We are in another energy revolution, with the advent of clean energy. We have to be. Climate change is coming at us with a vengeance. We still have plenty of coal, oil, and natural gas, but we no longer can afford to use them on such a large scale. Nuclear power, once “too cheap to meter” has caused two major disasters on this planet, so far.
Solar and Wind are increasing in usage worldwide, and their output is increasing at rates we never imagined 20 years ago. Geothermal energy, the least touted of these three, is also on the rise.
Hydropower was once thought to be a clean energy source, but dams have done unpredictable damage to the environment by blocking fish migrations, hindering, even stopping needed water from flowing downstream, dwindling the water supply further down the river where it is equally as vital, and has even been known to cause earthquakes.
Coal is the most polluting of fossil fuels. Mercury is one major ingredient of coal, and the burning of it, in spreads into the air, causing permanent mental disfunction's in young children. Other toxic chemicals contained in coal include lead, cadmium, arsenic, chromium, selenium, and at least five other carcinogens. After the coal is burned and reduced to ash, these same chemicals remain in the ash, and the ash has to be permanently stored away for the environment. Recently, there was a case where Duke Power stored ash next to a coal burning plant by the Dan River in North Carolina, where the pile collapsed and spilled into the river and cause a major ecological disaster.
This problem is repeated worldwide. Coal is the biggest producer of energy in the world, and though the U.S. is reducing their coal burning plants, China and India are increasing theirs. There are case in Beijing where the air is so polluting for coal that the residents either have to stay in or literally wear gas masks.
Oil is the fuel for transportation and accounts for 70% of all oil burned. Except in countries in the Middle East that are mostly hostile to the West, the age of easy oil is gone. A surge in oil has reemerged in the form of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, where a pipe is drilled into shale and chemically treated water is forced into the shale, cracking it, and forcing both oil and natural gas upward. This process has been around since the early 1940s, but has taken off in the early 2010s, almost doubling the amount of oil on the world market and deceasing oil costs. It’s beneficial to the U.S. and detrimental to the Middle East, but it’s also detrimental to the environment. The oil and gas have been known to seep into the water tables, poisoning them, and there have been cases where people in areas of Pennsylvania and New York has gotten sick and relocated due to this problem.
Mining the Oil/Tar sands of Alberta, Canada have depleted forests and contaminated the land, and more energy from natural gas, with lots of water is needed to separate the oil from the sands. Carbon dioxide is released in the air increasing climate change, making it worse.
Natural gas is being used to replace coal fired plants, but this should be considered an interim, a step to clean energy plants. Although only one half as polluting as coal when burned (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/natural-gas-really-better-coal-180949739/?no-ist), it still gives off climate changing gases. If released in the atmosphere unburned, as this happens every minute, the methane emitted will have a more powerful effect on the atmosphere than carbon dioxide in causing global warming. Of course, with fracking, the natural gas released will have an adverse effect on the environment, beginning with the water tables.
Nuclear power does not give off any polluting gases, but it does give off radiation, and in the event of a meltdown, which happened in Chernobyl, Ukraine (in the then U.S.S.R.) in 1986 and and Fukishima, Japan, after an earthquake in 2011. As a result, the towns are permanently contaminated and may never be inhabited again, at least not in Chernobyl.
There is also the problem of ever increasing nuclear waste, with a half life ranging from 10 to 24,000 years, or more (http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html; “Backgrounder on Radioactive Waste”). We cannot find a permanent place to store it. The nuclear industry is definitely on its way out, although it may be several more decades before the last nuclear power plant shuts down for good.
Clean energy, once touted as gimmicky, or believe to not be able to produce more than a small fraction of the country’s, or world’s energy needs, is coming into its own, and the quality of it is progressing at unbelievable rates. In this category, there are, as of now, three main sources of renewable energy, with the promise of a future, and they are solar, wind, and geothermal.
