Short answer is it cannot be done. Take for instance the aluminium that goes into the construction of a solar panel, putting to one side the glass, the Silicon wafers etc, just concentrating on the aluminium. Note also we will not be considering the energy required to actually mine the bauxite that is the feedstock for an Alumina Refinery.
The refinery receives raw ore, “red dirt”, containing bauxite at around 50% concentration, so more than two tonnes of bauxite is required to produce one tonne of alumina. The ore containing the alumina is “digested” in large vats of concentrated Sodium Hydroxide at temperatures exceeding 200 degrees Celsius. Once digested the slurry moves from the “Red Side” of the refinery to the “White Side” where the temperature of the red slurry is decreased and the alumina crystallises out of solution and is then washed. Finally the white alumina crystals, as the last step in the process, are moved onto the Calcination area where they are heated to between 900 – 1100 degrees Celsius. This removes, amongst other impurities, chemically bonded water from the alumina crystals. The bauxite introduced into the Bayer circuit to have the alumina extracted at the end of the process takes in excess of 24 hours, it is a continuous process, the energy required approximately 10.5 GJ per tonne of alumina. Hence irrespective of the number of Solar Panels they can never be used, by themselves, to make alumina. The alumina to be turned into aluminum must now be smelted in another process, another continuous process, again Solar Panels will never be fit for this type of process either. Two tonnes of alumina is required to produce one tonne of aluminum. So the feed-stock, alumina has already incurred an input energy cost of 21 GJ of energy for every tonne of aluminum produced. Of course the smelting of alumina to produce aluminium is very energy intensive, Google states around 186 GJ per tonne. Both processes are continuous, operating 7/24 and require lengthy shutdowns procedures to ensure that plant and equipment is not damaged and more importantly can be safely restarted.
As for Wind Turbines, well how long does it take to heat up a Blast Furnace, in excess of 24 hours and they do not cope very well with being shut down because of no sun or wind. The very devices being touted as the means to generate the power needs of a modern society cannot be used to manufacture themselves, time to take a long serious look at this.
Nuclear power stations of course can be used to power, with the the exception of transportation, the processes to make more Nuclear Power Plants. They could also be used to power the processes required to make Solar Panels and Wind generators, but why would you? Why would you waste energy creating intermittent devices that by their very nature introduce unreliability and risk grid stability when you already have an emissions free, reliable, base load energy system that is not dependent on any other energy systems to operate as intended? Now that is a very interesting question, isn’t!
Incompetence, greed and ignorance are the three pillars upon which modern society is built on.
Leave a Reply