Re: Low Cost Hydrogen is here to stay

On Dec 13, 1:19 am, Monkey Clumps <spacebrai...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 9, 8:24 am, Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:





On Dec 9, 8:20 pm, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Eeyore wrote:
Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Eeyore wrote:

How many tons of *electrolytically manufactured* hydrogen have you sold to
date ?

$24 billion worth. 1/3 of it will be used to upgrade lower rank
fuels, 2/3 will be burned directly.

And when will you deliver these 30 million tons ?

30 billion you mean

No, I meant 30 millon tons. As in $24 bn/ $800 per ton.

- these are 40 year contracts with first deliveries in 2011.

OK. Good luck with that.

Graham

Thanks, I can feel the love. lol.

William, here are a few engineering type questions regarding your
plans:

1. How will airborne contamination, dust, dirt, soot, pollen, etc.
that floats around and lands on things outside impact the optical
performance of your PV devices? How often will the need to be cleaned
or otherwise maintained to achieve desired performance? How will they
be cleaned?

When is the last time you saw a street light was cleaned? How about
an overhead light in your company's conference room? How about the
windows in a commercial greenhouse?

Please consider that I am not making pictures of the sun. I am
condensing sunlight with my lenses. So, scratches, dust dirt pollen
reduce efficiency, but is not objectionable if efficiency losses are
acceptable. How do you define acceptable? What is the value of the
gain in efficiency? What is the cost of that gain?

If you sit down and do the engineering you'll find just as in the
examples I gave above, in most situations, and most environments,
under most conditions, barring exceptional situations - the operator
is better off not cleaning them at all.


2. Since your projects are located in the tropics, it seems likely
that in the course of a few decades, one of your sites may be hit by a
tropical cyclone. Your description of the PV devices made them sound
somewhat lightweight in construction. How do anticipate they would
weather a cyclone?

Take the plastic from a six pack of soda - fold it so all the circles
overlap - now attempt to tear it apart. Unless you're exceptionally
strong, you can't do it. That shows you just how strong lightly
constructed plastic can be. The land is graded to intercept sunlight
and control run off. Drains are put into place and holding ponds -
using technology very similar to drainage systems used in
agriculture. The panel strings are wired together 1,100 at a time and
z-folded for transport. These are dropped off near the graded/drained
land. A specially built tractor picks up the z-folded block and
unfolds a 4 foot segment from the 4,400 foot string, each segment is
4ft x 8ft in size. A 4 ft trench is dug 8 ft apart by the tractor
(think Ditch Witch) Two webs of plastic folded on the backside of each
segment are unfolded and inserted in the trench, and disks and rollers
compress soil around the webbing. So, the entire 4,400 x 8 ft ***
has two plastic nets buried 4ft in the ground. When you consider that
most membrane roofs are held securely in place by a few inches of
gravel you'll see how secure this approach is.

The real problem when you sit down and do the work is water, not
wind. Wind is nil only a few inches above the ground. Besides the
panels are inside what amounts to a ditch, facing the sun running east
to west, so wind can't really get at it. Heavy rains are another
matter. So, that's why we pay special attention to drain designs on
the back side of the panel and how that integrates with the drainage
system and land grading. We use GPS controlled tractors and graders
to shape the land as its needed.

3. In addition to the creative and proprietary technical aspects of
your projects, it would seem to me that there will be a large amount
of meat and potatoes engineering to build the type of facility you
describe. Is your company doing the detail design of the entire
project? Who is going to do the construction?

These aren't engineering questions, they're highly proprietary legal
and financial questions. So, I will answer them generally not
specifically.

Generally speaking I have an off-shore holding company in an
appropriate nation that holds all the IP and manages its application
world wide. I create subsidiaries to license this IP for use in
specific energy projects throughout the world. Each subsidiary builds
owns and operates a specific facility and is responsible for
delivering the products called for in the project. This subsidiary
then hires qualified vendors to design and execute the project. While
specific vendors for specific functions on specific projects is more
than what I can tell you now, I will say that these vendors include
folks like; Boeing, IDC, CH2MHill, Accenture.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=ACN
http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/138/138531.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/110/110227.html

This is called the Timex business model of outsourcing. Timex was the
first, but certainly wasn't the last. Timex owned the marketing
channels, the intellectual property rights, the brands, the name, the
financing. They then outsourced all the work to vendors that they
purchased.

