YOU!: Fix the US Energy Crisis

Low-Q

It is just a matter of will and minor engineering to make this an efficient engine. Positive displacement engines already exist in pneumatic powertools, however the air/diesel/gasoline mixdure is sucked in, compressed and combusted in one revolution instead of having supplied high pressure air from outside. The combustion is the pressure which runs the motor - just like in any piston engine. I'm not saying this is a good idea, just an idea that will work with as few components as it is possible to have in an engine - two rotating parts with two different central axis in order to make torque possible.

Vidar

Crazymechanic

Well weapons is both an interest for nations security and also for the criminal world but there is a big difference.
Drugs , well whoever considers that a business has failed since the very thought came into his mind.Drugs , weapons sales and human trafficking are the kind of business which is done by people who either have no better brain to achieve something in other more complicated fields like science or who just care for alot of money but are not ready to sacrifice something from their own life, like learning and knowledge.This thread is not about those reasons but I must say that the human selfishness is playing a large role not only why we have wars and all kinds of criminal activity in the world but it's also playing a large role in the energy crisis , because energy is just as much as it is the resources are finite and we have to use them responsibly.
There is another issue that right now we are still living in a consumer type oriented society I think the future will bring changes to that as we have to realize that sharing and cutting your self comfort is not only because prices for that comfort like energy will be higher but also the environment will and is already showing signs of that.


Speaking about the engine you presented @Low-Q I really don't think it will work with much efficiency nor do I think that it is some kind of alternative to anything.
Honestly speaking we can ofcourse imagine that one day people will wait for water to completely give it's heat off to the room or turn of air conditioning just to enjoy a few extra degrees and stuff like that but let's be real the general public doesn't live, hasn't lived and probably won't live like that.There are many reasons for that I won't go inot them now but fact is fact.
I think we have to use the resources we have right now with as much care as we can while we haven't invented better ones.
Speaking about electric cars there are two factors in play the first one is how do we make the battery or energy storage technology so great that the mileage and recharging is atleast slightly comparable to that of existing gas/diesel engines.
The second problem is how do we produce the electricity in future.If we just introduce clean electric cars to the public but still continue to produce that electricity in coal power plants it is then useless to have an electric car, as the electricity is coming from a "dirty" source.
basically real time physics is no wonderland I think the best we can is to maximize the energy output of solar panels and use them in our building designs and house roofpanels.
Top use wind power in countryside where it does not hurt that much to have a large spinning blade up in the sky.
Use nuclear power for the main grid , new generation safe nuclear reactors.No problem.
And as long as we have fossil fuels with us keep them as efficiently used as possible stop the power is cool thing and just use them as careful as we can, I think the price of the oil and the problems associated with it will regulate the usage themselves, they already are doing that.We all know there will be no more cheap oil so we have nothing but to start to understand that and count our options.
Also we could use more LPG in our vehicles as gas produces far less pollution when burned and is also cheaper to drive atleast for now.
And then there is FUSION ofcourse but for now on we still have like some 30 years for the real deal if there ever will be one.Sad to say but just because we know how it works and have made it to blow in a H bomb doesn't really help that much making it a viable and real source for civil electricity purposes.One day ofcourse the questions is when that day is going to come and how are we going to live and change our mindsets till that day.

Felchi

Funnily, I haven't heard much discussion about geothermal or tidal energy. While nuclear has few advantages we have to keep in mind that there are risks associated with it and acting like "grown ups with responsibility and extreme care" won't erase human error.

As a side note, why do power plants allow steam to turn turbines and then escape into the atmosphere? Can't they have the steam condense and pour it back down into another set of turbines? Wouldn't this recycle the water used?

Most Curious

You are mistaken. Nuclear and fossil fuel power plants DO recover the turbine exhaust and condense the steam, recycling the water. That water is super pure and a fair amount has been invested in processing it. The condensers are actually good enough to pull a vaccum on the turbine outlet. Geothermal plants are a bit different and I do not know enough about their cycle to comment.

Tidal? So far no practical and effective method has emerged to capture much of that energy. Geothermal is very location dependent. Not all that many places that it is practical. Same for hydro.

In practical terms, fossil and nuclear are likely the primary source of electrical energy far into the future.

OmCheeto

I watched a video of Chris Hadfield this morning. He said something to the effect, that we are in a transitional period. (His comment was totally unrelated to the energy crisis, but everything I see, hear, and think about, is a metaphor for something else.)

One only needs to have the will, and the energy will be captured.

Of course, one needs waves.

Kitzhaber Thanks LCDC, Stakeholders For Adopting Guidelines On Limited Wave Energy Development

By Albany Tribune -- (January 28, 2013)
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Besides being our governor, John also serves as the director of the Center for Evidence Based Policy.
I like the idea of evidence based policy.
I like to think that that is the reason I voted for him for governor.
I would like to see him run for president one day, but he likes blue jeans.
I'm not sure he would like Washington DC, nor they, him.
Though he did get invited, and accepted the invitation to, the president's inauguration.
He got to sit with Michelle.

Crazymechanic

The thing is we need something that can produce alot of energy in a small as possible space.
If the amount of people on this planet would be like a 50 million then we could have wind farms and solar panels all around the globe but that is not the case.
We have to somehow manage to produce the needed energy in a small space.Pretty much nuclear is the answer.
Ofcourse there is a chance of human error but then again we all have to pay for our mistakes that's just the way this world operates.
There is no free path to happiness someone always has to sacrifice something even his life in some cases.Well that would go into philosophy that's why i'm about to leave it there.

Felchi

Isn't there an issue with nuclear waste?

