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Super Soaker Inventor Hopes to Double Solar Efficiency
mattnyc99 writes "With top geeks saying photovoltaic cells are still four years away from costing as much as the grid, and the first U.S. thermal power plant just getting into production, there's plenty of solar hype without any practical solution that's efficient enough. Until Lonnie Johnson came along. The man who invented the Super Soaker water gun turns out to be a nuclear engineer who's developed a solid-state heat engine that converts the sun's heat to electricity at 60-percent efficiency—double the rate of the next most successful solar process. And his innovation, called the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Conversion (JTEC) system, is getting funding from the National Science Foundation, so this is no toy. From the article: 'If it proves feasible, drastically reducing the cost of solar power would only be a start. JTEC could potentially harvest waste heat from internal combustion engines and combustion turbines, perhaps even the human body. And no moving parts means no friction and fewer mechanical failures.'"
well. at least its a FUN way to waste water, vs letting your toilet run, or your faucet drip, or ignore that leaky pipe in your lawn's sprinkler system that uses up 20,000 dollars worth of water in 2 months and creates a cavern twice the size of your house under your front lawn. (yes, that happened to someone i know) here's to hoping the heat engine thinger-ma-bob works as described.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I know nothing about this area, the guy is obviously smart and sane, and it would be fantastic if it worked, but ... my BS detector started blaring when I got to those words.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Energy efficient photovoltaic cells is fun and all, but clearly he's better qualified to invent nuclear powered Super Soakers.
And I think I speak for all of the geek fraternity when I say we'd prefer them over some poxy solar panels.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Huh? Recycling waste heat from a internal combustion engine? That sounds like someone is trying to violate the Kevin-Planck statement of the second law of thermodynamics!
Remember folks the majority of wasted energy in a ICE is from Valvetrain loss and from compression of air.
The upside is that- like the Super Soaker- these panels will be far more efficient than their weedy predecessors.
The downside is that- like the Super Soaker- they'll only be available in eye-searingly garish combinations of purple, red and fluorescent green and yellow.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
It may be "oxidized" as in the opposite to "reduced". See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redox
(I haven't RTFA to figure out for sure, but if they're talking "hydrogen" on one side of a reaction and "proton/electron" on the other, it seems plausible on first blush.)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
"at least its a FUN way to waste water",
hehehe, fishtank for toilet cistern resevour.
You obviously never finished school because you've never heard of the water cycle, so shut the hell up and go back to getting my fries.
I can guarantee that the water wasted from super soakers is nowhere near the amount wasted by poorly aimed sprinklers watering cement.
... perhaps even the human body. Does that sound a little to like the Matrix for anyone else? I'm not going to be a coppertop.:(){
I like the idea of a sealed unit without any moving (mechanical, anyway; I'm fairly sure the hydrogen gas moves about inside) parts powered by heat, but I'll be waiting until I see a working unit before I'd consider investing or whatnot. 2nd Thermodynamics seems to be something that'd need to be carefully considered, as this almost seems like a corollary of the Steorn business from a few months back.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
A nuclear engineer, the inventor of water sports AND knows how to turn a good acronym!
Yes, you know who you are! You who on the news groups said that "what they did in the matrix is not feasible and never will be because you could never extract enough heat from a human to power anything!"
I've been waiting for this for a long time! >
But this is pretty cool. I think if it holds true that it has micro applications, we can have an excess of power! you can easily mount these bad boys on scooters, roller blades and other forms of transportation!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
I want to know more about the principle on which these work, but if they work and can me made inexpensively, they will be found absolutely everywhere where there is waste heat. Couldn't the go under photovoltaic cells - since they convert heat and not light, they could just use the temperature differential between the hot black cells and the surroundings?
Well, something I have learned through the years, If something is too good to be true, then it's really too good to be true ! It's exactly like 419 Fraud, too good to be true :).
Now I am going to really read the article !
Most energy loss in an ICE is from Air Compression and valvetrain loss?
I would think that most of it would be because combustion is a woefully inefficient way of raising air pressure. Air compression should not be causing too much loss because that energy can be largely recovered on the power stroke. (except for ring blow-by (minimal) and compression-related-heat soaking into the cyl. wall) Valvetrain loss should only be due to cam friction (which is reduced by oil), as the energy required to compress the valve springs should be mostly returned when the valves are released.
SirWired
Well, fill a supersoaker with a caustic solution and you have quite the fun flesh-melting weapon.
Well, the human body DOES generate over 25,000 BTUs of body heat. Wait...why does that sound dubiously familiar?
The only way you can really "waste" water is to convert it into hydrogen and oxygen. Even then, we'll probably get it back eventually.
The only thing being "wasted" here is the money you pay the city to process that water so that when you super-soak the other person, you don't hand them a bunch of water-bourne disease vectors in the process. But it is your money.
