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dimensionless
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What could potentially allow the world to create cheap, low-polluting energy? I imagine fusion could fit the bill. Is there anything else other than fusion? Could super conduction have a major impact?
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dimensionless said:What could potentially allow the world to create cheap, low-polluting energy? I imagine fusion could fit the bill. Is there anything else other than fusion? Could super conduction have a major impact?
I don\'t think (or at least I hope not) anyone would support such a measure. But it does identify the real problem.vanesch said:I guess that spreading a desease that kills off 99.9% of the human world population would do too, but this is probably not the answer you were after
JustinLevy said:Regardless of the energy sources of the future (fusion, whatnot), if they are finite, we will use it up and demand more. The only authentic long term solution is if we can somehow control our population.
Pengwuino said:I would think that when we have a 500GW outlet, we'll have figured out a way to extract heat out of the atmosphere and get it off the planet...
Get enviromtilest gourps and go to the suprme court and delcare the laws of physiscs are unconstional.Solve the World's Energy Needs? Any Non-Fusion Possibilities?
dimensionless said:Well nuclear energy would be more feasible if we had superconductors. We could build the power plants in remote locations and then export electricity to the cities.
I'm sure oil prices will go up, but that might not have a huge impact on wind/solar/nuclear/biofuel. The latter group is less practical than coal, and coal is cheaper than oil.
When the amount of oil being pumped around the world maxes out sometime in the next 30 years or so (see main text), we will need an alternative to tens of millions of barrels of oil per day. At an October workshop sponsored by the US National Academies, though, experts on the leading alternatives made plain that even all the practicable substitutes combined won't be ready in 25 years to make up for a major shortfall.
Heavy Oil - Some crude oil is too viscous to flow easily into a well on its own. Typically, pumping in steam "converts peanut butter into ketchup," said Robert Heinemann of Berry Petroleum Co. of Bakersfield, California. Currently, about 3 million barrels of heavy oil are produced per day. If the price is right, Heinelmann said, heavy oil production might double in the next 10 years.
Oil sands - In Alberta, Canada, humongous steam shovels gouge out 100 tons of oily sand from the land at a time, eventually yielding 50 barrels of oil per shovelful. Steam injected into deep oil sand beds can also free up the oil for pumping. But the arduous and environmentally challenging extraction of oil from sand means that despite Alberta's abundant sands, only 3 million barrels per day may be produced in 2020, said Eddy Isaacs of the Alberta Energy Research Institute in Calgary.
Coal - Yes, coal could fuel your car. Friedrich Bergius proposed the first process for converting coal's big, heavy organic molecules into short chains of carbon and hydrogen in 1912. Germany fueled its Luftwaffe from coal during World War II. But David Gray of Mitretec Systems in Falls Church, Virginia guessed that it would take oil prices consistently above $50 per barrel to get production from coal up to 4 million barrels per day by 2030.
Natural Gas - Trucks and buses already run on natural gas, but to ease international transportation of gas and to concentrate its energy, its single carbon molecules can be chemically joined o form long-chain hydrocarbons, mostly a diesel like product. ExxonMobil is helping build a gas-to-liquids plant in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, Emil Jacobs of ExxonMobil in Annandale, New Jersey, said at the workshop. No other site has yet proven commercially viable. When pressed, Jacobs allowed that gas to liquids might yield half a million barrels of oil per day by 2015.
Conservation - John Heywood of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge noted that efficiency increases for US cars have been entirely countered in the marketplace by the American predilection for bigger, heavier cars. And major steps up in efficiency with clean diesel engines and hybrids will take 30 years to have a substantial effect, he said, even under optimistic assumptions. Smaller cars will have to be in the mix, he concluded.
Nonstarters - Some energy sources will be of little or no use when the peak comes. Nuclear, wind, and solar do not produce liquid fuels. Liquids such as ethanol from biomass are not yet firmly economic. Oil from organic-rich shale won't be commercial for a decade or two, if then. Hydrogen for fuel cells would likely take half a century to have a substantial effect.
I think you can convince yourself that 'free energy' such as that suggested will have a negligable affect on global warming if you consider the enormous amount of solar energy incident on the earth. In comparison to our needs, I believe the amount of incident solar energy is a few orders of magnitude larger.Even if we do not go through a thermal cycle and have "direct electricity production" in the 500 GW production cell (haven't gotten the vaguest clue how to do this, we're in complete science fiction here), the 500 GW outlet will, in the end, turn into heat, no matter how you use it.
Once this waste heat, produced by all the devices plugged onto these pocket fusion engines, starts competing with the energy flux the Earth receives from the sun, we're in for a BIG climate change ! Even though the source is entirely "clean".
Q_Goest said:I think you can convince yourself that 'free energy' such as that suggested will have a negligable affect on global warming if you consider the enormous amount of solar energy incident on the earth. In comparison to our needs, I believe the amount of incident solar energy is a few orders of magnitude larger.
