Here’s Michaud’s business case pdf purporting 1) 4x improvement in cooling tower cost and 2) Cooling tower elex CAPX+OPEX purports superior levelized USD/kWh, however I don’t know how to interpret the “Fixed Operating Cost” column since it is given without a time dimension as “USD/kW”.
2 Likes
You wouldn’t believe the chain of events that led to me find this gifted woman. I’ll just say that not only do I have good reason to believe her, but I have good reason to believe that women in general can develop this gift to a greater degree than can men and that the growing conflict between men and women may be healed if women would do so.
PS: A word of caution is in order – my diagnosis of this divide leads me to believe it is part of a far greater divide going on at a planetary scale involving of technological civilization becoming space faring, leaving Earth in a more natural state of evolution. While “nature” is often associated with the feminine, and technology with the masculine, the exact opposite is the case for civilization. Masculinity entails individual masculine aggression, which civilization domesticates into group force called gangs, governments and war. So when women such as Suzy speak of “patriarchal toxicity”, they are, themselves, in for something of a surprise.
1 Like
The Kiwis are forging ahead with vortex energy generation:
The Kiwis pretty much had me sold on their ability to engineer wind systems when I was working at SAIC in La Jolla where some of our guys were doing engineering for the America’s Cup and the Kiwis handed our asses to us. I was unaware that the lead scientist at Vortex Power Systems was one of the actual team that did it!
Also in the news…
Graphene (a huge energy consumer in my prior calculations) from ocean plastic pollution could jump-start EdenCrete atolls:
Instant Upcycling of Microplastics into Graphene and Its Environmental Application
Abstract
Microplastic pollution poses a growing threat to ecosystems globally, necessitating sustainable solutions. This study explores upcycling microplastics into graphene as a promising approach Traditional methods like pyrolysis and catalytic carbonization are slow and compromise graphene quality. Flash Joule heating is fast but energy-intensive and hard to control. In contrast, atmospheric pressure microwave plasma (APMP) synthesis, the proposed technique, offers a one-step, environmentally friendly alternative. APMP operates at relatively lower temperatures, reducing energy consumption and providing precise control over process parameters. This study demonstrates that polyethylene microplastics from waste dropper bottles can be efficiently transformed into graphene using APMP synthesis. Raman spectroscopy of synthesized material reveals a spectrum characteristic of graphene-based materials, with indications of defects and the presence of oxygen content. X-ray diffraction illustrates the characteristic graphitic lattice, with a slightly larger interlayer spacing attributed to intercalated functional groups. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirms sp2 hybridized carbon as the major component. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy provides insights into the multilayered structure and variations in interlayer spacing. The as-synthesized pristine graphene exhibits nearly ten times greater efficiency in adsorbing perfluorooctanoic acid compared to the oxidized form of graphene, although it is slightly less effective than graphene-based nanocomposites.
5 Likes
Whoa! The externalities will be considerable though.
2 Likes
That’s one reason (of many) for targeting the eastern equatorial Pacific doldrums for deployment of the partially self-replicating algae atolls, rather than the use of industrial process waste heat. People get really hung up on the idea of “tornadoes” anywhere near humans and don’t even do the most basic cost benefit analysis where cost entails insurance – and the whole potential (energy) – which is gargantuan – remains without so much as the value of a single Silicon Valley ranch home being invested. Meanwhile the Harris administration says $10T/year is a proper level of investment in containing global warming. This, by the way, is only one reason to suspect no one is serious about global warming.
In point of fact, water spouts are not tornadoes anymore than landspouts or dust devils are tornadoes. The ground-level source of vorticity is why they are controllable by ground-level structures. While ground-level vorticity structures can be destructive, the risk is qualitatively different.
The main area of environmental concern of these vortexes if positioned in the doldrums is the overshoot into the stratosphere where it might introduce additional water vapor. However, that only obtains well beyond the point when the primary economic value has been tapped at lower altitude dispersion of the vortex.
4 Likes
“Global warming, a global energy resource” is a 2023 review that cites the previously linked OTEC approach that transports refrigerant rather than water. Although the approach of using refrigerant working fluid is more limited in prospective elex generation than is the atmospheric vortex engine approach, it relies on technologies that are less controversial.
Either way, there is an exploding demand for baseload elex generation due to the need for high capital utilization rates of capital intensive ML hardware for frontier models and the capital cost of the elex gen facilities are less important than avoiding jurisdictional restrictions on expansion of baseload elex generation. I don’t think nukes will be able to fill this gap as easily as non-nuke approaches.
Thermal Science and Engineering (2023) Volume 6 Issue 2
doi: 10.24294/tse.v6i2.5268
1
Review Article
Global warming, a global energy resource
Jim Baird
Thermodynamic Geoengineering, 3217 Jingle Pot Road, Nanaimo, BC, V9R 7C6, Canada;
jim.baird@gwmitigation.com
ABSTRACT
Global warming is a thermodynamics problem. When excess heat is added to the climate system, the land warms
more quickly than the oceans due to the land’s reduced heat capacity. The oceans have a greater heat capacity because of
its higher specific heat and the heat mixing in the upper layer of the ocean. Thermodynamic Geoengineering (TG) is a
global cooling method which deployed at scale would generate 1.6 times the world’s current supply of primary energy
and remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. The cooling would mirror the ostensible 2008–2013 global
warming hiatus. At scale 31,000 1-gigawatt (GW) ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plants are estimated to be
able to: a) displace about 0.8 watts per square meter (W/m2
) of average global surface heat from the surface of the ocean
to deep water that could be recycled in 226-year cycles, b) produce 31 terawatts (TW) (relative to 2019 global use of 19.2
TW and c) absorb about 4.3 Gt CO2 per year from the atmosphere by cooling the surface. The estimated cost of these
plants is $2.1 trillion per year or 30 years to ramp up to 31,000 plants which are replaced as needed thereafter. Compared
for example to the cost of world oil consumption that in 2019 was $2.3 trillion for 11.6 TW. The cost of the energy
generated is estimated at $0.008/KWh
1 Like
Something I’ve wanted to incorporate into the design of the algae atoll structural material:
3D printed concrete, quasi-bone porosity to enhance buoyancy of the atoll while also increasing resilience to stress fractures due to wave dynamics.
Until this paper, I hadn’t thought of investigating the unique properties of different kinds of bones since all had some degree of porosity, although I had thought of, but had not gotten around to investigating, bird bones due to their evolutionary direction toward light-weight strength and resilience.
This approach may apply to CPVC as well as concrete.
4 Likes
Very interesting… I’ve seen someone else come up with interesting ideas along these lines:
2 Likes