Now, if you've gone and plopped yourself down where there isn't enough water for the population and industrial loading... that'd be your fault. Guess you'll just have to grit your teeth.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The article doesn't say the device is good for 60%, it states IF they are able to design it to work with with high-temperature ceramics, and IF it is able to reach 600C, then CARNOT efficiency is 60%, of which this device will obtain some fraction.
I didn't see any details on how this is any better than century-old heat engine ideas, unless the solid state design allows dirt cheap mass production, in which case he might be onto something...
I hope that it was an under-educated writer talking about harvesting waste human-body heat, and not the NSF or the inventor.
Harvesting waste heat from a 98-degree human operating in even a 30 degree environment is only 13% efficient, at maximum. I just don't see it being real useful to try and harvest waste heat from an ICE or turbine. If a power-plant turbine had useful exhaust steam, they would already be using it to turn another turbine I expect.
The fact it has no moving parts is nice, but how high could the efficiency possibly go?
SirWired
Nothing claims to beat the laws of thermodynamics. 60% efficiency doesn't even approach the best law-abiding case.
I seem to recall that a sterling engine was one of the most efficient ways to convert solar energy to do work. How does this compare with a sterling engine?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Aside from all the overdone crap about super soakers, this seems to me to be a kind of Stirling Cycle: it has high and low temp reservoirs, the high temp one for expansion, the low temp one for compression. Hydrogen (the working gas) is passed through the membranes, generating electricity. Therefore the max thermodynamic efficiency is determined by the Carnot equation, so the higher the temp of the hot reservoir, the better the efficiency. No pistons and whatnot required, so efficiency is maximized..
Would he be more qualified if he hadn't invented super soakers? I didn't know that people were only capable of having one skill. I'm asking for a refund on my liberal arts-style education now.
IOW, you still need a constant heat source. TFA mentions that they're working on a 200 degree C version, and managed to get their prototype going w/ 60% efficiency if the temp is at 600 degrees C... TFA also mentions that current solar furnaces can jack out around 800 degree C heat when you have a shitload of parabolic mirrors pointing at your boiler.
Overall, you're still taking in heat (read: energy) from an external source, so there's (from the looks of it) no cheating going on here.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Because I am a liberal who is concerned about social justice, I get excited by technologies that could be used to increase energy consumption by folks who are lower on the socio-economic ladder. Increased use of energy consumption for things like refrigeration, home heating, and personal car transportation is something I don't think should be reserved for the upper classes. Inventions that lower the cost of personal energy consumption are worthy of attention and disproportionate investment from fair minded progressives.
"If it proves feasible"
In other words, yes, it is very much a toy for now.
Way to mis-quote. According to TFA, that's the first solar thermal MANUFACTURING plant... As in, they make the equipment. There are several U.S. solar thermal power plants, dating back to the 70s.
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Carnot Efficiency is only a limit on a Carnot Cycle Engine!
In particular, with nuclear power plants AND geo-thermal. Our power plants dump loads of energy to the environment. This may possibly help with using more of that energy.
Perhaps more important would be geo-thermal. It does not say what the temp differences need to be, but if it can work on ~ 100 degree difference, then this is the answer for the large number of dried up oil wells that have loads of heat down there. The big problem for USA is that we have a large number of wells where the max temp is ~170F. We could hook up a solar heater to carry it up in temp, but if this works, then it will enable these old wells to be re-used and new ones to be drilled.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...and I can guarantee that the whole idea of "wasting water" is ridiculous in the first place. Where do people think "wasted" water goes? When it evaporates, it comes back as rain; when it soaks into the ground, it is transpired by plant life, and again evaporates and comes back as rain; when it goes into the sewer system, it dilutes the sewage, makes it easier to process, is replaced into the groundwater, evaporates, comes back as rain...
If you live in a place like Palm Desert, CA, fed only by an aquifer that recharges incredibly slowly, you should see the problem better -- basically, local conditions sometimes cannot sustain the amount of water draw from the given local resources.
solar-soak dat ho?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Oops, you addressed that. Damnit, that'll teach me to read the entire post. I still contend it's easier to find a non-overloaded place when people aren't being stupid with the water they've got.
Shouldn't that be ionized [not oxidized]?
It's been a while since I took chemistry, but "oxidized" means increasing in oxidation number. (Doesn't have anything to do with oxygen.) I forget all the things that oxidation number thingy, but gaining an electron is one of them. So, they're similar.
Would someone knowledgable tell me if all ionization is oxidization?
