Conference—On the Question of Energy

“Then let’s talk about energy first.” Xiao Zishan turned to the Energy Group. “Energy is of course the foundation to everything. As long as we have electricity, we can use everything from the modern world, from tools to computers. What does the Energy Group think about our energy generation problem?”

The one who responded was Chang Kaishen. He had been a migrant worker at a power plant for five years. He was the kind of person who worked the hardest, was paid the least, got no credit, and always got blamed.

“According to the situation we are about to head into, it would be best to predominantly rely on hydropower, supplemented by some fossil fuel and wind power.

“Hydropower has many advantages. For us, the greatest advantage is that it doesn’t require an active fuel supply. Once such facilities are built they can generate power almost indefinitely.

“Small hydropower generators are very simple to build and require very little terraforming. All we would need to do is divert some water into a 5 to 6 metre deep channel. Such technology is very mature. Small hydropower units have a widespread manufacturing presence in China, making them cheap as well.

“Simultaneously, we also need some fossil fuel generators. These range from large-scale coal or gas fired plants, but I’m focusing mostly on smaller, portable generators. These allow for a versatile use case. For instance, diesel generators. They are easy to use, require no set-up, and work everywhere. Early on we think that this will be our main method of power generation.

At this time, someone raised his hand: “We can only bring a limited amount of diesel over. Once we run out what should we do?”

“It is easy to find substitute fuels for diesel engines. I remember that even peanut oil can be used.” Someone else from the Energy Group replied.

“Ha ha, I don’t know if peanut oil would work, but instead of diesel we could use gas instead.” Chang Kaishen thought for a bit. “When I was last in the countryside I saw many small power stations using gas engines, so it can’t be that difficult.”

“I think we can actually make diesel in the future,” Xiao Zishan said, “But do go on.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Kaishen continued. “So, the above is my argument in favour of diesel. But, to ensure we don’t put all our eggs in one basket, we should have small and medium-capacity diesel generators, and also some small hydropower and wind turbine units. In addition, we should also bring some larger hydropower equipment, and expand our hydropower generation capacity once we have sufficient engineering capability. As for wind turbines, although they have the downside of being dependent on the weather and overall generate less power than the other methods, they are moderately convenient to set up. Perhaps they are most suitable as backup power sources for residential areas and any independent bases and systems not connected to our main grid.”

“That brings me to my next point. As everyone knows, electricity isn’t that simple. You can’t just have the stuff that makes power, you need to also move electricity to where you need it. That means we need power transmission and distribution infrastructure, such as substations. This subject is too technical for this meeting, so I won’t go into details here. It would probably take quite a long time to develop a specific plan.”

The next topic was the question of petroleum products. The travellers wouldn’t just be using generators, they would also need to run motor vehicles and boats. Be it gasoline or diesel, all their fuel supplies would be finite. If they didn’t achieve self-sufficiency in petroleum fuels there might not be any need to bring any products that used them.

“I don’t agree with the host’s words.” The next speaker was Luo Duo of the Energy group. During the online discussions he had made a series of long posts about acquiring petroleum fuels. “But, since he’s from the liberal arts, this is forgivable.”

Xiao Zishan blushed in embarrassment. His biggest peeve was that “liberal arts student” had become a derogatory turn of phrase.

“Actually, at heart, this is still a prime mover problem.” Luo Duo obviously didn’t notice the resentment of the Zishan. “Boats, cars and motorbikes can all be powered by non-petroleum derived fuels, so the issue of finding substitutes isn’t urgent.”

“Fundamentally, all prime movers that use petroleum fuels can be converted into gas engines. This of course incurs a loss in power, but not significantly enough to affect most use cases. Historically, by the end of World War 2, Germans had experimented with gas-driven engines on armoured transport vehicles and even tanks, and found that the result was acceptable. In fact, the technology of gas motors is very simple, and would be easy enough to implement.”

“Finally, let us all not forget about the steam engine. How many years has it been since the standard petrol and diesel engines came out? The real engine of the industrial revolution is the steam engine.”

“Can you even buy a steam engine now? Don’t tell me you want us to make one.” Someone in the Industry Group spoke up.

“Come on, you guys are all modern machinists, shouldn’t it be trivial to make a steam engine? That’s something from the 19th century!” Luo Duo asked back. “Our prime movers can’t continuously run on the reserves we bring, we’d run out one day or another.”

“The problem is that none of us have made a steam engine before. Hold on.” The mechanical group huddled together, and after a few whispered exchanges, Ma Qianzhu stood up. “We understand the principle of steam engines, and there are also a lot of ready-made design resources. We are confident we can do it. However, the main difficulty lies in the boiler. The crux of the matter is materials. To ensure that the boiler doesn’t just explode, we must have sufficiently high quality metals. This depends on the level of our metallurgical department.”

“Currently, the metallurgy counts under the industrial group,” Xiao Zishan explained. “I recall that there should be some experts in this field.”

“You’re right, we have an undergrad majoring in metallurgy.” This aroused some laughter around the room, and amongst them a young man smiled embarrassedly.

“You should flesh out a plan within your group first on that topic. Please continue.”

“That’s all we have for now.” Luo Duo seemed very excited, and sat down.

