Author Topic: Some facts around the world (Read 4609 times)

Goose · « **on:** July 16, 2006, 07:36:32 PM »

First off, good news!! You don't have to be clairvoyant anymore to know what is going to be in most of the messages on this board. All you have to do is read the subject line. If you don't like the subject DON'T READ IT!!

Some facts in the new Pop Sci magazine. They even say NUCLEAR is really working out there!! They are not just "fools goals"!!

-- 75% of France's electricity generated by NUCLEAR power, the highest anywhere. U.S. only 20%

--93% of homes in Iceland heated by geothermal power. Rich in both geothermal and hydroelectric power, Iceland is now using those sources to charge fuel cells for busses and, by 2040, all vehicles. (I think Nando may be correct with his assumption on Hydrogen, just my personal opinion)

--1:2 ratio of CO2 emmissions Japan creates to generate $1 of economic activity, to the amount the U.S emits for the same returns. Japan does more with less, thanks to NUCLEAR power, residential solar power and tough effeciency standards for home appliances.

--20% of Denmark's electricity provided by wind turbines. Wind will supply 25% of the country's power by 2008 and 40 percent of it by 2030. In the U.S., wind turbines make .4%of electricity. (good news, my home state of SD ( which ranks 2nd in wind power potenial) just anounces 100 wind turbines going up near Brookings. Up to 200 megawatts!)

--By the year 2020 Sweden aims to free its economy of fossil-fuel dependency. Thanks to NUCLEAR and hydropower, Sweden now gets 35% of its energy from oil, coal and gas, versus 77% in 1970. Fossil fuels are 86% of U.S. energy demand.

--127 Megawatts of electricity-enough for 40,000 homes-produced by a new solar-thermal hybrid power station planned for sun-rich Egypt.

--40% of Brazil's gasoline demand already met with sugarcane-based ethanol. The country is the world's leader in ethanol production.

--30,000,000 households in China that rely on solar water heating. No electricity is required--the simple $150 devices heat water in roof-mounted exchangers from which sunwarmed water is drawn for showers and dishwashing.

--Next year, in a Los Angeles desert farm, we will see 37 foot diameter stirling dish's track the sun, and heat a collector, where it will power a stirling engine and then turn a generator. Powing up to 278,000 homes.

This is my favorite one, since I have made a few of these hot-air engines. If I only had plans to make one that produced over 5HP, I would then forget about the wind power.

JW · « **Reply #1 on:** July 16, 2006, 02:14:24 PM »

Hi there Goose,

Yes its cooked, But i have minimal comments, etc.

Who ever said hydrogen was just an energy carrier is correct, but the process of extracting hydrogen from water, is not relized as depelting a finite resource such as water, the source of the hydrogen. Remember, the cycle of energy, and water released by a fuel cell reaction, is on the order of 5% total water released, to the 100% water yousd to fuel that reaction(from electrolisis water source, and what happens to the extra oxygen?). HYDROGEN DOES NOT OCCUR ANYWHERE NATURALLY ON THE PLANT EARTH. It must be separated from a hydrogen rich source such as methane hydride(formerly known as,hydrogen xtal's at the bottom of the ocean, coal, water, etc).

"--93% of homes in Iceland heated by geothermal power. Rich in both geothermal and hydroelectric power, Iceland is now using those sources to charge fuel cells for busses and, by 2040, all vehicles. (I think Nando may be correct with his assumption on Hydrogen, just my personal opinion)"

NOW what is the quote exactly saying Goose.

"Iceland is now using those sources to charge fuel cells for busses and, by 2040, all vehicles."

No, I believe its derive hydrogen from water, with surplus energy(electricy from there grid). Granted they dont need de-salination plants because the got so much frozen fresh water. But the problem is the same. There not charging fuel cells with any greater advantage than a 4 to 1 loss, but hey its surplus energy.

I suspect you are infact correct.

And no I dont want to get into fuelcells were uposta be a better battery technology.

Takes a deep breath

"--40% of Brazil's gasoline demand already met with sugarcane-based ethanol. The country is the world's leader in ethanol production."

Last I saw on FOX's News (please forgive me) these guys were at 100%(really) or scheduled to reach that number real soon. Definitly claiming they could be 100% energy independant with there current system, from there own crops..

Its all good really, I kid about as much as I can, Goose.

JW

ps, Are hot the air engines related to flow batterys?

TomW · « **Reply #2 on:** July 16, 2006, 02:36:27 PM »

Goose;

OK, haha got me with your first paragraph. Too bad it is complete and utter BULL. Learned very early on you cannot judge a book by it's cover and the same goes for a comment / story title. If this title said "Free Viagra" would you expect it to contain free Viagra?

Do you read all the junkmail because it says "Free cash" available with just your bank account number? You may well, I do not, however.

It is your Diary so carry on but cheap shots are from cheap people. Thanks for proving my theory.

End of comment as far as I am concerned.

T

JW · « **Reply #3 on:** July 16, 2006, 02:41:59 PM »

Well,

My excuse is that I saw the movie "THE CORE" yesterday and im all physic'ed up, I just want to save the world. Grinns (;

JW

TomW · « **Reply #4 on:** July 16, 2006, 02:51:09 PM »

As far as the rest of the Diary is concerned the first paragraph led me to believe I could not actually trust your reposting of the info to be accurate because you might well take the title of a document as the actual content of the document without further investigation. Can't have it both ways, sir. The info could be factual but I read recently that Brazil is at 100% independent on motor fuel at this time not some partial amount. That also brought me negative thoughts on your accuracy.

