Decarbonization

Carbon combustion emits trillions of tons of CO2 & large quantities of CO & NOX & SOX & PM, soot, smoke, fumes, all components of air pollution, & that air pollution toxic to public health, causing preventable diseases that increase healthcare costs. 

Carbon combustion emissions also making climate change worse faster which has even higher long term costs. Even in the near term we are seeing more powerful storm systems causing more damage, in Florida for example. Hurricanes & tropical storm systems derive their energy from the atmosphere, so when we add trillions of tons of greenhouse gas to Earth's atmosphere, that captures more of the Sun's energy, making the storms more energetic, more dangerous, more powerful, more damaging, making them bigger natural hazards!

Cheap heat & pressure

Petrochemical processing of petroleum or crude oil enables much of the progress observed over the last 125 years, since the introduction of internal combustion engines & their integration into automobiles, scooters, motorcycles, trucks, busses, ships, aircraft, generators, landscape equipment, power sports, to pump water in agriculture, in portable power systems used to energize direct energy weapons, to make electricity & propulsion on pleasure craft & jet skis & skidoo's & quads & other recreational vehicles. 

Battery electric trending

We saw electric motors become popular too. The best electric motor technology brushless, induction, long life, AC, that can act as a traction motor & as a generator to recover brake energy to recharge the batteries in electric vehicles, like electric bicycles, battery electric cars, EV's are trending in small electrified kick scooters, electric skateboards, electric mono wheels, self balancing electric vehicles, personal mobility devices are mostly battery electric. 

Power tools, battery lawn & garden tools with higher voltage 60v lithium ion battery packs. As the voltage increases, most power can be created, that's why most of the automakers making electric cars use ~400vdc battery packs, they will go higher, to 600vdc, 800vdc, 1000vdc, especially because silicon carbide switching transistors enable motor controllers of higher power, higher voltage & higher current, as those exceptional SiC power switching chipsets can operate at higher temperatures & have much longer life & are more vibration tolerant, just like high quality ceramic Japanese capacitors, instead of those flakey Chinese electrolytic caps (prone to leaking & dying fast) 

Decarbonization ideas extend into laws as some US states are moving to ban the sale of new gasoline & diesel vehicles by 2025. The idea is that hybrid & electric vehicles have improved, nearly all the automakers are making & selling many dozens or hundred of different hybrid & electric vehicles that consumers have a lot of choices of EV's to pick from when shopping for a newly made car, suv, truck, etc. Consider the Tesla Model 3 or Model Y or Electric Rivian truck, Audi E-tron or similar from Mercedes, Ford, GM, Nissan, Toyota, Hyundai etc 

Hybrid electric vehicles are nice because they can run on batteries locally, nearby to your home & workplace, but you can still go on a road trip to visit distantly located relatives, or just for fun to go sky diving or so something super entertaining. Meg & I did the zip-line course at Gatorland in Florida this summer & had a blast, it was super fun! I had never done anything like that before, only a much smaller zip-line as a boy scout as a young man long ago. 

I dreamed of swinging from a 3D printed robot system in a large open grass field, it was sunny & friends were nearby. Was was it realistic feeling, I was kinda bummed when I woke up for the day out of this dream. How exciting it felt to fly around & swing like that. 

Today I will be taking stuff from our POD & putting into a storage unit nearby. We found a better deal, and we can walk to it since its so close to were we live. This enables me to use the storage unit as a buffer swap spot for tools & gear that I sporadically make use of. Last night I went & mounted the bicycles up high, its 15 tall, so making use of the vertical space our challenge! I setup two smaller shelf assemblies, metal racks, for stuff, against the back wall, but need to add more shelving & then put a floating upper floor on top of the shelfs, so that I can put stuff up top too^^ We live in an Apartment with limited space, the POD contains the stuff we kept from our previous small house, furniture, lawn equipment, all kinds of stuff. My childhood best friend was renting us that house, when he committed suicide, his father Rob made us move so that Rob could sell the house to his best friend Daryl. At the time, my brother in law had just died, and my mother needed more assistance since her health been declining, she is elderly & disabled with very limited mobility, poor hearing, heart disease, insulin dependent diabetes, joint failures, very weak hands, its actually sad, seeing her fall apart like this. We moved in with her, in her apartment, so that Meg & I can help out as much as possible & because at that exact time, we also needed a place to live. I also needed to be close to my then widowed sister, so that I could help her more too! So it worked out well for everyone. 

