Assuming that we go to making our own gasoline and diesel instead of importing it, what are the various ways to do it, what do they cost, and what are the bottlenecks?
Wind to electrolysis to methanol, storing some hydrogen for when the wind doesn't blow for a week.
Coal to syngas to methanol, storing some syngas for peaking power through turbines.
Steel production.
Coke production.
Iron ore production.
Tube and sheet production.
Pump and valve production.
Aluminum production.
Bauxite production.
Cement production.
Coal production.
Electricity production.
Manufacturing tool time.
Construction equipment and crane time.
I'm assuming that there is a limit on cheap oil shale, cheap coal gas, cheap oil, and cheap biomass. Though, we could always strip mine the landfills for paper and wood...
What do you mean by "cheap." Some numbers are needed for clarification. In general, there are NO "cheap" alternatives to oil. None. Zip. Nada. That is the problem.
Worse, there are no "cheap" technologies on the horizon.
Plenty of things work: nuclear, windmills, biomass, etc., but none of them are cheap. Something else I have found is that the closer you get to a technology and the more you get into the nuts and bolts of implementation, the more expensive it gets. For example, I am an enthusiast for windmills, but to actually put in my own wind turbine, . . . holy smokes, that is a huge investment. And trust me, they are prone to trouble. They break--especially towers that are engineered for 100 knot winds and then you get a 115 knot straight-line gust. The best ones are horribly expensive and of course require a huge monetary investment in batteries if you want energy independence (as opposed to feeding juice back into the grid). And windmills wear out. Nevertheless I love windmills and am now working on a somewhat deranged idea involving six-volt bicycle generators driven directly by big model-airplane propellors, and six-volt batteries wired in banks to provide twelve volts. However, I buy nothing new and salvage junk; it is just a fun project and not scalable.
One thing to look at in addition to cheapness is abundance. There is a LOT of wind, a LOT of coal, a LOT of biomass, and immense quantities of nuclear energy that can be produced if we go to breeder reactors. But I want to emphasize that none of these are cheap and easy to develop. However, the nuclear potential is way, way more than all the others combined, and the technology is on the shelf.
Also, you may hear a lot about EROI; I'd take some of these comments with a bucket of salt. For example, you can mine coal with a lot of capital and energy, as do Americans, or you mine it as the Chinese do, with lots of labor and little fossil fuel. Resources such as shale and tar sands can be developed with cheap labor (slaves, forced-labor from convicts, etc.) but in the U.S. and Canada we use lots and lots of fossil fuels for the machinery we use to mine these.
Where labor is expensive, much fossil fuel and capital will be used in the production of energy. Where labor is dirt cheap, e.g. in hell-holes such as Haiti, people gather what little wood or brush there is and make it into charcoal or burn it directly for cooking fuel, and in these cases very little fossil fuel is needed, except perhaps to grow some of the food to feed the people. In Haiti and other desperately poor societies, however, many people cannot afford, for example, artificial fertilizers for their meager gardens or fuel for irrigation pumps (or anything else, for that matter).
Saw a documentary on wave technology. Any hope there? The assertion was that it is cheaper than any of the other alternative energy sources. In addition, it is predictable: we can predict the output days in advance.
More importantly, it is out of synch with wind. Wave power is last week's wind power from some place out in the ocean. It is also intermittant, but in a different way.
We should try to avoid posting junk science on TOD.
Common scientific opinion is that wind makes waves.
No wind, no waves. There is no 1 week delay. It's fairly immediate. Even for a tsunami which has much longer wavelength, the effect is felt in hours not weeks.
The link supplied is over simplified with regard to waves, and more importantly swell propagation, however even this link includes the phrase:-
"But even when you feel no wind at all, you may encounter large swells created by distant storms."
When considering wave power, it is necessary to differentiate between:-
Wind generated waves - can be described as the waves created by wind blowing at that place and time.
Swell waves - waves that are generated elsewhere and have travelled from their place of origin.
