Slashdot Mirror
Power, Water and Refrigeration in One Box
Roland Piquepaille writes "Engineers at the University of Florida have developed and built a system that can provide power, water and refrigeration from a single unit. This project, funded by the U.S. Army, will lead to units small enough to fit inside a military jet or a large truck. The prototype system is already more efficient than conventional turbines. And it is also environmentally friendly because it can use traditional fossil fuels as well as biomass-produced fuels or hydrogen and releases only small amounts of pollutants. This kind of system could be used as a mobile unit in case of hurricanes or wars. But it might also be connected to the normal power grid in fixed locations."
But think of all of the useful technology that comes out of this R&D spending! We need more military spending to develop great technology. More wars too! Think of all of the great technology and science breakthroughs that came about just from WWII!
Sounds really stupid, doen't it? But for some reason, if I replaced 'millitary' with 'sending people into space', I get modded 'Insightful' instead of the 'Flamebate' I'm about to get.
"If you're in a forward base in Iraq, it costs you the same per gallon of water as it does per gallon of fuel," said William Lear, a UF associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. "It would be better to just have to send fuel out there, especially if you could get refrigeration and water out of it - which is what our system achieves."
And that's exactly what this unit does. It consumes ridiculous amounts of fuel to cool off the milkshakes and hamburgers for the troops that are there to 'obtain' more of it. This is brilliant! And it'll make sure that fuel will remain cheaper than water (at least until Peak Oil). And the efficiency - the unit manages to condense one gallon of "unpotable" water for every gallon of fuel.
And it is also environmentally friendly because it can use traditional fossil fuels as well as biomass-produced fuels or hydrogen and releases only small amounts of pollutants. This kind of system could be used as a mobile unit in case of hurricanes or wars.
It's basically an oridinary gas-turbine with some clevel thermodynamic engineering of the airflow to gain compression that will give "5 to 8 percent more efficiency than a traditional turbine". That's as far as the 'environmentally friendlyness' goes. And any gas-turbine can be made to use "biomass-produced fuels or hydrogen" which doesn't necessarely have anything to do with 'environmental friendlyness'.
And finally they dare to suggest that these could be used in a hurricane disaster! Like for example refrigerate the bodies of the african americans and the poor? Stop exploiting the suffering of those left to die in New Orleans. The federal government didn't respond to Katrina and is are not interested in helping the people. It was basically a huge land grab for the rich, just like Iraq is...
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I live in NYC. I didn't vote for this Bush asshole either time he stole the election, nor did 75% of my neighbors. I take the subway and walk, and use less than 50% the energy the average American does, like most of my neighbors.
And though I plan to get one of these mobile plants through my military connections when they're ready, the government isn't providing them as resources for the citizens. The Bush government is providing less resources to citizens, while spending much more money, because it's providing needed services to Halliburton and the rest of its corporate buddies.
So YOU figure out who you're talking to before you shoot off your mouth. You're right about half of what you say, but not about me. Or about the needs of our nation, which don't include $4 gas or a billion Muslims so pissed at us that they want their kids blowing up in our faces.
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make install -not war
Then again, there's this book out by some guy named Chris Paine "Who Killed the Electric Car?" - he owned (well, leased) an electric car from GM, which he was very happy with. But after a year GM took it back, not even offering him the opportunity to buy it. Weird.
Yeah and the guy's a conspiratoid freak who just wants his purdy wittle car back. If my memory serves right, his book was turned into a movie recently. He blames the demise of the car on every conspiracy he can come up with. Meanwhile GM lost a billion dollars trying to build the damn thing, and then had to scrap it because the technology wan nowhere near ready, only to endure years of bad flack from anti-capitalism whackjobs who are convinced Da EEEEVil Corporations are out to ruin the planet.
BTW, if GM was willing to take a billion dollar hit in order to research the electric car, explain how that meshes with your "not want to rock the boat too much" theory. Also, realize that even though GM lost a lot of money in the deal, much of the technology developed for their electric car continues to be used to this day. There's a reason why GM is the leader in hybrid technology.