Crazymechanic

in terms of radioactivity and danger yes.
But in terms of the waste amount vs. the energy that it produced it's a winner.
By the way I'm pretty sure that waste can be reproduced and used as MOX fuel , it's rather a political thing not so much of a science problem.

Felchi

Not to be overly sadistic or cynical, but in that case the solution would appear to be:

1. Place nuclear power plants in isolated, uninhabited areas e.g. the Sahara and other deserts

2. Place nuclear power plants in obscure, poor communities where acccidents can easily be covered up.

3. Place nuclear power plants in Third World Countries where workers can be outsourced and if something catastrophic happens, most of the world won't care. Which is sad, but likely.

Drawing power from various sources (e.g. wind, tidal, geothermal) seems to be a good idea, as to prevent excessive reliance on one power source.

OmCheeto

Your post strikes me as what is already going on across the globe.

And this also reminds me of an incident where a PF'er and I came to have a severe disagreement. Being that we are both advocates of Nuclear energy, I found it a bit difficult to call him out on what I've always considered one of my pet peeves: "Not in my backyard"

I do not have a problem with the closure of Yucca Mountain. I also don't have a problem with keeping Nuclear waste on site, in the facility that generated it. I understand that there are financial considerations, but I don't like(aka: hate) the idea of shipping one's problems "somewhere else". (google "7th generation"...)

I'm pretty sure I disagree with 99% of the people in my state, when I say that I have no problem with drilling for Natural gas off of our coastline. Canada is being shredded for its precious "Coal Tar" oil. I personally find it obscene. But people in my state run around in gasoline powered cars everyday, and they're now saying; "We shouldn't let train loads of coal run through our state, to export to China, because, it's dirty", makes me want to puke.

I don't like hypocrisy.

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ok to delete.

ps. only 450 days, until, "something wonderful" happens.

russ_watters

Conspiracy theory nonsense aside, I don't see how this follows. Coal power kills roughly 15,000 a year in the United States alone, 170,000 people globally. The worst that can be said about nuclear power is that it likely killed a few thousand people due to excess cancers from Chernobyl, but these are un-provable as they are too small and widely dispersed to be extracted reliably from statistics.

There are no accident scenarios possible that can bring nuclear power into the same order of magnitude, even if we increase it by an order of magnitude to provide most of the world's power. Not even an annual Chernobyl or Fukushima would do it.

So far, wind and solar have killed more than nuclear has!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamescon...e-always-paid/
[edit] I read those numbers wrong - those are deaths per trillion kWh. They are normalized to account for differences in production. The US makes about 2 trillion kWh in coal power per year.

Also, these numbers include deaths by workers during construction, mining and production of the power.

Redbelly98

Locating them in the desert would make it difficult to supply the water that is to be heated.

mheslep

Yes, for the current Rankine cycle, low temperature designs. But high temperature reactors are theoretically possible and they could work on a Brayton cycle without water.

mheslep

Interestingly a high temp experimental reactor has recently been approved - the HT3R in Texas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HT3R

Traxfam

Here is a different type of plan to fix the energy crisis, best of all it doesn't require any new technology (in the long run it would drive technology change). In three easy steps.

Step 1: Tax Coal at 10%, Natural Gas at 2%, all other fossil fuels somewhere in between depending on carbon emmissions, renewable carbon sources (biomass, ethanol, biodiesel, methane generated from renewables, etc) would be exempt from the tax.

Step 2: Tax goes up by 1% per year

Step 3: 60% of revenue generated is used to finance non carbon renewables in the form of tax credits, 20% is used to finance research into noncarbon alternatives, and 20% for administrative cost.

USAGeorge

Forget about solar and windmills fund led lights,USA made by subsidy and regulation.....
Lighting is apx 17% of electric use and LED lights use 90% less energy. That translates to a 15% reduction of electric use for every household in the USA. Energy problem resolved for the near term.

par10

My first post so apologies if I am repeating what others have already said.

Yes we must replace our reliance on oil and gas for the generation of electricity and as the power medium of our transport, even though the use of fracture drilling technology has greatly increased the availability of gas in the USA and hopefully it will here in the UK and other areas around the globe.

I say hopefully because we need the breathing room that the new reserves of gas will give us in order to finally put a power generation strategy into place that is cogent and not one based on hypotheticals.

Nuclear, Wind, Wave and Solar are all green scources of power, Nuclear is much maligned and its dangers are so exagerated that the facts are lost in myth, Seven Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima have proven that the world does not end when a nuclear power plant is destroyed or badly damaged.

What is the consensus on this forum about the arguments put forward by Harry Braun in the review paper of 2008 The Phoenix Project: Shifting To A Solar Hydrogen Economy By 2020 ??

Given that all power generation has its peak demands and that during 20:30 and 06:00 most generating plants are running well below capacity if at all, is there not an argument for Hydrogen production during off peak times to supplement the fuel demands of peak time power generation.

In the UK coal fired power plants have been taken off line to meet the Green criteria that the former Government signed up to at that time, these plants were still perfectly functional and had a profitable working life left except for the fact that they were coal fired, the UK is now left with the spectre of a power shortage in the not to distant future because green technology has not producing power in the required quantity that was promised, as we know Wind power, Solar power and Wave power do need specific environmental criteria to be in place for power to be produced.

Nuclear works at all times regardless of weather or time of day, is compact regarding surface area but cannot compete with the negative arguments put out by the many pressure groups that exist.

Is there not an argument for the production of off peak Hydrogen utilising Wind, Wave, Hydro, Gas and Nuclear power plants to run existing Coal fired power plants that have or are due to be decommissioned?