A variant of Walmart's successful model. Walmart buys so much of the
output of a vendor that they basically control that vendor through the
sheer volume they buy.


4. For the electrolyzer, what will be the source of water? How pure
does the water need to be and what will you do with the removed
contaminants?

Depends on the details. One application will use hydrogen fired
distillers and Persian Gulf sea water to produce salt and distilled
water. Another application will use condenser heat from hydrogen
fired boiler for a power plant converted to hydrogen to distill water
from the Pacific. Another application will take the water vapor from
dewatered coal, plus rain run off and water from a river, purify that
and and electrolyze it.


5. After the hydrogen is produced does it need to be liquified for use
in your coal to high quality hydrocarbon process?

No.

How are you going
to deal with the metal embrittlement issues in handling the hydrogen?

Hydrogen has been produced industrially since 1911. Embrittlement was
an issue then, and throughout most of the middle of the 20th century,
but compared to other pipeline issues, like corrosion, embrittlement
was a secondary problem. It never really became a huge issue. In
August 2006 ASME completed B32.12 standards for hydrogen pipelines.
More here;

http://www.apia.net.au/events/docs/IPChydrogen.pdf

6. Where will the PV devices, electrolyzer and coal-to-liquid reactor
be designed and built?

Generally speaking the products I am building are designed and tested
based on 14 years of R&D by me. Based on these products and efforts
data was developed that were used by qualified vendors to design
factories to build them in quantity on a larger scale. These included
cost estimates from qualife qualified architects and engineers that
made them in a sense bankable. Banks required confirmation of this or
that detail. Test articles were made for unusual processes and
tested. Cost estimates were verified or adjusted, and the financial
models were created.

In the end, we didn't need any greenfield developments since most of
the stuff is off-the-shelf. The PV devices will be built at converted
wafer fabs I am buying. The electrolyzers will be built at a vendor
I've purchased. The coal-to-liquid reactor is built by a consortium
of vendors I've hired, and will be completed at a company I purchased
for that purpose who builds hydrogenation reactors.

For each element of the supply chain there is a make/buy decision to
be made based on IP I contribute, and volume of purchases, and state
of the industry, and so forth. Classical economics textbook stuff.

To carry this out over the past 5 years cost more than the technology
piece, and the financial piece cost more than that.

Each of these supply chains take time and energy to develop and
execute on. Accenture and others have spent the last 5 years working
through all this. Of course, this also takes financing which is a
whole other ball of wax. Obviously I will not give away strategies
that cost me dearly to acquire.

Clearly, I can talk generally about what's going on. Take the wafer
fabs as an example. About 90 wafer fabs are sold every year as the
electronics industry upgrades its processes. My solar dies do not
need the latest dimensional accuracies, and so, I have a list of
criterion that I need, and judge potential acquisitions based on that.
Some fabs are sold off with workers, some with equipment in place,
others empty buildings, others OLD empty buildings. Each has
advantages and disadvantages based on what they're doing and so forth.

Here is one resource - of many - that are then reviewed by qualified
analysts to determine acquiistion strategy.

http://www.scfab.com/index.php?p=view_product&product_id=6

which is then acted upon once funds are in place.

Is your company designing and supplying all of
that equipment?

Yes using the timex model described and the supply chain I have put
together.

7. How big is your company?

Its quite small for the amount of projects we own, but we cast a long
shadow through our partnerships, vendors and subsidiaries.

Do your intend to take it public
eventually?

No. I have adequate access to risk capital through the energy project
finance model I described, so I don't need to sell capital. The
projects then become bankable and the value of the projects are such
that I can leverage value of existing projects to expand as rapidly as
my supply chain allows. In fact I have a capital buy-back in place
for my original US based company, since I've transferred all IP
offshore.
.