Future Energy Solutions

Tama Copeman, Director, Future Energy Solutions, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. 

How plastics will prevail in the future energy solution ... 

Energy is an importantfactor affecting economic and political stability. The efforts of scientists, economists, social scientists and public figures involved in the solution of current and future energy problems must be combined in order to secure the stability on the global and regional levels. 

Future energy systems will be more dependent on energy storage than our current system. However, different elements cannot be considered in isolation an overall systems view is necessary to develop an optimized solution. Furthermore, it is not only technical optimization that defines the choice of an energy system. Societal preferences, economic and political factors, and even chance can influence the development of an infrastructure. However, there are some basic points that should be taken into account on the systems level. 

For the change of our energy supply towards renewable energy sources, H2 is considered to be a potential future energy carrier. However, the storage and transport of H2 is still an unsolved problem. A possible solution could be the chemical storage in chemical compounds, such as HCOOH, CH3OH, or NH3. However, for such applications, it is necessary that the chemicals can be easily decomposed for H2 retrieval on demand. 

Olivier de Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food from the United Nations, recently said It is necessary to consume less energy, to use fewer automobiles and not to create the expectation on the capacity of new technologies to allow us to keep our level of occidental life. This statement is certainly shocking in some respects, and it is not possible to predict for the future the solution to all the problems related to the supply of food for every citizen around the world. 

We have thus a clear idea of the problems of the future their solution will hardly advance thermodynamics at all in principle, but so much the more will they facilitate its application. It will be necessary, first, to explore further the dependence of specific heats on temperature and all conceivable external influences and, second, to obtain a clearer idea of the two identical quantities U0 and A0 (energy at the absolute zero and potential energy) in the latter direction my paper (108) already cited may constitute, perhaps, a first attempt. 

P. Frankl and M. Gamberale, in 1998, presented, the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach as a tool for energy policy to identify (future) optimal solutions which maximize environmental benefits,... to identify priorities... 

On a global macro level, it is clear that coal will continue to form a significant portion of the world s energy supply for the next several decades and that the United States and the world will rely on clean coal technologies to be the bridge leading to future renewable energy solutions. 

Today, fuel cells (FCs) are regarded as the best solution for future energy systems with increased energy efficiency and low environmental impact. It is expected that FCs will find successful applications in stationary power plants and in mobile power sources, particularly in vehicles [1]. Currently, due to the common use of portable electrical and electronic devices, efficient low-power generators are needed as alternatives to batteries [2],... 

There are other methods for concentrating solutions with a theoretical energy use lower than that of evaporation, and much funding has been devoted to developing these technologies. Application of some of these will result in future energy savings. 

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