DATABASE WOW WOW
Until now, thermodynamic engines that use compressible working fluids have generally been mechanical devices. These devices have inherent difficulties in achieving high compression ratios and in achieving the near constant temperature compression and expansion processes needed to approximate Carnot equivalent cycles. Solid-state thermoelectric converters that utilize semiconductor materials have only been able to achieve single digit conversion efficiency. Extensive resources have been applied toward Alkali Metal Thermoelectric Converters (AMTEC), which operate on a modified Rankine cycle and on the Stirling engine. However, because of inherent limitations, these systems have not achieved envisioned performance levels. The JTEC is an all solid-state engine that operates on the Ericsson cycle. Equivalent to Carnot, the Ericsson cycle offers the maximum theoretical efficiency available from an engine operating between two temperatures. The JTEC system utilizes the electro-chemical potential of hydrogen pressure applied across a proton conductive membrane (PCM). The membrane and a pair of electrodes form a Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) similar to those used in fuel cells. On the high-pressure side of the MEA, hydrogen gas is oxidized resulting in the creation of protons and electrons. The pressure differential forces protons through the membrane causing the electrodes to conduct electrons through an external load. On the low-pressure side, the protons are reduced with the electrons to reform hydrogen gas. This process can also operate in reverse. If current is passed through the MEA a low-pressure gas can be "pumped" to a higher pressure. The JTEC uses two membrane electrode assembly (MEA) stacks. One stack is coupled to a high temperature heat source and the other to a low temperature heat sink. Hydrogen circulates within the engine between the two MEA stacks via a counter flow regenerative heat exchanger. The engine does not require oxygen or a continuous fuel supply, only heat. Like a gas turbine engine, the low temperature MEA stack is the compressor stage and the high temperature MEA is the power stage. The MEA stacks will be designed for sufficient heat transfer with the heat source and sink to allow near constant temperature expansion and compression processes. This feature coupled with the use of a regenerative counter flow heat exchanger will allow the engine to approximate the Ericsson cycle. The engine is scaleable and has applications ranging from supplying power for Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) to power for large-scale applications such as fixed power plants. The technology is applicable to skid mounted, field generators, land vehicles, air vehicles and spacecraft. The JTEC could utilize heat from fuel combustion, solar, low grade industrial waste heat or waste heat from other power generation systems including fuel cells, internal combustion engines and combustion turbines. As a heat pump, the JTEC system could be used as a drop in replacement for existing HVAC equipment in residential, commercial, or industrial settings.
My other sig is a knife wound.
That's a nice theory, but it doesn't actually work in practice.
There is a limit to how much water is naturally evaporated from the ocean each year (far, far less than we're dumping into it) and rained down onto solid ground. There is a limit to how quickly water absorbed by the soil will leech down into the aquifers it was drawn from (it takes centuries) and that's where most of our water supplies comes from.
And as for location, there's no place on earth where the rainfall would possibly exceed the needs of a densely packed urban population, without conservation. The troubles Atlanta is having are just a start. Being located in the desert merely brings the problem to the forefront more quickly.
Look at the farm-packed interior of the US, and you'll find ridiculous quantities of water being used, all drawn from a gigantic aquifer, which is now being dramatically drawn down, with no sign of replenishment. You're welcome to go tell them they're just imagining it, when they run out of water supplies.
I'd gamble that, over the next decade, cities all across the US will have to begin copying the water conservation measures that have long been in-use in the southwest. And if they don't, the cost of water is going to go through the roof, as the expense for finding new supplies, and building new recycling facilities, goes through the roof.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It uses a temperature differential to produce energy but in this case the differential is created by solar energy heating one end rather than burying one end in the earth and the energy seems to be converted directly into electricity rather than steam to turn a turbine to create electricity. Clever, if it works.
TFA Talks about pressurized hydrogen gas being diffused across a membrane(s) but it does not mention where the hydrogen gas is coming from. Now, I am NOT a physicist, but unless he has found a new and low cost way to obtain free hydrogen H2 gas then I doubt that his engine will be a substantial improvement over existing technologies since hydrogen gas is generally very energy intensive to separate from water or other reactions. Another problem is that hydrogen gas, particularly hydrogen gas under pressure, is extremely corrosive. It tends to want to diffuse through or undermine the integrity of any material that you attempt to contain it with. This is the reason why hydrogen gas, even though it is the most efficient known working fluid for Stirling Engines is typically not used (Helium or Nitrogen is generally used instead or even just plain air). The difficulty and expense of separating and then containing the hydrogen gas within the engine is just not worth the trouble for the modest gain in efficiency over alternative working gases in Stirling engines. Perhaps someone with more background in physics can explain how the engine in TFA is different and solves these problems?
I'm really waiting for the nanotech implementation of these heat engines. The nanoscale mechanics will be higher efficiency, and embedded as materials into PV materials, will seem to be simply high-efficiency solar panels, not complex machines. Maybe more than 70% efficient. And I expect they'll be lower-energy to manufacture with chemical processes, rather than mechanical assembly, and last longer, so their overall lifetime efficiency will be several times greater than today's.
