How Australia Perfected Solar Power and Then Went Back to Coal

[Guest Andys@coffs]

what does CSIRO say http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Multimedia/CSIROvod/Climate-Change-Greenhouse-Gas-Factor.aspx

 

thanks for highlighting that , interesting reading especially the bit about Volcano's, which according to the scientists produce heaps of gas, but very little in the way of CO2.. He claimed that a South American volcanic eruption created no blip (my words read the article for his) at Cape Grim for CO2 readings....and all this time the "Volcano production must make mankind production look insignificant..." claim was exactly 180 degrees from reality....who'da thunk it!

 

 

[kaz3g]

Because I'm not at all convinced that battery's have any real place yet in everyone's home. Their life is not great and the costs for replacement aren't insignificant and they are not exactly environmentally friendly devices themselves.....

The issue is I stupidly expected a $10 device to have a 1cm cubed switchmode powersupply of fantastic quality and until someone is making millions per day that is unlikely. I still think that approach is the best solution for the majority of Australians just not quite yet....we need some more economies of scale.......and to convince the leading globe manufacturers who are selling us a product that they know is designed obsolescence with a product that they know if made right might never need replacing.......good luck with that

 

Andy

We ran a 240v 22.5 kVA alternator during daylight on the station back in the 1970s. This was enough to keep our freezers and electric fridge at temperature over each 24 hours.

 

For a few hours each night we ran a little petrol-kero Buzzacott driving a 32v plant and charging a bank of car batteries. When this plant was turned off the batteries gave us light, powered the HF radio and the radiogram which was our only source of electronic entertainment ...no TV, AM radio, phone or internet then.

 

We gave up on the old 2v batteries that were originally used and cost the earth and found the car batteries were pretty good. We often swapped the two batteries in the 4WD for two from the lighting plant just to cycle them.

 

But even then, the cost of fuel for generation was huge. I remember I thought $2.50 a gallon was exorbitant.

 

Kaz

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

OK, that's a change from the media garbage. All the more reason to press for biofuels. And - dare I say it - study the French experience with nuclear. Solar will help and wind generators also - though their potential as private economic ventures is dubious, from what has been said on this thread. But to use those sources, a national grid is essential.

 

Note that the CSIRO statement says two things (leaving volcanos aside - that simplifies things) - firstly, that burning of fossil fuels IS a major contributor to the rise in CO2 levels; and secondly that the rise in CO2 levels IS a major factor in rising world temperatures. Those are major statements. Have they released the full scientific evidence on which those statements are based? Because I'm really rather surprised that the burning of fossil fuels in WW2 did not produce a significant rise in CO2 levels - but the curves I've seen do not show one. One Lancaster took 2154 imperial gallons of fuel - and there were around 500 of them or their equivalents airborne most nights from 1942 thru 1945 - that's nearly one million gallons per day, for RAAF bomber command alone. Fuel manufacture rose substantially during those years - why does it not show on the curve? So there must be a lot more to the story than that simple announcement reveals; I'd like to know more about it. I intensely dislike being given the mushroom treatment (kept in the dark and fed on manure).

 

 

[coljones]

And just as I was watching the non-CO2 loaded eruptions from the Icelandic volcano I was reminded that volcanoes are tremendous force of good as they stop planes flying around loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.

 

 

[turboplanner]

What are you referring to as biofuels Dafydd?

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

What are you referring to as biofuels Dafydd?

Fuels that are made by the use of sunlight to capture atmospheric carbon dioxide. Usually by photosynthesis, but whatever algae do seems even more promising. There are plants such as Jojoba Curcans (if I have that right) that can use land that is unsuitable for food crops.

 

This includes waste agricultural products. Whether one uses them to produce biodiesel or alchohol or as feedstock for something like the Fischer-Tropsh process is for the industrial chemists to work out. But for these things to happen on an industrial scale, their profitability must exceed that of fossil-base fuels - and that won't happen unless the Government tax imposts are lifted.

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

OK, that's a change from the media garbage. All the more reason to press for biofuels. And - dare I say it - study the French experience with nuclear. Solar will help and wind generators also - though their potential as private economic ventures is dubious, from what has been said on this thread. But to use those sources, a national grid is essential.