That's why we have a storage unit. It will also be nice to have a swap space like that when we move away from this apartment, somewhere to archive things until we can move them to our next home. My sister still has my HarvestRight freezer dryer stored in her basement, though all three of my vacuum pumps are in the storage unit. I seek to realign those in the near future so that I can freeze & dry food ideas again. The newer vacuum pumps are much quieter than the old one, that needs a light rebuild. Speaking of electric motors, it would be unimaginable how something cool like a home freeze dryer would work without electricity & electric motors. The switching, control, compressor, vacuum pump, all of that stuff in that machine electrical & uses electricity to function, just like our fridge, microwave, electric stove top, electric water heater, our entire apartment electric, no natural gas or carbon combustion. 

Our older vehicles burn gasoline, as does my emergency backup generator & pressure washer, motorcycle & motor scooter. Our Segway MiniPro by Ninebot is battery electric, like my 20v Dewalt brushless drill driver, with pneumatic tires that I keep inflated with a handheld lithium ion battery air pump that my mother got me as a Christmas present in 2020, since I manage over 20 pneumatic tires. 

Having more vehicles a lot to keep track of, batteries, tires, oil changes, tabs, insurance, I tried to streamline & simply as much as I can, using them less really helps, also reduce gasoline consumption & its over $5/gal locally lately, so that's great. I am also between jobs. After I resigned from being a bus driver near the end of the last school year, I went on a long road trip with Meg for most of the summer & never found another job upon returning, but that's ok. I needed a long break to recover from injuries & to reset my mind & to complete a long list of tasks I needed to work on that would be impossible to complete if I was in the grind! I nailed much of these tasks recently & have a few more to go. 

I try not to waste gasoline. I am excited for when biogasoline will become available for purchase. I know that hydrodiesel works really well & wonder about doing something similar with gasoline. I know that natural gas can be converted to gasoline using Shell GTL or gas to liquids technology that employs the Fischer Tropisch reactions, that polymerize natural gas into liquid hydrocarbon chains. People get frustrated when politician talk about banning the sale of something, but the markets will move beyond conventional gasoline & diesel passenger vehicles anyway, since that was a solution that worked great, but there will be better solution available in the future. Less polluting technology means safer, for example if you were to run a gasoline powered vehicle in a closed garage space, the CO can build up & carbon dioxide poisoning can be fatal. 

CO or carbon monoxide bonds to hemoglobin in blood more strongly than oxygen, but it cannot do what oxygen needed to do in the body, so it causes hypoxia or cell death in brain & heart & other necrotic death by cutting off oxygen from essential organs & tissue. Usually people exposed to carbon dioxide are uninformed & use an emergency backup generator inside their home during a winter storm power outage, for electricity & heat, not realizing the largely H20 & CO2 exhaust also contain the neurotoxin carbon monoxide or CO. Many homes have a CO alarm, like a smoke alarm, it makes a loud beeping noise & blinks of CO levels rise near where the unit operating. Probably good to have near any source of combustion, for safety. 

PM or particular matter is soot or fine particles like smoke, that lodge deep into lunch sacs causing scar tissue that impairs lung function progressively like COPD, asthma or lung cancer. Smoke increases lung cancer risks, as does saw dust from cutting wood, welding fumes, other sources of smoke, soot, or particles of metal or ceramic or other materials. Breathing dust not health, rock dost, soil dust, dust in general bad for lung tissue, your sinus, your nasal bulb, ears, eyes, nose & throat. In heavily polluted places in Mexico City & in many large cities in China, where coal power & vehicle emissions combine to make air that's grey & dark like pea soup. People in these locals regularly wear face mask filters that darken as they capture the coal power emissions, soot particles, fly ash & other air pollutants. 

