|
Post by james on May 1, 2020 14:31:41 GMT -5
This 'ignoring me' policy seems to be going a bit wrong.
|
|
|
Post by TKennedy on May 1, 2020 14:54:43 GMT -5
You guys need to watch the Beal mind control rant on the clip from Network I posted earlier.. Quite prophetic for it’s time.
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on May 1, 2020 15:55:18 GMT -5
- All power generation is temperature gradient power. The problem is having enough entropy to make a useful thermodynamic cycle out of it. Sure, you could create a heat engine that takes advantage of something like the fact that air is cooler on top of the mountain than down in the valley (or any number of other, similar natural phenomena), but the "delta-T" is so low, you couldn't get any meaningful power out of it. I know some Mechanical Engineers that have done Geothermal heating/cooling. For commercial projects. It costs a LOT of money and you have to drill a lot of wells to get the btus you need to heat and cool a good sized building. Expensive proposition. With a lot of equipment required (that needs maintenance and breaks down periodically). But technically when you get past the big initial push, the heating and cooling is free. Oh, and it takes more real estate too. The spacing of the wells is such that the footprint of the building won't usually provide enough energy.
|
|
|
Post by james on May 1, 2020 16:57:32 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on May 1, 2020 17:25:47 GMT -5
- All power generation is temperature gradient power. The problem is having enough entropy to make a useful thermodynamic cycle out of it. Sure, you could create a heat engine that takes advantage of something like the fact that air is cooler on top of the mountain than down in the valley (or any number of other, similar natural phenomena), but the "delta-T" is so low, you couldn't get any meaningful power out of it. I know some Mechanical Engineers that have done Geothermal heating/cooling. For commercial projects. It costs a LOT of money and you have to drill a lot of wells to get the btus you need to heat and cool a good sized building. Expensive proposition. With a lot of equipment required (that needs maintenance and breaks down periodically). But technically when you get past the big initial push, the heating and cooling is free. Oh, and it takes more real estate too. The spacing of the wells is such that the footprint of the building won't usually provide enough energy. To dust this particular corner a bit: There are two different technologies that are called geothermal. The first is what I would call "traditional geothermal": Basically drilling a well into some very hot ground (like around a volcano) and using it to either extract or generate very hot water that can then be fed into some sort of power plant. That's pretty useful stuff, but obviously highly limited by geography. There are relatively few places where such geology exists. The second is frequently called geothermal, but I think it is more properly called a "ground water heat pump". Those systems are built around a relatively conventional air conditioner/heat pump system. Instead of interchanging heat with the ambient air, a system of wells are dug, and filled with piping that carries the working fluid back and forth through the ground. The result (at least around here) is a year round supply of 50 degree fluid that makes the subsequent heat exchanging a whole lot more efficient. Imagine how much easier your air conditioner would have it if instead of trying to blow heat out into the already hot outside air, the condenser coils were bathed in a constant flow of 50 degree water. But still not exactly "free". IIRC, they advertise (for residential installs, that is) something like a 50% reduction in heating costs and a 40% reduction in cooling costs. Which is nice, but as you say, the installations are hella expensive, (and can be horribly difficult in a retrofit situation), and pay back times are pretty long. PS: None of this is anything close to new technology. There really hasn't been a fundamental change in any energy technology since the perfection of nuclear power generation. The USS Nautilus was launched in 1954, but it's been 100 years since Einstein got a Nobel Prize for a paper that explained, in part, how the photovoltaic effect works. At most, we can optimize efficiency at the expense of other design factors (usability, durability, affordability, etc) and squeeze out a few percentage points. Order of magnitude level changes in efficiency (measured however you like, including carbon efficiency) necessary for making a meaningful impact on climate change (if you care about that sort of thing) are not going to happen unless we either get over our nuk-o-phobia or someone comes up with something entirely new.
|
|
|
Post by majorminor on May 1, 2020 19:40:41 GMT -5
Pffftt. You engineers with your fancy math and shit....
|
|
|
Post by james on May 1, 2020 20:29:00 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by james on May 1, 2020 20:40:36 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by james on May 1, 2020 20:53:50 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by aquaduct on May 2, 2020 20:26:24 GMT -5
If you haven't watched it yet, it looks like the offended goofballs are stroking hard to get it buried. Revenge of the Fraud MastersOught to tell you something.
|
|
|
Post by james on May 2, 2020 21:56:11 GMT -5
|
|