What Really is COVID-19?

This is the PowerPoint presentation slides for my speech titled "What Really Is COVID-19?" The speech was delivered on November 14, 2020, at the Fairleigh Early Birds Toastmasters Club in New Jersey, USA.

Why will dominant alternative transportation fuels be liquid fuels, not electricity or hydrogen?

This is my recently published paper. The link is:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421517304019

If you would like to read the whole text, please email me: binzhaode@gmail.com.  

Highlights of the paper

•    Existing transportation infrastructure favors liquid fuels.
•    The human nature of satisfying their needs with least effort favors liquid fuels.
•    Continuing supply of oil will reinforce existing transportation infrastructure.
•    Understanding alternative fuel market helps avoid making unrealistic policies.

Abstract

The nature of oil as a finite and non-renewable resource determines that the world oil production will eventually peak. Alternative fuels are energy to fill in the gap for transportation. The types of the alternative transportation fuels include electricity, gaseous, liquid, and solid energy carriers. Understanding what type of alternative fuels will dominate alternative transportation fuel market is critical for policy-makers to make sound decisions to develop alternative fuels. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the general trend of alternative fuel market by applying principles that govern the biological and technological evolutions. Existing transportation infrastructure favors liquid alternative fuels over electricity and hydrogen. The human nature of satisfying their needs with least effort also favors liquid fuels over electricity and hydrogen. And continuing supply of oil will reinforce existing transportation infrastructure, which will continue to make it impossible for electricity or hydrogen based transportation system to compete with current liquid fuel based transportation system economically.

Keywords

Transportation energy, Alternative fuel,Peak oil, Prediction,Path dependence,Human nature

Sections of the paper

1.   Introduction
2.   Existing transportation infrastructure favors liquid fuels
3.   The human nature of satisfying their needs with least effort favors liquid fuels
4.   Continuing supply of oil will reinforce existing transportation infrastructure
5.   Conclusions and policy implications
6.   References

Management Law

For a management to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it helps the managed subjects reach their goals by providing them with greater and greater access to satisfy their needs.

This law is to place progression of management (of humans and of other animate subjects) on the basis of natural law of life. According to this theory, biological nature is the selection power for the progression of management.

Goals are desired results the managed subjects want to achieve. Two fundamental goals of any life are survival and reproduction. Biological needs such as satisfying hunger, thirsty, sleepiness, sexual desire; pursuing pleasure; approaching attractions; avoiding pain and repulsions are inborn needs to help an organism achieve the goals of survival and reproduction. Social needs of humans such as acceptance, prestige, and self-fulfillment are derivative needs (or extension) of biological needs.

Striving to survive, reproduce, and satisfy needs is a nature (trait) common to all lives. In a sense, biological nature can be defined as an innate force that drives life to achieve its goals and satisfy its needs. This nature is determined by biological program (genes) of life. There is no way to change biological nature of a life. Recognizing and cooperating with biological nature of a life when managing it is the only way for the management to persist in time. And biological nature is the force that constantly works on management and selects fitter management that better serve the goals and needs of the managed subjects.

Similarities and dissimilarities between the boy who cried wolf and people who advocate Peak Oil

Similarity: Wolf did not come as the boy cried for several times; World oil production did not peak as some “peak oil advocators” predicted for several decades. 

Dissimilarity: The boy intentionally wanted to trick the villagers; Peak Oil advocators did not intentionally want to trick people. Some of them just failed to understand and predict how development of technology would impact on discovery and exploitation of new oil resources.

Similarity: There were wolves; There are limitations of oil resources. The nature of wolves that they eat sheep did not change; The nature of fossil oil resources that they are non-renewable and limited does not change. 

Similarity: Wolf came suddenly; Peak Oil will come, possibly in a sudden way.

Similarity: The boy and the villagers should not have dropped off their guard for wolves; Peak Oil advocators,  policy makers and people should not drop off their guard for future oil crisis. 

Cellulose, Maginot Line of Plants. Shoud it be Tackled or Avoided for Biofuels Production?

--A Thought about Biofuels Production

It is almost always a better strategy to cooperate with biological natures of a life than to fight against them if we want to get the most of the life. Cooperating with biological natures of a life means helping it achieve its goals, and thus would avoid resistance from the life. Two fundamental natures or goals of any life are survival and reproduction. For example, bread and rice we eat are made from seeds of wheat and rice respectively. It is a nature of wheat and rice to produce seeds, and they have a natural tendency to produce as many seeds as they can because that is in favor of their reproductions. In past thousands of years, humans have successfully “catered for” this nature and “helped” wheat and rice produce much more seeds than they originally did for human benefits.

How is this principle related to biofuels production?

