AC,

You really seem to swallow the Russian propaganda whole. This new payment system devised by the Russians has one major flaw in that it is not accepted by any western banks, so while it is maybe great for selling Russian goods into China, it is worthless otherwise. Even then no planes can fly out of Russia, and any ships going to Russia cannot get insurance.

In 3 months when the 6-month notice on the withdrawal of shipping insurance expires, no ship loading goods or oil will be able to be insured which severely reduces the possibilities for Russia to sell its oil. The Russian economy is set to shrink by between 10% and 15% by the end of 2022 and will continue to shrink as its isolation increases. These sanctions are slated to stay in place until Russia withdraws from the whole of Ukraine including Crimea.

In the interim, Russia continues to lose thousands of men and huge amounts of hardware while the west pours in many $bns of weapons into the Ukranian army.

Bazz,
>No you did not mention hydrogen, but your suggestion of installing turbines a multiple
>of the size required but they still stop when the wind doesn't blow.
It would seldom be calm enough for them to stop completely. But if and when they do, the hydrogen production can go into reverse - some electrolysers can act as fuel cells, turning hydrogen back into electricity.

>Doesn't sound very economic.
Obviously how economic it is depends on the cost of electrolysers and the real interest rate. But with fuel prices this high, heavy investment in renewables makes great economic sense.

>Hydrogen has its own problems. Saw a talk at U3A about the various
>green, blue and black hydrogen.
Only green hydrogen has much of a future. Blue is too expensive. Black is not only too polluting but also too expensive at the moment. There may be a bit of grey (i.e. hydrogen produced as a byproduct of industrial processes) but it's more likely to decline than increase.

>Must try and get his slides, very interesting problems especially EROEI.
I hope you're not still clinging to the delusion that everything depends on meeting sone arbitrary EROEI threshold!

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Indyvidual,
It depends on where the lithium's from. In Bolivia they just use sultans - it's easy to separate lithium chloride from sodium chloride as the former floats and the latter sinks.
But yes, when lithium prices are high it's economic to mine allow concentrations. The same is true for many other minerals. In many cases there are other minerals that can be extracted from the same ore; I don't know how often that applies to lithium.

Having read through this thread, I’m glad that we have the wood fired traction engine to do the plowing and the recently installed, by the eldest son, steam driven alternator to charge batteries
He’s also working on a steam driven generator to supply lighting without the use of batteries.
We have open fires for heating and a renewable wood supply.
Some renewables work well!!

Issy, at least you're comfortable in your cave. Cheers I'm coming to you from God's Waiting Room. I'm only on my second scooter after dinner, so I'm still almost sensible.

Issy, at least you're comfortable in your cave. Cheers I'm coming to you from God's Waiting Room. I'm only on my second scooner after dinner, so I'm still almost sensible.

Don't forget the old WW11 wood gas generator Is Mise, they would do a great job of driving a Fergy. They may not be the most powerful tractor, but are much faster than steam traction engines.

My son has built a Sterling engine powered pump. Our river is 25 meters below the plane in it's normal flow, & it is another 125 meters across the black soil flat to the dam. He is only getting 10 liters a minute, but the thing works & can be scaled up, or duplicated as required. That would be enough for a veggy plot down there.