Solar power is making inroads beyond our wildest dream. Photovoltaics, the concept of literally turning light into electricity, has improved in efficiency so much that where electricity from a solar panel once costed $75 per watt now costs seven cents per watt. Because of this, a solar revolution is occurring where homes, schools, and businesses are installing solar panels on their roofs on a massive scale.
Many countries, such as India, China (which also manufactures solar panels, and has a glut of them on the market, thus lowering costs even further), Germany (where it is mostly cloudy), Japan, almost the entire world have join in on this trend. Entire coal and gas powered plants are being shut down in favor of solar farms. Countries and many U.S. states have set goals for how much solar energy they will product by a certain date, in the trillions of watts.
Solar energy has become a disruptive technology where the utilities feel threatened, where the decentralization of power production is taking place, where homes are getting off the grid permanently.
Wind power is another disruptive technology. It is now bigger than solar, generating four times the amount of electricity worldwide. The top countries deriving wind power are China, the U.S., Germany, Denmark, and the U.K. In the U.S., there are wind swept plains that are ripe to wind turbines, from North Dakota to Texas, and these plains states, and California, are building turbines exponentially. The problem of them stopping when the wind stops is now becoming irrelevant, because, being hooked to the national grid, somewhere, there will be turbines running producing power. The best part is that the amount of wind we use today has zero effect on the wind we use in the future, so it is inexhaustible. Of course, there are successfully replacing gas, nuclear, and gas power plants.
Geothermal energy, the third of the big three renewables, is big, especially around parts of the Earth where tectonic plates meet, such as the Pacific Rim, the Continental divide in North America, Iceland, Africa, Southeast Asia, everywhere. Iceland derives 90% of space heating, and 99% of their energy from geothermal sources, powering the aluminum industry. China leads the world in geothermal energy, with Turkey, Japan, Iceland, India, Europe, the the U.S. following.
The U.S. taps 25% of the world’s geothermal energy in use today. The states where Geothermal energy is mostly derided is California, Alaska, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. The amount of geothermal energy is the U.S. waiting to be tapped is 90% of it potential.
It is known that about 82 countries use geothermal energy directly, and about 40 countries could be completely energy independent on geothermal energy alone. These include countries in Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia.
These are the three main sources of clean energy. Hydroelectric power, as mentioned earlier, only works up to a certain point and is known to be environmentally disruptive, sometimes on a massive scale. Burning biofuels, even wood, is polluting, and natural gas, even though is only one half as polluting as coal, is still polluting and still emits greenhouse gases.
The question here is, if the would is to run completely on clean energy, would solar, wind, and geothermal be enough? These three sources are growing in power generation, but, according the the U.S. Energy Information Administration, they only generated 21% of the world’s electricity in 2011, with a projected rate of 25% by 2040. Should the use of these three clean energy sources continue to rise, the projected rate may be higher, and it looks like it will be, but we will still need more massive sources of energy, clean energy, to satisfy the ever growing demand, in homes, transportation, and industry. Coal and nuclear power are slowly being phased out, oil extraction is both politically dangerous and destructive to the environment, and natural gas is only a temporary fix.
Energy from space is the answer, in three forms: space solar power, the mining of Helium-3 from the Moon for nuclear fusion (that leaves no nuclear wastes), and platinum group metals from the Moon, but mostly from asteroids, to help power a hydrogen economy.
The energy from the sun is literally billions of times greater in space than it is on Earth. Because of Earth’s atmosphere, Earth’s infusion of the sun’s power in only one in 23 billion of the Sun’s output in space. This means that electric power emitted from the sun in space is 23 billion times greater than on Earth (http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/; “Space Solar Power”). A solar panel on a satellite up in space can absorb these Sun’s rays and power the satellite as long as the panels face the Sun.