Note that the CSIRO statement says two things (leaving volcanos aside - that simplifies things) - firstly, that burning of fossil fuels IS a major contributor to the rise in CO2 levels; and secondly that the rise in CO2 levels IS a major factor in rising world temperatures. Those are major statements. Have they released the full scientific evidence on which those statements are based? Because I'm really rather surprised that the burning of fossil fuels in WW2 did not produce a significant rise in CO2 levels - but the curves I've seen do not show one. One Lancaster took 2154 imperial gallons of fuel - and there were around 500 of them or their equivalents airborne most nights from 1942 thru 1945 - that's nearly one million gallons per day, for RAAF bomber command alone. Fuel manufacture rose substantially during those years - why does it not show on the curve? So there must be a lot more to the story than that simple announcement reveals; I'd like to know more about it. I intensely dislike being given the mushroom treatment (kept in the dark and fed on manure).

Correction - RAF Bomber command, of course.

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

This whole biofuels business is right up CSIRO's alley; it needs proper research - and it's about B time that some of the research that we pay for actually benefitted Australia. In view of CSIRO's very definite statement on CO2 and global warming, what instructions has the Government given CSIRO re biofuel research to set up an industrial-scale operation?

 

I said before, I don't think our politicians are worth the oxygen they consume; here's a glaring opportunity. Do they have the brains of beetles?

 

 

[gandalph]

This whole biofuels business is right up CSIRO's alley; it needs proper research - and it's about B time that some of the research that we pay for actually benefitted Australia. In view of CSIRO's very definite statement on CO2 and global warming, what instructions has the Government given CSIRO re biofuel research to set up an industrial-scale operation? I said before, I don't think our politicians are worth the oxygen they consume; here's a glaring opportunity. Do they have the brains of beetles?

 

Well I wonder just who would give the instruction to the CSIRO. Certainly not the Science Minister - 'cause we don't have one!

 

Politicians - perhaps useful for Bio-fuel base stock?

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

Probably the best use for them.

 

The Germans produced about 850,000 metric tons per month of fuel in early 1944; a fair percentage of that was synthetic fuel produced by the Fischer-Tropsh process. There may be more information on that on the internet, but I can't look it up whilst I'm writing this reply. You may recall that there were permanent flames on top of refineries at Silverwater and Kurnell in the '60s. That was burning-off the methane etc that was at that time uneconomic to convert to liquid fuel. You don't see those flames any more; the alkylation plants (that produce iso-octane, amongst other things) now use them instead of wasting them. An alkylation plant is roughly half of a Fischer-Tropsch plant; the other half is pretty much a gasworks, that makes producer gas / water gas mixture. So the technology has been around for at least 70 years. It only needs the Government nous to make it happen. But we are governed by lawyers, not engineers, aren't we?

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Well you want to see Mexico - four year olds begging in the street to a prepared script.

Unfortunately true, Dafydd. Our leadership is lousy with lawyers, but very short of people with a good grasp of science and engineering.

 

There are some promising developments in producing bio-fuels via algae, and what better place to set up trial plants than right next to our existing coal-fired power stations. The CO2 could be pumped in and converted to methane- thereby getting double value from every tonne of coal (a bit like when steam engines started adding extra low-pressure cylinders to squeeze a bit moe efficiency from the used steam).

 

 

[Soleair]

"When it comes to electric cars or aircraft, that is not eliminating pollution; it's merely exporting it to the power station and the battery manufacturer. "

 

I disagree Dafydd. My point (from several pages earlier in this thread) was that using existing technology it is perfectly possible to provide power for electric car(s) - and aircraft - from domestic rooftop solar arrays. It is an efficient way of harvesting the surplus power not used in the home rather than feeding it back into the grid for the derisory price paid by Origin et al. Admittedly this would become more attractive with advances in battery technology but I think it is reasonable to assume these will be forthcoming very soon, particularly if the incentive of a mass market was to occur.

 

I believe the real problem is that the State would not make any money out of this. If we all used our roofspace to generate our own household + commuting travel energy needs, how would the government replace the tax income presently received from petrol & electricity sales?

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Oh this thread still going ...

 

I am not anti electric this and that, I am anti bu11shite, hype and ridiculous amounts of my money going to research that hasn't gone anywhere and isn't going anywhere until someone comes up with something that we simply do not understand yet, and that usually comes by accident when looking for something else.