The comment with reference to the short time interval before the effects of a tsunami are felt is misleading. Wave speed is directly related to wavelength, waves due to seismic disturbance typically have wavelengths measured in hundreds of kilometers as opposed to tens / hundreds of metres for normal swell. The effects of distance storms can be felt many days after the storm in distance locations.
I am aware of 2 companies with differing approaches to wave power, with systems approaching commercial reality.
I am an Alumni of Edinburgh University, and I spent the good part of 3 years studying/working in a building which housed Europe's largest wave tank at the time. The tank belonged to the University's Mechanical Engineering Departments "Wave Power Group" which was set up in the 70s during the Oil Crisis.
The group was headed by a guy called Stephen Salter who is now a professor there.
"His invention, Salter's Edinburgh Duck, continues to be the machine against which all others are measured. In small scale controlled tests, the Duck's curved cam-like body can stop 90% of wave motion and can convert 90% of that to electricity."
This amazing device was also seen as a major savour of coastal regions that get serious problems of erosion from wild seas.
Unfortunately by the time the design got recoginition, politics overtook it and the 'Duck' was totally discredited.
The UK Nuclear industry effectively killed it. The nail in the coffin was the (some consider deliberate) miscalculation of the duck's efficiency by an 'independent' analyst that meant the figure was out by a factor of 10.
I still hold great hope for the resurrection of Salter's Duck, and I hope that Stephen Salter gets the recognition he deserves within his lifetime.
Sorry, but this is no urban myth (if you have evidence otherwise, you need to post a reference to it).
The whole episode with Salter's Duck occurred while I was studying in the very same building where they developed the Duck itself. My best mate at the time was a Mech. Eng. student and everyone knew what had happened to the Duck. We all felt very frustrated that it seemed hopeless to save the project.
Lancaster Polytechnic did a trial of one tenth-sized prototypes in Loch Ness (The science TV program "Tomorrow's World" did a piece on it at the time) that proved that it was very effective at harnessing wave power, but that was just before the deliberate miscalculation of it's efficiency killed the project.
Recently, FujitaResearch released a report which said that:
"the 'Salter Duck' can produce electricity for less than $US0.05 per kWh"
I'm just glad that Stephen has stuck to his beliefs and carried on working on wave energy. I'm sure he will be rewarded for it eventually.
try this one:
(I have not studied it)
United States Patent 4,300,871
Laithwaite , et al. November 17, 1981
Method of, and apparatus for, extracting energy from waves
Abstract
In a method of, and apparatus for, extracting energy from waves on a liquid, the precession of a gyroscope in response to angular motion of a member in response to waves performs useful work by operating a hydraulic pump. Advantageously, pairs of gyroscopes having their rotors spinning in opposite directions are mounted in the member so as to balance the output torques of the gyroscopes.
Inventors: Laithwaite; Eric R. (c/o United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, 11 Charles II St., London SW1Y 4QP, GB2); Salter; Stephen H. (c/o United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, 11 Charles II St., London SW1Y 4QP, GB2)
Appl. No.: 107366
Filed: December 26, 1979
But the Mech. Eng guys knew exactly what this kind of wave was like and did many experiments (using the wave tank, of course) that proved the survivability and efficiency of the Duck (pdf warning). Now make sure your read it this time.
It is hard for Don to prove that something doesn't exist. You claim that a 1982 invention would have become operational if it hadn't been for a government/nuclear industry plot to eliminate it.
Stepback's link to a patent, in Salter's own name, doesn't provide much evidence either way. The 20+ year history of wave derived energy has not produced any commercially viable products. I don't believe this is because the only viable technology was invented, then misappropriated.
I would like to see Don provide more subsatantive documentation of his claims. However, in my mind, this one still should be filed under urban myth.
As Jack said: "I would like to see Don provide more subsatantive documentation of his claims"
You've been very negative in this thread without providing even one link to something that discredits the Duck. So how about it? Can you actually point us to some credible evidence that this is snakeoil?
While you are away looking, here are some other articles to keep the others amused while they wait (and wait, and wait...)