“Have we thought about biodiesel?” Someone else asked. “I’ve seen several reports on biodiesel recently, and some countries have even started using it in practice.”

“Yes, I remember there was a special kerosene tree in Hainan. The oil from the bark could be used to light lamps.”

“But it could only be used to light a lamp, it’s not real kerosene.” Ma Qianzhu clarified. “Biodiesel is not a simple technology. Although there are many kinds of plants that can be used to make biodiesel, such as oil-seed camellia, jatropha curcas, Chinese pistache, bamboo, and so on. However, oil obtained directly from the plant cannot be used in place of diesel, and must be chemically treated. In addition, no matter what kind of oil-crop you have, it would be useless to have just a few trees. Usually such plantations exceed 100 mu to create a useful supply.

Someone from the agricultural group spoke. “By the way, I also want to point out, the you-nan tree you are thinking of must grow to a diameter of 40-50 centimetres before it would produce oil. To my knowledge, it only grows in Sanya, Ledong, Dongfang, Changjiang, Basha; these regions in Hainan where the water temperatures are higher than in Lingao and Danzhou.”^[1]

“We could instead boil pine roots to get oil. The Japanese did this during World War 2, and they could even use it to refine jet fuel without any specialised distillery equipment.”

“That’s right, but it wasn’t anywhere near cost-effective. The Japanese mobilised an entire nation to refine only about 10,000 barrels,^[2] and Hainan wouldn’t have so many pine roots for us to gather.”

“What about ethanol?” The supporters of biofuels continued to dig.

“It could be used as a substitute, but the calorific content of ethanol is far too low. There is also the problem of carbon deposition, so it’s not ideal as a substitute.”

“I have another opinion on the issue of finding substitutes.” Someone else stood. “My name is Zhong Lishi, I work—ahem, worked—as a designer of oil shale distillation equipment. I once designed equipment for an oil refinery in Danzhou City, Hainan.

“Danzhou city has rich reserves of oil shale. The distillation products from oil shale can be readily refined into the usual petroleum fuels. From this perspective, it wouldn’t be a problem to make our own gasoline and diesel.”

“Where is Danzhou?” Someone whispered.

“It’s just to the west of Lingao. It’s very close.” Someone whispered back

“Then this option is good.”

“Let me briefly explain the oil shale process to everyone. The oil shale from Changpo mine is about 5.1%, and is frequently embedded within lignite rock. There are two main strata of ore in Changpo mine at depths of 6 metres and 44.5 metres respectively. Since these deposits are so shallow, we can just use an open-pit mining method.

“We can also use the Maoming-style retorts for pyrolysis. Each stove has a processing capacity of 50 tons of ore per day, and an oil extraction rate of 60%. Using 5.1% as an estimated oil content of the Changpo shale, this means that each stove would produce 1.5 tons of crude oil every day.^[3]

“This kind of distillery is not too resource intensive to build or run. Setting a daily processing target of 1,600 tons, so…32 retorts, and we would also need two gas heating furnaces, one ventilation room, two washing towers, two cooling towers, and two exhaust stacks. I already have structure diagrams for all of these, and it wouldn’t be that hard to build these facilities. Such a plant would be able to produce 48 tons of crude oil daily, including by-products such as gasoline, ammonia, coal gas, and phenol. All of these are very useful as well.

“The quality of crude oil extracted from shale is very high, and it can be refined directly into diesel. So, in my opinion, we can use both diesel and gasoline engines, and there is no need for natural gas engines.”

“1,600 tons of raw ore a day!” Luo Duo rebutted. “We couldn’t reach that even if we all went and moved rock!”

Zhong Lishi smiled the smile of an expert who knew far more than he let on. “For an oil shale refinery this is already very small. In reality, we would use trains and conveyor belts to move ore. The refinery I outlined above doesn’t match even a fraction of a modern oil shale plant. The one I work at for instance has several processing lines each larger than this, and each ore furnace has a capacity of 200 tons a day.

“Also, if everyone thinks the crude oil yield of 5.1% is too low, the shale mined in Shandong, namely, Huangxian and Penglai, is of even high quality, with a content of 22%. If we still can’t drill for crude oil by a decade or two in, we can consider taking over Shandong first.

The audience started whispering to each other again. Several people in the Sports group were looking at the map of China that had been hung on the wall.

“Let’s include this in our long-term plan, and make it contingent on what level our manufacturing base can reach.” Wen Desi said. “Now, let’s continue.”

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1. Unfortunately, I can’t find an accepted English name for the you-nan tree. The scientific name is sindora glabra ↩︎

2. Here is a 200 page document I found online fully detailing this pine root oil program, from the US Naval technical mission (i.e. US spies). Enjoy. I haven’t had the time yet to verify Boaster’s claim of Japanese production, but I’m sure it’s in this document somewhere. (unless of course Boaster is pulling from a different Chinese source). ↩︎

3. Maoming is a prefecture level city in Guangdong province and is one of the largest petrochemical production areas in China. Mostly oil shale processing. I won’t explain shale oil extraction too much, the wiki article is pretty thorough. The author isn’t specific what sort of retort Maoming-style refers to, so I’ve left it vague as well. ↩︎