--
make install -not war
No, I was merely pointing out that "oxidized" doesn't have to mean "oxygen" or "that crud you think of on old metal", that in fact there is a technical meaning to the term the average software engineer who took one freshman level science course a decade ago -- which may not have even been chemistry -- might not connect with. Ionization and oxidation/reduction are in fact closely related terms, which the wikipedia link was meant to illustrate. If you compare the two entries ("Redox" and "Ionization"), I think you'll see the connection. Describing the process as oxidation and the effect as ionization is not a priori incorrect.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
A super effective solar heat engine have
already been invented it is called a repulsin.
Try google it.
Geez, 200c is low temp? Couple this with high temperature semiconductors running well below freezing, you could stick a thermocouple between the generator and the delivery system and generate more juice.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
This is a heat engine with gaseous hydrogen as the working fluid? What part of the "membrane-electrode assemblies" is different from this?
As I read it, the hydrogen is cycled between the hot and cold sides of the cell. You don't need any more than the initial charge, just like the refrigerant in an air conditioner.
What actually happens is the hydrogen is ionized, meaning the protons which make up the nucleus of hydrogen are separated from the electrons. The protons pass through a proton-permeable membrane and flow to the cold side through a tube. The electrons are collected by anodes and forced to travel through an electrical load to the other side in order to recombine with the protons.
I'm honestly not sure of the specific details beyond that. I suspect hydrogen is used because it consists of only a proton and an electron. No pesky neutrons getting in the way and sapping energy with their mass without contributing a charge. I have no idea how they deal with hydrogen embrittlement or anything like that, because I suspect it would be a worse problem dealing with ionized hydrogen, but it may be a surmountable one.
Based on how little information there is on the webpage, I'm guessing this project isn't very far along. At face value it sounds technically feasible, but I'll wait until they start reporting actual performance data to get excited about it.
If this works, I could see almost every larger producer of waste heat producing electricity. Both to sell and to use. The break even point for alternative electric production is getting ever closer. Somewhat off topic; I think that there will be some waste heat with that plasma arc garbage burner that is being built in southern Florida.
Passionately Indifferent
I live in Melbourne, the 2nd largest city in Australia. Australia has incredibly low population density, yet where the number one issue on everyone - including the everyday mums and dads - is water.
For the last 3-4+ years we've been on water restrictions such as:
- Can only water garden between 6 and 8am, only on 2 days a week (depending on street number). Must use a trigger nozzled hose. Cannot water grass. With the exception of One in every FOUR sporting grounds.
- Cars cannot be washed at home, only at a commercial venue where they recycle water. Bucket can be used to remove spot corrosion.
- Cannot fill new or existing pools or spas. Topping up can be done with a bucket or watering can only.
So you see, when you say you cannot 'waste' water, I wonder what in the world we're doing all this for, because clearly your knowledge is greater than our own.Yes, the total water amount on this planet may be constant - but only 0.3% of this is accessible fresh water (not counting glaciers, ice caps and ground water). And this isn't where we want it.
Hmm... maybe you're right. Maybe I should leave Australia, and move to some other place, just because our climate patterns have been changing over the last 10 years (gee, I wonder how that happened) such that we now have no water...
According to the diagram on the website, it seems that the low temperature stack is receiving electricity to "pump" the proton through the barrier and loose energy to heat dissipated.
On the hot side, heat is absorbed and electricity is produced.
Why would the electricity output be greater than the input.
Also, in a fuel cell, one chemical reaction is Hydrogen => Proton + Electron, the other side of the barrier is Proton + Oxygen + Electrons => Water.
How come this engine can regenerate Hydrogen on the other side of the barrier while the Fuel Cell has to use Oxygen to produce waste water ?
People use a lot of water from underground sources, i.e. aquifers. water moves very slowly through some soil types. in some cases, the water that is being used is many many centuries old. think glacial melt water from the last ice age and the remainder of the in-land sea in the u.s. And we are pulling much more out than can be replenished naturally. when that's gone there will be no water to irrigate crops in the mid-west. if there's no water in the ground, there's no evaporation to bring rain, and so there's no rain.
There'll still be rain by the coasts, but a whole lot of that rain water flows right back into the ocean. if there's no water in-land, people move to the coasts and water use increases there. if we were to capture a majority of that water to prevent it from getting all salty, say good-bye to rivers and streams. no more fly fishing, etc.
if you want water from the sea, you need lots of power to make is less salty.
so wasted water gets all salty, and we'll have to waste lots of energy to make it drinkable
do you understand now?
The hydrogen runs in a loop -- the cell doesn't need a constant supply. It's like a coolant reservoir in a car engine.
You don't need a shitload of parabolic mirrors pointing at a boiler. That old dilapidated 8-10ft C/Ku-band dish in your backyard is entirely sufficient with a nice mylar or polished aluminum coating. You can also add a secondary concentrator at the focus to seriously jack up the temperature.