Science News article "Oceans of Electricity" "Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh and other researchers, mainly in the United Kingdom, devoted about a decade to the goal of building large-scale, 2,000-megawatt wave-energy plants. The collapse of that program--whether because of inadequate support or overly ambitious goals--left wave energy with a credibility problem and scared off investors. Now, wave energy is riding a new surge."
Australia's Research Institute for Sustainable Power's page on wave power: "The Salter Duck is able to produce energy extremely efficiently, however its development was stalled during the 1980s due to a miscalculation in the cost of energy production by a factor of 10 and it has only been in recent years when the technology was reassessed and the error identified."
This article from Glasgow's Strathclyde University actually criticises the Duck (i'm trying to help you out here, Don): "Due to the complicated design it is expected that it will take more years of development and is reckoned to be a `next generation' device." (Next generation, eh? Obviously years ahead of it's time!)
[The US DoE's "Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy"s web page on wave power] says: "Sophisticated mechanisms--like the Salter Duck--use the bobbing motion of the waves to power a pump that creates electricity." (hmmmm. Sophisticated snakeoil!)
Now, American institutions are much more capable of passing snakeoil, so this October 2005 White Paper from MIT is probably less believable :) (pdf warning). Here's a more complex quote: "One of the earliest innovations is the design by Professor Stephen Salter of the U. of Edinburgh. It consists of a long line of two-dimensional cams hinged on a horizontal axis near the sea surface and parallel to the shore. The cross-section resembles a tear-drop with a pointed beak facing the sea and a circular rear facing the shore. The diameter is large enough so that little energy is transmitted past the cams. Energy is extracted from the rolling motion of the cam. By adjusting the energy absorption rate optimally, the cam radiates waves that are equal in ampliutde but opposite in phase with the waves reflected by the mere presence of the cam. Hence all the incident wave energy can in principle be removed. There are two criteria for complete (ideal) absorption: (i) the cam motion must be resonated by the incident waves, and (ii) the power extraction rate must be equal to the rate of radiation damping carried by the radiated waves due to the cam motion. Because of its geometry, the device is widely known as Salter's Duck."
Man! Do you guys not even read the web-pages that people post references to? Obviously not.
Since you are too lazy to do it yourself, here is a paragraph from the Fujita Research Corporation Report that I posted a link to above:
"The 'Salter Duck' was developed in the 1970s by Professor Stephen Salter at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (email Shs@srv1.mech.ed.ac.uk) and generates electricity by bobbing up and down with the waves. Although it can produce energy extremely efficiently it was effectively killed off in the mid 1980s when a European Union report miscalculated the cost of the electricity it produced by a factor of 10. In the last few years, the error has been realised, and interest in the Duck is becoming intense."
Would you like to tell the Fujita Corporation that they are blowing smoke out their asses?
For god's sake look at the patent! Why would the address of two Edinburgh University researchers be filed as the "UK Atomic Energy Agency". Do you not think that the UKAEA might have wanted to 'field calls' from prospective clients? Maybe you guys think they just wanted to offer Stephen Salter a free forwarding service!
Now whether the miscalculation was deliberate or just an act of stupidity, the reality is that the European Union report 'stuck' enough to kill the project at the time.
As I said above, I just hope Stephen gets the recognition he deserves.
I have trouble just reading all of the comments. I think it is important to keep all crucial components of the argument withn the comments and provide links for support. I don't think it is fair to say someone else has to read 10 linked documents before they are allowed to respond to a comment.
Sorry Jack, but that is a falacious and specious arguement at best. Basically, you are saying "I'm to lazy to look at your evidence," and that is not an acceptable arguement.
Don made claims against the aforementioned invention. It has been proven to exist, and DuncanK backed up his claims adequately.
Salter Duck has too many parts to be economical. The Oscillating Collumn system needs only 2 check valves per collumn and some tubing going to a simple turbine-generator.
I did not say that the Duck was perfect, only that it was theoretically 90% efficient (something that Don refutes as "urban myth").
Technically, my 90% is actually incorrect because it is 90% efficient at extracting the energy from the 90% of the original wave that it absorbs. So it is actually only 81% efficient.
