alternative energy 2

alternative energy
my guess is the thousand large mirrors aimed at a steam boiler is our best bet, but cleaning the mirrors will be labor intensive.
One has operated for about 30 years and several are under construction that are somewhat different.
Another is a giant green house with a mile high chimney which turns wind turbines. I think it produces less energy than the mirrors unless the chimney is extremely tall.
At a few locations (top of a ridge) Wind turbines are making electricity when the wind blows. Denmark has made a big commitment to wind turbines, but most locations the wind does not blow often enough.
Every few months someone claims they are about to make cheap solar panels = photovoltaic,but one square yard still costs about $150 and makes a dimes worth of electricity per day under the sunniest conditions.
Neil

Ive heard of microwave transmission of energy using incredibly straight tunnels. I wonder if somewhere there isnt some research being done? I get the SCience and Technology Magazine ferom Lawrence Livermore, Its a free to the trade mag, very good and reflects one labs output.

As far as burning trash , I remember the trash to ethanol projects. It went nowhere.

as far as TCDD, the bad thing is that any TCDD congener with a molecular multiple of 7, is the real culprit. Fortunately the Kd of tCDDs and PCBs and Chlorodibenzofurans are really high, so its easy to capture the stuff in the stack, or develop a super heater , in which the molecules are destroyed as part of the combustion cycle. Ive lost track of the tech because weve moved to other tricks in ore beneficiation, so I have to admit Im rusty on latest adsorption technology

Neil, You have two threads with the same name. .

I commented on the other one and referred you to a couple of points of interest.

Re Photo Voltaics. I think that your economics are a little off but if I paid $150.00 for a panel that made a dimes worth of electricity per day it would have a payback time of approximately 41 years.

Next year the panel will cost $120.00 and the electricity will be worth $0.12. for a payback time of less than 30 years.

It happens even faster if you use the panels for a roof on your house. Deduct the cost of the roof from the cost of the panels and your payback comes down to 10 years or so. Thats on a par with fossil fuels now and probably has something to do with the proliferation of sellers of Photo Voltaic panels today. Even J.C.Whitney can sell you one suitable to keep your batteries charged.

Pay attention to your philosophers. Adam Smith and Maltheus have some rather accurate views on the subject despite despite the 2 or 3 hundred years that have passed since they made their observations.

ARE PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS oops , getting better? I have a couple of banks on my RV and they keep the4 drydock batteries charged nicely I can go indefinately on my own power if I dont use the airconditioning or the microwave. . I cannot develop a huge amp surge to run heavy appliances (and of course theres the Alternating current problem) ive wanted to change over the photovoltaics if there are any new techs that apply. Any ideas? Rvers are the most energy mizerly doofii around. We squeeze the amps and get change.

Hi farmerman: Tell us more about ore benefication.
I think the chemical engineer I talked to agreed that most of the nasties from an incinerator were made less hazzardous by high temperature, but even at plasma temperature chlorine would produce dioxin in the air above the stack as soon as it cooled sufficiently.
I might have heard of the microwave tunnels. Wave guides could be on the surface. A billion dollar waveguide might accept a billion watts at the input and deliver 700,000,000 watts at the output 200 miles away. That would be better than a high voltage power line, except we have an energy conversion to get the microwaves, and another conversion at the receiving end, unless the microwaves can make hydrogen, do home or industrial heating, power an aircraft in flight, or other. As a minor bonus the micro waves might carry broadband data.
The new photovoltaic panels are only about 10% better than 20 years ago, unless you can get some designed for space craft. You can draw more amps from your motor home batteries if you replace them every two or three years, and can make room for bigger ones. A big bank will stay charged almost as well with your present photo voltaic, but adding a panel or two will make for faster recharging. You should never leave the batteries discharged for more than a day or two or they will lose some of their amp-hour capacity.
The new breed of inverters are cheap at Sam's Super Store, about $30 for a 500 watt inverter which will supppy 1000 watts of 110 volts ac for at least one second. At no load they only draw 4 watts (0.3 amps) from your batteries. Does anyone think two inverters can be operated safely in parallel to get enough power for the microwave oven? Can we count on them phaselocking with each other? Neil

Hi aka: Your arithmetic/ecconomics is correct, I believe, if it is rarely cloudy at your location and there are few trees shading your south facing roof. Can we expect the solar panels to leak no water for as long as quality shingles? Can you walk on solar panels as safely as on shingles? Do you have any installation hints? I hope the price for one will drop to $120 soon. I presume you can get quite a bit off if you are buying 100 panels to cover about 1000 square foot of roof. When your batteries get old they give back less than 1/2 the charging power so that is also a sizable cost whether you replace the batteries or use them another year or two. The batteries need a shelter outside the house due to possible fumes and possible explosion. Sub zero weather could damage the batteries if near discharged. Even 7 years payback is poor if you buy the panels on your credit card. Will the buyer accept the reliability of the roof, if you unexpectedly have to sell your house? You could get less than nothing for your $5000+ worth of solar panels especially if the $5000 makes your house the most expensive in the neighborhood. Neil

hi neil. Im involved in a site experiment for the last week and Ive been doing late data checks, so my sleep time. is totally reversed.
WHile dioxins and PCBs and dibenzofurans will be formed. they will be cut down to very low levels at high >2700 F. Then the off gases , in a combined cycle can be cleaned by adsorbing the Dioxins onto a substrate. We use their high ad/desorption coefficients to do the work.
Most modern combined cycle trash to energy facilities use them.
The problem in ore beneficiation, we are calcining the ores to make them react with acids and form a SUlfate or CHLORIDE salt. We obviously dont want the chlorides salt forms because we are into an expensive enviro stream.
We take Titanium ore , which is an Fe/ti Oxide and "roast" to allow it to react with Sulfuric acid. That forms a double phased group of salts. The Ti Sulfate then can be converted to TiO2 and the batch of Copperas (the iron Sulfate) can be diverted to another use or recycled. We are now taking the ores and extracting other rare earths by using HF first.

my experiments now are involving reducition reactions to develop some silica salts with Tantalum, Germanium, Hafnium, etc. it takes some time to coax the reactions and pull out samples to run Xray flourescence on the precips.

