New way of producing electricity...

[santafe2]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

Solar energy is as close to being nothing as I can think of on Earth. NOTHING....No free lunch. Got it?

Starving, I propose an experiment where, before daybreak, we take 15 average solar panels and wire them to your left wrist and 15 average solar panels and wire them through your right wrist. At daybreak, we'll let you be the judge of the power of nothing. We can power the average home for 40-50 years with these solar panels or we could just light up your after-life for a few seconds. But then, it's nothing so why discuss it.

[santafe2]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

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.

The problem with solar thermal is moving parts. It's always been the problem. When that is resolved, it will be a much bigger player and when it is, we will sell it. But not now, it's still problematic.

[unlucky]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

Scientists at San Diego University have designs for nano silicon wafer generators, a cubic meter of them will produce the same power as a nuclear power plant.

Less than a cubic meter. It works as follows:

1. Scientists write up powerpoint slides explaining how much money this idea can make.
2. Power point slides are presented at venture capital convention.
3. Energy is rectified and transmitted by cell phone and jet liner from Silicon Valley to Wall Street.
4. Stimulation and amplification result in a tremendous jolt of power beamed across the nation and the world.

There are still some wrinkles in the design. Last time it was tried, the power beam was short-lived and resulted in vaporization of life-savings for many users.

[cmalbatros]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

More stumbling - http://rdmag.com/News/2010/02/Genera...hotosynthesis/ This may be only the start of qauntum mechannic power generation. We will still need oil to make plastics etc. but who knows what the future will bring. People of old dismissed cars, electricty etc. in their earliest days of innovation/invention. Science fiction is tomorrows fact.

[Starving Steve]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

More stumbling - http://rdmag.com/News/2010/02/Genera...hotosynthesis/ This may be only the start of qauntum mechannic power generation. We will still need oil to make plastics etc. but who knows what the future will bring. People of old dismissed cars, electricty etc. in their earliest days of innovation/invention. Science fiction is tomorrows fact.

How many tens-of-billions have been pissed-away on solar and wind and tidal and geo-thermal dreams?

There is ZERO future in solar-electric.

Basic math: 0 x N = 0 .

In other words, (a stupid idea) multiplied by (investment capital) equals (zero) in the end..... period.

More basic math: N/0 = infinity.

In other words, (investment capital) divided by (zero potential) equals (infinite cost).

Still more basic math: ZERO is the place on the number line exactly half-way between +1 and -1.

Translation: When the pot-heads in the environmental movement hyjacked the Western nations, instead of going forward (to approach +1) or backward (to approach -1), we went NO-WHERE. The progress of the West stopped.

I blame this on pot. (The trouble began at Woodstock, NY.) It has to be the marijuana because the Western world was once 1000 years ahead of the turd-world. :rolleyes:

[flintlock]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

How many tens-of-billions have been pissed-away on solar and wind and tidal and geo-thermal dreams?

There is ZERO future in solar-electric.

Basic math: 0 x N = 0 .

In other words, (a stupid idea) multiplied by (investment capital) equals (zero) in the end..... period.

More basic math: N/0 = infinity.

In other words, (investment capital) divided by (zero potential) equals (infinite cost).

Still more basic math: ZERO is the place on the number line exactly half-way between +1 and -1.

Translation: When the pot-heads in the environmental movement hyjacked the Western nations, instead of going forward (to approach +1) or backward (to approach -1), we went NO-WHERE. The progress of the West stopped.

I blame this on pot. (The trouble began at Woodstock, NY.) It has to be the marijuana because the Western world was once 1000 years ahead of the turd-world. :rolleyes:

Have you been toking again Steve?

[flintlock]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

I've long thought we could do a lot better job at designing homes with energy use in mind. What we have now still leaves a lot to be desired. I do think that many people would choose to spend more on a new home if they were offered significant energy savings. But the option is rarely offered, at least in my area. Part of the blame lies in the transient nature of our society. People don't stay put long enough in a home to see the payback, so they choose low initial cost over long term savings. And once the home it built, the cost adding these more efficient systems increases. The buck gets passed along, year after year, with no one willing to bite the bullet and upgrade out of a fear of an unexpected move. The only solution I see is stricter building codes for the new homes. Hardly a popular move these days with builders already having a tough time selling homes.