As the Strathclyde University article that I quoted above says: "Due to the complicated design it is expected that it will take more years of development and is reckoned to be a `next generation' device."
Now the Oscillating Wave Column (OWC) design (similar to the LIMPET 500 on Islay) may be simpler, but it is probably not as efficient as the Duck. Efficiency is not everything, of course.
Seems to me there is way way more solar than nuclear, like a couple of billion years worth, and the technology is just as on the shelf as breeders, maybe much more so (PV is not the only one, probably not the best either).
I sure wish somebody could point to us good people a believable source of honest thinking about the real cost of nuclear. Some people say cheaper than others, some say far more expensive. Which?
Well, it's cheaper than even coal at today's prices for fuel. My problem with nuclear is that a six inch howitzer would do a pretty good job of blowing up a reactor. Figure on how many howitzers are out there in the world and how easy it is to smuggle a fifteen ton cannon into America, and you can see why I'm not a fan or nuclear reactors.
Not to mention that the damned things can blow up all by themselves with no help from anybody but their operators...
Fast neutron, gas cooled, buried, low flux, convection cooled reactors are the only ones I would consider signing off on.
Graphite reactors store too much wigner energy and pressurised water is chemically unstable to reactor materials during loss of coolant, and both are too capitol intensive for low flux operation. Low flux is low power, and an expensive reactor has to operate at high power to make enough electricity to pay back it's construction cost.
Unfortunately, no one is building fast gas reactors and so regulators aren't getting wined and dined by anybody to allow them to be built.
Realistically, small, relatively low investment, and modular is the only thing that has a chance of ever being built. And that's pretty much nothing available in the U.S. right now.
Don, you may be interested in this vertical windturbine, which can stand extreme conditions and is not so prone to trouble. They also have better gains then the usual, and are soundless. http://www.windside.com
methanol is the easiest to produce liquid fuel fitting well in the existing infrastructure. You just need a carbon source, water and energy (whatever form it is)
methanol is also relatively clean (cleaner than ethanol/lower CO2 per unit of energy)
The biggest problem would be the source of carbon to produce methanol. The easiest source would be coal, but in this case the second process is the most efficient. On the other hand the second process has less efficiency than Fischer-Tropps liquification of coal to diesel. So in the end it may turn out that FT will be path of least resistance, which does not sound very nice in regard to Global Warming.
What I hope for is that somebody finds a way to separate CO2 from the atmosphere and use it as a feedstock to the first process. The energy needed might be produced by hydro/wind/solar/nuclear/tidal/whatever... The efficiency would be low but the good part is that we can scale up those sources (which are not nearly utilised) and produce lots of fuel even with low efficiency.
"What I hope for is that somebody finds a way to separate CO2 from the atmosphere and use it as a feedstock to the first process. The energy needed might be produced by hydro/wind/solar/nuclear/tidal/whatever... The efficiency would be low but the good part is that we can scale up those sources (which are not nearly utilised) and produce lots of fuel even with low efficiency."
Along with above what are the energy costs to recycle metals and glass versus new manufacture? I have heard pro's and con's both sides. Who has data to share?
I can't help thinking we are throwing a lot of metal "raw material" into dumps currently. A few years ago most of the recyclers went out of business because they couldn't get enough for their steel.
New glass made from recycled material does take significantly less energy, not just because you don't have to gather and transport new materials, but because melting glass requires significantly lower temperatures than getting raw sand to fuse. Just in the manufacturing stage there is about a 25-30% energy savings.
But even then it takes about 2.2 million Btus of energy are required to melt a ton of glass. More counting typical inefficiencies.
Clearly, by far the most energy friendly, cheapest, most effective way to recycle glass is to wash bottles and reuse then. This is of course what was done milk and soft drink bottle for decades, though many people today would think it is gross or weird. However, I suspect we will see low tech reuse strategies come back in the near future.
I don't buy much milk, but when I do buy it, it's from a local farm that washes and reuses its glass bottles. There's a $1 deposit on the bottles, but a lot of people don't return them anyway, because the bottles are so "cute."