 

"When it comes to electric cars or aircraft, that is not eliminating pollution; it's merely exporting it to the power station and the battery manufacturer. "

I disagree Dafydd.

My City of Chengdu, best known for Pandas, just up the road from my City of Deyang (I own houses and live periodically in both cities) is one of the leading vehicle environment cities in the World and has been since before I arrived here. All taxis, buses must run natural gas and motorcycles are completely banned other than electric scooters. Cars are all recent of course, Euro 4 minimum and it is 100% against the law to modify them in any way.

 

I can sit outside at an Ex-Pat's pub at one of the cities major intersections with a major bus stop 20 meters away with one stopping less than every minute, and talk to people in complete peace without smelling exhaust fumes, listening to loud sports bikes, Harleys or idiots in their turbo Nissan/Subaru/POS. The biggest danger is stepping in front of an electric scooter because they are dead silent and you don't hear them coming.

 

I agree that the pollution is merely moved elsewhere but isn't it better that kids can walk a city street without breathing immediate condensed crap into their lungs.

 

In the last couple of years there has been a huge surge in tiny electric cars, think of a Smart but smaller again, and along with all the millions of electric scooters, their is no registration required as long as it goes no faster than 40kmh. - imagine the Australian Government letting any unregistered vehicle on the road.

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

"When it comes to electric cars or aircraft, that is not eliminating pollution; it's merely exporting it to the power station and the battery manufacturer. "

I disagree Dafydd. My point (from several pages earlier in this thread) was that using existing technology it is perfectly possible to provide power for electric car(s) - and aircraft - from domestic rooftop solar arrays. It is an efficient way of harvesting the surplus power not used in the home rather than feeding it back into the grid for the derisory price paid by Origin et al. Admittedly this would become more attractive with advances in battery technology but I think it is reasonable to assume these will be forthcoming very soon, particularly if the incentive of a mass market was to occur.

 

I believe the real problem is that the State would not make any money out of this. If we all used our roofspace to generate our own household + commuting travel energy needs, how would the government replace the tax income presently received from petrol & electricity sales?

If you are talking about electric scooters or lightweight "town" cars, and small highly specialised aircraft with low utilisation, yes it's possible with current (excuse the pun, please) technology. But it's still a long jump from something that can run LED lighting in a private home, and something that will run anything like a "normal" training aircraft, or a vehicle for country use. What's the likely cost of a solar array that would power a 60 KW motor for a "normal" two-seat aircraft equivalent to, say, a Jab 120, for four hours a day - i.e. around 180 KWH per day? And what would such a battery weigh? I don't think we're there yet, by a long chalk. I looked at a lightweight low-performance (due to large wing area) single-seat glider design, a while ago, that could use a Rotax 277 for takeoff and climb, and then be self-sustaining by solar cells producing around 3 KW - but it would not be manageable until flexible solar cells get to around 40% efficiency; the cost would be too high for the market, and the aircraft would be the aeronautical equivalent of a butterfly.

 

The government would not make money out of backyard biodiesel either. Same problem. All our non-nuclear energy comes from the sun; whether you collect it in silicon cells or in a plant crop or in an algae pond, it's ALL Solar energy. But converting it into a liquid fuel provides much higher energy per unit mass, than does any storage battery so far invented - and the gap is still an order of magnitude.

 

 

[turboplanner]

Fuels that are made by the use of sunlight to capture atmospheric carbon dioxide. Usually by photosynthesis, but whatever algae do seems even more promising. There are plants such as Jojoba Curcans (if I have that right) that can use land that is unsuitable for food crops.

This includes waste agricultural products. Whether one uses them to produce biodiesel or alchohol or as feedstock for something like the Fischer-Tropsh process is for the industrial chemists to work out. But for these things to happen on an industrial scale, their profitability must exceed that of fossil-base fuels - and that won't happen unless the Government tax imposts are lifted.

I agree with you that government tax imposts should be lifted on sunrise industries to assist with development, however at some point tax/excise does have to be considered in the financial model because petrol/diesel produces such a huge government income. I'm in favour of dropping all excises and taxes from "fuel" used in transport to encourage decentralisation and Australian tourism, and replacing that income by something like increasing the GST. The net reduction in costs of megalopolis, and increase in income for country towns would offset the amount needing to be replaced by a percentage, and create a sustainable need for public transport to country areas.

