[biofuel13]

Hey all,

If anyone knows if there is a better thread for this question please point me in the right direction, otherwise toss in your input.

My wife and I need to purchase a new clothes dryer as the one we have now is about 20-25 years old and finally crapped out on us. It was an old beast of a gas dryer and I shudder to think of how inefficient it was. Given the discussion in this thread about the skyrocketing price of NG and in this thread and others about skyrocketing electricity costs I'm not sure which kind of dryer will be more efficient/cost effective in the long run. Any suggestions??

PS I anticipate that some of you will say screw the dryer, focus on preps instead, but fear not we are pretty well set in that department so please stick to the gas v electric topic. Thanks!

[ROCKMAN]

biofuel,

Probably depends where you are. Down here in Texas NG will likely be a better choice in the long run: lots of local NG and most of our electricty come from NG fired plants. Thus going NG cuts out one middle man.

[seahorse2]

How about posting under the energy technology thread or the planning thread? Why this thread?

[dunewalker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')
You do not need natural gas to make nitrogen fertilizer. It is just the source of energy. Not a feedstuff. You can also use coal or nuclear to make fertilizer. And inorganic fertilizer is not the only source of nitrogen either. There are alternatives. It is just up to now inorganic nitrogen fertilizer made with natural gas (and lots of water) happened to be the least cost, most efficient alternative.

[MrBill]

If anyone is interested in alternatives to making inorganic nitrogen from natural gas here are a few links:

Nitrogen Sources

SOURCES OF NITROGEN FOR ORGANIC FARMS

Impacts of Crop Rotation and Nitrogen Fertilization

Coal Mine Nitrogen Generation

Manure as a source of Nitrogen

Cyanobacteria that can fix atmospheric nitrogen

Fertilizer from fish and bone meal

Nitrogen from Hydroelectric

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he solution was ingenious: instead of manufacturing aluminium, Eyde – in collaboration with the researcher Kristian Birkeland – devised a method of using hydroelectric power for the first ever successful industrial production of fertilizer. Apart from hydroelectric power, the other main ingredient was nitrogen – which is found in air. There was fresh air in abundance up there in the mountains. Nitrogen fertilizer was to be Hydro’s most important product until far into the 1980s – and since 2004 it has been manufactured in the world’s largest fertilizer company, Yara.

[biofuel13]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seahorse2', 'H')ow about posting under the energy technology thread or the planning thread? Why this thread?

[PraiseDoom]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'N')o PD...it's brand new and deep and expensive and a high flow rate/recover potential (potential, of course, meaning we don't really know crap yet)

[kenohio]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PraiseDoom', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'N')o PD...it's brand new and deep and expensive and a high flow rate/recover potential (potential, of course, meaning we don't really know crap yet)

[Starvid]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') don't know what you do with a natural gas fired power plant if natural gas gets too expensive Neither does anyone else. A gas power plant is basically an aircraft derived jet engine fuelled by gas turning a generator. Only other fuel is aviation fuel.

[ROCKMAN]

Starvid
There is a small global market currently for LPG but the potential growth is significant. About two weeks ago a Japanese company commsisioned the construction of a $14 billion LPG plant for an offshore Indonesian Field with an estimated 10 trillion cubic feet of gas.

As for a moving a gas fired plant it's not very economic. Some of the high end components could be salvaged but it's simliar to tearing down a house and rebuilding it 500 miles away....cheaper to build a new house from scratch.

I'm not sure what the time frame might be but there have been trillions of cubic ft of NG discovered in the Carribean just south of the US. There is very little market for this volumein the local economies. There are a number of plans to build big LPG receiving facilities along the US southern shores but no major progress yet.

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kenohio', '
')
I am not sure if that is good or bad. My family has a farm with 3 gas wells already drilled that have been producing pretty well since 1984. Apparently by the maps there is some freak deep gas pockets under the property. But it is in the border-line pretty deep Marcellus Shale predictions.

I am not sure if this is a good thing or not for the future of my families gas wells.

I guess the only good thing is that the pipeline is already in place if they ever want to go beyond the shallow wells.

[MD]

RE:OP

Here in North America we'll have to figure out how to get by with half the gasoline we consume today. It could happen in as little as a month, or if we're very lucky, it might take ten years. That's the harsh reality.

Natural gas, on the other hand, isn't subject to sudden interruption, since we don't import much.