It will heat up to 6.4 gallons per minute, which means you can theoretically run 2 showers at the same time. Versus a newer tank water heater you can save around $100 year.
You also get a $300 tax credit, making the $1000 pricetag a little more palatable.
My coworker is buying one to replace her ancient tank heater, and expects to save hundreds each year.
Now maybe you don't want to bet on NG. Well there are electrical versions as well, but they're smaller and designed to sit right by, say, a kitchen sink. I'm betting on NG because I'm hoping that Michigan will continue to have some usable NG (for residential at least) for the next couple of decades...
The Vulcanus Mark 4, is a state of the art microwave hot water delivery system for the 21st Century. It is a containment field otherwise known as a Faraday box, much like the ones used in your microwave oven at home. The unit size is 24x14x7.5 and weighs only 20lbs. It was designed to save on construction costs,
- Wind to electrolysis to methanol, storing some hydrogen for when the wind doesn't blow for a week.
- Coal to syngas to methanol, storing some syngas for peaking power through turbines.
Steel production.Coke production.
Iron ore production.
Tube and sheet production.
Pump and valve production.
Aluminum production.
Bauxite production.
Cement production.
Coal production.
Electricity production.
Manufacturing tool time.
Construction equipment and crane time.
I'm assuming that there is a limit on cheap oil shale, cheap coal gas, cheap oil, and cheap biomass. Though, we could always strip mine the landfills for paper and wood...
Worse, there are no "cheap" technologies on the horizon.
Plenty of things work: nuclear, windmills, biomass, etc., but none of them are cheap. Something else I have found is that the closer you get to a technology and the more you get into the nuts and bolts of implementation, the more expensive it gets. For example, I am an enthusiast for windmills, but to actually put in my own wind turbine, . . . holy smokes, that is a huge investment. And trust me, they are prone to trouble. They break--especially towers that are engineered for 100 knot winds and then you get a 115 knot straight-line gust. The best ones are horribly expensive and of course require a huge monetary investment in batteries if you want energy independence (as opposed to feeding juice back into the grid). And windmills wear out. Nevertheless I love windmills and am now working on a somewhat deranged idea involving six-volt bicycle generators driven directly by big model-airplane propellors, and six-volt batteries wired in banks to provide twelve volts. However, I buy nothing new and salvage junk; it is just a fun project and not scalable.
One thing to look at in addition to cheapness is abundance. There is a LOT of wind, a LOT of coal, a LOT of biomass, and immense quantities of nuclear energy that can be produced if we go to breeder reactors. But I want to emphasize that none of these are cheap and easy to develop. However, the nuclear potential is way, way more than all the others combined, and the technology is on the shelf.
Also, you may hear a lot about EROI; I'd take some of these comments with a bucket of salt. For example, you can mine coal with a lot of capital and energy, as do Americans, or you mine it as the Chinese do, with lots of labor and little fossil fuel. Resources such as shale and tar sands can be developed with cheap labor (slaves, forced-labor from convicts, etc.) but in the U.S. and Canada we use lots and lots of fossil fuels for the machinery we use to mine these.
Where labor is expensive, much fossil fuel and capital will be used in the production of energy. Where labor is dirt cheap, e.g. in hell-holes such as Haiti, people gather what little wood or brush there is and make it into charcoal or burn it directly for cooking fuel, and in these cases very little fossil fuel is needed, except perhaps to grow some of the food to feed the people. In Haiti and other desperately poor societies, however, many people cannot afford, for example, artificial fertilizers for their meager gardens or fuel for irrigation pumps (or anything else, for that matter).
There are no easy answers.
Common scientific opinion is that wind makes waves.
No wind, no waves. There is no 1 week delay. It's fairly immediate. Even for a tsunami which has much longer wavelength, the effect is felt in hours not weeks.
For more info, look here at the bottom picture
"But even when you feel no wind at all, you may encounter large swells created by distant storms."
When considering wave power, it is necessary to differentiate between:-
Wind generated waves - can be described as the waves created by wind blowing at that place and time.
Swell waves - waves that are generated elsewhere and have travelled from their place of origin.
