New way of producing electricity...

[ASH]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

I would hesitate to guess at the lack of importance of the article. The new phenomena being observed as folks figure out how to form specific structures at atom dimensions continues to surprise. Whether someone finally actualizes room temperature superconductors or some "palladium" like matrix that enables the holy grail (if taboo idea) of cold fusion is possible (not probable) will probably come from this type of research. Remember, the basic physics of the Laser was started by Einstein in 1917 but a functional laser didn't really happen in the 1960s.

I actually think this could be very useful in the long run, but mainly in the context of compact burst power generation. The researcher quoted in the article was mostly thinking along the lines of miniaturization, which plays to this technology's initial strengths. And who knows, you could probably drive thermal waves through the material using lots of other heat sources, so perhaps this technology could be used to generate electricity in some non-battery format. I'd be a little surprised if this turns out to be a more efficient heat-to-electricity conversion mechanism than more prosaic technology, but I can imagine various heat sources being pulsed on and off, and maybe this is just the thing to convert periodic heat pulses into electricity.

[Starving Steve]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

FWIW, -- 100% Efficient Wood Stove (or gas furnace) ! ! !

You have a great idea except for one minor detail: carbon-monoxide which would be vented into your home. The CO2 would not kill you, nor would the H2O vapour, but the CO would be deadly. You wouldn't survive the first night with your new stove.

Still, major improvements to the efficiency of wood stoves is the way engineers should be designing. So you have the right idea.

I wonder if wood-stoves could be designed to generate electricity. That would be very helpful because electric rates are outrageous to-day, especially in California where the pot-heads in the environmental movement have mandated the de-commissioning of atomic power plants. (Remember Jane Fonda and her movie, China Syndrome?)

[GRG55]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

Spending the afternoon swinging a giant mallet over my head and splitting stumps--- whilst cursing every pot-heat eco-nut that lives by me in East Sooke, British Columbia---

Speaking as an engineer, have you ever heard of Caterpillar? Usually the score at the end of an individual match is:

Dozer 1; Stump 0

And after you dig out the stump from one of those first growth monsters you have out there in East Sooke and end up with a big, round hole in the ground, that invariably fills with water from all the rain you folks get [which is why you have monster trees in the first place, right], you get yourself another type of CAT and do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5AcQahwKs0

Oh, and if any of your "pot-head" neighbours complains about the roaring noise or diesel smoke from a D9 with the ripping hook deeply imbedded on the backside of one of your stumps, just tell 'em you know where they live... ;)

[Starving Steve]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

You can bring your CAT-D9 over and park it in my driveway anytime. That would make a bold statement to my neighbours, visually.

[tastymannatees]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

You have a great idea except for one minor detail: carbon-monoxide which would be vented into your home. The CO2 would not kill you, nor would the H2O vapour, but the CO would be deadly. You wouldn't survive the first night with your new stove.

Still, major improvements to the efficiency of wood stoves is the way engineers should be designing. So you have the right idea.

I wonder if wood-stoves could be designed to generate electricity. That would be very helpful because electric rates are outrageous to-day, especially in California where the pot-heads in the environmental movement have mandated the de-commissioning of atomic power plants. (Remember Jane Fonda and her movie, China Syndrome?)

Moving back in time here maybe it's time to bring back steam engines:rolleyes:

My parents built their retirement house here in CT - 6in insulation in the walls 2 feet in the ceiling, The house sat on an insulated concrete slab with thermal plastic tubing embedded in it with oil heated hot water running through it.

Had the house oriented towards the south with a wall of windows facing the sun open the shades in the morning and the sun would shine on the tile floor and heat things up (thermal mass) close the shades at night to keep the heat in. Floor was toasty and a pleasure to take off your shoes in February and warm your feet on them, dogs especially liked the warm floor.

approx same size house as mine and they used 75% less oil then my wife and I running about 5-8 degrees cooler on average.

They had a small back up French coal stove burned about 10 lbs of coal a day and heated the whole house.

Technology is great but sometimes good design can do pretty well on it's own.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

I wonder what a cheap way of producing electricity would do to inflation

[cmalbatros]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

I stumbled upon this - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...ed-by-air.html

[Chris Coles]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

Next to nothing is almost zero is almost zero is: a big bunch of NOTHING. Got it?

ZERO. Zip. Nada. Cero. Basura. Junk.

It took the world thousands of years to discover that zero had meaning as a number, and sadly, some in this world still don't get it. 0 = 0.

You can smoke all of the pot that you want, but nothing is nothing.

Solar energy is as close to being nothing as I can think of on Earth. NOTHING. So carbon waves in nano-tubes produce only the amount of electrical energy that they have from input heat. Got it? And they might even produce less energy than they have from input heat. Things go down-hill, not up-hill. No free lunch. Got it?

No free lunch, not even in physics, nor mechanical engineering. Not at MIT, nor Berkeley, nor anywhere. Zero is zero.

And the economics profession is the same kind of thinking: a free lunch from paper money. Sorry, but it doesn't exist, and never did.