Sounds like great technology but I wonder how well these things will truly hold up at extreme temperatures. Instead of a paraboloid, I suppose one could use an extruded parabolic trough to generate lesser temperatures.
I live in a rural setting on 20 acres just above the 49th parallel with limited solar irradiation and have been looking for a solar (or any heat-based) solution for a while now. My experience is that whenever someone talks about permeable proton membranes and the like, it's out of my price range.
Australia has a bunch of worthless sunbaked desert, a bunch of coastline... Why the HELL don't you just build some fucking solar powered desalination plants?
That's pretty bull.
(Yes, IAAIS (I am a Irrigation Specialist), among other things that I do)
I have literally installed and repaired hundreds of lawn sprinkler systems. If the damn thing burst its pipe, chances are either
1) Your lawn is flooded, or
2) Your basement is flooded.
To have a cave that is twice the size of your house due to $20000 worth of potable water (which, by the way, means that your friend needs to have his eyesight checked as well because no one can miss that much water coming out of the ground) implies that there is something wrong with his house' foundation in the first place.
When you build a house, you always try to manage where the waste water from the lawn goes. Either to the storm gutter, or to the street, or you lay a nice gravel/sand lawn bed, or whatever. To have a piece of land so unstable that
1) all the water drains away before anyone noticed
2) creating a basin underneath
implies some serious flaws in the design/construction process.
Issued 1 year ago, this patent describes this system in great detail. I am doubtful it can work. The electric current out of the hot end of the device is less than or equal to the current in to the cold end (since the H circulates and each passage thru either side consumes or generates one electron). To create more electric power out than goes in, the proton exchange membrane would have to create significantly higher voltages at high temperature than at low temperature. But I believe the membrane voltage is pretty much limited to the ionization potential of H, and that is not going to change significantly over temperature). Lonnie Johnson sort of weasel-words around this in column 4 lines 30-50 of the patent body. This glossing over of detail is, to me, the most damning evidence (I am a PhD physicist with 89 issued US patents).
May his efforts be more wholesome than the supersoaker oozinator. Cuz that's just wrong.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
All of this could be fixed using the amazing power of technology.
With enough power and resources, you could run a pipe to the ocean and run a desalination plant.
You'd just have to pay with higher water bills. And maybe have to live with a nuclear plant to power the desalination plant. But it'd also reduce dependency on hydrocarbon power, so maybe it's a wash...
I don't read AC A human right
Interesting -- nowhere in the article does it mention what technical barriers remain that make it seem like it might not be feasible.
Currently hooked on AMP
And that's where Bush's plan to melt the polar ice caps comes into play. We melt the icecaps, thus replenishing the water needed for the aquifers.
It's a popular concept in some circles: Use affordable high-tech devices to let folks in the developing world have a better life.
An example are cell phones. They've brought connectivity to folks in even isolated villages who could not dream of getting a land line.
Or the "life straw," a simple, cheap, but high-tech gadget that filters the filth and germs from streams. It's literally a straw.
Or a simple solar-charged LED light. Hang it outside your hut in the day, bring it in at night so the kids can study or mom can make extra money doing piecework.
A sturdy, self-contained solar electrical generator could act as an adjunct for a decentralized high-tech low-budget infrastructure. You'd use it to charge cell phones, XO Laptops (and their adult equivalent), and so on.
Water? You mean like from the toilet?
Use Brawndo, its got what Super Soakers crave.
Why not the heat differential between deep ocean water and surface water? Or heat from either coal or nuclear or geothermal power plants? The possibilities are endless. Assuming it works as advertised, of course.
If he is getting NSF funding then his stuff has survived an NSF peer review panel or more. I work at NSF and I can tell you that scientists that sit on NSF panels (BTW they don't work for NSF but are asked to come) don't have a habit of rubber stamping stuff they think is BS. The Ego's involved don't allow it. If it is truly worth funding then some serious people have looked at his proposal and the science behind it.
supersoak dat ho
This is one of those times when it would be wonderful to distill the best of the questions and concerns expressed here and take them directly to the inventor for responses.
Is there a Slashdotter in the house with really good contacts in this area?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You beat me to it. The Seattle Tacoma metro area has some 3 million people in it, and most of them are served with rain run off from several river systems. Most of our power is hydro as well, also fed by rain. The same is true for Portland Or, which has close to 1M people in the metro area. Vancouver BC would be another example.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
You must be an irrigation specialist somewhere other than Florida. I suspect GP has a friend there who had a sink hole open up in is yard after dumping water through his lime-rich land. My mother-in-law lost her green-house to such a thing. They just paid someone to bring in tons of dirt and fill the damned hole, and built a new green-house. Now the main house is on more stable soil which was tested before construction, but those tests are only done where the foundation is laid. Your yard isn't checked.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Don't forget Vancouver, BC and surrounding townships, some even rainier. Here in Burnaby I haven't seen the sun in over a month.