 

Comments like "politicians not worth the oxygen they consume" apply to some of our best friends like Gordon Rich-Phillips who is doing so much for our Victorian aerodromes, and don't take into account just what a difficult job a politician has with the need to be across around 300 different portfolios on a daily basis - for example what action would you take to address the current ice crisis in the communities which has reached the proportion where ice residue is now measurable at Melbourne's western sewerage plant? Just taking Gordon as an example. I walked into his office one night after a meeting, and he was sitting there exhausted with a stack of A4 paper in the middle of the desk, and told me he had to read all of it and make recommendations by the next morning's Cabinet meeting. Apart from that, we are not a communist country - if there are developments or changes they will, and should come from industry.

 

And since the fright of the 1979 fuel crisis where some people put about a story that the world was running out of fuel, Industry has spent hundreds of billions of dollars looking for transport alternatives from four cylinder Commodores and V8's which ran on four cylinders at lower speeds to all the alternative power supplies we could think of.

 

Slightly ahead of this search for an alternative to the oil industry, came the discovery that exhaust emissions were killing us from lung cancer, and that took over as our primary objective, aided by draconian government legislation, and that now becomes an important consideration in redesigning the power source for the automotive industry - we couldn't wait for the wonder fuels.

 

In 1975, Methanol, the staple racing fuel which has survived to the present time due to its lower fire risk could have been used in a car simply by altering ignition timing and opening carby jets up to about twice the size of petrol jets, and fitting a bigger fuel tank. Methanol is made from carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen - environmentally a very attractive source.

 

However, it would be more problematic today with current emission systems and our return to late 1940's car shapes which would not have enough tank space. The key tooling ingredient of a car is its floor pan - all the engineering flows from there, and floor pan tooling is amortised over decades, so putting a decent boot back on a car is a time issue, and if, as I suspect the current shape has a long nose to make the mandatory progressive crumple rate cheaper, and a short boot to fit into parking spaces, it could be more than a time issue.

 

So before considering an alternative fuel for combustion engines these are some of the issues we need to consider:

 

• Flash point - the type of burning which will take place in the combustion chamber, and so combustion heat (example: burnt valves on long distance with LP Gas)
   
  
• Lubrication - petrol and diesel both provide a measure of internal lubrication (example: LP Gas)
   
  
• Amount of fuel burned for the required power - (Example: Methanol 2 x petrol, CNG)
   
  
• Type of fuel vessel - (Example: armoured tank required for CNG)
   
  
• Emission standard compatibility - quite a few alternatives cannot meet Euro 5 standards, and those standards are not going to be reversed
   
  
• Emission equipment compatibility - (Example waste cooking oil)
   
  

 

 

So, back to your biofuels:

 

I would consider waste cooking oil to be one of these, and while it will work very well in your old tractor doing work for virtually zero cost, it has some disadvantages.

 

It solidifies on cold nights so requires a blowtortch under the tank, or internal electrical element to melt it before an early morning start - something which could be overcome

 

I gave a recent example of a truck which has 22 computers sitting boiling at a fast food outlet. The transport operator had modified his fleet of sophisticated trucks to burn the waste cooking oil from the fast food chain in a mutually ecstatic example of greenness and sustainability.

 

These days we get to Euro 5 emission standards by using a common rail (tube) of diesel pressurised to around 20,000 psi (which by the way will kill you if you try bleeding by cracking the injectors). From this rail computers decide what phase the engine is at, open the injector and control its volume. Where previously an injector pump was gear driven to send a shot of diesel through the injector at a given point, now there may be three injector bursts during each cylinders compression/ignition stroke, the last one being to burn waste carbon. The computers also periodically retard the injectors sending a massive flame down the exhaust to burn detritus off the catalytic converter and this is currently terrorising unsuspecting drivers who experience a sudden power loss and massive flame out of the exhaust.

 

So when waste cooking oil is introduced to these sophisticated engines the reaction is for the computers to tell the engine to boil.