The lesson is to put your talents and energy into things that you know work well, and do more of what works well, and less of what doesn't work. So bury the solar energy crap, and get real.:rolleyes:

If we ever dig-out of the Great Recession, it will be by producing vast amounts of energy from coal, oil, natural gas, tar sands, hydro-electricity, and atomic power. Got it? We will do what works and do a lot of what works.

Now get sober.

I feel sure no one will mind my setting out a small marker. Steve, you may be about to be proven wrong. Nothing more than that.

[we_are_toast]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

My parents built their retirement house here in CT - 6in insulation in the walls 2 feet in the ceiling, The house sat on an insulated concrete slab with thermal plastic tubing embedded in it with oil heated hot water running through it.

Had the house oriented towards the south with a wall of windows facing the sun open the shades in the morning and the sun would shine on the tile floor and heat things up (thermal mass) close the shades at night to keep the heat in. Floor was toasty and a pleasure to take off your shoes in February and warm your feet on them, dogs especially liked the warm floor.

approx same size house as mine and they used 75% less oil then my wife and I running about 5-8 degrees cooler on average.

They had a small back up French coal stove burned about 10 lbs of coal a day and heated the whole house.

Technology is great but sometimes good design can do pretty well on it's own.

I have a very similar home now, with a very large thermal mass in the floor, but use thermal solar panels to heat the mass (I could use a few more panels).

I'm in the process of designing a new home and have been doing a lot of personal research to determine the proper amount of insulation, and have concluded that the new energy building codes have gone way to far on the requirements for ceiling insulation.

Back of envelope example:

A 100 square foot of ceiling with an inside temp of 65F and an outside temp of 15F would have a temp difference of 50F.

If the ceiling had no insulation, it would have an R value of approx R1. Over a 24 hour period it would lose 50/1 X 24 X 100 = 120,000 BTU. With a very efficient heating system using propane, it would take about 1.5 gallons of propane to heat this 100 square foot area, costing about $4.50/day or, in my cold climate, very roughly $150.00/year.

Now lets add 3 1/2" of fiberglass to bring the R value to R12, BTU loss of 10,000, propane consumption of .12 gallon, costing about $12.50/year.

Now let's double the insulation. So now, with 7 inches of insulation, we've got an R value of 23 and reduced the BTU loss to 5,000 BTU and the propane consumption to .06 gallon, costing about $6.25/year.

Let's double the insulation again. Now with 14 inches of insulation, we have an R45, BTU loss of 2500 and a propane usage of .03 gallons, costing about $3.12/year.

So from going from no insulation to an R45 we've reduced our yearly costs by roughly 98%. Even by adding the last 7 inches of insulation, we've only saved just over $3.00/year. Now if you double the insulation again to 28 inches, well, you get the picture. Insulation has a rapid point of diminishing returns.

So rather than putting an extra 14" of fiberglass in your ceiling, you could get almost the same savings by putting a 2" piece of Styrofoam, or equivalent, in that patio door on those really cold winter nights.

[MulaMan]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

Yes, energy tech breakthroughs will define the 21st century. Very difficult to pick the winners until after they win, like always with tech.

Now - People Against Progress - Always amazes me how cowardly so many people have become, scared of change, scared of the future.

Sometimes I think it is just baby boomers getting old and scared but I also wonder if it could be because we a living in a period of massive technological advance never seen before in human history and it is very difficult to see in the big picture as we are living inside the changes.

This result is certain types of people, religious groups, old 20th century tech people, established old tech economic interests ect.. thrashing out at any progress through fear of the future.

It is kind of sad that many people will never be able to escape the 20th century, even through we are 10 years into the 21st century and that these people will simply die off / fade away dreaming of their Pontiac GTOs (horse and buggy) from that one day back in the 70s that they almost got laid.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

I stumbled upon this - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...ed-by-air.html

It is said there is nothing new under the sun.
The article may be wrong about the novelty of this invention.
Article says:

World's first battery fuelled by air
The world's first battery fuelled by air - with 10 times the storage capacity of conventional cells - has been unveiled.

Published: 8:19AM BST 20 May 2009
Scientists say the revolutionary 'STAIR' (St Andrews Air) battery could now pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, laptops and mobile phones.
The cells are charged in a traditional way but as power is used or 'discharged' an open mesh section of battery draws in oxygen from the surrounding air.
This oxygen reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery, which creates more energy and helps to continually 'charge' the cell as it is being discharged.
By replacing the traditional chemical constituent, lithium cobalt oxide, with porous carbon and oxygen drawn from the air, the cell is much lighter than current batteries.
And as the cycle of air helps re-charge the battery as it is used, it has a greater storage capacity than other similar-sized cells and can emit power up to 10 times longer.
Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews, said: "The benefits are it's much smaller and lighter so better for transporting small applications.
"The size is also crucial for anyone trying to develop electric cars as they want to keep weight down as much as possible.
"Storage is also important in the development of green power. You need to store electricity because wind and solar power is intermittent."