The comment with reference to the short time interval before the effects of a tsunami are felt is misleading. Wave speed is directly related to wavelength, waves due to seismic disturbance typically have wavelengths measured in hundreds of kilometers as opposed to tens / hundreds of metres for normal swell. The effects of distance storms can be felt many days after the storm in distance locations.
I am aware of 2 companies with differing approaches to wave power, with systems approaching commercial reality.
http://www.oceanpd.com
http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com
It will be interesting to watch thier progress as they attempt to scale up.
Dave.
I am an Alumni of Edinburgh University, and I spent the good part of 3 years studying/working in a building which housed Europe's largest wave tank at the time. The tank belonged to the University's Mechanical Engineering Departments "Wave Power Group" which was set up in the 70s during the Oil Crisis.
The group was headed by a guy called Stephen Salter who is now a professor there.
To quote the Wikipedia section on the Wave Power page:
"His invention, Salter's Edinburgh Duck, continues to be the machine against which all others are measured. In small scale controlled tests, the Duck's curved cam-like body can stop 90% of wave motion and can convert 90% of that to electricity."
This amazing device was also seen as a major savour of coastal regions that get serious problems of erosion from wild seas.
Unfortunately by the time the design got recoginition, politics overtook it and the 'Duck' was totally discredited.
"According to sworn testimony before the House of Parliament, The UK Wave Energy program was shuttered on March 19, 1982 in a closed meeting, the details of which remain secret. The members of the meeting were recruited largely from the nuclear and fossil fuels industries, and the wave programme manager, Clive Grove-Palmer, was excluded."
The UK Nuclear industry effectively killed it. The nail in the coffin was the (some consider deliberate) miscalculation of the duck's efficiency by an 'independent' analyst that meant the figure was out by a factor of 10.
I still hold great hope for the resurrection of Salter's Duck, and I hope that Stephen Salter gets the recognition he deserves within his lifetime.
All this nonsense about technologies being "suppressed" gets aired on the Internet, but it is all nonsense, from the Pogue carburettor on.
Do you think the Japanese or Chinese would not instantly glom onto some technology that actually worked?
The whole episode with Salter's Duck occurred while I was studying in the very same building where they developed the Duck itself. My best mate at the time was a Mech. Eng. student and everyone knew what had happened to the Duck. We all felt very frustrated that it seemed hopeless to save the project.
Lancaster Polytechnic did a trial of one tenth-sized prototypes in Loch Ness (The science TV program "Tomorrow's World" did a piece on it at the time) that proved that it was very effective at harnessing wave power, but that was just before the deliberate miscalculation of it's efficiency killed the project.
Recently, FujitaResearch released a report which said that:
"the 'Salter Duck' can produce electricity for less than $US0.05 per kWh"
I'm just glad that Stephen has stuck to his beliefs and carried on working on wave energy. I'm sure he will be rewarded for it eventually.
Thank you.
(I have not studied it)
United States Patent 4,300,871
Laithwaite , et al. November 17, 1981
Method of, and apparatus for, extracting energy from waves
Abstract
In a method of, and apparatus for, extracting energy from waves on a liquid, the precession of a gyroscope in response to angular motion of a member in response to waves performs useful work by operating a hydraulic pump. Advantageously, pairs of gyroscopes having their rotors spinning in opposite directions are mounted in the member so as to balance the output torques of the gyroscopes.
Inventors: Laithwaite; Eric R. (c/o United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, 11 Charles II St., London SW1Y 4QP, GB2); Salter; Stephen H. (c/o United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, 11 Charles II St., London SW1Y 4QP, GB2)
Appl. No.: 107366
Filed: December 26, 1979
Two things to note about this patent:
- The date - not that it's boxing day (which is odd in itself), but this was right in Oil crisis territory (1979)
- Both the inventors have an addres co the UK Atomic Energy Authority
Now Don, please post a link to the article which details why this is an Urban Myth.Of course the device will work in an indoor tank with carefully controlled wind velocities.
Do you have the faintest idea what waves driven by gale force winds look like?
