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The Forum > Article Comments > Energy and industry > Comments

Energy and industry : Comments

By Ross Elliott, published 26/5/2017

Manufacturing is far from dead and remains our fifth largest employer: more than double the entire financial, insurance and property sector.

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“We just can’t make stuff as cheap and as quickly as they can in China, Vietnam or India.”

No, we cannot; but we can make stuff much better. Much of the stuff coming from overseas is absolute rubbish, We are accepting Third World standards in goods because Australian industrialists are a greedy lot, exploiting cheap workers and low standards – and we are allowing them to get away with it because we are a mob of sheep.

It now seems that we are on the brink of losing Birdseye and Edgell, the remaining producers of Australian frozen vegetables. If you buy frozen vegetables marked New Zealand because they are a few cents cheaper, be aware that you are eating CHINESE vegetables, packed in New Zealand, which have been FERTILIZED WITH HUMAN WASTE.

We don't need Ross Elliott to tell us that energy in Australia is scarce and expensive, and nothing is being done about it. But, we need to remind ourselves that much of the energy we do have is owned by the CHINESE, thanks to our shonky, gutless and corrupt politicians and because we are a mob of sheep.

And while I have to accept Elliott's claim that manufacturing is still number five in Australia's list of activities, I have to say that in my daily use of goods I find precious little stamped 'made in Australia'.

Australian wages are no longer the problem. Wage rises for most are how few and far between. The real problem is the increasing greed and massive, uncontrolled mark ups of Australian manufacturers (including those who have moved off shore), government charges and, of course, energy. Australia is a very costly placed to live in. And it is going to get worse.

Australia is rooted.
Posted by ttbn, Friday, 26 May 2017 9:19:23 AM
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It's not that easy. to import you have to have a license for a specific commodity, and licenses are only available when there is a need for the product to be imported. Vegetables in victoria are very expensive now probably due to the floods etc in QLD and NSW.
China imports as much fruit and veg in the off seasons as and it exports when they have too much.
The likes of birds eye at the moment would most likely be importing if they are permitted or else paying big prices for veg. That is probably why veg is coming from NZ
Posted by doog, Friday, 26 May 2017 11:21:03 AM
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Energy and its cost impacts on almost every thing we use. Be it the toast you have at breakfast or the boiled egg that accompanied it. It take around 55 gals or around 222 litres of water to produce an egg. If you do the sums and incorporate the water needed to grow the grain, water the chook etc, from hatching to the lay etc. And most of that water will be pumped!

Similarly when you put vegetables on the plate know that irrigation water has likely factored in their production, and given that is so, using, dearer than diesel, 3 phase electricity.

The reason we can no longer compete, is not because we lack affordable raw material nor affordable labour!

China has been experiencing a 30% wages inflation in recent years and is now turning to automation to stay ahead? Even though they pay humongous transport costs both ways before they undersell our car or any other manufactured good market.

The reason? Well how about power bills higher than the labour costs, which in isolation cost around 16% of the build costs of most stuff!? Power costing significantly more than Labour hire!

Does it have to be thus?

No, but due to political inertia/ineptitude/unadulterated incompetence and total absorption on other matters more important to self obsessed pollies.

Consequently, the eye has been completely off the ball and for literal decades! Were this not so we would be beating the pants off china instead of selling the farm and the mine to them in some of the most short sighted, sludge for brains, decision making by politically obsessed folks, just there for themselves?

Yet, even now, this could be very different, if we but had the courage to buck our?their current puppet masters and just get on and do stuff.

I recommend Graham's current blog and some of the comments there to explain far more fully, as this thread as always has word limits.

Don't be shy, have a butchers, I won't hurt or cost much I promise!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 26 May 2017 11:32:27 AM
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It is well known that all steelworks (other than a few that operate purely by recycling, for which there is a limited supply) use coal. It's generally accepted that this will have to continue for a while yet, though molten oxide electrolysis will eventually take over (and if the government want to help the steel industry in the long term, the best they could do would be to invest in MOE research).

