Optimal Strategy for Energy That Eliminate Emissions

The fastest way to eliminate emissions is to 
replace heat and electricity generated by burning  fossil fuels
  with   heat generated and stored by 
compact, High-Power     solar can replace the fuel source in a plant.

This will also greatly lower energy  cost, with major benefits for idustry now  reduce inflation at the source:   For the last hearing season, the National Grid spokesman said that  the Grid is using a 70% hedged on electric and a 50% on natural gas this heating season.

The other element of inflation that hits everybody is food:

Food comprising 13.4% of the Consumer Price Index (CPI),in which  energy prices have been  the major contributor, up 32%, over the past twelve months

A chart below shows that Food processing
consumed about 1/6 of industrial heat consumption

The Second    edition   of

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   the   DFM    book has 22  sub-sections   of  strategies

Focus of "energy" should be heat, not electricity because:

Why Solar Panels are Such a Bad Foundation for a Solar Strategy:

STRATEGY FOR CONCENTRATED SOLAR POWER

The conventional  premise of renewable energy is focused  on generating electricity, which waste 3/4 of input energy for solar power and  fossil fuel too .    For reference, fossil fuel energy production also wastes two-thirds of consumed energy.

The premise for an Optimal Solar Strategy should be heat (nearly 100% efficient), not  electricity (now at only 25% efficiency);. Plus serious implications for scalability & point #5 below.

Current Solar electricity is inherently can not be scaled; Solar heat can!

Electricity from any renewable power plant can  not be stored for use at night, 
except by fighting against the needed battery prioritization that should go to 
electric cars and storing energy for them from rooftop PV panels.  

      CSP electricity  is generated  by  steam turbines and reducing speed to to make electricity  at no more than 25% efficiency.  At this efficiency, no form of solar "energy" should  also be used to make heat, which can be generated directly at four times the efficiency of electricity.  Polity makers and environmental  groups  should strongly discourage using electricity to generate heat, when solar alternatives are available, , starting with going back to  clothes lines!

        Heat.   Use  virtually all solar energy directly as heat, from smaller fields, to provide:

• 60% of industrial energy consumption* is Heat and

60% of residential  and office consumption is heat

Both of these figures would be raised by replacing all air conditioning and industrial refrigeration with "evaporative cooling" refrigeration  which can be powered by solar heat.

• Virtually all of desalination energy consumption is Heat  and, in the future, solar heat could supply most of that, maybe almost all of that. 

The last scenarios compares:

• Using solar heat to generate electricity at solar power plant at only  25% efficiency  and distributing it over the grid, which has its own losses and may have to be expanded or build new grid networks o serve new remote solar plant  fields or

• Using solar heat directly provide all the eneery to process bio-mass (mostly organic waste) into bio-gas, all of which is "carbon-neutral," and pipe it to homes, and then use gas  fuel-cells (widely used in Japan) to convert virtually all of that energy to electricity and heating.  This "co-gen" (co-generation) makes use of almost all of the input energy.  Not only could this power all the home's heat and electrical needs (even when the electrical grid is off or turned off), but, when not needed for home duties, it  can also power alternate fuel vehicles with electricity for EV's or use the electricity to make hydrogen  from water  into  hydrogen vehicle fuel, as discussed below.

• Provide the heat to convert bio-mass to bio-fuels (like bio-Diesel)  for trucks, trains ships,  generators,   Diesel cars bio-mass (non-petroleum) "hearing oil." Note that  bi-mass is considered a "carbon-neutral" fuel, since the plants generate oxygen the whole time they are growing, which cancels out the carbon dioxide generated when they die or are used as fuel. this has been the case since the invention of file until people stated burning store bio-mass, which is whye call it 'fossil" fuel.
  

METRICS: the wrong ones can cause more harm than no invective at all !!!

 If  "cost" is based  predominantly  on  parts,  this  will:

- encourage cheap parts, which will degrade quality and  product development  itself, as  shown  graphically in  Figure 1.2  in  first  and second  editions of  the DFM  book.

- eliminate  the  greatest "Half Cost Product development" opportunities  opportunities  which   depend on  reducing  "overhead" costs by  up to  ten times!

