I thought you had misspelt desal, and was going to say that’s a pretty poor example in the Australian experience of a technology that paid back on its sales hype
I thought you had misspelled Seidler and I thought that was a poor example because Harry Seidler’s buildings are bullshit.
If only Seidler had designed desal plants in an offgrid cabin powered by a diesel generator.
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There’s one of these near the train line from Sevilla to Cadiz in Spain. I looked at the heliostat, and I can confirm it does make your eyes sore.
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I don’t think you’re meant to look at the heliostat.
Trump.
that doesn’t seem like a smart move.
I watched “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” last night. Good movie.
Clicked on this thread for the first time.
I stopped eating all animal products (meat/fish/eggs/dairy) just over 2 years ago now.
It was a decision motivated by health goals, but I feel that the environmental impact of animal agriculture is often ignored in climate change discussions, in favour of greenhouse gases from transportation.
It’s a highly emotionally charged topic at times, and often the argument on the internet is that plant based diets are just as bad, if not worse for the environment than meat based diets.
But importanlty there doesn’t seem to be much debate among the scientific community on animal agriculture being a major driver for environmental destruction.
Even just logically, it would have far less environmental impact for humans to grow some crops then eat them, rather than grow crops to feed billions of animals until they are big enough to slaughter, then eat their meat.
The energy/land/water required per calorie from meat is highly inefficient, compared to that of most plants (yes I am aware of the land/environmental impact of particular crops like almonds).
Sorry no direct sources for the graphic below:
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Little bit of local news, after previous discussion on the topic thought some might be interested in this, attempts to measure real fugitive methane emissions at the source in the Illawarra/southern Syd catchment mines.
It’s a good concept, but I’d heavily question the use of OGI for analysing methane. It’s a good technology for what it is, but prone to false positives/false negatives, not to mention environmental factors. The error increases greatly when at a further distance to the area you’re trying to analyse. Considering these guys are recording for a fairly huge distance from the facility, the results would have an even lower accuracy.
It’s not difficult for regulars to come out onsite and do in-situ testing and get confirmations in a lab. Don’t think any of the global regulators would allow OGI as a quantitative or even qualitative measure
I’m not too familiar with the tech. I understand the main method used for emissions reporting is satellite based, which would sound even less precise than doing it this way. Is there a more accurate method to record mine or well fugitive emissions?
The most accurate way would be to set up air sampling pumps to collect air onto a special filter, send off to a lab for analysis and then do a time weighted average. You could set up multiple pumps throughout the area to see the extent to which the leak has spread and you would have exact concentrations and would be able to speciate an contaminants. Even for general leak checks, it wouldn’t be difficult to set up pumps throughout a facility to identify any issues. It’s similar enough concepts as dealing with airborne asbestos, dust or crystalline silica.
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So a certain mandatory number of detectors within a certain radius of every fracking well, for example, would give a high degree of confidence that all fugitive emissions are being detected? And what about long wall mining deep underground, would sensors on the surface be able to detect fugitive emissions from subsidence cracks for example, or do they spread out over a wide radius do you know?
In theory yes. Your best bet would be an initial baseline test to show that leakage has been controlled or captured, after which you would do intermittent regulatory tests to ensure that the system is working and meeting regulatory requirements. Getting a hygienist out onsite daily would be a massive cost if you were required to extend that out for a full mine-site over a number of years. Not to mention require the staffing to exist in the first place. The pumps themselves will set you back over $1000 each, with a set of 5, plus all the other parts, calibration tools etc work out to be $10,000 all up.
The nature of the testing is that you would need someone to go out onsite on a daily basis to pick up filters and replace, plus charge pumps, calibrate them etc.
In terms of spread etc, that would be something extremely difficult to account for and detect in any real way, no matter the technology. With greater spread for deep underground works, the gas can potentially diffuse so much that it could be undetectable with current technology, or could follow unknown fault lines or lines of least resistance to areas where it could be impossible to account for. Could also be impossible to prove where the specific gas came from if it diffuses far enough. It’s a similar enough process with water leaching from waste stockpiles etc It’s almost an art trying to figure out where the chemicals will go. Although you have the added benefit that most of the chemicals in water will be man made rather than potentially naturally occurring.
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Thanks, that’s very informative!
Definitely not an expert at that specific form of testing, my forte is soil, but the analytical concepts are similar enough.
Ha, bet you do not do kjedahl digestions any more.
Morrison lover!
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Actually it’s still part of the industry. One of the tests i’m aiming to add on over the next few years