[ RadSafe ] Anyone have GOOD world wide energy consumption data?

[Ted de Castro]

Thanks - I found my error - it was 85,000  thousand barrels of oil per day!

So - the purpose of my calculation?

Well - a quick gedanken experiment (or muse)  suggested me that solar, 
wind, wave or maybe even bio fuels were hopeless as a fossil fuel 
replacement - SINCE - as I reasoned:

Wind wave and solar are PROMPT use of solar energy.

Bio fuels are collected solar energy  integrated over a growing season - 
and consumed in much less time thus exceeding the rate of solar energy 
input.

Likewise fossil fuels represent millions of years of solar energy 
integration over the entire planet - land AND sea, collected and stored 
at some probably small efficiency which I couldn't begin to guess - BUT 
which we consumed over only a couple of centuries - once again FAR 
outstripping the prompt solar energy rate.

Nuclear of course represents solar or maybe stellar energy as well - BUT 
from within the star and integrated over billions of years.

Anyhow - since the "devil is in the details" as they say - in this case 
those unknown efficiencies ....  A more direct calculation seemed a good 
way to "check this out".

So - what I came up with was to replace the entire world wide fossil 
fuel use assuming we could harvest that with 10% efficiency (current 
unconcentrated solar cell max efficiency) would require 0.2% of the 
entire land surface (or 1% for biofuel - 2% efficiency last I heard - 
but that COULD use sea space as well).

I found that surprisingly maybe almost possibly doable!  I had thought 
that considering the LONG integration time as opposed to the short use 
times and there would be no way the the prompt solar rate would be 
sufficient - so I was wrong - thus concluding that the efficiency of 
solar to biomass to fossil fuel conversion MUST be vanishingly small!

On 3/20/2011 10:38 AM, Jeff Terry wrote:
> Hi Ted,
>
> I rely on the BP World Energy Report for all of my energy consumption data that I present.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/26h3ayt
>
> Jeff
>
>
> Jeff Terry
> Asst. Professor of Physics
> Life Science Bldg Rm 166
> Illinois Institute of Technology
> 3101 S. Dearborn St.
> Chicago IL 60616
> 630-252-9708
> terryj at iit.edu
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 20, 2011, at 12:34 PM, Ted de Castro wrote:
>
>> Members here often have good data like this right on the top of their minds or at least readily available.
>>
>> I wanted to do some world wide energy consumption/resource calculations - purpose not important at this point - so using Google I was trying to determine world wide fossil fuel consumption and ran into what appeared to be good information - mostly from Wikipedia.
>>
>> I found references for oil:
>>
>> 85,000 barrels per day 2003
>>
>> Barrel of oil 42 gallons crude - 44 gallons refined of which 6.8 gallons is NOT used for fuel.
>>
>> and Oil energy equivalent /barrel
>>
>> 1.7 MWh
>> 5.8 e6 BTU
>> 6.1178632e9 J
>>
>> THEN I found another reference that gave 2004 data:
>>
>> Oil 160 e15 BTU/yr
>> coal 95e15 BTU/yr
>> gas  95e15 BTU/yr
>>
>> I thought that NOW I have the info I needed and could bring it all together.
>>
>> Unfortunately I chose to check the data for internal consistency and:
>>
>> 85,000*5.8 e6*365 = 1.8 e14 BTU.yr
>>
>> from the first reference does NOT equal 1.6 e17 as stated in the other reference.
>>
>> Factor of 2 agreement I would have accepted - factor of 10 - skeptical.  BUT factor of 1000 -
>> all I have here is junk data which could only yield a GIGO calculation.
>>
>> MAYBE the ratio of oil/coal/gas is ok - but considering the discrepancy - unless ONE of those numbers can agree with RELIABLE data - I doubt that as well.
>>
>> So - can anyone point me to better data?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Ted de Castro
>> retired (for all those that want to ascribe an affiliation with each message)
>>
>>
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