So any innovation that is intended to "save the world" must:

1) Generate the least overhead as taught in the above link and Section 3.8 in the 2020 DFM book.

2) Do not let "corporate overhead" weight down, and thwus tjwart innovation to pay for other inefficient "high overhead" divisions.    Instead, create an "innovation unit,"  microclimate, "skunk-wrks," or  a profit-&-loss center that will benefit from all efficiencies taught  above and through this site.

The wrong time metric (release to manufacturing) can miss all opportunities to cut in half the time to stable production: see Figures 2.1 and 3.1 in all DFM books and web page: https://www.design4manufacturability.com/half-the-time.htm 

Avoid Counter-Productive strategies, policies, decisions, plans and remedies, or "solutions"  that will have a compounding effect whenever they d, iscourage e or thwart whatever really needs to happed now. This has been such a problem that the 600 page DFM book has Section 11.5 with 13 sub-sections – and this seb site has a 3m000 word page on this at http://design4manufacturability.com/counterproductive.htm

Beware of EFFICIENCY metrics or goals that are 100%  or "Net Zero" anythg

Efficiency, in itself, can be a misleading goal, if the input source is abundant and free, like sun-light, especially if the conversion cost is can be very low (not anywhere close to current offerings for reasons delineated at  http://www.halfcostproducts.com/half_cost_solar.html )

Unfortunately, a common cause of major cost and scalability problems is specifying performance premiums: So Avoid excessively expensive and hard- to-get components that costs a high premium for the last few percent of efficiency.

Ironically, some solar energy projects arbitrarily choose efficiency as a primary goal, which can ultimately raise costs unnecessarily, especially when all the ensuing scalability costs are factored in

Some "advanced" solar projects not only

(a) accept incredibly expensive technologies just for sun tracking (as summarized o the above link on Half Cost solar), but also:

(b) use this technology "that they already have" to programmably concentrate Focus to optimize the efficiency of complex hydrogen reactors.

Subsequently, the top goals of these kid of projects are;

1) improve efficiency, and

2) reduce cost.

For help with all of the above strategies, see:

Design for Manufacturability: How to Use Concurrent Engineering to Rapidly Develop Low-Cost, 
High-Quality Products for Lean Production, Second Edition , 2020, from Productivity Press.

Or see the web white-paper summary of Concurrent Engineering at https://www.design4manufacturability.com/concurrent-engineering.htm

Or go to the first article listed at the leading DFM site, entitled:  "The Most Effective Product Development class" at  https://www.design4manufacturability.com/advanced_npd.htm 

The  Real Stte  of   Renewable  Energy

Contrary to uninformed assumptions, renewable energy is just not really ready. In fact, this industry is so poorly commercialized, that seeing solar equipment being tested in the dessert led to the creation of this article on commercialization.

Essential  Accomplishments

In all DFM book editions, Section 1.6.4 says the say the way to make major progress is to focus on what what achieve goal rather than the goals themselves – or targets, pledges or even specs or regulations.

MAXIMIZING  SOLAR   HEAT  FOR   INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE

Concentrated Solar Heat (CSH) needs to be planned and designed to maximize the amount of industrial heat that comes from the Sun.   Here is what the strategy that CSH industry needs to pursue:

• Lower heat cost to economically provide enough capacity for large factories and processing plants. 

• Make  CSH  fields or dishes  small enough to be sited near all large heat "users."  Don't expect factories and processing plants to locate next to remote CSP Concentrated Solar Power) electricity plants.

• Concentratimg enough sun rays can produce very high temperatures eith enough heat to Provide high enough temperatures to furnish all of the 60% industrial energy use that is in the form of heat, such as:
  

I. Existing Industries: The U.S. Energy Information Administration report on "Energy use n industry" (updated August 2021) listed yearly energy consumption for the industries tabulated below without the unidentified "Other" categories and the category called "Petroleum and Coal."