What's "on the nose" is the use of coal for generating electricity, as there are better alternatives available.
Posted by Aidan, Friday, 26 May 2017 12:34:44 PM
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It's ironic that Holden is closing just weeks before SA is supposed to get the world's largest battery and there will payments to reduce summer demand. In theory we could slap a carbon tariff on imports of steel and aluminium (made from Australian ingredients) plus more advanced products like cars and electronics. See also
http://euanmearns.com/carbon-emissions-carbon-intensity-and-the-global-trade-in-co2/
While carbon tariffs are within WTO rules other countries will still have lower wages and economies of scale but extra transport costs.

Enthusiasts for unreliable intermittent generation have praised the idea of smelters reducing power consumption in heat waves. Next it will be in cloudy weather or because millions are watching major sports events on TV. We hardly ever had these problems in the old days of high baseload. Bring them back but make it near zero carbon nuclear not coal.
Posted by Taswegian, Friday, 26 May 2017 12:49:20 PM
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Some of our iron ore is pure enough to weld to chunks of it together and the reason ours is in so much demand.

Traditionally we have used blast furnaces and coal in traditional two stage, pig iron, to steel smelting.

This method not only burns the coal for the heat required but incorporates some of the carbon content, in high carbon steel.

We invented the one step steel making method using some coal or other high carbon product, such as bailed recycled plastic.

Then use arc furnaces to produce the required heat. And where the raw electric current touches the melting metal; at that point produces greater heat than the centre of the sun? Ditto similar lightening strikes.

This locally invented method, if implemented by us as opposed to our competitors. And given maximized automation, produce the world's lowest costing steel for ourselves/anyone else. And given thorium power, with the lowest costing, safest, cleanest industrial power available.

Iron smelting is essentially a chemical, heat assisted, reduction process that replaces oxide with hydrogen.

Thorium heat enables catalytically assisted decomposition of water, to produce very low cost hydrogen and liquid Co2.

So we could if we had thorium as our power source, replace coal, with Co2 as the source of carbon and oxide reducing hydrogen as the reducing hydrogen?

Thus nuclear energy allows us to not only consider (technically possible) creating the worlds lowest cost steel, but one with the genuine lowest carbon footprint. And sequester carbon, as already polluting, carbon products in the process?

Yes, some steel could and should be recycled, if only to reduce required energy input, but still need to mine considerable iron ore to underpin a viable steel making, job and economy growing, steel export industry.

Cant died in a cornfield over a century ago and we just don't require permission or have others decide what we can or should do!

That course has put us where we are now today, aided and abetted by truly hopeless, incorrigible incompetents, I believe, with quisling like self serving agendas?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 26 May 2017 2:35:59 PM
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The catalytically assisted decomposition of water produces oxygen and hydrogen. And far cheaper than traditional electrolysis.

With the flameless heat of the thorium nuclear reaction more safely enabling that outcome.

The oldies used an injection of Co2 just before the catalysis, to lessen/remove spontaneous combustion? And the reason more costly electrolysis is now preferred?

Fossil fuel advocate, Lord Monkton, was quite scathing in his condemnation of the idea plastics could be created out of thin air, given he said, the amount of Co2 and hydrogen needed, would fill the empire state building. And essentially correct.

However if one recovers those two gases from sea water, where they are far more concentrated, producing hydrocarbons and everything that comes from that is easier, with ultra cheap thorium power making it viable, economic and doable.

Co2 extracted in vacuum towers then compressed and re-compressed to make a stable liquid which can be united with hydrogen to make many useful and endlessly sustainable hydrocarbons.

Yes we can and have burnt water! And thorium enables us to develop a nuclear industry without ever once abandoning our stand against nuclear proliferation!

Interestingly, as concentrated Co2 is removed from seawater, it is almost immediately replaced by absorbed atmospheric carbon, given water's natural affinity with Co2; meaning, very real prospects of a technical fix to quite massively and rapidly reduce it!

Ultra cheap clean safe thorium, Super Fuel (Green energy) central and a essential key requirement. Given nothing else save mythical fusion stacks up!

