In the past when:
Aggression by a petrostate, spiking global energy prices, and worries about whether we’ll have enough supplies for the next heat wave or cold snap. When the world faced this situation in the past, it turned to its petroleum engineers and geoscientists to find and extract more oil and gas …
But times have changed, and now it’s the mechanical engineers the world needs to improve its energy security. The present situation in Europe is especially fragile. Countries in western and central Europe are among the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas exports. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, those nations plus Turkey accounted for 49 percent of Russian oil exports and 74 percent of its gas exports. It is no accident that Russia invaded Ukraine in February, when demand for Russian gas to heat European buildings in the depths of winter is usually highest.
Three solutions come to mind: increase exports of liquefied natural gas to replace Russian gas, promote electric vehicles to reduce demand for petroleum products, and improve and deploy heat pumps to reduce demand for natural gas. All these are the domain of mechanical engineers. Their innovations can improve global security.
https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/mechanical-eng…
Jaak
Read te article to see what and how mechanical engineers will:
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Mechanical engineers can develop better, faster, and more efficient liquefaction trains for natural gas.
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Mechanical engineers can develop improvements in EV battery designs and on-board power management, thus making these vehicles even more attractive and reduce the demand for oil or refined products from Russia.
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Heat pumps can be important weapons in our energy security arsenal. Heat pumps run on electricity and are more efficient than the gas furnaces or boilers they replace in older buildings.