XYLENE POWER LTD.

HOME PAGE

CORPORATE ACTIVITIES:
Xylene Power Ltd. provides technical expertise related to the development and implementation of new technologies for: distributed heat and electricity generation, energy conservation, energy management, energy metering, mechanical equipment monitoring and electronic security. A new technology for distributed heat generation is Micro Fusion. A new technology for electricity conservation is Power Line Carrier Lighting Control. Regulatory and public policy matters relating to electricity generation, electricity transmission, electricity distribution, electricity conservation and electricity metering are included under the heading Electricity. Environmental and public policy matters relating to fossil fuels and greenhouse gases are included under the heading Climate Change.

CLIMATE CHANGE:
Present Canadian and American government energy policies implicitly assume that Canada and the USA have the unfettered right to release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at a per capita rate that is about four times larger than the average per capita rate for all the other nations combined. This implicit assumption is now being challenged. Mankind presently produces carbon dioxide by combustion of fossil fuels much faster than natural processes remove this carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Excess carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere.

The excess atmospheric carbon dioxide reduces the Earth's infrared emissivity, which increases the atmospheric temperature and causes net heat absorption by the lakes, oceans and irrigated land areas. As the surface temperature of open water increases the atmospheric water vapor concentration increases. The extra atmospheric water vapor further reduces the Earth's infrared emissivity, which further increases the atmospheric temperature over dry ground. This process amplifies the warming effect of the excess carbon dioxide. The net temperature increase is referred to as global warming.

If the net temperature increase causes melting of snow or ice, there is generally a reduction in local albedo (solar reflectance) which causes a further local temperature increase. Melting of floating ice also increases the open water area, which further contributes to the atmospheric water vapor concentration and hence to the overall warming effect.

Farming in the presence of global warming requires extra crop irrigation. If the supply of fresh water is limited, global warming causes the amount of land area under cultivation to be reduced. The increase in the atmospheric water vapor concentration that accompanys global warming increases the cloud density, which reduces the amount of sunlight that is available for crop growth. These two effects reduce agricultural carbohydrate production, which reduces supplies of food, animal feed, organic construction materials (wood) and biofuels. Further increases in the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration will trigger wide spread starvation.

The above graph, provided by NASA, shows a theoretical computation of the Earth's infrared thermal radiation emission spectrum as it appears from space. The big dip in the infrared emission in the wavelength range 13 um to 18 um is due to infrared absorption by carbon dioxide in the Earth's upper atmosphere. The lesser dips in the wavelength ranges 5 um to 8 um and 18 um to 25 um are due to infrared absorption by water vapor in the Earth's upper atmosphere. The red line shows the radiative emission for an ideal black body with no atmosphere. Analysis of this type of graph allows quantification of the various components of global warming.

As the peoples of the world become more aware of the causes and negative consequences of carbon dioxide triggered warming, present Canadian and American energy policies are certain to engender conflict. The atmosphere and oceans simply do not have the capacity to allow other nations to emulate the Canadian and American energy intensive lifestyle using fossil carbon as a primary energy source. Preservation of the environment and principles of human equity demand that Canadians and Americans reduce their per capita release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by about a factor of nine. Achieving this reduction in release of carbon dioxide will require a massive investment in hydro, wind, nuclear and solar energy and related energy storage, transmission and control equipment. Use of natural gas in place of coal for electricity generation is an interim measure that will slow but not prevent global warming. The only solution to global warming is abandonment of fossil fuels for heating, transportation and primary energy generation.

If present trends continue the Earth will continue warming until the consequences of the higher temperature cause massive human mortality. These consequences are no longer in the distant future. These consequences are impacting people today.

The physics of carbon dioxide triggered warming, the reasons for making energy systems independent of fossil carbon and the means of attaining that goal are set out in the section titled Climate Change.

ELECTRICITY:
For almost a century most electricity generation in Ontario has been done at large central plants. Electricity is conveyed to customers via high voltage transmission lines that feed local distribution networks.