The table below cites the yearly consumption of "fuel" (primarily by burning natural gas, all of which could be replace by reenables as recommended on this site) in each category as a fraction of the total of these five categories:

Chemicals:                      consumed       just  over1/4           of industrial heat consumption 
Paper pressing:              consumed       just  under 1/4          of industrial heat consumption
Primary Metals:              consumed              about 1/6           of industrial heat consumption
Food processing:             consumed              about 1/6           of industrial heat consumption
Non-metallic minerals:     consumed             about 1/6           of industrial heat consumption

All of these, except Food Processing, are grouped together into clusters, which would have room for solar heat fields (like heliostat mirror arrays used in Concentrated Solar Heat fields, as long as they are compact enough to get their heat into all processing users.
            On the other hand Food Pressing is more dispersed, which would need solar heat concentrators to be compact enough to fit into their smaller (maybe urban) sites and maybe light enough to be perched on the roofs near their heat-intensive processes. Heat cost matters: There is a C&H sugar refinery in the SF Bay Area that costs so much to "heat up,"  that the plant runs 10 days in a row, with 4 days off every other week.

II. Agriculture  and Farming would benefit greatly from concentrated heat generation with over-night storage for  local desalinization, crop drying and pre-processing, "green" fertilizer production, bio-mass fuel production from agricultural waste,  building and barn heating even all night, and emergency crop heating, without burning fossil fuels.  And, as mentioned below, Highly Concentrated Solar Heat  will be able to generate  zero-carbon vehicle fuels for tractors, combines, and to ship crops and  fertilizers.

III, Promising Potential for Solar Heat

-  Desalinization wherever it is needed

-  High temperature refining of magnesium, for which solar furnaces already being consideredV

IV Products  made from  CO₂

Providing the heat to make products from carbon dioxide (a searching on that phrase gets 86,ooo,ooo results!),  Not only would this "capturer" CO₂, but it also makes useful products to reward the effort.  Five product categories listed by GreenBiz are;  carbon nanotubes, carbon fiber; Nanoparticles for plastics, concrete and coatings; Bioplastics;  Methanol; and Chemicals, bio-composite foamed plastics.

Everything discussed herein is to be build quickly and at very low cost on
 automatic programmable machine tools and then assembled by local labor. 

Related Caveats

•  Don't  couple CSP and CSH  if that makes them too large for most industrial plants  or if they can't locate at a remote site.

• Raise the temperature generated  to provide heat for virtually all industrial processes and hot enough to generate hydrogen (see advanced  Strategy page at  www.design4manufacturability.com/strategy.hem ).

•   Develop higher-temperature Heliostat mirror fields as done with solar furnaces,  which currently use two-stage mirrors.  Research has been done on single stage heliostats by focusing mirror "facets" but the extra set of computerized actuators  that are  too expensive for CSP or CSH.  However, clever mechanism design could do this at low cost in more compact fields that generate higher temperatures, as proposed in Example # 3:  Linkage coupling of mirrors for ultra-low-cost mirror guidance and 25 times better focus!

OPTIMIZING  RENEWABLE  STRATEGY  FOR  TRANSPORTATION

Of all sources of green-house gases (GHG), transportation  has worst combination of solution importance  and urgency combined with  solution difficulty, cost, impact on our lives, jobs, impace on and the economy

Here are the factors that affect this ratio from worst to best:

Results

• 1) Emissions: from greenhouse gasses that resist reduction  -->  no net emissions for vehicle plus their energy source 
  

• 2)  fuel sources:  As a general rule, production of electricity wastes 3/4 of input energy for PV solar cells and 2/3 waste for fossil fuel plants  and sometimes  higher for  wind power   -->  less cost for energy, raw materials, environmental disruption, grid expansion, with rooftop PV cells.

Operation

• 3) Fuel availability: from electric vehicle  charging  conundrums when vehicle use depends on charging station availability, which, in turn, depends on vehicle use  -->  versatile fuels and vehicles that run on new or old fuel networks 
  
  4) Fuel  supply & distribution: large, remote Solar and petrol power plants feed expanded electricity distribution grids  -->  (a)  local renewable  fuel sources feeding local charging stations or (b)  clean mobile fuels can be trucked to existing filling stations. 
•  

• 5) Energy storage: batteries used to store electricity PV plants  -->  battery use should be prioritized on electric vehicles and storing rooftop PV output for vehicle charging. The big advantage of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is being able to store solar heat in molten salts all night for 24 hour use, which could generate electricity and other fuels all day, all night.

