![]() | DrumBeat: November 6, 2007 | The Oil Drum | Energy and Environment News Updates (and an open thread as Tapis JUST HIT $100!--see comments!) | ![]() |
61 comments on The needs and use of water for power, industrial plants and people
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
61 comments on The needs and use of water for power, industrial plants and people
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
- What "Lower Consumption" Means
- Tricking and Treating the Future
- Meeting Energy Decline Part-Way - Potatoes?
TOD:Europe
- The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction - Part IV: Energy from Breeder Reactors and from Fusion?
- The US stimulus and "green jobs"
- EROWI - energy return of water invested
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- The Bullroarer - Saturday 7th November 2009
- The Bullroarer - Friday 30th October 2009
- Details of Solar Flagships Released
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.”
—Francis Bacon, Essays
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.










GAIA Host Collective
I know next to nothing about power station engineering. However, I'm curious to know whether it would be possible to use a working fluid with a higher boiling point than water, thus having the overall system hot enough to boil the cooling water and implement HO's idea?
Also, some loss of efficiency could be tolerated if the value of the desalinated water was high enough (and that of the sea salt - which would have to be mechanically removed somehow).
Quick answer: yes, it's possible, but very expensive in capital and loss of efficiency.
In power engineering there are 'topping' cycles, and 'bottoming' cycles.
Topping cycles are designed to use a fluid that can be handled effectively at temperature for which H2O offers serious difficulties. One fluid that I have heard of being used in this application is Mercury. It boils at higher temperature. The vapor maintains reasonably high density at very high temperatures. The condenser can be used to warm the H2O on its way to the main boiler. Condensing the Mercury is technically very easy. Keeping the piping absolutely leak free probably requires different gasket materials than H2O. Topping cycles have some importance in coal fired plants and less importance in nuclear plants because it is often hard to keep the reactor from melting at typical temperatures of topping.
Bottoming cycles are used in solar boiling water power stations. The fluid is one that boils at a lower temperature than H2O. Various fluids that have application in refrigeration systems also are used here. Boiling the fluid is done in the steam condenser. Recondensing the vapor is done in yet another condenser which itself requires either
cool air or cool water to carry away the reject heat. Bottoming cycles allow the use of a higher density vapor at low temperatures. This allow the use of physically smaller turbines.
I a physicist. I don't know much detail about these systems. There a lot of tricky ideas that have been tried to improve the efficiency of power plants. Part of the design process is figuring out how to build plants that have good survival under the stress of handling the nasty fluids and vapors. I suggest that great caution be exercised discussing this technology. A lot has been left out of THIS presentation. BEWARE!
Sorry, but when I first went to the csp site I found a neat little video that showed that an oil was used to carry the heat from the collectors to the power plant, at several hundred degrees. It doesn't appear to be there now, though there is one at Youtube on the subject. Pity since it showed off the project quite well, and I had thought I had referenced it.