Slashdot Mirror
New Heating Technology Uses Seawater and Carbon Dioxide (csmonitor.com)
Kenneth Stephen writes: While some enterprises have used sea-water for cooling, others are starting to use this for heating. and thereby cut back greatly on the carbon footprint of large facilities. What makes this technique even more fascinating is that a key component of this technology is carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas that has climate watchers so worried.
An Alaska aquarium recently announced "the first installation of CO2 refrigerant heat pumps to replace oil or electrical boilers in a conventional heating system in the United States" after 7 years of development, and predicts they'll now save up to $15,000 each month on their heating bill.
Especially this bit about compressing the CO2 to over 2,000 psi to heat it. I assume this process is powered by fairy dust, unicorn farts, politicians speaking honestly, or some other such magical limitless power source? This is Slashdot - give me the physics, not the fluff piece.
Feel free to point out if I'm wrong.. But, isn't this just like a huge mini split? Using CO2 instead of um.. Freon, or whatever they put in them these days?
Stick a huge finned thing out in the ocean, cycle some refrigerant around it, transfer heat from one side to the other? Requires electricity and it's not like.. you're *consuming* CO2 and removing it magically?
The article seemed to describe exactly what the mini-split in my living room does, only on a much higher scale, and with C02 as the transport medium instead of some other rare gas?
It's not an example of switching "from fossil fuels toward innovative clean energy". It's an example of switching from an inefficient heating technology (electrical resistance heating) to a more efficient heating technology (refrigeration). Presumably the energy source is still fossil fuels because they likely want to heat the place on days and nights when the wind isn't blowing (not much solar at 60N in December).
It's also an example of wildly inaccurate reporting. But you can find wildly inaccurate reporting in virtually every article about anything nowadays.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Four years to recoup a capital investment is beyond fantastic. Even double that, as will be more likely when everything is figured in, is really good.
> thousands of times more than the negligible amount mankind has ever produced
nice try.
the yearly production of CO2 by humans is MUCH higher than the yearly CO2 production by volcanoes.
from first link I found :
-->volcanoes release a total of about 200M ton of CO2 annually.
-->global fossil fuel CO2 emissions (2003) = 26B ton CO2
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
The Key takeaway here is saving $15k a month on heating bills.
If the savings are representative or what can be achieved elsewhere, the economics and payback period work out, then it's a Win-Win.
The surest way to bring someone over to your Environmentalists side is to show people they can save lots of money. Haranguing them about the CO2 and driving up energy costs...not so much.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It's pretty depressing if every time we mention CO2, there has to be an obligatory, if completely non sequitur mentioning of AGW. It's akin to being required to say something about werewolves everytime someone mentions silverware.
People who have internalized so much right-wing propaganda that they've become totally delusional are very confident in their beliefs, because Conservatism has become a cult. They consider science and news "Liberal" and embrace superstition and propaganda. They're probably hopeless, but you're doing good work in correcting the propaganda when they regurgitate it outside their bubble.