Current demand for materials best batteries has pushed them  into "rare arth"  status.

CONVERSION

• 6) Conversion  Costs: instead of having to replacing all currently polluting vehicles  -->  build or modify existing engines to run cleaner or make existing vehicles run on scalable, clean running fuels , hopefully generated by low-cost and scalable renewable sources.
  
• 7) Conversion  time:  years/decades to replace whole fleets  --> adapt exiting fleet quickly, which benefits the planet quickly
  
• 8) solution  viability: The old way ways (on the left above) are hard to change or replace with anything scalable  --> the advanced half may need innovation for better, faster solution completions, that can scale up to whatever is needed.
•  

STRATEGIC   ANALYSES  AND  STRATEGIES   TO  PURSUE

Emissions.  (Point #1): projects that emissions from conventional sources continue to resist attempts to reduce emissions at the source (or capture, transport, and bury the pollution.  We should be only building pipelines for renewable fuels, not for fossil fuels or the pollution from fossile  fuels.

 Strategies to pursue:  To achieve the goal of "no net emissions from vehicles plus their sources," we will need to eliminate the all emissions that supply these low/no emission vehicles or else their real benefits will be cancelled out.

Fuel Sources (Point #2): The low efficiency of fossil fuels makes them three times worse than perceived  with respect of raw material mining and extraction, and their environmental impacts and costs .

 Strategies to pursue:  This needs to be taken into account for any transportation strategy that depends on this electricity which is inherently wasteful of source energy.

Charging / Refueling: (Point #3): n addition to the fuel distribution conundrums mentioned in Point #3, lack of system  scalability will lead to shortages, which are  becoming the industry's biggest challenges when they are being asked to become carbon-free.

Strategies to pursue now:  Scalability needs to be understood and products and their production systems need to be designed for that, as taught in Section 4.8 (IN THE 2020 DFM book) and at  Scalability to greatly increase production volumes quickly (design4manufacturability.com) .
       Recent news cites supply problems brewing for high-performance electric motor that are designed around rare compo (actually made from "rare Earth"  elements that we get mostly from unfriendly sources who would rather sell us the whole motors than a few rare parts).  Designing products around rare or scarce parts is warned against in Sections 2.7.9.2, 3.9.7, 4.6.3.1, 4.8.4.1, and 5.1.8.3 in the 2020 DFM book.

 Fuel  supply & distribution  (Point # 4): New mobile fuels and even electricity, may also be  produced  in remote factories (like refineries and power plants).  An then there are the not fully-understood "charging costs:    The obvious one  is the  $100,000 cost for each charging system.  But As they say about major omissions: And that ain’t the half of it. 
       One other enormous cost  of gearing up to generate electricity from  renewable sources (necessary for any of this to make any sense).  If that is nor forthcoming before more EV's hit the streets (which could be fast for the very large Tesla factory), then we will be in the ironic situation actually burning more fossil fuels until scaled up  renewable plants (now years off by their own estimates) cancan  catch up.  
         The other enormous  cost to greatly expanding  the electrical grid by the following multiplier: from the big towers to the transformer on your block, to handle half the energy output of the petroleum industry (for the prevalent goal of half vehicles are EV's)  .

Strategies to pursue:  The overall system strategy needs to be prioritized to allocations    panels   which are inherently not scalable, (as shown in Section 4.8.4.3 in the 2020 DFM book). Recent news cites supply problems brewing for high-performance electric motor that are designed around rare components (actually made from "rare Earth" elements) which are warned against in Section 3.9.7.  Here the advise is to design in adequate space for readily available magnets.

New mobile fuels (also in point #4) may be produced in large, remote factories. 

Strategies to pursue: Renewable energy could leap ahead on energy distribution (point #4), by (a) developing more compact energy source utilizing the unique Precise Assembly design principles, that could be more plentiful and be located closer to users, and, (b) developing fuels that can be trucked  to existing or new fueling stations. 

Energy   storage (Point #5): Un-synergistic thinking  allows  using  valuable (and some predict scarce) batteries to correct one of the biggest shortcomings of both PV solar panels and wind power: storing energy when the sun doesn't shine or when the wind doesn't blow.

