A Presentation On Energy by Dr. Oliver H. Winn

A Presentation by Dr. Oliver H. Winn

CIVILIZATION WITHOUT OIL

The world is swamped with discussion and argument about power and energy. What is almost entirely missing is a sense of proportion. As a result, the field has become a political, emotional, and economic battlefield. The purpose of this presentation is to provide experts and ordinary mortals with a reasonable understanding of worldwide energy, its relation to “civilization”, and what logical paths should be taken to manage it as our fossil fuels dwindle.

OPUS VITA

Dr. Oliver H. Winn

Dr. Winn graduated, first in his class, from Michigan Technological University with a BSEE degree with majors in power and electronics. He joined General Electric Company in 1942. He entered the Test Program and completed the 3 year Advanced Engineering Course. He spent the first 18 years in engineering and engineering management in Defense electronics: airborne radar and countermeasures, sonar, data links, air-to-air missiles.

During this time, he was awarded GE’s Coffin Award, the company’s highest award for technical achievement. He also was became a Fellow in the IEEE, and earned his Professional Engineering license.

He then was appointed General Manager of the Capacitor Department and subsequently led Battery, Integrated Circuits, and High Voltage Circuit Breaker Businesses.

Upon retiring from GE, Dr. Winn completed his PHDEE at Syracuse University, working on Hetero-junction Solar Cells. He taught at technical subjects in the Business Departments, first in a community college and then at Glassboro State College in NJ. He led both school’s moves into the business microcomputer age.

In retirement he works hard to remain current in his various technical and management fields. Occasionally he writes something.

Dr. Oliver H. Winn, life fellow IEEE

owinn@worldnet.att.net

PRESENTATION

CIVILIZATION WITHOUT OIL

To gain perspective, we will examine world use of energy beginning with energy used by a family of four, at home and away. As we proceed along this path, we will be able to form important conclusions. These will be presented in italics as they appear. At the end of this process, we will appreciate the size and nature of the challenge facing the world as its fossil fuel dwindles and finally is exhausted.

The next Step in the analysis assumes all the fossil fuel has been used up. Not a ton, a barrel, or a cubic foot is left. Fortunately there are solutions. To give hope, the solution makes a pretty good world, even better than it is now. With a solid and detailed view of the future, planning the transition is easy. The transition is not easy, but planning it is.

THE BEGINNING: The energy use by families.

Everybody must eat. We are told that to survive healthily we should eat about 2000 Calories a day.

Food is made up mostly of two chemicals: hydrocarbons and carbohydrates. They are made up of three elements: carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O). Hydrocarbon foods are oils and fats. They are made up of chains and loops of the combination of two hydrogen atoms and one carbon atom (CH₂).

Carbohydrates are made up of units of carbon linked to water: CH₂O. All breads and fruits and sugars are carbohydrates. Vegetables contain mostly carbohydrates with varying but relatively small amounts of fats. Meats have more fat. The energy of carbohydrates comes from the carbon; the water goes along for the ride. If you drive it out of a piece of bread in the toaster, you are left with a black slab of pure carbon in the shape of a piece of toast. Don’t try it; it stinks up the house.

Such is the terrain of food and fossil fuels. Unfortunately, humans can’t digest carbon. If carbon were digestible, our principal food would be coal.

The technology of energy and power (rate of delivery of energy) uses many different units of measurement. To avoid unit confusion, BTU (British thermal unit) will be used for energy and Kilowatt for power in this discussion. A KW is equal to one BTU per second. One food Calorie is equal to 4 BTU’s. A BTU is the energy to heat one pound (about a pint) of water one degree Fahrenheit. Boiling one pound of water requires 212 BTU’s.

Non-technicals can now relax. This is about as technical as we will get.

The energy content of corn is approximately 6500 BTUs per pound. With the water driven out, the carbon (burnt toast or pure coal) has energy content of 14000 BTUs per pound. The weight of the water and the need to heat it are gone. This is where our coal comes from: carbohydrates with the water driven out by the pressure and heat deep within the earth.