Q_Goest said:Regarding how our energy consumption/expenditure may affect global warming, I'd have to respectfully disagree with vanesch:
I think you can convince yourself that 'free energy' such as that suggested will have a negligable affect on global warming if you consider the enormous amount of solar energy incident on the earth. In comparison to our needs, I believe the amount of incident solar energy is a few orders of magnitude larger.
rikus said:hi, first post here-
question regarding this issue- if one would have a 40 miles long electric cable, would it be possible to strech it from Earth's mainland to outerspace? i mean physically, is it possible to do that?
i ask that because solar energy inside Earth is really lousy because of maintance and land costs and also the damaging effect of silicon-but if you would build a huge powerplant based on solar energy in orbit of earth, which is probably possible, all you would need is a cable that hold until the bottom of the earth...?
HallsofIvy said:How strong do these microwaves have to be to get through the atmosphere? What would happen if the microwave beam got slightly off line to the receiving station?
Wikipedia said:The beam's most intense section (the center) is far below the lethal levels of concentration even for an exposure which has been prolonged indefinitely. Furthermore, the possibility of exposure to the intense center of the beam can easily be controlled on the ground and an airplane flying through the beam surrounds its passengers with a protective layer of metal, which will intercept the microwaves. Over 95% of the beam will fall on the rectenna. The remaining microwaves will be dispersed to low concentrations well within standards currently imposed upon microwave emissions around the world. However, most people agree that further research needs to be done on the effects of these stray microwaves upon the environment. Likewise, more research upon the effects of microwave transmission upon the atmosphere needs to be carried out extensively.
The intensity of microwaves at ground level that would be used in the center of the beam can be designed into the system, but is likely to be comparable to that used by mobile phones. The microwaves must not be too intense in order to avoid injury to wildlife, particularly birds. Experiments with deliberate irradiation with microwaves at reasonable levels have failed to show any negative effects even over multiple generations.
It depends on the frequency. One would want to find a frequency for which absorption by water vapor would be minimal. One should realize that microwave ovens heat food by heating the water in the food. On the other hand, the density of water vapor is about 3 orders of magnitude less than water.Azael said:as far as I know the atmosphere is almost completely transparent to microwaves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave - I leave to one to verify with another source.The microwave range includes ultra-high frequency (UHF) (0.3-3 GHz), super high frequency (SHF) (3-30 GHz), and extremely high frequency (EHF) (30-300 GHz) signals.
Above 300 GHz, the absorption of electromagnetic radiation by Earth's atmosphere is so great that it is effectively opaque , until the atmosphere becomes transparent again in the so-called infrared and optical window frequency ranges.
Astronuc said:It depends on the frequency. One would want to find a frequency for which absorption by water vapor would be minimal. One should realize that microwave ovens heat food by heating the water in the food. On the other hand, the density of water vapor is about 3 orders of magnitude less than water.
Kurdt said:I always thought that was the major problem in global warming rather than any heating coming from electrical power being used. France is nearly 75% nuclear if I remember correctly but I have no idea what they do with their waste now (maybe vanesch will tell us).
Tzemach said:I have designed a pressure cylinder into which I inject water as a mist with a fuel injection system and the best part is I have a microwave amplifier in the cylinder to heat the mist quickly. Voila, almost instant steam and the batteries can be recharged while you drive. I can't wait until I am fully operational I will take great delight stopping at service stations to wash the windows and top up with water.
JustinLevy said:Seriously, the only way to solve the energy problem is to stop wanting so much energy.
eeka chu said:So we'll end up using kilowatts for computers and that could even go on to megawatts I suppose.
I don't think that's such a problem. The key is, not to be wasteful. Just because we have a lot of free energy to hand, let's spend and extra five minute designing a better chip that saves some juice per calculation.
Car manufacturers for instance. It shouldn't be an option for them to produce an engine that wastes more than 50% of it's fuel as heat in the same way that it's not tolerated if the car spontaneously burst into flames.
Perhaps as space based platforms become cheaper we might be able to deploy some form of solar collector farm in space, where the wattage will be much higher, and then direct the energy back through the atmosphere in a form that will undergo reduced absorption?
But I think fusion is probably the way it's going to go. We can't be far off now. And superconduction is still edging it's way forward with updates of the theory and some new conductors with impressive temperature requirements.
vanesch said:I think you underestimate the efforts of the engineers designing all that pretty stuff: cutting down on power is a MAJOR issue. Not so much for ecological reasons, but because waste heat is a major engineering pain.
The 50% is dictated by thermodynamics. A combustion engine will never be 100% (or even 80%) efficient. Internal combustion engines are already pretty efficient when it comes down to comparing them to what they potentially COULD do, within the limits of thermodynamics.
The problem is: getting the stuff up there. Costs a lot of energy and exhaust gasses.
I wonder what's this obsession with superconductors. In fact, I've SEEN
[snip]
So all that pain for less than 4% gain.
However, there's one TRUE potential application for superconductors in electricity distribution, which is instantaneous power storage and relief.
[snip]
superconductors don't like magnetic fields, and don't support high current densities.