act as a soil enriching mulch ^[3], thereby enriching the soil on which it is grown. 

Also, the economics of using jatropha is also favorable and by some estimates^[2] is about $43 per barrel, about half that of oil from corn, a third of that from rapeseed and very close to the current crude oil prices. Furthermore, the capital investment required for setting up its processing facilities is comparable to that of conventional refineries according to UOP ^[8]. Companies like BP and D1 oils (British bio-fuels company) have made substantial investments ^[5] in jatropha plantations in India, Southern Africa and South East Asia.

The fuel obtained from Jatropha is also suited for use as an aviation turbine fuel. Recently, Air New Zealand, in partnership with Boeing, UOP LLC and Rolls Royce, did a successful test flight^[6] on a Boeing 747-400 passenger aircraft which had one of its four engines (of make Rolls Royce RB-211) powered by a 50-50 mix of jatropha oil and standard Jet Air 1 (standard jet) fuel. The following videos ^{[7], [8], [9], [10], [11]} describe this test flight and analyze the use of jatropha as a bio-fuel. The jatropha oil used for the test flight matched remarkably well with the standard aviation fuel with respect to its properties, especially those related to its performance as an aviation fuel ^{[8], [9]}.

Thus, from the above discussion, it is clear that jatropha can address most of the problems associated with the use of bio-fuels like corn and is an ideal solution to meet the current and future energy shortfalls. However, it has its own share of problems, such as its toxicity due to which the government of Western Australia banned the cultivation of jatropha ^[3]. There is also the fear that in areas dependent on subsistence agriculture, it could force out food crops, thereby increasing the risk of famine ^[3]. There is also some uncertainty associated with its yields which could affect the economics of its use. Thus, further research into the development of new technologies to address these issues is needed before advocating its large scale use as a bio-fuel.

References

1) "Bio-fuels Are Indefensible in Our Hungry World". The Wall Street Journal (June 13 2008)  

2) "Jatropha Plant Gains Steam In Global Race for Biofuels". The Wall Street Journal (August 24         2007)

3) "Poison plant could help to cure the planet". The Times (July 28 2007)

4) "Mali’s Farmers Discover a Weed’s Potential Power", New York Times (September 9, 2007)

5) "Could jatropha be a biofuel panacea?" by Angela Hind, BBC Radio 4 (July 8, 2007)

6) "Air New Zealand Completes Test Flight with Jatropha Biofuel" Renewable Energy World.com

7) "Air New Zealand Jatropha bio-fuel test flight" youtube.com

8) "UOP presentation: Air New Zealand test flight". youtube.com

9) "Rolls Royce presentation: Air New Zealand test flight". youtube.com

10) "Boeing presentation: Air New Zealand test flight" youtube.com

11) "Bio-fuels power New Zealand jet" Reuters.com

12) "Indian Railways’ Jatropha Biodiesel Gathers Steam: a Biofuels Digest special report" Bio-fuels digest (Sept 9, 2008)