Seems like a good old fashioned zinc-air battery to me. From wikipedia about zinc-air batteries:

The effect of oxygen was known early in the 19th century when wet-cell Leclanche batteries were observed to benefit from atmosphereic oxygen diffusing into the carbon cathode current collector. In 1878 a cell was demonstrated that substituted a porous platinized carbon air electrode for the manganese dioxide of the Leclanche cell. Commercial products were not made on this principle until 1932 when George W. Heise and Erwin A. Schumacher of the National Carbon Company built cells [5] with the carbon electrodes treated with wax to prevent flooding. This type is still used for large zinc-air cells for navigation aids and railways. However, the current capacity is low and the cells are bulky.
Large primary zinc-air cells such as the Thomas A. Edison Industries Carbonaire type were used for railway signalling, remote communication sites, and navigation buoys.These were long-duration, low-rate applications. Development in the 1970s of thin electrodes based on fuel-cell research allowed application to small button and prismatic primary cells for hearing aids, pagers, and medical devices especially cardiac telemetry.

Invented in 1878, commercialized in 1932.
World's first? :rolleyes:

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

Yes, energy tech breakthroughs will define the 21st century. Very difficult to pick the winners until after they win, like always with tech.

Now - People Against Progress - Always amazes me how cowardly so many people have become, scared of change, scared of the future.

Sometimes I think it is just baby boomers getting old and scared but I also wonder if it could be because we a living in a period of massive technological advance never seen before in human history and it is very difficult to see in the big picture as we are living inside the changes.

This result is certain types of people, religious groups, old 20th century tech people, established old tech economic interests ect.. thrashing out at any progress through fear of the future.

It is kind of sad that many people will never be able to escape the 20th century, even through we are 10 years into the 21st century and that these people will simply die off / fade away dreaming of their Pontiac GTOs from that one day back in the 70s that they almost got laid.

All true.

Perhaps our modern information systems agrevate this -every potential advance is noticed and broadcast with breathless enthusiasm, and nothing much comes of them for years, if ever.

Breeds skeptical cynicism (guilty as charged)

[Starving Steve]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

Yes, energy tech breakthroughs will define the 21st century. Very difficult to pick the winners until after they win, like always with tech.

Now - People Against Progress - Always amazes me how cowardly so many people have become, scared of change, scared of the future.

Sometimes I think it is just baby boomers getting old and scared but I also wonder if it could be because we a living in a period of massive technological advance never seen before in human history and it is very difficult to see in the big picture as we are living inside the changes.

This result is certain types of people, religious groups, old 20th century tech people, established old tech economic interests ect.. thrashing out at any progress through fear of the future.

It is kind of sad that many people will never be able to escape the 20th century, even through we are 10 years into the 21st century and that these people will simply die off / fade away dreaming of their Pontiac GTOs (horse and buggy) from that one day back in the 70s that they almost got laid.

There has been nothing of any significance discovered or produced in the energy field since the first-half of the 20th C.

Some required reading for you from the London Evening Telegraph, Jan 11, 2010: Wind farms ( which produce significantly more electrical energy than solar power installations ) produced practically no electricity during Britain's cold snap. They produced 0.2% of the supposed 5% of Britain's energy that they were supposed to produce. Even if Britain goes ahead with 30 giga-watts of potential from nine "super wind farms" planned by 2020, "nothing of any significance would have been produced this winter".

Go read the story yourself. (Britain is not Wyoming.)

Once again, solar-electric is even worse for supplying electricity than wind turbines.

We had better go back to early 20th C. thinking about energy generation if we are ever to dig-out of this economic morass. :rolleyes:

[Rajiv]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

Actually this appears to be a modified Li battery, with 8x capacity per unit weight or volume.

See Air-fuelled Battery Could Last Up to 10 Times Longer

8 May 2009


Diagram of the STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell. Oxygen drawn from the air reacts within the porous carbon to release the electrical charge in this lithium-air battery.

A new type of air-fuelled battery could give up to ten times the energy storage of designs currently available.

This step-change in capacity could pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

The research work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is being led by researchers at the University of St Andrews with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle.

The new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls.



An early demonstration model of the STAIR (St Andrews air) cell.

Improved capacity is thanks to the addition of a component that uses oxygen drawn from the air during discharge, replacing one chemical constituent used in rechargeable batteries today. Not having to carry the chemicals around in the battery offers more energy for the same size battery. Reducing the size and weight of batteries with the necessary charge capacity has been a long-running battle for developers of electric cars.

The STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell should be cheaper than today’s rechargeables too. The new component is made of porous carbon, which is far less expensive than the lithium cobalt oxide it replaces.
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[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

I wonder what a cheap way of producing electricity would do to inflation

There is a proven cheap way to make energy ( not electricity ), that has near universal use in some countries . It is not popular in the states mainly because it is unsightly. I'm talking about solar hot water heaters. In Israel almost every house has one on the roof. In Spain it is mandatory to have a solar hot water heater on new construction. The break even for solar hot water heaters was reached decades ago for most homes and prices continue to drop.

There have been a series of articles on the oil-drum recently about solar hot water heaters. This is one I was just reading.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6264

I think solar hot water heaters are the "killer app" of alternative energy. Cheap to make , with much better economics than solar cells and incorporating their own "battery" in the form of a hot water tank. Hot water can be used for space heating and hot showers and laundry. It has the notable problem of not being able to run your toaster, but this is being addressed.