More good NG news: Useful quantities pop up everywhere. You'll note I said "useful", not "commercial" (you'll have to pick your own dividing line between the two).

Natural gas price will follow oil into the stratosphere as people continue to attempt substitution.

There is no reason to expect energy-industry on this continent to shut down, even through the worst economic conditions. Therefore you can expect NG to remain stable. The industry is poking holes like mad, and will continue to do so.

Oil? Not looking so good. This means gasoline and diesel shortages. Big ones. Coming to your town soon.

PO is the killer. PNG comes later, and will help soften the blow, if we're lucky.

[ROCKMAN]

Good points MD. The oil industry in the US (as far as exploration goes) hasn't been the OIL industry for over 20 years at least. It's been the gas industry. Of the last 100 drilling projects I've reviewed I would say 10, at most, were searching for oil. That's a big reason why the latest potential oil resource plays, like the Bakken, have gotten so much interest. But now that NG prices are up over 70% from last winter (the "high" gas price season) most are hitting the unconventional gas/tite gas sand plays like there's no tomorrow. We have 100's of thousand of acres of such leases. But were pretty close to the limit on drilling operations: not enough rigs and pretty close to limiting out on steel tubular production.

Sorry to hear about the well water woes M. Bill. Methodology/ethics are much better these days but screw ups still happen. Any chance of nailing the operator for remediation?

[MrBill]

We are working with them, but it may have been the seismic drilling? Hard to say? Large hills that drain down into a lake. Therefore, anything upstream might affect downstream even if there were a hill in between? We were getting 85+ gallons per minute from the well, so would be a shame to lose it.

[ROCKMAN]

Mr. Bill,

It's probably too late in your situation but for future reference you could force/require any drilling operators to use radoactive markers in their fluids. Thus having their fluids fingerprinted you might be able to ID the offender. Some operators might resist while some are all for it. A new operator in your area might insist on doing it to avoid climbing into an existing potential lawsuit.

Are there any other potable sources at depth. From my experience many operators would drill you a new well to avoid a lawsuit even if they were sure they weren't the offender. A good lawyer costs a lot more than a water well.

[MrBill]

Well, our block is all owned by one oil company, so the seismic would have been ultimately done on their behalf in any case. A negotiated settlement is always better than suing. In a small community it just breeds ill will as the company men are also our neighbors. My step-sister works for a gas company and my step-brother is a drill push. And we use energy. So no use being a hypocrite about it.

If memory serves me correct the well is about 500 feet deep. We could likely drill another and tap into another underground river. We are not exactly hurting for water. We are in the bend of the N. Saskatchewan River. There is open water every 10-miles in Lakeland Country. But we do have some problems with rust.

Separate question. How deep and how many boreholes would need to be drilled for a heat exchange system for a large house? We are already on natural gas with hotwater heating throughout, so it would be to convert from gas to a heat exchanger pump. One neighbor suggested four holes. Doesn't ground water interfer with the efficiency of the heat exchanger?

[ROCKMAN]

Mr. Bill,

Residential geothermal is far from my expertise but I won't let that hinder my advice. There should be some web data out there to help quantify the potential. If I understand the question re: groundwater inteference and if I understand a little about geoheating, you want an active ground water interaction. The systems I have seen use a loop method to recover the "warm" water: fluid is pumped down and up with exchange occuring in the aquifer. Thus it would be beneficial to have moving ground water recharging your artifical heat sink. I saw a film on such a project designed to supply heat to a commercial 25,000 sq ft operation. Took 8 holes at 200'. But this was in Georgia, USA. But I also know some systems actually produce the aquifer and recover its heat at the surface with the water then being discharged on the ground.

Obviously it would take a detailed study of your location to know which technique, if any, makes sense. If you find some info on the net feel free to hit me with any questions that pop. As you can see, my not being an expert seldom stops me from offereing advice.

[MrBill]

Great. Thanks very much. Sorry to disrupt the nat gas thread. Cheers.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FoxV', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KillTheHumans', '6'),000 TCF in known deposits and a 100 TCF/year consumption rate means it might be a problem sometime, but it sure isn't one of scarcity during the next couple of decades.
...
Absolutely. CBM and unconventional production completely reversed the US production decline and brought it to a new peak level, and the rest of world ignores that end of the resource spectrum. To say "there is alot more to be found" is an understatement.