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Post by the light works on Aug 1, 2016 16:01:46 GMT
the landfill my home garbage goes to has the fill capped, and collects methane gas from the anaerobic bacteria eating organic material. - this runs a power plant. there is still a LOT of stuff that is just fill; but it does recapture some of the energy from organics that people throw away instead of composting.
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Post by GTCGreg on Aug 1, 2016 23:36:11 GMT
the landfill my home garbage goes to has the fill capped, and collects methane gas from the anaerobic bacteria eating organic material. - this runs a power plant. there is still a LOT of stuff that is just fill; but it does recapture some of the energy from organics that people throw away instead of composting. Our landfill does the same. Nice to know your garbage still has some useful purpose.
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Post by Lokifan on Oct 14, 2016 16:47:28 GMT
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Post by the light works on Oct 15, 2016 3:28:33 GMT
I still have visions of the PTD Water as motor fuel threads when I see the thread title.
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Post by Lokifan on Oct 15, 2016 7:17:32 GMT
Those threads usually involve Dr. Mr. Nobody-Ever-Heard-Of who discovered the ancient secrets of the leprechauns under his compost heap.
This thread contains reports from the Oak Ridge National Lab.
Consider the source.
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Post by the light works on Oct 15, 2016 7:38:47 GMT
Those threads usually involve Dr. Mr. Nobody-Ever-Heard-Of who discovered the ancient secrets of the leprechauns under his compost heap. This thread contains reports from the Oak Ridge National Lab. Consider the source. still, carbon dioxide is usually a combustion by-product.
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Post by Lokifan on Oct 15, 2016 14:42:20 GMT
Those threads usually involve Dr. Mr. Nobody-Ever-Heard-Of who discovered the ancient secrets of the leprechauns under his compost heap. This thread contains reports from the Oak Ridge National Lab. Consider the source. still, carbon dioxide is usually a combustion by-product. C02 and water, yes, are the normal products of combustion. But CO2 is not immutable. Plants, for example, change it into carbon and oxygen via photosynthesis. With power, you can do the same thing in the lab. It's just normally not very efficient, and you spend much more energy breaking it down that you could recover from burning it again. According to the article, with the nanotech spikes, you get an efficiency of somewhere around 63%. As I read it, that means you get 63% of the energy you put into the system back, stored as ethanol. That's pretty big, and, if true, holds great promise, to the point of making wind/solar useful in the real world instead of just politically. Here's the problem with "variable energy" systems like wind and solar. You may be surprised to know that for every wind/solar plant you build, somewhere a traditional fossil fuel plant is running without contributing any power to the grid. This is because of physics. Power production must, at all times, equal power demand. Too much production and you burn out systems. Too much demand and you get blackouts/brownouts. So, how do you deal with variable production and demand? The techniques are well understood, dating back to Edison's days. You basically always run your production facility so it produces a little bit more than you need, and dump the resulting waste power you don't use into a dummy load, where it's used up, usually as heat. Using predictive algorithms (simply looking at history and human behavior), you know that more power is used on a hot summer day than a cool fall night. You adjust your system to balance, cranking up the oil, coal, natural gas, hydro, or neutrons when you need them. You bring generators (and sometimes whole plants) that are idling into full production as demand increases. Run out of production, and you get blackouts/brownouts. The problem is that it's not instantaneous. The fastest power plants (usually natural gas) need about a half hour warning to change production levels significantly. Older, slower plants can take hours to change. So, if you're running solar or wind on your grid, you're constantly watching the weather and your output. When either starts to drop off, you call up the fossil plant that's been backstopping them by idling, and tell them to ramp up their outputs to compensate. When the wind stops blowing or the sun goes down (or it gets cloudy/rainy), you cut off the wind/solar from the grid and rely entirely on the fossil plants. The most fascinating part of this process for me happens when you predict wrong. Too much demand gets you brownouts/blackouts, but too much production means those dummy loads get hot--very hot--as they eat up the excess. In one case, the load is basically a bunch of copper "trees" that actually melt when they get too much power. So, whenever you see a windmill or solar panel, even when they're working and producing power, somewhere, a fossil fuel plant is burning fuel that it wastes idling. Why not turn the fossil fuel plant off until you need it? Because, as I said, a half hour to change output is the best case, when they're idling. To bring up even one of these fast plants can take days to turn on from a cold start. Enter this development, and things get easier and much more efficient. Being able to store energy as ethanol means you can smooth out your supply output, burning it as you need it so you don't need a natural gas backup running elsewhere. Heck, by their description, you could use it to produce vehicle fuel, thus saving corn to be used for something more useful, like feeding people or animals. If it works out, short ADM stock. Having the wind stop blowing or the sun stop shining is no longer the constant catastrophe that it is now.