I'll be surprised someday when this is considered a "benefit" of living in Vancouver!
Because it's like, the desert? you know, the places where there isn't any water there?
So, you would have to bring the salt water hundreds of mile inland, then the freshwater elsewhere and the byproducts back to the ocean. Sounds expensive.
In practice most desalination plants are coastal, for obvious reasons. The freshwater produced is also very expensive. It's a matter of whether Australians are willing to pay more, and pollute more, for the privilege to wash their cars and fill their pools. Drinking water is not so much a problem today.
Australians are not in favour of nuclear power, by and large, and they are starting to realize that outputting carbon has detrimental effects, like droughts. So somehow the idea of a large coal-powered desalination plant in a populated, coastal area to trade freshwater for CO2 is not popular. Go figure.
It's a better heat engine. It is equally applicable to gas, coal, nuclear or any other heat source. If these other sources currently have an aconomic advantages over solar (e.g. working at night) they can benefit from this invention at least as much as solar. They will continue to have an advantage over solar, possibly even a bigger one than they have today. Something that can change this situation has to be applicable only to solar (like the nanosolar film) and not benefit the competition as well.
I'm all for renewable energy, but self-deception or wishful thinking will not get us there.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
I am a physicist. (OK, I'm a grad student, but I just had thermo.)
The article says that at 600 degC, a Carnot cycle engine would have a theoretical efficiency of 60%, but nowhere do they say anything about the efficiency of this development.
It's possible to prove that no thermodynamic cycle is more efficient than a Carnot cycle, so you can expect the actual efficiency of this product, if development finishes, to be less than the numbers they're giving.
That said, I think it's a very intriguing idea.
If a power-plant turbine had useful exhaust steam, they would already be using it to turn another turbine I expect.
They are, with what's called a "bottoming cycle" that uses the steam that exits the low pressure turbine to heat a mixture of ammonia and water that boils below the boiling point of water alone, thus raising the working pressure enough to turn an additional turbine. This bottoming cycle is also known as the Kalina cycle, and is in use at combined cycle gas turbine plants (where the hot exhaust from a gas turbine is used to make steam to run another turbine).
is agriculture. A tremendous amount of water is wasted through evaporation. Minor increases in the efficiency of water use in agriculture would go a long way towards solving AU's drought problem. Water-efficient agricultural techniques have been researched (e.g. drip irrigation already in use). Downside, people will wind up paying more for food. But in most cases, more expensive food is better than no food.
Tech Public Policy stuff
"Seattle ranks 44th among US cities for rainfall with an average yearly rainfall of 36.2 inches (92 cm)."
Cardiff, UK: 1,065mm (41.9 inches).
Palmerston North, New Zealand. Annual rainfall is 963mm.
Wet is more than 2 metres/year. Quit whining.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
If you put some in a super soaker, it makes a nice flame thrower :0 (with appropriate ignition source)
As a comment on the original site points out, the article confuses two concepts: Energetic efficiency and cost efficiency. Energetic efficiency may be theroretically double that of a convenitional solar plant, 60% in this case. Cost efficiency is measured in money/energy, however, so it will only effectively make solar power cheaper if it doubles energetic efficiency while at the same time not doubling the price. You could theroetically get a very energetically inefficient solar cell - say 10% - to still be cost efficient if it only is dirt cheap to produce and lasts long enough. Conversely, this highly engetically efficient concept will only be cost efficient if it is cheap and durable enough. Energetic efficiency alone does not make you win against coal.
Pah, that's nothing. Ocean Falls, BC, Canada averages 4369 mm per year (172 in). Now you know why it's called Ocan Falls. ;)
Just like solar panels, this technology will generate DC power, which you then have to invert (an inefficient process) to get mains AC.
So you need to take that into account when calculating efficiency. Those big solar plants that use super heated water (aka 'steam') to drive a turbine can generate mains AC power directly, just like your coal-fired power plant that we want to kill off.
But cool tech none the less.
Also (not mentioned in OP), it can work in reverse - so it could be an efficient heat pump for your AC system or hot water heater.
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
...then we should be talking about the next richest man in the world.
Wow, you can cycle on water these days? Man I love technology :)
which is totally what she said
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/21/1627206
So is solar cheaper than coal or not?
My Babylon
OR - and call me crazy - you could carry the power from the desert to the coast along, I dunno, some sort of metal cable or something. Radical, I know.
