Pipes and the future of energy transport

Transmission lines play a critical role in electrical infrastructure. They help actualise the single most important feature of electrical energy. The ability to transport it over large continental scale distances. In recent years there have been concerns about a shortage of copper to meet the demands of transmission lines but there are 2 counter arguments to that.

First the total known reserves of copper are around 1 billion tonnes while the annual production is merely 23M tonnes. For a 1000KM long HVDC link only about 30 thousand tonnes would be required. 20MT of copper would suffice to meet all of 3TW of power required globally with plenty left as a backup for future demand. And that's just copper, there is even more aluminium which is quite close to copper in conductivity and could easily fill in gaps left by the copper supply chain. If all else fails there is always steel. It has 50 times lower conductivity than copper but even then it's good at high voltages. There is an immense amount of iron.

The key issue is not that there is a lack of availability of conductive metals. The key issue is that those ores are unevenly distributed. A few regions have disproportionately large amounts of reserves, others none. This imbalance is deeply felt for copper but even iron ore is not well distributed requiring regional & global cooperation that is not always a guarantee. Even if it were a guarantee there is such a huge power imbalance in that cooperation that it becomes rather difficult to sustain.

This is why it is important to discover alternative ways to transport energy efficiently over long continental scale distances. While the oil and gas industry is continuously bashed for causing global warming they seem to have solved this issue via compressed natural gas transport. Over 90% efficiency is routinely reported over thousands of KM. Today these pipes are transporting natural gas but they can also be manufactured to transport hydrogen providing an alternative energy distribution mechanism that does not necessarily rely upon metals for transport.

Pipes must be seen as an essential part of energy transport infrastructure. And it is important to design pipes not just with traditional materials like polymers or steel but also from composites like glass fibers to make them cheaper and more functionally suitable for non-traditional energy sources like oxide ions. Epoxy would fail to meet these requirements but aluminosilicate glass is surprisingly inert in cold plasma conditions. These pipes could potentially support enormous energy densities at low weight with little functional materials.

Composite pipes are already manufactured for hydrogen storage and transport but functionally graded ceramic matrix composites could offer a strong, insulating, chemically resistant transport mechanism.

Another possibility,that of using mechanically reinforced sand, to handle the compressive loads on a pipe could make manufacturing even cheaper by transferring shear on the pipe surface and dissipating it as friction in sand. This approach is novel and unproven yet not without merit. Geo-composites of mechanically reinforced sand have been used in compressive loads like for example in bridge abutments. Pipes/tanks handle similar static loads in normal operating conditions making this an idea worth exploring.

Pipe dreams? Maybe. But a thing that seems unimportant can sometimes turn out to be the most important thing there is.

Pipes are fascinating to me. Whether it's the infrastructural transport pipes or the small capillaries that make up the food and water transport systems in plants, against gravity under enormous pressures that could cause water to cavitate, I love talking about pipes with those working in the industry. That is why it was such a pleasure to meet Dr. Madhusudan Chaudhri and discuss his role in meeting market demand for pipes and what his company Time Technoplast is doing to innovate in this space.

REFERENCES

Electric energy consumption

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption

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Akshat Jiwan Sharma

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