And just the tip of an iceberg of possibilities that include quite massive reafforestation/reversed desertification and mitigating against poverty almost at will.

There are no technical or genuine financial difficulties! Just political difficulties served as usual with massive heaping helpings of fear-mongering (green) BS!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 26 May 2017 4:48:34 PM
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Counter-terrorism Minister Michael Keenan has rejected calls from Tony Abbott for stronger laws enabling police to take out terrorists in crises such as the Lindt cafe siege, saying officers “already have the power to shoot to kill”.
Posted by doog, Friday, 26 May 2017 4:51:45 PM
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i will suggest something should be done on time before it gets worst.
Posted by rollyczar, Saturday, 27 May 2017 5:56:42 AM
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@ doog, i think you have a good point,but in my suggestion a quick action should be taken.
Posted by rollyczar, Saturday, 27 May 2017 5:59:51 AM
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@ Aidan, about the generation of the electricity you said, i think that would be fine if it could be organized.
Posted by rollyczar, Saturday, 27 May 2017 6:04:14 AM
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Yes Adian: MOE molten oxide electrolysis, is an area holding considerable promise we ought to investigate, for all manner of metals, rather than just steel.

In Gold production, for example, deliberate oxidation is followed by precipitation in solution. And given the associated silica content? May lend itself to this, simple by comparison technology, to recover traces too small to measure from mine site dumps and tailing ponds etc?

And given the essential energy is cheap enough, lend itself to all manner of formerly impossible recycling projects?

Which may even include fractional distillation insitu as a formerly impossible direct from ore to pure metal refining as a possibility? Yes by all means and I endorse your excellent suggestion! Just need the Pollyannas in positions of power, with just a modicum of science, predicating their funding proposals or permission

Other minerals are won from the ore by leaching, with caustic solutions. Light metals smelting, magnesium and titanium require different vacuum assisted approaches? Given magnesium and sodium burn, whereas the higher heat required for titanium, make vacuum assisted arc furnaces and robotics mandatory?

Yes we should investigate MOE, to see where and what, besides steel it might be applied to, and lets not forget either steel or aluminium as we do that?

On a large enough scale could produce entire non-welded ship hulls and many other normally fabricated shells or vehicle bodies, in a single piece mass produced production paradigm in hours maybe?

Rather than days, weeks or months, by using the mold or molds as the MOE tank(s)? In which case, every mass produced replication would be identical, to the enth degree?

Why, given the required heat and vacuum assistance formerly impossible, stronger, more robust alloys could be envisaged? And not so much as where the list of possibilities and combinations start, but where and when they might end?

Tungsten and titanium armor plate perhaps? stronger than steel lighter than aluminium, vanadium/molybdenum titanium, bullet proof plane bodies i.e., etc?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 28 May 2017 12:01:42 PM
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Alan B,

I agree MOE has potential outside steel production. Titanium production is probably where it will make the most difference: currently Ti is commercially produced by using sacrificial magnesium electrodes to reduce titanium chloride.

Aluminium is currently produced using a variant of MOE that uses aluminium fluoride as a flux to lower the melting temperature of aluminium oxide. Using pure MOE would avoid creating the fluorocarbon byproducts that would otherwise have to be captured, but I doubt that would justify the much greater use of energy needed.

Most other light metals can be electrolysed from molten chlorides easily enough - there's no need to resort to MOE. And any metal that doesn't react with water can just be electrolysed in solution. And yes, iron does react with water, albeit very slowly.

Casting is unlikely to be a good way of producing ships, firstly because it would make them more difficult to repair, and secondly because I'd expect them to use panels strengthened by cold working.

BTW the use of hydrogen in metal production is usually undesirable, as hydrogen can permeate the metal and make it brittle.

And please learn to spell CO2!
Posted by Aidan, Sunday, 28 May 2017 12:51:03 PM
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Co2 is spelt capital C with lower case o. And a normal 2 Thus it was when I was a boy or later in labs, and for fifty years. Hydrogen permeates reduction, whether it is derived from methane (a hydrocarbon or combination of hydrogen and carbon, hence the nomenclature) in coal or NG and is the reductive element that replaces the oxide in oxidized metal.