It looks like this patent applies:
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO2006124679&F=0
SOLID STATE CRYOCOOLER
WO2006124679 (A3) US2006254286 (A1)
A cryocooler is disclosed which includes a reservoir (11), an electrochemical cell or proton conductive membrane (PCM) compressor (12) coupled to a source of AC current, and a gas expander in the form of a pulse tube expander module (13). The compressor (12) includes a proton conductive membrane (17) positioned between a pair of electrically conductive electrodes (18) and (19). The pulse tube expander module 13 includes a regenerator (21), a pulse tube (22), and in inertance tube (23). The regenerator (21) has a heat rejection part or aftercooler (25) and a cooling part or cold heat exchanger (26). The pulse tube (22) includes a heat rejection portion or hot heat exchanger (27).
I find that... astonishing. At a guess, I'd say that the total fresh water consumption of human civilisation adds up to about half what the Amazon puts into the South Atlantic. Sea levels are rising because we're melting the icecaps, not because we're moving water from the land into the sea.
Off to look up the figures now.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
As soon as I got to the words "Hopes to" this article became pointless.
Let me know when he achieves what he hopes, if its worth my time to know. Until then its all hopes and dreams...
I hope to end stupidity.
I hope to save the planet.
I hope I have a good day.
Hoping for something isn't necessarily a bad thing, but its not newsworthy either... Even for a site as loose with the news sometimes as slashdot...
--- When you start with the conclusion that you want, then throw out any facts that don't agree, is it true?
The guy is developing the technology used in the Matrix to use the human body for power. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
stillsuit for summer made out of this material
Agreed, this looks dodgy.
> I am a PhD physicist with 89 issued US patents
This may be why you are not modded up yet...
I was thinking it would be great to capture the heat from my dryer vent, that's a large source of wasted heat!
Oh yea, and who's the fuckwit who modded parent "Troll"?
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
From Parent: Australia has a bunch of worthless sunbaked desert, a bunch of coastline... Why the HELL don't you just build some fucking solar powered desalination plants?
From you: So somehow the idea of a large coal-powered desalination plant in a populated, coastal area to trade freshwater for CO2 is not popular. Go figure.
He did say solar not coal. To make the solar panels might/does(?) create a lot of CO2, but the use of them has got to be lower then the use of coal fire power plants.
Build massive solar array in the desert, send the power to the coast to the water desalination plant. They could even sell off the salt too.
Aphorisms don't fix code. (Bart Smaalders)
Average annual rainfall is 152 inches (3861 mm); annual average snowfall is 37 inches (940 mm).
Source, Wikipedia.
I remembered this tidbit from a vacation there many years ago.
Maybe it was only $20,000 of bottled water. i.e. 3 gallons.
Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Conversion...60% efficient...
Heck, everyone knows you get more from a big Johnson.
Proverbs 21:19
Or, you could build solar farms in the desert and run high voltage DC lines to the sea, where desalination plants could run. Hell, you could build a CANDU reactor (wikipedia it) on the shore, and use the waste heat to generate fresh water.
What is spent each year on energy these days, worldwide? Something like $8,000,000,000,000?
How much will it cost to pay this guy to see if his idea works? About 0.0000002% of that?
More money should be invested in trying out ideas that might improve the economics of solar power, not less, even if it appears unlikely to pan out.
R&D is cheap.
..there's no place on earth where the rainfall would possibly exceed the needs of a densely packed urban population..
How about Ketchikan, AK: Average annual rainfall is 152 inches (3861 mm); annual average snowfall is 37 inches (940 mm).
Desert? Atlanta?
Sprawling suburban wasteland and desert are not the same thing.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Seattle doesn't get that much rain. Average annual rainfall there is only 37 inches. That's less than New York (45"), Houston (54"), or (before the drought) Atlanta (50").
It just seems like a lot because it's delivered as a constant drizzle.
But then again, I could be wrong.
No. You're merely reading those two sentences out of context.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Even if so (seems extremely unlikely), you're ignoring all manner of other sources... Primarily, urban run-off.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Unlikely and probably exaggerated, but not on their face impossible.
Not a smidgen of actual technical data. I mean stuff like "prototype X199 put out 3.4 gigawatts for 1200 hours with an input temp of 821C, output temp of 183.5C." You know, measureable facts.If he was up to running his 199th prototype for 50 days straight at gigawatt power levels, they'd already be on sale. Right now he's at the proof of concept stage, and this is just an interesting idea.
Instead we get animated GIFs of protons moving (diffusing?). In case you never took high-school science, this is impossible.The hydrogen fuel cell people would be very interested to know that protons can't move or diffuse, what with it being the entire operating principle of their devices. Anyone who works with ionized hydrogen would also want to hear about this amazing discovery.
Or maybe you were declaring the animated GIF impossible?
And we get a lot of personal aggrandization.Saying the guy did all the things he did is basic reporting. That he invented the super soaker is just a journalistic hook. I don't see Johnson engaging in much waving of his own flag here.