Strategies to pursue:  Systems thinking would advise that battery usage should now be prioritized for (1) storing roof-top PV electricity and (2) the electric vehicles themselves, as discussed in Section 4.8.4.1 in the 2020 DFM book.  A related prioritization would also avoid using batteries for wind power, which may ironically might  be thought of as a way to power electric  vehicles.  Instead, systems thinkers should insist that wind  energy also be stored without needing batters, for instance, pumping water up  high enough to generate electricity through the same generator, r, when s not blowing).  A clever, integrated  solution uses the actual tower structure to hold the pumped water. Beware of snap decisions to base a wind strategy on off-shore locations  electricity can not be stored out there.

        By contras, many Concentrated Solar Power "power towers" routinely store heat throughout the night in molten salt tanks, all of which is highly scalable.

 Conversion  Costs : Ignoring these or other adaptation strategies may incur overwhelming costs to replace all vehicles when auto factories can’t even find enough parts to keep their plants open.  Current decision-makers need to immediately start prioritizing the allocation of  PV solar panels which are inherently not scalable, (as shown in Section 4.8.4.3 in the 2020 DFM book).       Rather than accept the status quo or an obvious but sub-optmal "solution," to the first half of these points, consider all of these "Strategies to pursue.."

Strategies to pursue: For success of solutions in all these points, investigating and good solutions for all of these points, investigate and develop innovation, workable solutions that will enable existing internal combustion engines to be modified or easily  adapted to run on a renewable, zero-emission fuel (see leading candidate below) whose production will be very affordable and scalable without limit and whose distribution is not limited by sales of replacement vehicles.

This is especially relevant to the "Big 3" auto makers, whose most profitable and best selling models will continue to be big trucks and SUV’s, which, if trying to replace by EV’s would:

- be very expensive to provide enough power from big motors needing "rare Earth" magnets and bigger batteries to provide enough "juice." On the other hand, exiting vehicles. or newer versions, already have powerful engines

- take too long at stations, which may not be  within range even bigger batteries. On the other hand, being able to switch back to the (increasingly more expensive) fuel in the "old gas tank," can extend range indefinitely. 

- take too long even at home from more expensive arrays PV panels and batteries or try draw more utility current than even the transformers  could handle

Thirty years of teaching DFM has revealed many counter-productive policies can waste 2/3 of product development resources, especially low-bidding, ection 11.5.11), off-shoring,  (Section 11.5.12). and trying to do cost reduction after design. (Sections 11.5.10 and 6.1 "How Not to Lower Cost").  The   worst  policy  that will thwart  all ambitious cost programs is  Section 11.5.9: "Don’t Measure “Cost” as Just Parts Cost,"  on which some tools and programs may be based like Vallur Analylss / Value Engineering, Target  Costing, and some "DFNA  software tools,   Any industry that has these policies and does these practices  will have to learn and implement all methodologies on this site and in the 600 page DFM book, before offering or attempting any ambitious or challenging new product development efforts.

 Conversion  time  (Point #7): The more urgent is the need for change, the faster its completion is needed from the first half of Point #7 and all these other points above.

Strategies to pursue.    Complete  meaningful change quickly and getting the fastest results will depend on: optimal strategies (summarized on this page, and adapting existing internal combustion engines to  run renewable fuels (proposed in the "strategy" section of Point #3, above; and the next section which proposes the most promising solar fuel.

Solution  Viability  (Point #8), consider the slogan on the back cover of the new 600page DFM book: "Achieve any cost goals in half the time and achieve stable production with quality designed in right-the-first-time:" 

Everything discussed herein is to be build quickly and at very low cost on
 automatic programmable machine tools and then assembled by local labor.

Solar Hydrogen

A solar furnace concentrates enough sun rays to reach temperatures high enough to produce solar hydrogen.

Solar furnace laboratories have generated hydrogen and oxygen, sometimes in separate chambers which could be generated on a continuous basis.

The previous section on "Optimizing Renewable Energy Strategy for Transportation" showed how  much low-cost, scalable supplies of clean hydrogen could help all the strategies presented for transportation.

What is needed now is for the solar furnace results to be commercialized and designed for Scalability without shortages  designed in be able to scale up quickly.