One pound of corn oil or olive oil has a heat value of approximately 16,000 BTUs.

A pound of diesel oil has a heat value of about 19000 BTU’s per pound.

Natural gas, with its extra hydrogen atoms, produces 24,000 BTUs per pound. Hydrogen gas produces approximately 62,000 BTUs per pound. About 40% of the energy in hydrocarbons comes from the hydrogen, even though it weighs only 1/6 as much as the carbon.

Hydrogen is a high-energy fuel. The rub is that essentially all of the earth’s vast quantities of hydrogen already have been oxidized to water. To get it from water we’ll somehow have to “unburn” it, but this takes significant energy. We’ll sort out this problem later.

We’ve completed examining the characteristics of the fossil and food fuels we use. We’ve now we will examine the energy expended by a family of four, two adults and two dependent children.

With 2000 Calories per day for each member, this family will require approximately 12,000,000 BTUs per year. There are about 70 million families in the United States. This amounts to a need for 840 million million BTUs. With food containing a healthy 20% fat (8000 BTUs per pound), we need 105 billion pounds of food per year.

We produce this food very efficiently. At the time our nation was formed, nearly everyone was a farmer. Now one out of every 115 of us farm. Even so, producing this much food we already use more that 80% of all of our tillable land and a large percentage of our available water.

Feeding the whole world this well would require

2,200,000,000,000,000 pounds of food per year.

So examining the energy demands just for food leads to an important conclusion:

There are too many of you! Do any of you want to get off the planet? You’re welcome to go, but don’t use any energy to do it.

The only example of how this problem might be solved is China’s draconian one child per couple edict. If enforced, China’s population would be reduced to one Chinaman in 637 years! No solution is presented here. The remainder of this discussion assumes that population growth eventually will come under control.

We will discuss food again later when we consider biomass as a fuel. We will leave it now and consider the other needs of our family of four.

We will assume that we have water, gas, and electricity delivered to our homes and that we own a car. Producing and delivering these requires lots of energy, but we will ignore that for now. First we’ll add a hot water heater. Mine uses gas, a very efficient heating fuel. The label attached to the heater says I will use gas to produce

31.7 million BTUs per year.

Our hot water heater alone needs about three times the energy contained in our food.

Our furnace consumes 250 million BTUs, 20 times the energy contained in our food.

Our car consumes 72 million BTUs per year 6 times that contained in our food!

Our electricity, converted to the fuel used to generate it, requires about 143 million BTUs of fuel, 12 times the energy contained in our food!

These other family needs add to 40 times the energy in our food! By interpreting our living style as “civilization”, we can conclude:

It is very unlikely that burning biomass or biomass brewed into ethanol could make even a tiny contribution to filling our massive energy needs; we are already straining our tillable land and water resources just to raise food. Our efforts to use ethanol made from corn to fuel our cars is ludicrous. A sensible use is mixing the ethanol with wine to make brandy.

Our huge need for energy is not the need to eat to live. It is our way of life, our civilization that burns our fuel. Few are willing to change their way of life significantly enough to be of any real help. Even dropping one zero in the number recording our needs would cripple our economy and much of our civilization.

Most of us spend more than half our waking hours away from home, at work, school, or other locations. Energy use by these facilities is approximately equal to that used in our homes. Thus the total use for one family, at home and away, is estimated to be 509 million BTUs. For 70 million families in the US, this usage is 36 million billion BTUs. That is 36 followed by 15 zeros! If we printed this on a linear scale bar chart with one family’s need for food energy plotted at the 1/10 inch point, plotting the total for the nation’s family usage would require a paper 5000 miles long! All the remaining needs for energy approximately equal twice that used by families. There is no need to detail these here.

Here are the annual totals for all uses:

USA: