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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.
Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere. If too much of this is done, we'll run out of carbon dioxide. That will kill plants and make the Earth a very cold place. This seems like a bad idea to me.
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.
Well, it is Alaska.
I mean, what do you think it costs to heat a giant building each month in Alaska?
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?
I'm not sure why it's such a big deal. While CO2 heat pumps are new-ish, they aren't groundbreaking.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
My first thought was "CO2 as a refrigerant - its kind of toxic isn't it? I wouldn't want to be around if a pipe broke."
Then I thought "Ammonia is also used as a commercial refrigerant, and that is also toxic. Which is worse?"
I haven't found any good answer online. Nobody seems to want to talk about toxic concentrations of ammonia in air, just in blood. Then there are all sorts of other complications - what quantities and pressures would be used for comparable CO2 and NH3 refrigeration plants? Does the lower density of NH3 mean it will disperse faster? Are you a whole lot worse off after being nearly killed by NH3 than after being nearly killed by CO2? Is CO2 more likely to take you by surprise, so you don't realize your danger until it is too late?
In summary - is it better to be near a catastrophically failed NH3 or CO2 refrigeration plant? What about other refrigerants used at a similar scale?
Here's an NH3 refrigerant accident: http://www.reuters.com/article...
And here's a CO2 one: http://www.fluorocarbons.org/m...
Interestingly this last link refers to CO2's 'low toxicity'.
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> 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?
There are at the moment over 30 volcanoes erupting world-wide spewing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, thousands of times more than the negligible amount mankind has ever produced starting with the very first fires of cave-men
Even without knowing exactly how much CO2 the volcanoes produce you can already see that this is not right. Volcanoes have been producing CO2 since the beginning of the Earth, yet the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere only started to go up since the industrial age. Also, when you look at the graph of CO2 concentration, you see a nice smooth rise, and no sudden peaks during years of massive eruptions.
You seem to make numbers up... but luckily real numbers exist. The American geophysical union (which includes many of the world's foremost experts on volcanoes) actually calculated how much CO2 volcanoes produce in an average year, the answer is about 0.25% of what coal power plants put out in an average year (and that's only a fraction of industrial CO2 emissions - remember cars for example).
Volcanic CO2 emissions average a quarter of a percent of coal powerplant CO2 emissions. We outdo volcanoes all the damn time.
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Traditional refrigerants like R-12 (dichlorodifluoromethane) have massive ozone destruction capability, 1st generation replacements like R-134a (1,1,1,2-tetrafluorethane) has minimal ozone destruction capability but very high global warming potential (thousands of times more potent than CO2, gram for gram), 2nd generation replacements like R-1234yf (2,3,3,3-tetrafluorpropene) while having no ozone destruction capability and minimal global warming potential suffer from being highly flammable, increasing the risk of leaks.
The advantage of CO2 is that it is neither flammable, ozone damaging, high GWP, nor significantly toxicity. The disadvantage is that substantial re-designs of refrigeration systems are required to use it, as well as some changes to operation/maintenance.
The transition from R-12 to R-134a, is near drop-in, with only minimal redesign required for optimal performance. To switch to R-1234yf, the re-design required is relatively modest (pressures are higher, so a different pump is needed), but otherwise the principles and basic system architecture are the same. With CO2, you are dealing with transcritical fluids, and this requires a significant architectural change to the refrigerant circuit (as there is no condensation of the refrigerant, so no liquid refrigerant in the circuit).
that entirely depends on how efficient the building is. Good insulation has a very big return on investment.
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.
So if the boiler breaks now you flood your house with CO2 and kill everyone in it? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Which graph, has no peaks? See that graph where CO2 levels keep dipping down toward 180ppm 4 separate times; if it had dipped to 150ppm, life on Earth would have ended. Perhaps these graphs that show CO2 levels as high as 17 1/2 times higher than today maybe; are those the ones that only show "the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere only started to go up since the industrial age"?
Of course if volcanoes were only the massive eruptions that make the TV news and Hollywood disaster movies, you would have a point, but in reality those are so rare they are once in a generation events world-wide, real volcanoes the vast majority of volcanoes are boring little cracks in the ground or seabed that leak gasses for centuries and spitup a little lava, often unnoticed every couple of decades. Even those are far outnumbered and out-produced by the Black Smokers world-wide.
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Which graph [wikipedia.org], has no peaks?