Solar Power Satellites is a concept thought up by Peter Glaser in 1968. A satellite, with solar arrays, spreading out for 10 kilometers, would be placed in geosynchronous orbit (GEO). GEO is 22,300 miles (35,000 kilometers) up from Earth’s surface, where the satellite would orbit the Earth in 24 hours. Because of this, it would hover over one point on Earth at all times.
A solar satellite placed in this position would collect the sun’s rays, convert them into microwaves, and beam them down to a receiving antenna (rectenna) on one spot of the Earth, where five to 10 billion watts of direct current would be generated and distributed to where that grid might deliver it, even at a distance of several thousand miles/kilometers.
The proposed technology has been improved to a point where 10 kilometers of panels are not necessary, and one proposal has a series of satellite 400 kilometers up, where they would beam lasers into a mirror and beam the power to Earth (http://www.energy.gov/maps/space-based-solar-power “Space Based Solar Power”). When one satellite has passed, another would take its place, so the power would be constant.
These series satellites and SPS systems would complement, not replace, renewable energy sources, and would provide the massive power needed for industries and ever growing populations that Earth solar, wind, and geothermal energy could not provide. Not only that, but remote areas in places like China, India, and Africa could have rectennas and provide power to places where the inhabitants would not normally have power, or would use polluting sources or needed plant life, thus providing power and saving their environment simultaneously.
Helium-3, though not yet developed, is a vital fuel for nuclear fusion, a process of fusing atoms together, producing great amounts of power and leaving no nuclear waste. Should nuclear fusion be developed, that would be another massive source of clean energy in areas unable to support receiving antennas for solar satellite systems.
Helium-3 is a helium element with two electrons and neutrons, like the normal helium atom, but with only one proton in its nucleus. It originates from the sun and it carried by a solar wind to various bodies, such as the Moon and the gas giants, but also the Earth’s upper atmosphere, and quite possible Mercury itself, although that is never mentioned. It can also be created with the decomposition of tritium.
Helium-3 would be used for nuclear fusion, the process of literally fusing two atoms into another element, producing massive amounts of power, with no generator or turbines, and little or no radioactivity.
The first phase would be a deuterium-tritium reaction, the first step that is necessary to take to lead to the development of a helium-3 reaction. The reaction here will leave a lot of radiation.
The second phase would be a Helium-3/Deuterium reaction, fusing into an element of on helium atom with one proton, and the proton could be used to generate more electricity. There would be low level waste that can be taken care of easily. With the advent of space technology, it can be transported into space and disposed of, should there be no use of it here.
The third phase would be a double Helium-3 reaction, the fusing of two helium-3 atoms into one conventional helium atom and two free flowing protons, again, that can be used to generate more electricity. There would be massive amounts of electricity with no radiation or waste (http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a235/1283056/; “Mining the Moon;” Dec 6, 2004).
The third phase would be absolute clean energy. The second would be clean energy up to a point, but with manageable waste or low level radiation that can be prevented from harming the local populations. (I am aware of what happened at Chernobyl and Fukishima, be this was nuclear fission, the splitting of atoms, not nuclear fusion.)
Helium-3 can be found in the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere and on the surface of the Moon. On the Moon, the amount of this element has been found to be 50 parts per billion (ppb) maximum, so digging nine feet lunar regolith about three quarters of a square mile, and processing the regolith would supply enough Helium-3 to power a country as large as the United States for a year. With the addition of other energy sources, this amount of time could be stretched, but constant processing the the dirt would still be required. The good news is that other needed elements, metals and oxygen are also contained in this dirt in a greater amount, so these elements would have to have priority; i.e. taken out first, with the Helium-3 element at the same time, to save costs and labor, and make profits from these other elements. Process the dirt for everything, and separate the Helium-3.
The planet Mercury would definitely have this same element, perhaps in greater amounts since it is closer to the sun, but it is also hotter during the day cycle, so there would need to be greater protection from the heat. It would be mined like the Moon. Near Earth asteroids would also contain this vital element.
The Earth’s atmosphere can be mined for this element, very easily with sub-orbital, unmanned spacecraft.