My Rv is 3 years old and is equipped with an on board deisel generator that is part of the engine. it also has a small on board gas generator. the only problem with any generators is that they are not friendly to any neighbors. Its a very hedonistic way to generate enough wattage for full power. EVerything with standard power is geared to 30 amp service or else the system goes into a distributive mode. (The computers on board keep monitoring amp draw and then redistribute the load. The refrigerator and freezer will automatically go and change to gas mode if we run the AC or run the microwave longer than, say 10 min.
The inverters that my rig uses (its called a Prevost) are as state of the art but they cant create power, just make it available. If i wanted to use a microwave, in the boonies, the computer would automatically start the engine and the generator would come on., and since its an 8.5 L diesel, its only as quiet as a greyhound bus at the stop lioght. the inverter would only provide voltage to 12V circuits unless I was hooked to outside "camp" power. The computer wouldnt let it even touch drawing from the batteries. The power sensors are really quite sophisticated. They wont let me do anything stupid. its like a star ship , they wont let anything touch life support without a major conference. (I have to enter a 7 digit override code if I wish to abort" enviro -modes") otherwise HAQL tells me to shut up and sit down.
If your not familiar with the newer RVs , go to some web pages for Prevost, Beaver, Bluebird, or Eurobus. They are pretty much idiot proof as they always protect your staring mechanisms for the main engines(this is where the Cold country(Canadian) rigs have it all over the US ones

now my solar panels, are an aftermarket feature that fit on the roof and provide a trickle charge to the battery system only. i just was curious whether there are any pvoltaics that are less than 3 years oil;d that are even more efficient. I heard of some new nano silica versions that use doped xls and i was wondering when they will become available. You are quite correct, You cannot walk on the solar panels so their distribution on the RV roof has to be thought out because most RVs now have slide out room extensions that you have to plan where you run the lines so you dont intercept a slide out track beneath the roof. Also rV roofs are now all one unbroken panel with pre molded lip areas that take the AC compressor or the vents or the anemometer. The RV companies are real sensitive about having anything drilled and popped through their essentially unbroken roof surface.
(The dirtiest secret about the older Motor rVs was the leaks in the roof wherever some appliance came through) Now they preplan where everything goes and tehn make these "lips" that rise and take the appliances and there is a complete surrounding cover that sits about an inch and a half highre than the roof, so even if there were a caulk or liner break, no head pressure could develop to allow leaks.

I agree that there are much better energy trade offs for houses than solar panels. First decide where your big energy needs are (heating, toys, cooking etc) then go after them separately. For heat, Id look at a water source geothermal unit and maybe use solar or wind (if feasible0 to run the water pumps only.
I have friends out in Western PA that have their own gas wells on their properties. thats like a totally energy free house. The initial expense for gas drilling is about 20K for a deep overpresssured system and the rest of your life is pretty much a free boat. Now that theyve found this huge gas reserve in the Appalachian Front (Trenton Limes), I expect that There will be a gas rush for those areas not already diverted to big exploration ,like columbia or Panhandle fuels.

Well, Ive gotta take some 5:30 samples and get some sleep

Neil, There are no easy answers but I still have a lot of faith in capitalism. I also have little faith in conspiracy theories.

Personally I have a couple small solar panels which are used to keep electric fences charged. Not particularly efficient but cost effective compared to running an extension cord a half mile or so.

I am buying four more larger ones for my sailboat to charge a 12 volt system for lights and a (hopefully rarely used) auxilary motor. I have read of houses in Chicago which are using similar systems today.

My guess for the future personal transportation needs will be some sort of direct expansion Stirling cycle alcohol burner. Nissan and the University of Arizona both have both have direct expansion engines in vehicles today.

As far as roofing with solar panels is concerned I see no reason why panels and roofs designed for the job could not be made superior to shingles which IMO are vastly inferior and only modestly less expensive than (my personal favorite) standing seam "galvanized" or "powder coated" metals.
In my personal experience the standing seam has been good for 104 years. Plate glass covered panels should be nearly as good. As Farmerman mentions proper engineering is important. Structurally, electrically, aesthetically, and economically. There is no free lunch.

Right now in rural WV one has to pay between $5,000-$10,000 to get on the grid. This will also help your payback time in some locations. Hopefully some day our elected stewards will realize that subsidies only encourage inefficiencies and that the best interests of all people are not being well served by the systems of subsidies that are currently in place vis-a-vis roads, tariffs, Farm Bills, food stamps, guaranteed loans, and government jobs.

Betting that we will live to see this happen would not be a good use of our retirement funds IMO.
Have a good evening, Mech

Hi mech: All good points. I hope you agree that subsidies, grants or prizes preferably private rather than government are necessary to develop new technology and help small business compete with the giant international corporations which are often ruthless, and deserve to be discriminated against in taxation, mandates, grants and subsidies and in the courts. Neil