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Post by the light works on Oct 15, 2016 17:53:13 GMT
still, carbon dioxide is usually a combustion by-product. C02 and water, yes, are the normal products of combustion. But CO2 is not immutable. Plants, for example, change it into carbon and oxygen via photosynthesis. With power, you can do the same thing in the lab. It's just normally not very efficient, and you spend much more energy breaking it down that you could recover from burning it again. According to the article, with the nanotech spikes, you get an efficiency of somewhere around 63%. As I read it, that means you get 63% of the energy you put into the system back, stored as ethanol. That's pretty big, and, if true, holds great promise, to the point of making wind/solar useful in the real world instead of just politically. Here's the problem with "variable energy" systems like wind and solar. You may be surprised to know that for every wind/solar plant you build, somewhere a traditional fossil fuel plant is running without contributing any power to the grid. This is because of physics. Power production must, at all times, equal power demand. Too much production and you burn out systems. Too much demand and you get blackouts/brownouts. So, how do you deal with variable production and demand? The techniques are well understood, dating back to Edison's days. You basically always run your production facility so it produces a little bit more than you need, and dump the resulting waste power you don't use into a dummy load, where it's used up, usually as heat. Using predictive algorithms (simply looking at history and human behavior), you know that more power is used on a hot summer day than a cool fall night. You adjust your system to balance, cranking up the oil, coal, natural gas, hydro, or neutrons when you need them. You bring generators (and sometimes whole plants) that are idling into full production as demand increases. Run out of production, and you get blackouts/brownouts. The problem is that it's not instantaneous. The fastest power plants (usually natural gas) need about a half hour warning to change production levels significantly. Older, slower plants can take hours to change. So, if you're running solar or wind on your grid, you're constantly watching the weather and your output. When either starts to drop off, you call up the fossil plant that's been backstopping them by idling, and tell them to ramp up their outputs to compensate. When the wind stops blowing or the sun goes down (or it gets cloudy/rainy), you cut off the wind/solar from the grid and rely entirely on the fossil plants. The most fascinating part of this process for me happens when you predict wrong. Too much demand gets you brownouts/blackouts, but too much production means those dummy loads get hot--very hot--as they eat up the excess. In one case, the load is basically a bunch of copper "trees" that actually melt when they get too much power. So, whenever you see a windmill or solar panel, even when they're working and producing power, somewhere, a fossil fuel plant is burning fuel that it wastes idling. Why not turn the fossil fuel plant off until you need it? Because, as I said, a half hour to change output is the best case, when they're idling. To bring up even one of these fast plants can take days to turn on from a cold start. Enter this development, and things get easier and much more efficient. Being able to store energy as ethanol means you can smooth out your supply output, burning it as you need it so you don't need a natural gas backup running elsewhere. Heck, by their description, you could use it to produce vehicle fuel, thus saving corn to be used for something more useful, like feeding people or animals. If it works out, short ADM stock. Having the wind stop blowing or the sun stop shining is no longer the constant catastrophe that it is now. yeah, I understand this is basically a complex battery system, and other regions use other complex battery systems as well. I understand somewhere near Niagra, there is a hydroelectric reservoir where they will pump water up into the reservoir during power surplus times, and stop when they need to add power. the Co-gen plant I have mentioned before has a set of ICE powered "peaker" generators for the same thing. they can compensate for minor power fluctuations (by which I think I mean about a megawatt) in a matter of minutes. still doesn't prevent the immediate "water for fuel" mental reaction, though.
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Post by silverdragon on Oct 16, 2016 12:57:39 GMT
Excess demand... somewhere n Wales, UK, is a lake, that is entirely fake. Its job is to act as a barrier against excess demand, say the spike in people putting the kettle on for a brew at half-time in the football final... They turn the water on, and allow it to make electricity, which drains the lake... And then, when they have excess load, they use that to pump the water back from the lower lake to the top one.
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Post by the light works on Oct 16, 2016 14:30:04 GMT
Excess demand... somewhere n Wales, UK, is a lake, that is entirely fake. Its job is to act as a barrier against excess demand, say the spike in people putting the kettle on for a brew at half-time in the football final... They turn the water on, and allow it to make electricity, which drains the lake... And then, when they have excess load, they use that to pump the water back from the lower lake to the top one. basically, the electrical grid is a prius.
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Post by Lokifan on Oct 16, 2016 14:31:26 GMT
Excess demand... somewhere n Wales, UK, is a lake, that is entirely fake. Its job is to act as a barrier against excess demand, say the spike in people putting the kettle on for a brew at half-time in the football final... They turn the water on, and allow it to make electricity, which drains the lake... And then, when they have excess load, they use that to pump the water back from the lower lake to the top one. Yes, hydro can be used that way. But I'll bet it's not 63% efficient, as this method appears to be. It can't be cheap, either. Pumps can be expensive. In fact, I'd honestly like to know the efficiency of that method. I've heard it mentioned over the years, and it'd be nice to see the numbers.