Thus producing oxygen as the result of precipitation. I mean, just how do you think MOE works? And experimented with to produce oxygen for astronauts on an airless Moon or Mars, the latter with little if any in its remaining atmosphere!

I suspect you with your propensity to always always find fault, particularly given most of your knowledge seems to be exclusively borrowed from this or that link rather than practical knowledge or years of experience, coupled to a superiority complex and an ego that won't fit in the same room as you, due to its truly massive size.

And alone enables you to contradict even yourself, on the same day in the same thread due to a serious attention deficit span!? Or even more serious intellectual disorder?

Suggest in future you put your manners back in, learn to respect your elders and their years of experience, some of which is especially hard won. I weary of your tiresome, undeserved, unwarranted abuse!

What's next, H2o all upper case, or just trying to teach your Grandma to suck eggs? Genius.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Sunday, 28 May 2017 4:51:11 PM
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Alan B,
With trolling like that, you deserve all the abuse you will ever get.

The trouble is I can't tell where your larping ends and the genuine ignorance begins. I presume you can't really be dumb enough to think that oxygen's chemical symbol is a lower case o, but I do sometimes wonder...

I presume your misunderstanding the meaning of "permeates" was a genuine mistake.

Hydrogen is of course often used for chemical reduction. The trouble is hydrogen can also form negative ions (known as hydride ions) and hydrides are typically much weaker than metals. This limits its use in metal production.

Coal is usually turned to coke before being used to make steel. I'm not saying hydrocarbons can't be used; they can, but it leads to extra complications.

Molten oxide electrolysis does not use hydrogen. The oxides are instead converted to oxygen (gas).
Posted by Aidan, Sunday, 28 May 2017 7:23:41 PM
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Trolling? Is that your answer! Aidan, elder abuse is your forte not mine, as is trolling!

Oxide reduction as a chemical (cathode anode) process in MOE, The E in MOE stands for electrolysis, which as the process, liberates the oxygen in the oxide by replacing it with hydrogen from the sacrificial anode! What did you think happened? Harry Potter waved a magic wand?

As always with cyber bullies or Trolls, you go straight into abuse mode when found wanting! Poor little ikle diddums, somebody take your Tonka when you weren't looking?

Just what makes you think that deliberate abuse is acceptable at any level or any form; and in your case, on the basis of absolutely erroneous assumption or worse?

Do you really expect people to stop reading me on the basis of your ill directed abuse? Your real goal in this discussion? You irrelevant pedantic little link dependent puffed up popinjay/Putin puppet.

How's the weather there in St Petersburg? Warming up a little?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 29 May 2017 10:22:46 AM
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A;am B,
I certainly thought you were trolling. But if you really are so ignorant as to think the chemical symbol for oxygen is a lower case o, and so arrogant that you assume yourself to be right and the world to be wrong, then the heavy criticism you've interpreted as abuse is certainly not deserved.

MOE does not use hydrogen at all. And unlike the aluminium smelting process (which uses a sacrificial carbon anode) the new MOE process uses inert electrodes. This makes it suitable for smelting titanium (which reacts with carbon).

BTW I'm not expecting you to stop reading, but it seemed to me you were trying to get me to stop reading. My real goal in this discussion was to let you and other readers know the truth. But when you instead reject the truth, fail to supply any evidence for your claims, switch to ad hominems (trying to belittle me on the basis of my lack of experience) and appeal to age, then finish up by ridiculing the truth (I thought sarcastically but apparently not) then abuse is not only what you deserve, but seemed also to be what you were actively seeking!
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 29 May 2017 12:01:13 PM
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Correction to the first paragraph of the above:
I certainly thought you were trolling. But if you really are so ignorant as to think the chemical symbol for oxygen is a lower case o, and so arrogant that you assume yourself to be right and the world to be wrong, then actual abuse may not be deserved, but the heavy criticism you've interpreted as abuse is certainly deserved.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 29 May 2017 2:08:30 PM
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The author appear to be accepting AGW as established fact and that debate is needed as how to handle it.