Just in case yo haven't figured it out, working at a govt lab is not necessarily a mark of distinction. Having worked at several, many of us have first hand knowledge that the govt often hires and promotes total idiots. Not saying anything about this guy, just sayin.....You are calling him an idiot. You're just using weasel words to pretend you aren't. I'm going to trust the guy with an impressive resume over a slashdotter who can't spell and can't get get basic physics correct.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Protons do not move. Hydrogen ions can move through liquids or gases, but this guy's device looks like a solid.
And let's not forget the provenance of this story, a magazine which routinely had cover stories on "The new car engine with 15 triangular pistons, coming soon to a car near you".
The Amazon river puts out 219,000 cubic metres of fresh water per second. That's 0.219 cubic kilometres per second, or 6.9 million cubic kilometres per annum. My guess was out by orders of magnitude - in fact we use about one thousandth of an Amazon.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I really don't see anything on his web site that indicates that he misunderstands either chemistry or thermodynamics the way you seem to think he does. Yes, the article that pointed to his stuff is the typical popular science media crap, but we're talking about a person with some pretty solid credentials in the relevant field and a history of good engineering work. I know that energy conversion is one area where it pays to be skeptical, but I don't think that your instincts are serving you well here, since the claims aren't all that outrageous and the design doesn't appear to be based on any form of quackery.
I'd be far more skeptical if I could find real problems with the overview and if the project wasn't being run by somebody who has an honest to god, verifiable background in energy conversion and thermodynamics.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Oops. Out by a factor of 1,000. How embarrassing.
A cubic kilometre is 1,000,000,000 cubic metres, not 1,000,000. So if we use 4,430 cubic kilometres, and the Amazon puts out 6,900 cubic kilometres, then... hey, actually, that's not so bad. My arithmetic was wrong, but my original estimate was pretty damn good! We use two thirds of an Amazon.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Riiight. What kind of insane physics did your high school teach? Protons are accelerated by gravity and electric fields just like anything else with mass and a charge.
Hydrogen ions can move through liquids or gases, but this guy's device looks like a solid.What do you think a hydrogen ion is? It's a proton. You have just said protons don't move and protons do move.
And again, this is the same sort of proton-permeable membrane used in hydrogen fuel cells.
But then again, I could be wrong.
The article mentioned that we were still 4 years away from affordable solar (solar for about the same price as materials used today). Affordable solar may be here sooneer than you think. Are you familiar with the ground floor movement to take solar to the masses by a company called Citizenre? They are trying market solar with an approach similar to satellite TV, cellular telephones, and alarm systems. That is to provide the customer a complete solar system with no upfront charges and make money from a service contract. In this case the service contract would be a rent agreement. They intend to put a complete solar system on clients home. When the system produces electricity, it will lower the bill from the current utility provider. In most cases the savings from the lower bill will more than cover the rent fee that the company intends to charge. The company currently has no product available but intends to deploy in the middle of 2008. They are currently taking reservations and have over 26,000 takers so far. I have written several articles on this company in my blog and even have a couple of videos that I have recorded at www.solarjoules.com. Feel free to take a look. I welcome comments. As in any start up business, a chance exists that they may never get off the ground and fulfill any preorders, but if this is the case - the potential client has not lost anything. If you cannot afford the upfront cost of solar today, this may turn out to be a great alternative. This solution would mean that we could produce at least a little less pollution and would be a great step. If anyone would like company information you can go to www.jointhesolution.com/razmataz.
And the salt water, where do you find it in the desert? What about the brine? It's not exactly fine to let it pile there I think.
Solar desalination plants works by letting the sun evaporate the salt water. Using PV cells to generate electricity is already inefficient, converting the low voltage DC current to high-voltage AC is possible, but even more inefficient. I don't think this idea flies at all.
Is there any example of an actually working, decent-size, efficient AC solar plant ?
AFAIK, there are some tiny AC solar plants in Australia and elsewhere, but apparently the tech is costly and doesn't scale that well. Also it's not really worth it to build hundreds of kilometers of cable from a 10MW plant. It's OK if the plant is near the grid.
Solar is not easy.
Cleantech is currently building out an 80MW plant out in California: http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/09/california-to-get-worlds-largest-solar-farm/
Solar is going to be huge shortly, as we're figuring out how to make the panels cheaper and more durable (although, not much more efficient then the older models). Plus, in the US at least, we have a whole hell of a lot of land in the desert to put said panels.
Yes, 10MW, that's what I read. This is less than 1% of the capacity of a new nuclear plant (say). 80MW is better, but does solar scale much further ?. Not that I particularly like nuclear, mind you, but you need lots and lots of the 10MW solar plant variety to run a desalination plant with any capacity.
So the answer to the original discussion is : why doesn't Australia build large solar powerplants in the desert for all their energy needs? because one know how to do that yet, check back in a decade.