But the Mech. Eng guys knew exactly what this kind of wave was like and did many experiments (using the wave tank, of course) that proved the survivability and efficiency of the Duck (pdf warning). Now make sure your read it this time.
I did not find "the" patent.
Just did a quicky search for the named inventor.
There were more than one that matched for Stephen S...
go to uspto.gov
pick patent search
pick advanced search
use the "in/" specifier to formulate a boolean search that includes the named inventor
Stepback's link to a patent, in Salter's own name, doesn't provide much evidence either way. The 20+ year history of wave derived energy has not produced any commercially viable products. I don't believe this is because the only viable technology was invented, then misappropriated.
I would like to see Don provide more subsatantive documentation of his claims. However, in my mind, this one still should be filed under urban myth.
You've been very negative in this thread without providing even one link to something that discredits the Duck. So how about it? Can you actually point us to some credible evidence that this is snakeoil?
While you are away looking, here are some other articles to keep the others amused while they wait (and wait, and wait...)
Science News article "Oceans of Electricity"
"Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh and other researchers, mainly in the United Kingdom, devoted about a decade to the goal of building large-scale, 2,000-megawatt wave-energy plants. The collapse of that program--whether because of inadequate support or overly ambitious goals--left wave energy with a credibility problem and scared off investors. Now, wave energy is riding a new surge."
a little page at TechnologyStudent.com with cute animated GIFS of the Duck
Australia's Research Institute for Sustainable Power's page on wave power:
"The Salter Duck is able to produce energy extremely efficiently, however its development was stalled during the 1980s due to a miscalculation in the cost of energy production by a factor of 10 and it has only been in recent years when the technology was reassessed and the error identified."
This article from Glasgow's Strathclyde University actually criticises the Duck (i'm trying to help you out here, Don):
"Due to the complicated design it is expected that it will take more years of development and is reckoned to be a `next generation' device." (Next generation, eh? Obviously years ahead of it's time!)
[The US DoE's "Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy"s web page on wave power] says:
"Sophisticated mechanisms--like the Salter Duck--use the bobbing motion of the waves to power a pump that creates electricity." (hmmmm. Sophisticated snakeoil!)
Now, American institutions are much more capable of passing snakeoil, so this October 2005 White Paper from MIT is probably less believable :) (pdf warning). Here's a more complex quote:
"One of the earliest innovations is the design by Professor Stephen Salter of the U. of Edinburgh. It consists of a long line of two-dimensional cams hinged on a horizontal axis near the sea surface and parallel to the shore. The cross-section resembles a tear-drop with a pointed beak facing the sea and a circular rear facing the shore. The diameter is large enough so that little energy is transmitted past the cams. Energy is extracted from the rolling motion of the cam. By adjusting the energy absorption rate optimally, the cam radiates waves that are equal in ampliutde but opposite in phase with the waves reflected by the mere presence of the cam. Hence all the incident wave energy can in principle be removed. There are two criteria for complete (ideal) absorption: (i) the cam motion must be resonated by the incident waves, and (ii) the power extraction rate must be equal to the rate of radiation damping carried by the radiated waves due to the cam motion. Because of its geometry, the device is widely known as Salter's Duck."
Oh, and here's the Wave Power Group's official homepage at Edinburgh University (one of the UK's oldest Universities with a great tradition in snakeoil!)
It's 3am here now, so I better get to bed. I'll check back in the morning to see what you have come up with.
Since you are too lazy to do it yourself, here is a paragraph from the Fujita Research Corporation Report that I posted a link to above:
"The 'Salter Duck' was developed in the 1970s by Professor Stephen Salter at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (email Shs@srv1.mech.ed.ac.uk) and generates electricity by bobbing up and down with the waves. Although it can produce energy extremely efficiently it was effectively killed off in the mid 1980s when a European Union report miscalculated the cost of the electricity it produced by a factor of 10. In the last few years, the error has been realised, and interest in the Duck is becoming intense."
Would you like to tell the Fujita Corporation that they are blowing smoke out their asses?