In reality debate is needed to prove whether or not thermal properties of ocean algae plant matter mass could be sometimes linked to warmer areas of ocean.
Posted by JF Aus, Monday, 29 May 2017 5:39:46 PM
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Someone long way back said;
It's ironic that Holden is closing just weeks before SA is supposed to
get the world's largest battery

Well the battery would not be much use, it would keep Sth Aus going for
9 to 15 seconds depending on time of day.
They have never said what its purpose is but I suspect to enable a black start.
Posted by Bazz, Friday, 2 June 2017 4:33:07 PM
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Baźz.

I think S.A's biggest in the world electrical storage 'battery' involves using daytime solar energy to pump sea water up into a mountain reservoir and then run that water back downhill at night though turbines to generate power.
Posted by JF Aus, Sunday, 4 June 2017 2:00:36 PM
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JF Aus, I don't see how the battery would fit into such a scheme.
If you have the spare solar/wind output you just use it direct to
push the water up the top.
When you need the extra supply you run it down then.
That way you avoid the battery losses. The battery would be redundant.
Anyway has SA got the up mountain storage of suitable size ?
Posted by Bazz, Sunday, 4 June 2017 3:22:25 PM
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Bazz,

I suggest think SA's giant battery like this.
Think beyond chemistry of present day batteries.
Water is a chemical.
They could be proposing to cycle the water up into an earth reservoir and at night pipe it down down using gravity to turn turbines.

Likely it's a world first type of battery.
Not many countries would have excess wind and sunlight to pump enough water up, to charge the system.
Water and mountains are also needed.

Anyway I think there would be ecological problems putting salty sea water on top of the fresh water - water table.
Posted by JF Aus, Friday, 9 June 2017 9:05:52 AM
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JF Aus, no, they would line the "Turkey Nests", as they call them,
with plastic.
They are talking about a real battery of 100 KWHr rating probably
lithium considering who will be supplying it.
Tesla is in the business of supplying large battery installations.
They would be great for keeping large computer systems operating in
a blackout, or to supply a hospital.
However I suspect cost is the reason you see No-Break diesel systems
installed in hospitals etc as a tank of diesel could keep them
operating (no pun intended) for a week or two.
Posted by Bazz, Friday, 9 June 2017 11:15:06 AM
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Bazz,

Fair enough, a real battery.

How would they seal joins in plastic lining? And what about weight forcing plastic down onto sharp objects?
And cost for a big area?

I would also like to also hear how old batteries will be collected and disposed and at what cost psid by who?

Plus, what is the manufacturing impact of all these batteries worldwide?
Posted by JF Aus, Sunday, 11 June 2017 9:29:44 AM
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All good questions JF.
The technical problems have probably been solved especially for such
large cells.
The shear cost of providing multigigawatt batteries boggles the mind.
The cost of a complete electrical system is enormous.
To then duplicate it by adding another system in case the wind drops
one night or to install a multi gigawatt battery, oh dear who is going
to pay for it ?
Already we can see that the public cannot pay for it.

The discussions on TV about the Finkle study seem somewhat unrealistic
to me as battery backup seems to be an alternative to coal fired
power stations, although they are not absolutely ruled out.

It strikes me that this study by an academic is just an excuse set up
to be there to give the politicians an excuse when it all goes down
the well known gurgler."Oh it was Finkle's fault. The plan was a dud".

You will hear a lot of waffle about "Oh the wind does not drop
everywhere at the same time".
True it doesn't but what good does that do you. The output where it
is blowing is already committed. As the Germans found on one famous
occasion it did stop everywhere.

A further complication is that the interconnectors have to be beefed up
to be able to carry the load of a whole state, but that only matters
if Victoria & Sth Australia have enough spare capacity to carry NSW's load !
I have seen nothing in any report that answers those difficult questions.
Posted by Bazz, Sunday, 11 June 2017 11:27:18 AM
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