 

Fuels refined from plants were seriously considered at the time of the 1979 fuel crisis, by in reports I was reading about a decade ago when looking at the bigger picture, the amount of arable land required to produce the amount of fuel we consume was non-viable, and would just get worse as the world population grew and required more land to grow food. Brazil was the shining star in the 1980's, hoping to totally replace oil based fuel with ethanol, but I notice that 30 years later they have only managed to get up to 20% ethanol into petrol - not much different to what we are doing here.

 

There were great expectations from Jojoba in Victoria in the 1980's, with a former Premier, Dick Hamer promoting plantations to investors, who I assume died poor.

 

I looked up the Fischer - Tropsch process which my friend Wiki describes as extracting synthetic fuel from coal, natural gas, biomass

 

• The future of the Latrobe Valley Coal field is pretty much tied to the "fuel from coal" concept, so Fischer-Tropsch is alive and well there.
   
  
• The Bass Strait and North West Shelf gas fields are now supplying Methane scrubbed of Butane etc so that could be a cheaper supply than the Fischer-Tropsch process at 1 c to 2c per litre.
   
  
• Biomass crosses over into plant based which I've covered above, but sewerage plants produce big volumes of biomass full of pathogens and heavy metals which have passed through our systems. Melbourne Water has suitors who want to use its biomass for fuel production.
   
  

 

These are some of the areas I've noticed along the way working in the transport industry.

 

All of the above is based on retaining the internal combustion engine which has become an incredibly costly piece of equipment.

 

I'm in favour of moving towards alternative power such as electric motors, and the most tantalising "zero cost" fuel is solar. I've been watching the progress of the Darwin - Adelaide solar race now, which started with unltralight streamliners which trundled along the road, then became so fast that they were required to observe a 130 km/hr speed limit, and then, since most of them just sat on 130 km/hr were required to have upright seating to absorb some power pushing the wind out of the way. So far the only negative is the horrific complexity and cost of the electrical system, but I can envisage a B Triple truck with print on solar generators all over the trailers giving us cheaper freight for consumer goods.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Oh this thread still going ...

I am not anti electric this and that, I am anti bu11shite,

no one ever accused you of being "anti electric", although the diesel powered laptop does raise some questions. Is this "anti electric" thing, the new racism?

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

Well, my apologies that my answer did not give you an obvious opening to decry the problems of using cooking oil or alchohol directly in engines designed for something else, though I see you were not deterred by that; I suppose it had to be said.

 

Zero-cost fuel? Yes, the pigs are fully fuelled, and ready to fly.

 

The fundamental problem with electric power is the energy density of the fuel; the liquid fuels we use to-day have at least an order of magnitude greater energy per unit of mass, than any electric storage device so far discovered. So there is considerable point in liquid fuels; and since we are looking for ways to reduce CO2 emissions, they must be derived from the energy of the sun - and apart from solar cells and wind power etc, which are not much practical use for everyday vehicles as yet, that leaves biofuels in all their various forms.

 

Biofuels in their raw state have all the drawbacks you describe, and probably more. Only trans-esterified biodiesel is a likely goer, and then probably only in a jerk-pump diesel engine, in a warm climate. However the Fischer-Tropsch process allows us to take those biofuels (and in fact almost any biomass) and convert them into forms that are more suitable for whatever application we choose. The reference to coal in the Wikipaedia article, I think, refers to the use of coke in the producer-gas/water gas generation process; the FP process is a convenient way to convert coal to usable liquid fuels, but it's by no means dependent upon the use of coal; that was just a convenient means on hand at the time to get the feedstock into gaseous form.

 

The Fischer-Tropsch process essentially takes short-chain hydrocarbons and converts them to longer chain ones, by heat, pressure, and the use of suitable catalysts - i.e. it takes gases in and gives liquids out. That solves the fuel energy density issue, so you do not need to carry a massive battery that will deplete the Earth's lithium reserves within a decade or so, and can use the existing distribution chains. You can tailor the output product by the choice of the catalyst and the operating temperature and pressure - just as is done to-day in alkylation plants that take crude oil in and give AVgas out. The various organic pathogens are just a bit more hydrocarbon to be converted. The remaining pathogens will be the same as we have to-day, in our fuels.