[ASH]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

More stumbling - http://rdmag.com/News/2010/02/Genera...hotosynthesis/ This may be only the start of qauntum mechannic power generation. We will still need oil to make plastics etc. but who knows what the future will bring. People of old dismissed cars, electricty etc. in their earliest days of innovation/invention. Science fiction is tomorrows fact.

Thanks for posting the link. The basic news story is interesting as far as the science goes, but the portrayal of this quantum mechanical effect as being somehow exotic or unique is a little hyped.

At one level, quantum mechanics has to be involved with photosynthesis, because quantum mechanics governs the physics of the interaction of light with matter -- and the transport of energy -- at the molecular scale. In fact, everything is governed by quantum mechanics at a fundamental level. The issue which is worthy of remark here is not the presence or absence of quantum mechanical effects, but rather whether the underlying quantum mechanical behavior is distinguishable as such. The article catches this point in this remark by Professor Scholes: "It means that quantum mechanical probability laws can prevail over the classical laws of kinetics in this complex biological system, even at normal temperatures."

There is a hierarchy of what you might think of as "averaging" in physical chemistry that goes from quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics to thermodynamics. At the microscopic level, for a small collection of particles (lets say atoms in a molecule), it's possible to treat the state of the system in detail with quantum mechanics. In statistical mechanics, information about the quantum states is considered for a large ensemble of particles, allowing one to calculate some "lumped parameters" that describe the average behavior of the large grouping. A typical example of this might be using statistical mechanics to calculate the heat capacity of a particular chemical, based upon knowledge from quantum mechanics of the spectrum of the energy states of an individual molecule of that chemical. In thermodynamics, one discards consideration of the quantum states and typically works from the lumped parameters alone to calculate the average behavior of a large grouping of particles. Chemists normally treat energy transport and the evolution of chemical systems in terms of a driving force derived from thermodynamics and a rate determined with the help of statistical mechanics -- what Professor Scholes refers to as 'kinetics' -- and he is remarking upon the fact that energy transport during photosynthesis is enough of a microscopic process that these 'average' treatments don't apply. (I don't find this at all surprising, because the energy transport is occuring at the molecular level, and isn't really a property of the ensemble. But what do I know?)

In going from the microscopic study of individual quantum states to the average behavior of a large collection, certain types of quantum mechanical behavior are obscured by the 'averaging'. In particular, loss of the 'coherence' of individual quantum states -- and failure to observe phenomena like interference which relate to phase -- typically defines the boundary between what is regarded as quantum mechanical behavior and classical behavior. In general, researchers who are seeking to prepare coherent quantum states need to minimize interactions in their sample, and work with rarefied materials at low temperatures. That is why Professor Scholes is remarking upon how exciting it is to observe quantum rather than classical behavior in a 'complex biological system at room temperature.'

But back to the main point. This isn't "quantum power generation" any more (or less) than is burning a bucket of coal. "Quantum power generation" isn't a meaningful phrase, because at the microscopic level, everything is a quantum system, and every interaction that generates (or transforms) power is a quantum process. Rather, this is a scientific observation about the mechanism by which energy is transported during photosynthesis: the fact that transport occurs at a scale before the 'averaging' processes which make statistical mechanics and thermodynamics relevant occur, and the fact that energy transport by the type of superposition state observed is more efficient than would be predicted by mis-applying classical kinetics to the problem.

[c1ue]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

As ASH notes, the word 'quantum' is charged with more meaning than necessarily impact.

True quantum energy would be something like speculated in science fiction: plates precisely placed close together to generate current via the quantum paired particles that appear and disappear spontaneously in space.

Or some type of dimensional tap into alternate planes of reality where energy states are higher.

Plants exhibiting superpositional light is quantum in a sense, but really is a function of the property of the wavicles.

For that matter, quantum effects happen all the time already. Most of you out there are using PCs with hundreds of millions to billions of transistors.