Carbon energy enabled most industrial development after the 1700's. Before that, combustion was limited to candles, wood burning, natural oil wick lamps & low power thermal heath & artificial light applications. After introduction of the steam engine by James Watt, external combustion enable railroads, which combined with the printing revolution & manufacturing revolution, now mass produced goods could be shipped feasibly throughout the world & goods could be moved more quickly over vast distances, books & furnitures & clothing & spices. It was piston engines burning gasoline that really got the world moving in a hurry or a rush. Now the business world moves quickly, the stock market trades by the millisecond with ultrafast trading using math created by the worlds smartest people who work for financial firms, hedge funds, investment firms & other lucrative companies that use money to make money like a bank. Speaking of which, the governments of the world have made oil a very lucrative venture, enabling gasoline & diesel to energize transportation, unlocking globalization with high bypass turbine aircraft engines burning a version of kerosine more highly purified called JET-A, that's also more expensive to make. Airplanes & helicopters requires better quality fuels that cost more, to operate. 

While diesel might sound like a VW dead-end, some diesel engines are really cool. They can operate for 10,000 hours with regular oil changes, fuel filter changes, basic maintenance. Many heavy duty class 8 trucks are powered by inline turbo Diesel engines, those trucks that move containers filled with goods all throughout the United States. I often write these posts within the context of 2022 America, the USA, because I am an American, living in Washington State, USA. What happens in America has a global impact on other economies & countries around the world because of the fiat currency known as the USD or United States Dollar. While the dollar has lost a lot of its value as a fungible token, it still works to pay for things, Thank God! I do not like inflation or quantum easing or crony capitalism & all the corruption & unsavory things that happen between perverted politicians & weirdos in government & government contractors. I am reminded of people like Bill Cosby & Bill Clinton, philanders & perverts who misuse their positions of wealth & power to sexual abuse women; of Jeffry Epstein & his good friends Donald Trump & Vladimir Putin. There are some really warped whacked out sickos in high places & I don't like their immoral & unethical conduct as people! I do not approve of the way these notable famous people, like Jeffry Bezos conduct themselves, turning a blind eye too the suffering of other people & nature. To whom much was given, much should be expected, since they are the ones with the means to make a meaningful difference. Do you expect the poor or marginalized middle class to pay to solve problems that government not effective at addressing? 

You cannot ask other people to use less energy. That's why we need more new nuclear reactors paired with renewables like solar photovoltaic rooftop energy collection systems paired with batteries & connected to the grid with an additional electrical meter & disconnect switch & additional utility panel. Wind power & other intermittent energy technology need to be combined with energy storage to improve uptime & capacity factor & load following, so that they can produce electrical power output into the grid to power customer loads, 24/7, the world never sleeps & people operate on different schedules! A hospital in a populated urban area has to be online 24/7, as do police & firefighting stations & other emergency responders as bad things happen due to accidents & crime & other problems all the time, at any time of day & no one knows when the next bad thing will happen. A lot of car accidents are unintentional, human error or mistakes, drivers distraction, the people driving do not go out with the intent of damaging their vehicle, damaging someone else's vehicles or property, hurting themselves of other people, but sometimes the driver is drunk or high, sleep deprived, confused, just has a stoke or embolism or is having heart attack. Sometimes bad things happen to good people for no good reason & there is nothing you can do to stop it other than to intelligent minimize risk by being wise & not doing anything foolish like driving a vehicle while drunk or high. 

In order to improve wealth creation, we have to make vastly more electricity without burning carbon. To give 10 billion people 6kw 24/7 will require tens of thousands more nuclear reactors, billions off solar panels, millions of wind power installations, huge geothermal energy plants, large scale wave & tidal energy capture energy & all sorts of other energy storing technologies installed & connected to grids. 

The electrical grids urgently need N+1 upgrades, superconductor pipeline power connections, gigawatt scale energy storage systems, MMR & SMR distributed sealed automatic safe fission reactors, flywheels, mass based energy storage, capacitor energy storage, graphene, molten salt batteries & more. There are many different ways to capture & store electricity & they all have to be used in order to make enough electricity to display carbon combustion, to decarbonize transportation energy & enabling charging of billions of electric vehicle batteries at all times of day! We need new thin flexible fabric solar panels in smart clothes, in smartwatch bands, in cell phone cases, on the back of the laptop screen, on the rear of the tablet, in wrist watches, on the roofs of electric cars, on the backs of backpacks with batteries inside to capture the energy & USB-A & USB-C outlets to charge electronic with the stored solar energy captured.