Comments on: Natural gas is a fuel of the future

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 23:43:44 +0000

Gavin, I think we’d both rather @terraformindies used nuclear power, but there’s a lot to be said for just releasing water vapor from your smokestack like a nuclear plant’s towers. Heck, water is useful stuff too.

By: McChuck

McChuck — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 21:50:19 +0000

“Combined cycle natural gas power plants use hot exhaust from the turbine to make steam like traditional thermal plants. About 2/3 of plant output comes from the gas turbine and 1/3 from the steam turbine. Total efficiency can be over 60% with less equipment and labor than boiler-style thermal plants.”

This is obviously a lie. One cannot utilize mechanical processes A and B, and have the total be less complex than process B alone. If it has a boiler, then it has a boiler. It cannot also not have a boiler.

By: Gavin Longmuir

Gavin Longmuir — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 19:42:24 +0000

Burn natural gas — it releases energy and produces mainly water vapor and life-giving carbon dioxide.

Looks like Terraform Industries plan is to extract energy from sunlight using massive areas of expensive solar panels (imported from places where the authorities have no compunction about using slave labor and no concern about the environmental impacts of mining & manufacturing exotic materials) to generate electricity so they can reverse the oxidation process and make methane from low concentrations of CO2 and scarce water.

Technically, it can be done — has already been done. Environmentally, it is probably worse than drilling gas wells. Economically, it is a non-starter. But hey! “It’s Green”.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 16:33:46 +0000

Terraform Industries (@Terraformindies) makes natural gas from CO2. It would be a lot more sensible to have their stuff attached to smokestacks on power plants and factories than just using scrubbers.