At 45nm/0.45um - there was likely one quantum event among the electrons skipping about these transistors among you - tunneling somewhere it shouldn't.

[cmalbatros]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

"plates precisely placed close together to generate current via the quantum paired particles that appear and disappear spontaneously in space."

This is one of the designs that the scientists at the San Diego University proposed at the sub 25micron level that should produce 1millionth of a volt each, one can get a crap load on to a chip, it would use ambient temperature difference as its source and in theory can work from absolute zero and above to generate power. I can send any one interested in the video the bit torrent file if you want to download it. And also one might like to watch the Bedini videos on you tube, and Tesla was doing some strange "out of the box" experiments before he ran out of funding (J P Morgan pulled the plug when Tesla wanted to transport energy over the air.)

[ASH]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

I can send any one interested in the video the bit torrent file if you want to download it.

If you have a link to a paper, or the names of the authors of published research on this topic, I wouldn't mind taking a look.

Thanks.

[Starving Steve]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

"plates precisely placed close together to generate current via the quantum paired particles that appear and disappear spontaneously in space."

This is one of the designs that the scientists at the San Diego University proposed at the sub 25micron level that should produce 1millionth of a volt each, one can get a crap load on to a chip, it would use ambient temperature difference as its source and in theory can work from absolute zero and above to generate power. I can send any one interested in the video the bit torrent file if you want to download it. And also one might like to watch the Bedini videos on you tube, and Tesla was doing some strange "out of the box" experiments before he ran out of funding (J P Morgan pulled the plug when Tesla wanted to transport energy over the air.)

One millionth of a volt is nearly ZERO.

0 = 0.

A billion of such a big bunch of nothing would amount to 1000 volts on a chip, but the Sun doesn't produce that kind of energy. The temperature differences just don't exist for you to tap into.

The whole way of thinking of the pot-heads is ridiculous! There is no free lunch on planet Earth.

Put your talents to work in something productive such as fossil fuels or atomic power or hydro-electric.

Whilst the pot-heads dream at UC San Diego, Korea and Japan have bought-up Saskatchewan's uranium. China has bought-into some of Alberta's tar sands projects.

While the pot-heads dream on Vancouver Island about their failed tidal project in Sooke Harbour, the lights have gone-out once this week already in East Sooke. There is just not enough electricity being generated to manage through auto accidents (cars hitting utility poles) etc.

0 = 0. Tesla was wrong. JP Morgan did not have a conspiracy to deny the world cheap electric power.

SOBER UP! Try coffee. :rolleyes:

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

So what is your solution Starving Steve? Are you saying there is a better use for my $30,000 than a nice solar array on my roof? what is it?

[ASH]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

One millionth of a volt is nearly ZERO.

So, uh, is 3.4E-11 Joule (8.2E-12 gram-calorie) nearly ZERO as well?

The average energy yield from splitting the U-235 nucleus is about 0.000000000034 Joule (215 MeV x 1.602E-19 Coulomb).

In your system of math, where is the dividing line for rounding small numbers down to zero, so that later when you multiply by a large number, you still get zero? Obviously, in the case of nuclear fission, a very small amount of energy times a very very large number of nuclei equals a large amount of energy... so much energy that you regard nuclear power as a viable energy source.

If you didn't already know that nuclear works, would you look at the energy yield per fission and conclude it wouldn't? (Maybe not, because you probably know something about how many U-235 nuclei can fit into a smallish lump of metal.) But it seems to me that it's not much work, what with modern calculators and all, to actually work the products and see if the amounts of energy discussed in this forum are worth the effort or no. Rounding small numbers down to zero and then multiplying "zero" by a large number doesn't make your point very effectively. Showing that a small amount of energy times a reasonable multiplier based upon some physical constraint (such as surface area or weight or something) doesn't give a satisfactorily large product would be more effective.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: New way of producing electricity...

At the risk of stating the obvious Starving Steve is exaggerating for effect. He is familiar with the concept of multiplication, he just believes that capital and human effort should be put into oil drilling.

So tell us Steve: Exactly what do we put our money into?