Solar furnaces have been making hydrogen in many ways as Concentrated Solar Heat (CSH)

Also, hundreds of R&D projects have been working for decades to perfect a category called Direct solar water-splitting. The simplest and most commercializable approaches requires (1) very high  temperatures and (2) very low cost. 

The highest temperatures come from very high concentrations  of sun rays , that can be achieved using Precision Assemblies and accurate tolerances for large structures, which us summarized in the next paragraph. 

"Half Cost Product Development" (Section 3.8 in the 2020 DFM book) which cam save nine cost categories half the cost to ten time less!

The foundation for  up to ten times cost is Design for Manufacturability (see dozens of DFM articles); DFM guidelines including : Availability designed in (see Sections 3.8.3, 3.9.7 , & 4.6.3 in 2020 DFM book); Tolerance Strategies (in 17 sections; 9 guidelines, and two figure in the DFM book; How to avoid cumulative exponential degradation of quality and performance,  e.g. for hundreds of thousands of heliostat mirror trackers, which now could not  get enough chips for that  (see Figure 10.2 and Section 3.3.11 on Concept Simplification in the DFM book);

Then, products need to be designed for manufacturability and scalability in half the time at half the cost 
( as taugtht in the webinar: https://www.design4manufacturability.com/advanced_npd.htm   ) followed by a commercialization workshop, described at: http://www.halfcostproducts.com/commercialization.htm 

The following section will present how solar hydrogen can help other industries.

INDUSTRIAL  USES  FOR  HIGH  TEMPERATURE

As pointed out earlier, 60% of industrial and residential/office energy demand is heat.

In order to supply renewable heat to where it is needed, the sources will need to close by. Fortunately, highly concentrated reflector systems can be located next to or on top of factories or office, apartment buildings, and even fueling stations.    

Fortunately, very high solar concentration ratios, can be compact enough that (a) as many as are needed can be located next to the proverbial "blast furnace" application and (b) these can be designed to be light enough be supported by roofs.  

Further, the much higher "sunlight concentration  ratios" means that in northern latitudes  or on cloudy days,  using  "filtered sunlight" will get though to a wide range of most solar heat users.

The logic of the last two paragraphs can be combined to enable solar energy to heat and power ocean-going ships with the techniques discussed  in the Transportation setion above  (with readily available ship-mounted trackers)

CONCLUSIONS : Strategy for  ENERGY

The first step that needs to be done is to commercialize the "solar furnace,"   which concentrates sun rays several thousands times to produce "blast furnace" temperatures.   High concentrations can be achieved by  designing with the overall strategies presented in the page How to Design Precise  Assemblies and optimal tolerance Strategies (in 17 sections; 9 guidelines, and two figure in the 2020 DFM book  Such a low-cost design  that would be scalable and would be able to:

 

(a)  provide 60% of all of the energy demands for industry, which is in the form of heat

(b) make solar hydrogen  as the ultimate clean transportation fuel, Which can be "burned" in existing vehicle engines (with only water vapor as the "exhaust") and be able to switch over  to the more expensive gas in the same old  gas tank if  the H₂ tank might be close to  running low.

This will avoid the new fuel conundrum (mentioned earlier) because  people will  readily upgrade the car they already own to burn clean-burning  hydrogen, when they know they will always find one of their dual fuels!

 

Two major new articles on scalability at:

Copyright  © 2021 by: 
Dr, David M Anderson, P.E.,
Fellow, American Society of Mechanical Engineers
anderson@build-to-order-consultng.com
+1-805-924-0100

 

         If your company makes any products that have similar opportunities, contact Dr. Anderson for your own proposal for workshops or design studies that will show you how greatly lower the cost of your hardest-to-design parts.  As a Certified Management Consultant (CMC), Dr. Anderson's high ethical standards  prevent  him from doing this for direct competitors, which means the first to bring him in gets a unique competitive advantage. 

To discuss this further, contact:

Dr. David M. Anderson, P.E.; CMC; Fellow, ASME
HalfCostProducts.com
www.design4manufacturability.com
www.build-to-order-consulting.com
1-805-924-0100; anderson@build-to-order-consulting.com

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