In later decades, long after we reach Mars, the gas giants could then be targeted for Helium-3: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. That would be at least after the year 2100 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3).
Now that we know the availability of Helium-3 and its potential for producing massive amounts of clean energy, all we need to do is to develop fusion technology. Research on this technology has been ongoing for over 60 years, and the break even point, where one can generate as much energy as one expends, has not yet been reached. After this, we need the breakthrough, generating more energy than expended. Countries have been researching this on their own, but I feel it is time that all scientists and nuclear engineers from all countries collaborate on this venture, putting together what they have learned, and how to continue from there. It can be done. We need more research, facilities, and, of course, funding.
The last subject of this I would like to discuss is the hydrogen economy, involving platinum and platinum group metals. These elements are rare on Earth, but are a lot more common in asteroids, and there are enough near-Earth asteroids to provide this metal.
Platinum, for now, is needed as a catalyst to help power fuel cells.
From the beginning, the hydrogen economy is slowly coming, and by this, I mean hydrogen can be used to power vehicles such as cars and trucks, and airplanes. Hydrogen powers transportation vehicles not be generators, but by fuel cells, where hydrogen is mixed with oxygen, from the air, producing electricity. The waste product emitted is water, so there are no polluting gases whatever.
There are many different types of fuel cells, using different fuels, but what will be covered here will be the Polymer Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell, that uses hydrogen.
There are many different types of fuel cells, using different fuels, but what will be covered here will be the Polymer Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell, that uses hydrogen.
If you look at the diagram, it can guide you as I explain the process. Pressurized hydrogen gas (H2) enters the fuel cells through the anode, the negatively charged electrode of the cell. When it comes in contact with the platinum coating on the anode, the hydrogen molecule splits into two electrons and two ions (positively charged particles). The electrons then proceed through the cathode where oxygen (O2) enters through the cathode, splitting into two oxygen atoms, with a negative charge. This attracts the ions from the hydrogen and, through an electrolyte in the cell, combine with the oxygen and the two electrons from the circuit, forming water (H20). This also releases electricity to power the vehicle. Other devices are required to channel the electricity, such as fuel cell stacks and bipolar plates, but this is the basics of a fuel cell and how it works (http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/fuel-cell2.htm “How Fuel Cells Work.”)
In a hydrogen economy, there will literally be hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of vehicles running on hydrogen. Obtaining the hydrogen should be simple. Without the need for transporting it, there could be small refueling stations that will have the technology to take water and split it into hydrogen and oxygen on the spot, thus supplying the fuel.
The issue here is the platinum. With all those vehicles with fuel cells, platinum will be in high demand, and it can be found in only a few places on Earth, in places like Africa. The process of mining it can threaten, even destroy the environment surrounding these deposits, so we will have to look elsewhere. This is where we go into space to obtain it.
There are two places to mine these metals: the Moon and near Earth Asteroids (NEAs). It is widely believed that platinum and platinum group metals (PGMs) might exist on the Moon. These metals, because of their scarcity compared to other metals, are known as trace elements. This list includes not only platinum, but other metals such as osmium, iridium, gold, and other related residual elements that may be of use on fuel cells. If there are metals, we can mine them from the regolith, simultaneously with other elements, including Helium-3. In order to obtain these PGMs, they would not be the metals to be mined, but other, more abundant resources, such as iron, carbon, magnesium, nickel, and these trace elements would be byproducts of the extraction of these other metals.
Whatever the supply of PGMs on the Moon, be it ample or scarce, the first place these metals would be mined from are the asteroids, not the Moon.
It has been proven that asteroids have large deposits of platinum group metals, and John Lewis, author of “Space Resources” and “Mining the Sky” explains the types of asteroids in existence and which one have the PGMs, and they are a lot, enough to provide metal for fuel cells to power every vehicle on Earth, and then some.
Here, all we have to do is to mine the asteroids, which is what we are now about to do anyway.
