[ExI] Fwd: announcement for talk "Storing Sunlight in Waste-derived Syngas"

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 10:02 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> ...
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> >>... Keeping energy prices low, particularly motor fuel, is the one thing that voters will support in perfect unison.  spike
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> >...Any thoughts on the current price of motor fuel?  I would say more, but I don't want to land on a list of enemies again.  The fact that I am promoting a way to make better use of renewables (to make fuel) is bad enough.
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> Keith
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> Ja, I sure do have thoughts on that, along with new insights.
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> Keith what you are doing is great.  Energy is life.  Energy is advanced civilization.  All forms of energy from all sources is good.  I sincerely hope your solar concentrating trash to syngas idea sells, and investors come.
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> As you know I am a big advocate of nuclear energy, but I understand that takes a while to crank up, and many of us are convinced that our time is short, our energy needs are critical.  This next part is something John Clark will like methinks.
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> I was coming down thru Oregon earlier this week returning from Spokane where I was caring for an elderly relative.  If you look along the Columbia gorge, you will see many wind turbines, this being an ideal location for them.  One of the big challenges with wind power is that there is not always demand for the power on windy days, but they do cost money to operate.  This results in wind farms, as seen from an airliner, where 99% of the turbines are idle with two or three of them spinning wildly, demonstrating that there is wind, but insufficient local demand.
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> Go into Google maps, satellite view, and see Biggs Junction Oregon.  The highway south from Biggs is state road 97.  All along there especially on the east side of the road are new wind turbines.  All of that is privately owned land, so the government has no say in what goes in there.  Wind turbines are perfectly compatible with what is already out there (wheat fields) for biggest harvesters and combines can pass underneath the blades with no clearance problems at all.  For about an hour drive south from Biggs, new wind turbines can be found, out in the wheat fields.
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> OK.  The power companies don't want any more damn wind power, for they do not have the storage capacity, however... we don't need the power companies or their cables coming down from the John Day dam.  If individual rich guys were to contract with wheat farmers to put turbines out there, then use the power generated to run data centers, not connected in to the power grid at all, then it's all good.

Data centers, for economic reasons, can't run on wind or other
intermittent renewable energy sources alone.  If the source is not
available 25% of the time, the data center shuts down.  This not only
makes the capital cost go way up, but also makes a mess out of
interrupted computations and shuts down AI availability.   The syngas
method makes solar and wind into steady sources and provides a sink
for excessive generation.  But by making renewables more useful, it is
likely to be opposed by the FF industries, especially if people start
using syngas to make liquid fuels.

It also seems to be an exceptionally hard idea to understand.  One of
the brightest people I know read the paper and completely
misunderstood it as an incineration proposal.

If anyone wants to rewrite the abstract or make suggestions to make
the paper clearer, please do so and send me a draft.

Keith



The wind howls constantly thru the Columbia Gorge and points south,
which is a pain in the ass if one is in an RV, but is a comfort in the
ass if one is trying to generate wind power.  (Hmmm, comfort in the
ass, he says (I might need to come up with a different expression for
the opposite of pain in the ass.))
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> The photos on Google earth view are old, which is why we don't see all those new wind turbines, but I can assure you, they are out there.  I was just thru there two days ago.  I don't recall seeing that many of them when I came down thru there in May of last year, so they might be that new.  Google on Dirty Cowgirl Saloon Wasco.  Go into satellite view and see north and east from there.  There's an RV park, within walking distance of the Dirty Cowg... eeehhhh... walking distance of the... emmm... First Methodist Church of Wasco!  Ja, that's it, the Methodist Church, in Wasco, short walk from the RV park.  Ahem.  Wind turbines, lots of them.  Spinning like crazy, all of them.
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> Out there is a good example.  A prole can get a good feel for how far apart wind turbines need to be to make a profit and how damn much wide open windy land it available out there for a data center, with a nearby river (the mighty Columbia) where water can be drawn up and vaporized to carry away the heat.  Excess power could be used to convert coal to motor fuel.  The farmers could make good money leasing to wind power guys without even interfering with their dry-land wheat farming.
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> spike
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