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Post by the light works on Oct 16, 2016 14:54:15 GMT
Excess demand... somewhere n Wales, UK, is a lake, that is entirely fake. Its job is to act as a barrier against excess demand, say the spike in people putting the kettle on for a brew at half-time in the football final... They turn the water on, and allow it to make electricity, which drains the lake... And then, when they have excess load, they use that to pump the water back from the lower lake to the top one. Yes, hydro can be used that way. But I'll bet it's not 63% efficient, as this method appears to be. It can't be cheap, either. Pumps can be expensive. In fact, I'd honestly like to know the efficiency of that method. I've heard it mentioned over the years, and it'd be nice to see the numbers. that is a going to be a really tricky cost-benefit analysis to perform; and it is pretty likely no two systems will have the same calculations. a CO2-ethanol conversion system might be more uniform than other storage systems, although the molten salt system is also pretty much manufacture-only; as compared to a hydro system which is terrain dependent, unless you are using manmade water towers as your "energy storage" reservoirs. and of course, the bottom line is "how do you define the efficiency of a process that turns throwaways into usable energy?" what is the efficiency of my woodstove? I burn a cubic foot of wood a day, on average. to heat my house. if I wasn't using the woodstove, I would be buying electricity to heat my house, and burning the wood in the backyard to make it go away.
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Post by Lokifan on Oct 16, 2016 16:14:03 GMT
I guess I'd define it in comparison to alternatives. Is it more efficient to pump water or make ethanol?
Of course, another benefit to ethanol is that it's transportable to be used where needed.
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Post by Lokifan on Oct 16, 2016 16:15:35 GMT
I guess I'd define it in comparison to alternatives. Is it more efficient to pump water or make ethanol? Of course, another benefit to ethanol is that it's transportable to be used where needed. I suppose the question of efficiency could be phrased as: Will the ethanol system produce the same KWH as the hydro system, for comparable investment?
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Post by mrfatso on Oct 16, 2016 16:27:35 GMT
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Post by GTCGreg on Oct 16, 2016 17:59:51 GMT
The problem with any Hydroelectric solution is the massive amount of the land resources it eats up. You not only need the land area, but the proper topology for it to work. On the other hand, you can put an ethanol plant almost anywhere.
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Post by the light works on Oct 17, 2016 0:32:32 GMT
I guess I'd define it in comparison to alternatives. Is it more efficient to pump water or make ethanol? Of course, another benefit to ethanol is that it's transportable to be used where needed. I suppose the question of efficiency could be phrased as: Will the ethanol system produce the same KWH as the hydro system, for comparable investment? and that's what makes the calculations complicated.
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Post by silverdragon on Oct 17, 2016 9:51:25 GMT
Excess demand... somewhere n Wales, UK, is a lake, that is entirely fake. Its job is to act as a barrier against excess demand, say the spike in people putting the kettle on for a brew at half-time in the football final... They turn the water on, and allow it to make electricity, which drains the lake... And then, when they have excess load, they use that to pump the water back from the lower lake to the top one. Yes, hydro can be used that way. But I'll bet it's not 63% efficient, as this method appears to be. It can't be cheap, either. Pumps can be expensive. In fact, I'd honestly like to know the efficiency of that method. I've heard it mentioned over the years, and it'd be nice to see the numbers. When you get down to the actual efficiency of the plant on site, perhaps not that good... But in the general scheme of things, when you have other plants "dormant" but still active, as you say, running on idle supplying load to a dummy load to not overload the grid, if they are instead supplying to the pumps instead of wasting that energy, the pumps pumping uphill are running on "free" electricity surplus to demand... And then when there is demand, they run in supply mode... In the general whole grid picture, its therefore 100% efficiency, and maybe even more, because the pumps run on energy otherwise wasted, and then run "Fo Free" when the water runs back downhill?...
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Post by silverdragon on Oct 17, 2016 9:53:39 GMT
Being they were built before the internet, I didnt think of looking for them online.... have been to both and watched them work... fascinating....
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Post by silverdragon on Oct 17, 2016 9:56:35 GMT
The problem with any Hydroelectric solution is the massive amount of the land resources it eats up. You not only need the land area, but the proper topology for it to work. On the other hand, you can put an ethanol plant almost anywhere. However, I aint seen may Hydro plants go "boom"?... Yes of course, Hydro cant work on the flat, and ethanol can be stored safely. But in comparison, if a Hydro plant starts burning up, it can use the water on site to put fires out....
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