After Ontario Hydro exhausted the large easily accessible hydro-electric resources in southern Ontario, it built large nuclear and coal fired electricity generation plants. The nuclear plants were expensive and the coal fired plants emit carbon dioxide and toxic products of combustion.

Carbon dioxide is now a threat to the continued existence of mankind. The toxic products of combustion of coal are also a major public health problem in Ontario.

Ontario must take its coal fired plants out of service and must develop distributed electricity generation using non-fossil fuel technologies. There must be sufficient new non-fossil fuel electricity generation capacity to replace the coal fired plants, to replace the aging nuclear plants, and to permit displacement of fossil fuels in the industrial, transportation and heating sectors.

The electricity generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure must be sufficient to allow rapid population growth in Ontario to accommodate people who are forced to evacuate other countries due to rising sea levels, agricultural failures and conflict resulting from global warming.

The change from an electricity transmission and distribution network based on central generation to a network containing much more distributed non-fossil fuel generation requires changes to the metering methodology, electricity rates, switching systems and generator dispatch control. The output variability of individual wind, solar and hydraulic generators requires additional investment in transmission line and energy storage infrastructure. In order to financially enable energy storage there must be high differential time-of-generation and time-of-use electricity rates.

The economics of distributed electricity generation and electricity conservation are set out in the section titled Electricity.

MICRO FUSION:
Most of Canada is subject to a near polar climate. Almost every building in Canada has both a space heating system and a potable water heating system. Canada's per capita fossil fuel consumption is very high, in part because of the large amounts of fossil fuel that are used for winter space heating, winter water heating and like purposes.

Canadians also consume a lot of liquid fossil fuels for transportation purposes due to the vast size of their country. In Ontario, which contains about 40% of the Canadian population, data from NRCan shows that the annual gasoline consumption is about 16,000 million litres, approximately 1316 litres per annum per capita. However, continuing large scale use of fossil fuels is no longer viable due to fossil carbon dioxide related global warming.

Micro Fusion is a micro-nuclear process that converts about 25 kW of electricity into about 250 kW of heat in the temperature range 165 degrees C to 185 degrees C, without producing greenhouse gas or long lived radioactive waste. Micro Fusion can be practically applied in stationary applications involving continuous heating or cooling. Subject to availability of electricity, arbitrary numbers of Micro Fusion Units can be clustered together to obtain increased thermal output.

Micro Fusion can be used to concentrate biofuels such as ethanol and butanol (agriculture based gasoline substitutes) without production of green house gas and without soil depletion.

Micro Fusion is expected to play a critical role in reduction of global carbon dioxide emissions by displacing fossil fuels in space heating, water heating and transportation fuel production applications.

This website contains a section devoted to Micro Fusion.

LIGHTING CONTROL:
Power Line Carrier Lighting Control involves the use of illumination and occupancy sensors to minimize electricity consumption by automatically controlling each lighting fixture to provide only the amount of light required at any particular time. Power Line Carrier signalling is used to minimize system installation costs and to permit maximum application flexibility. Optional central control based on time/day/date and energy management requirements can be provided. This website contains a section devoted to Lighting Control.

CHIEF ENGINEER:
Charles Rhodes, P.Eng., B.Sc., M.A.Sc., Ph.D., is the Chief Engineer of Xylene Power Ltd. Dr. Rhodes has more than 30 years of practical experience that includes development, manufacture, operation and maintenance of: distributed electronic control and monitoring systems, high efficiency boilers and co-generation systems.

Other work by Dr. Rhodes has been in the areas of Power line Carrier, RF, VHF, and UHF communication systems, microcontrollers, electricity and heat metering, electricity rate issues, fluorescent lighting, solid state device fabrication, high vacuum systems, cryogenic physics, nuclear energy and the physics of climate change.

This web page last updated October 30, 2008.