This one: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/w... I do want to clarify my earlier statement. Obviously, CO2 has varied in a lot in the past, but looking at your Vostok graph, it has been relatively slow moving for the last half million years, never crossing 300 ppm. Since the industrial age, we've crossed 300 ppm, quickly followed by breaking the 400 ppm level, even though volcanic activity isn't remarkable.
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.
The issue with both of your data sets is that they are in 2 completely different areas of the world. The NOAA data that religionofpeas posted is from the Mauna Loa observatory on the Hawaiian islands, an area ripe with volcanic activity that also has the added benefit of huge population density. It makes sense that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is extremely high there. The Vostok Petit data is from an Antarctic research station. So on one hand you have an equatorial climate area with high volcanic activity and huge population density (so lots of vehicle exhaust and other CO2 producing equipment from military bases, Air conditioning units, etc.) and on the other hand you have a research station on a polar climate area whose sole population is teams of researchers (so a near-zero population density.)
The takeaway here is that you can't just take the data from ONE monitoring station and call it the "real" measurement of atmospheric CO2. Last I checked, the planet is a very dynamic environment thanks to the Earth rotating on its axis, varying levels of solar radiation (from infrared, Ultraviolet, and other areas of the spectrum,) naturally occurring events such as earthquakes/volcanic activity, and man-made events. The atmospheric gases get shifted around all over the place, new sources of CO2 are releasing varying amounts day to day, and nobody knows for sure what the hell they're talking about since there are so many factors. Calculating a "real" quantity of CO2 is very difficult since humanity has VERY recently started collecting environmental data (from a "beginning of humanity to current day" timeline perspective,) so who truly knows what the "norm" is supposed to be? Ice core samples from that Vostok station show extremely high concentrations of CO2 in certain periods of history, so that does raise some valid concerns and questions.
The CO2 heat pump generates 1800 PSI over a base pressure of 600 PSI. In other words, there is an explosion hazard that has to be considered when engineering these systems and maintenance will be more difficult, seals will fail more quickly, etc.
You seem to make numbers up... but luckily real numbers exist.
He's not making up numbers. He's comparing the accumulated CO2 release over 4.5 billion years of earth's existence to 250 years of industrial activity. It's not made up (much), it's just completely irrelevant.
That graph is only about 60 years long, the "Industrial Age" is generally assumed to have been from 1850 to present; that graph doesn't even go back before AGW was theoretically possible, 1950.
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Sounds like it makes sense in Alaska where the water is presumably already cold during the winter. http://www.industrialheatpumps...
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I've never fully understood how the thermodynamics works out when you run the heat pump in the counterituidive direction.
Normally one uses a heat pump to take heat from a hot object and transport it to a cold object. this is intuitively obvious. the heat pump is, logically, just like a fan accelerating the transport of what was going to happen eventually anyhow.
I also can see how these can work past that logical point when you are using it as an airconditioner. It creates a cold object in the room, colder than the room, and puts a hot oject outside that is hotter than the outside air. Here one is going past the point of "what was going to happen anyhow" and actually pumping heat from the room to a hotter object outside.
the key take home point here however is this takes energy. The total heat you are dumping outside is MORE than the heat you extracted inside. This is the sum of the inside heat plus the heat of the work you used.
Okay so far so good. Now when it comes to heating the house how does this become more efficienct than just using the electricity you would have powered the pump with to heat the house directly (resistive heating)? This I cant see. is there an easy way to see how one gains efficiency by pumping heat out of a cold object to the hot side, over the direct resistive heating?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm predicting that somebody will complain that using seawater is going to change the "natural" temperature of said seawater and will therefore affect the flora and fauna in the water and therefore humans are evil usurpers of the planet.
I really didn't read "at the moment" as being an accumulated number.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
You really need to learn some history. The "Industrial Age" started depending on who you ask with the development of mining water pumps in the 1730s, the start of canal construction (to move coal and other goods from mining areas to industrial areas) at about the same time, or the development of iron smelting using coal or coke instead of charcoal (abount 1710). 1850 was one of the slumps when the industrial age slipped back a little.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
fine;
That graph is only about 60 years long, the "Industrial Age" is generally assumed to have been from 1730 to present; that graph doesn't even go back before AGW was theoretically possible, 1950.
I stand corrected, I was giving undue credit. Even though when Industrial age is spoken of in a climatological context, it refers to 1850 when the major climatological datasets begin.
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