For god's sake look at the patent! Why would the address of two Edinburgh University researchers be filed as the "UK Atomic Energy Agency". Do you not think that the UKAEA might have wanted to 'field calls' from prospective clients? Maybe you guys think they just wanted to offer Stephen Salter a free forwarding service!
Now whether the miscalculation was deliberate or just an act of stupidity, the reality is that the European Union report 'stuck' enough to kill the project at the time.
As I said above, I just hope Stephen gets the recognition he deserves.
Don made claims against the aforementioned invention. It has been proven to exist, and DuncanK backed up his claims adequately.
http://www.loc.gov/index.html
Technically, my 90% is actually incorrect because it is 90% efficient at extracting the energy from the 90% of the original wave that it absorbs. So it is actually only 81% efficient.
As the Strathclyde University article that I quoted above says:
"Due to the complicated design it is expected that it will take more years of development and is reckoned to be a `next generation' device."
Now the Oscillating Wave Column (OWC) design (similar to the LIMPET 500 on Islay) may be simpler, but it is probably not as efficient as the Duck. Efficiency is not everything, of course.
I sure wish somebody could point to us good people a believable source of honest thinking about the real cost of nuclear. Some people say cheaper than others, some say far more expensive. Which?
Not to mention that the damned things can blow up all by themselves with no help from anybody but their operators...
Fast neutron, gas cooled, buried, low flux, convection cooled reactors are the only ones I would consider signing off on.
Graphite reactors store too much wigner energy and pressurised water is chemically unstable to reactor materials during loss of coolant, and both are too capitol intensive for low flux operation. Low flux is low power, and an expensive reactor has to operate at high power to make enough electricity to pay back it's construction cost.
Unfortunately, no one is building fast gas reactors and so regulators aren't getting wined and dined by anybody to allow them to be built.
http://www.windside.com
- methanol is the easiest to produce liquid fuel fitting well in the existing infrastructure. You just need a carbon source, water and energy (whatever form it is)
- methanol is also relatively clean (cleaner than ethanol/lower CO2 per unit of energy)
The biggest problem would be the source of carbon to produce methanol. The easiest source would be coal, but in this case the second process is the most efficient. On the other hand the second process has less efficiency than Fischer-Tropps liquification of coal to diesel. So in the end it may turn out that FT will be path of least resistance, which does not sound very nice in regard to Global Warming.What I hope for is that somebody finds a way to separate CO2 from the atmosphere and use it as a feedstock to the first process. The energy needed might be produced by hydro/wind/solar/nuclear/tidal/whatever... The efficiency would be low but the good part is that we can scale up those sources (which are not nearly utilised) and produce lots of fuel even with low efficiency.
It already exists! It's called photosynthesis :-)
xuewen
Carbon monoxide is MUCH better/less energy to create methanol from than carbon dioxide.
I can't help thinking we are throwing a lot of metal "raw material" into dumps currently. A few years ago most of the recyclers went out of business because they couldn't get enough for their steel.
But even then it takes about 2.2 million Btus of energy are required to melt a ton of glass. More counting typical inefficiencies.
Clearly, by far the most energy friendly, cheapest, most effective way to recycle glass is to wash bottles and reuse then. This is of course what was done milk and soft drink bottle for decades, though many people today would think it is gross or weird. However, I suspect we will see low tech reuse strategies come back in the near future.
Buy a tankless water heater if you are using natural gas.
The Bosch 250SX is the one I am going to get:
http://www.boschhotwater.com/
It will heat up to 6.4 gallons per minute, which means you can theoretically run 2 showers at the same time. Versus a newer tank water heater you can save around $100 year.
You also get a $300 tax credit, making the $1000 pricetag a little more palatable.
http://www.energy.gov/taxbreaks.htm
My coworker is buying one to replace her ancient tank heater, and expects to save hundreds each year.
Now maybe you don't want to bet on NG. Well there are electrical versions as well, but they're smaller and designed to sit right by, say, a kitchen sink. I'm betting on NG because I'm hoping that Michigan will continue to have some usable NG (for residential at least) for the next couple of decades...
http://www.pulstech.com/
Microwave tankless hot water heaters.