There are many categories of NEAs, but the three main types we will focus on are the low-low (LL) chrondrite asteroids, the 90% nickel/iron (Ni/Fe) asteroids, and the 98% Ni/Fe asteroids. The iron and nickel asteroids is estimated to be 25% of all asteroids in the system near and/or crossing Earth’s orbit (Lewis, John S., “Asteroid Mining 101: Wealth For The New Space Economy,” Deep Space Industries, 2015, p.104).
As with the Moon, the PGMs would not be the metal primarily mined, by as byproducts of the more common metals of nickel and iron. This process is of obtaining these byproducts is known as carbonyl extraction, meaning injecting carbon monoxide in the regolith for a chemical reaction to exact the platinum. It is estimated that one can extract 31 grams per ton with the remainder being dirt and other metals. Other PGMs range from germanium (1.02 kilograms per ton) to Rhodium and gold (a little more than 4 grams per ton.)
This may not seem like much, but, as an example, take the asteroid name 3554 Anum, a metallic asteroid with a diameter of two kilometers. The weight is estimated to be 30 billion tons. John S. Lewis, Professor of Planetary Science at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, estimated that, in 2014 dollars, there are $8.88 trillion worth of PGMs in the single asteroid, and that is the smallest out of the tens of thousands of mineable asteroids so far discovered.
From this, I feel that, regardless of how rare platinum is right now, there is enough in the NEAs and lunar surface (and eventually, other planets and moons) to satisfy the demand for platinum in fuel cells, and don’t forget the other metals having priority. There may be a substitute element for platinum for these hydrogen fuel cells that is more common, so the mining of so much platinum may prove unnecessary.
It doesn’t matter, for space industry will take off regardless.
The combination of the three clean energy sources on Earth, solar, wind, and geothermal energy, supplemented with solar power satellites, Helium-3 nuclear fusion, and fuel cells for a hydrogen economy, can make create a totally clean energy economy for Earth.
Energy is one of the dirtiest businesses there is, and as we run out of energy sources, such as wood (the first energy source), coal, oil, natural gas, we have to look for other sources, requiring more advance technologies. As we progress in producing energy, the technologies gets harder and more demanding, but if we are to maintain and improve our quality of life, we must go forward, not back. We need to give up fossil fuels, though their use will be around for a long time to come, even as we advance into cleaner energy sources; i.e. oil and gas are used for making plastics, chemicals, nylons, computer chips, even medicines.
We do need advanced energy sources so as not to drown in our own poisons. It is possible. They are both down here on Earth, and up there in space. We need only to work and invest the money to obtain them.
Alastair Browne
Other References not mentioned in this essay
1. Brown, Lester; with Janet Larsen, J. Matthew Roney, and Emily E. Adams; Earth Policy Institute; “The Great Transition - Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy.” W.W. Norton & Company; New York; London; 2015; pp. 19, 21, 34, 35, 41, 73, 74, 76, 84, 85, 90, 91, 99, 100, 102-107, 121.
2. CBS News, 60 Minutes, “The Spill at the Dan River,” covered by Lesley Stahl, December 7, 2014.
3. Diagram of Helium-3/Deuterium reaction from “America at the Threshold - America’s Space Exploration Initiative;” The Synthesis Group; U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.; 1991; p. A-33. Redrawn by Charlie Shaw.
4. Diagram of Helium-3/Helium-3 reaction based on Helium-3/Deuterium reaction (Ibid. p. A-33) and redone by Alastair Browne.
5. Diagram of Fuel Cell by Alastair Browne.
6. Energy Information Administration; (http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=527&t=4; “Frequently asked questions, How much of world energy consumption and electricity generation is from renewable energy?” updated December 18, 2014)
7. Lewis, John S.; Mining the Sky; Helix Books, Addison-Wesley
Company; Reading, Massachusetts, etc.; 1996; pp. 112.