Cellulosic biofuels made from wood, grasses, and inedible parts of crops, are widely considered to be promising as alternative transportation fuels with great economic and environmental benefits. Cellulose is a polymer of sugar. It is produced by all plants, from single-celled algae to giant trees. Abundance of cellulose led to a logic or a natural expectation of producing fuels from cellulose. Actually, producing fuels from cellulose is not a new idea: ethanol production from cellulose began in Germany as early as in 1898. However, for plants survival, cellulose is naturally made tough for breaking down. Breaking down cellulose is like attacking the strongest point plants defend. In the past century, scientists and engineers have invented numerous physical, chemical and biological methods for breaking down cellulose. But breaking down cellulose into sugar remains difficult and the most expensive step in production of cellulosic biofuels. Besides, for survival plants spend energy transforming sugar into cellulose; and for producing cellulosic biofuels, people have to spend energy transforming cellulose back into sugar. This does not seem optimal.

It is not implied that cellulosic biofuels will not be able to make a significant impact in production of alternative transportation fuels, but more attention might be needed to give on new strategies that would cut out or avoid cellulose for producing biofuels.

(To be continued)

Energy for Transportation

Transportation is the movement of people and goods from one location to another. It is an inseparable part of any society. The way of transportation has a close relationship with the way of people’s life.

The main transportation tools in modern society are cars, ships and airplanes, which are vehicles for land, water and air transportation respectively. Needless to say, it takes energy to run these vehicles.

The first energy carrier for transportation is petroleum or oil, which provided about 95% of all the energy consumed in transportation in the world and 90% in the USA in 2011. Oil is a liquid fuel, which has high energy capacity, easy to transport, and easy to handle. But oil is a fossil fuel. It was formed from plants and animals that lived on the earth millions of years ago. The resources of oil are limited and non-renewable. As global demand for oil is increasing and worldly oil production will peak in the near future and then decline, the world simply cannot produce enough oil to meet the demands of oil for transportation.

The second energy carrier for transportation is natural gas. Natural gas as a transportation fuel can be either compressed natural gas (CNG) or liquefied natural gas (LNG). There were about 14 million natural gas vehicles in the world in 2011, which accounted for about 1.4% of all vehicles running on the road. Natural gas vehicles are more expensive than gasoline-powered vehicles. But natural gas has a price advantage over oil and emits fewer greenhouse gases when burned. Because huge supply is available domestically in the USA and around the world, current and predicted future price of natural gas is much lower than that of gasoline on an energy equivalent basis. With such a price advantage as a fuel, natural gas vehicles, especially those of heavy-duty trucks and high-mileage vehicles like transit-buses and taxis, will continue to grow in the coming years.

The third energy carrier for transportation is electricity. Electricity is clean, which doesn’t cause air pollution to the driving area. Some trains and a few of cars are running on electricity. There seem no big problems to produce enough electricity for present and future use because electricity can be generated from nuclear power, solar energy, wind, tidy, water force etc., as well as from coal, natural gas and oil. But there are several barriers for widely using electricity cars. First, the energy capacity of batteries is low. Generally an electricity car can only run about 100 miles. Second, it takes hours to recharge the batteries. It can be argued that the first problem could be solved with development of more effective batteries in the future; and the second problem could be solved with building up national net of battery stations: people change their batteries at the battery stations rather than wait for the batteries to be recharged. However, key materials for making rechargeable batteries are expensive and non-renewable.

The fourth energy carrier for transportation is hydrogen. Hydrogen is widely used in space transportation, for example, sending satellites and people into space by rockets. There are also a few cars running on hydrogen. The advantage of hydrogen is clean with water as the only waste. But hydrogen is not easy to handle. The tank of a car that can store hydrogen must be able to contain high pressure, which is a technological challenge. And since hydrogen is highly flammable, cars running on hydrogen have special safety issues. It seems that in the near future, hydrogen would not be able to become a popular transportation fuel.

The fifth energy carrier for transportation is liquid biofuels. Biofuels, such as ethanol, butanol and biodiesel, are fuels produced from living organisms or biomass. Since energy in biofuels originates from solar energy through photosynthesis, biofuels are renewable. Liquid biofuels can be conveniently used in current petroleum used vehicles. The problem facing biofuels is how to produce large quantity of biofuels with low and competitive price. Current ways of producing biofuels from corn, soybean, and other crops are not the solution for the future, because their production costs are high and potentials limited. It seems the future lies in genetically modified or created bacteria or algae, which will be able to directly produce biofuels by using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.

As renewable fuels, biofuels will play more and more important roles in transportation.

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The above is one of my 8 to 10 minute Toastmasters speeches.