 

It would be convenient, in the short term, to produce fuels in plant that in many cases probably already exists, that can be burned in internal combustion engines, since the World has such a vast investment in them; but they are fundamentally limited to a gross thermal efficiency of only around 25% to perhaps 35% and are thus very wasteful. The sooner we can go away from them, the better; and rare-earth magnet electric motors are more like 80% to 90% efficient, so they are an obvious choice - tho the supply of the magnet materials may become an issue in mass usage, just as lithium is for batteries.

 

If you can use those liquids in, say, a fuel cell, you can jump from the 25% gross thermal efficiency of the internal combustion engine, to maybe 75% gross thermal efficiency, using rare-earth magnet motors built into the wheels - and get regenerative braking into the bargain. No doubt this will come, but in the meantime, we can reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere by this method; and therefore it merits proper research. Simply pointing investors at Jojoba without the accompanying infrastructure is irresponsible, and that's why the problem needs to be tackled holistically. No single sector of industry can do that by itself. Albert Speer was able to do it in Nazi Germany - and we don't want to have to go to that sort of political system. But we do have CSIRO to investigate the various facets of it and present a workable overall plan to Government; and Government can make it attractive to industry by backing-off the tax imposts to allow it to get up and running.

 

This would deal with the aspect of CO2 that comes from transportation. It's not the answer for electric power generation, obviously. If we have a functional national grid, electric power can be shuffled from where the sun shines or the wind blows, to where it's needed. Decentralised power generation would remove a great deal of "power" from the commercial entities currently providing it; but they would still be needed to maintain the grid infrastructure. That's one way of doing it. The other way is the DIY thing so one can be self-sufficient. At the moment, that doesn't look economically very favourable, tho a practical solar-powered refrigerator would go a long way to make it so. But we could reduce our reliance on major power plants somewhat, and look at siting a small number of nuclear powerplants where they can do the least harm. I don't see one running any sort of substantial workshop on a domestic solar system, however, without a major initial outlay; connecting to the grid allows one to get started without such a burden. A totally self-reliant electrical power system would cripple small manufacture business start-up - and it has enough hurdles now, without adding that.

 

 

[turboplanner]

We were a little behind the times with our discussion on Biofuels:

 

Caltex is selling now in Australia:

 

Caltex Bio E-Flex which contains up to 85% ethanol produced from:

 

• Waste starch from wheat processing
   
  
• Molasses from sugar production and sorghum
   
  

 

So we have pulled way ahead of Brazil!

 

Other blended product are:

 

• Caltex Bio E10 unleaded petrol which has 10% ethanol
   
  

 

 

Bio diesel

 

made in Australia from used cooking oils and animal fats

 

Caltex blends this with standard diesel to produce:

 

B5 (5% biodiesel)

 

B20 (20% biodiesel)

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

That's great Caltex. Now can we have a lead-free certified-quality petrol?

 

 

[turboplanner]

Looks like it's all over for you dinosaurs, just build an E-flex compatible motor.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Looks like it's all over for you dinosaurs, just build an E-flex compatible motor.

Probably already is, if I change the jets. My tanks and lines are supposed to be ethanol-tolerant. Why spoil good alcohol with petrochemicals?

 

 

[turboplanner]

I haven't checked the price though, probably 2c/litre cheaper than straight petrol to allow a totally seamless change as post Peak Oil starts to ramp up the cost of petrol price cycles.

 

I'm still waiting for solar-electric

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

I haven't checked the price though, probably 2c/litre cheaper than straight petrol to allow a totally seamless change as post Peak Oil starts to ramp up the cost of petrol price cycles.

I'm still waiting for solar-electric

Yes, solar electric is the ultimate, but I don't think my wooden Jodel is the ideal platform.

 

Good luck trying to find these new-fangled fuels at an airport. That's why diesel is so appealing: jetfuel is widely available.

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

Well, I doubt I'll live long enough to see fuel-cell electric, or really practical solar-cell-covered wings, so I'll settle for something less exotic. 85% ethanol sounds pretty practical, actually; at that concentration I expect it can absorb a fair bit of water and still burn, though presumably with reduced power.

 

When will it become more generally available, I wonder.

 

 

[turboplanner]

It's been available in Capital Cities for about 4 years, The link is a brochure suggesting it would be available in 100 locations by 2011.

 

http://www.caltex.com.au/Media%20Items/BioEflex%20FAQ.pdf