OK more than anyone wants to hear on this from me anyway.

Nando · « **Reply #5 on:** July 16, 2006, 03:00:40 PM »

HYDROGEN :

There are too many BELIEVING that HYDROGEN is a energy carrier -- that unhappily is a fallacy that few understand .

HYDROGEN is the source of NATURE -- ACTUALLY, due to our earth ignorance in how to dis-associate Hydrogen from, in this case, Oxygen, there have being a bunch of relative knowledgeable people = readjusting = their brains to make such statement.

YES, actually takes more energy to separate H from O in the water and that is the THRONE that some have used to keep saying that HYDROGEN is an energy carrier.

It would be the day when the proper parameters are implemented to separate water with energy efficiency -- the parameters are known -- but we do not have the technology YET.

It will come sooner or later, we need to see that with one cubic mile of water earth may have all the needed energy even to be able to include local weather stability and elimination of arid places due to the "easy way" to get the energy for projects that presently are quite energy costly.

EASY WAY because the parameters that are required to fulfill may generate a chain reaction (non - atomic) to produce large amounts of Hydrogen and Oxygen.

Actually, high temperature ( 4000 F) will separate H20, there are now experiments using high temperature (1800 F) for border line dis-association feeding this to high temperature FUEL CEllS -- calculations seem to show that the energy gain is many fold if using a nuclear device to maintain such high temperature process.

If such experiment does go forward the SAYERS of "Hydrogen is an energy carrier element" -- WILL quite for ever.

Nature is Savvy -- gave us 3/4 of earth with water, - 1 cubic mile may reduce the ocean height by about 0.001 inches not counting the replenishing processes that actually occur in the earth surface and atmosphere.

Nando

JW · « **Reply #6 on:** July 16, 2006, 03:36:24 PM »

Nando, Nando, Nando,

What you say?

Im only doing this post(I promised my self no more tonite) Because I think TOMw needs some back-up. After-all whynot.

"HYDROGEN is the source of NATURE -- ACTUALLY, due to our earth ignorance in how to dis-associate Hydrogen from, in this case, Oxygen, there have being a bunch of relative knowledgeable people = readjusting = their brains to make such statement"

Nando, This is only the case IF hydrogen is derived from water...

You, of all people should knoe, that if hydrogen is derived from any source other than water, carbon with be the by-product, not significant amounts of oxygen. I was just making the point, that hydrogen does not occur(collect) anywhere near, or close to the surface of planet earth. You know this is a fact. The hydrogen is locked up in something, always. this is how we get our hands on any typical ore(which can be liquid)...

No one here is denying that when hydrogen is processed thru any fuelcell it's not a 100% percent efficient reaction. Ok, so you got so much hydrogen from somewhere, I hope its not from my fresh water drinking supply, just cause it has 40 meg ohm's. Face it, ALL of that enrgy is burned up eventually in the form of heat, regardless of the efficientcy #. unless your using hydrogen superconductor's on all your output appliances?...

Nevermind.

JW

richhagen · « **Reply #7 on:** July 16, 2006, 04:05:54 PM »

Some interesting stuff there. I haven't seen that issue of Popular Science at this point. I will have to take a look at it when I get the chance.

I like the bio-fuels, I think that is sustainable, I just don't know if the U.S. can make enough of them. The last figure I can find, for 2005 shows that Brasil still consumes 1.61 million barrels per day of oil. They now produce more than they consume with about 2 million barrels per day of production. They had in the past been a net importer. At a usage rate of about 20 million barrels a day, the U.S. uses much more oil than Brasil. The U.S. has about 9.63 million square kilometers compared to 8.51 million in Brasil, however, Brasil gets better solar insolation, with a majority of the country being tropical and subtropical. They have the ability to grow sugar cane on much of there airable land which enables them to produce more gallons of ethanol per square kilometer than would be possible in the U.S. now.

I didn't have CO2 data to compare, but he data on the Japenese electricity usage is telling. The GDP of Japan (2005) was 4.664 trillion U.S. dollars approximately. The electricity consumption was 946.3 billion KWH. For the U.S. the GDP was about 12.49 Trillion and the electric usage was 3.656 trillion KWH. This figures to a ration of 4.83 dollars of productivity per KWH for Japan and 3.42 dollars of productivity per KWH for the U.S. These figures (from the U.S. Government's world factbook) include all electricity usage, not just industrial as I didn't find any reliable published figures dividing the quantities.

While this differs from the CO2 2/1 ration you cited from the magazine, it represents a huge cost advantage I would think. It probably frees up more resources for other things to improve the quality of their products. Conservation is cheaper than generation at least to a point.

I think it is wonderful for iceland if they are able to take advantage of the hydro-power and geothermal energy available there. The last I knew, they had three hydrogen powered buses on the roads in Reykavic, and they stored the hydrogen in gas cylinders on the roof. Those buses were proving more costly to operate, although popular in the country. It is neat if they can take locally available energy and power all of the private and public vehicles in the country, but they are still quite a few years away I would guess, even with the large investments by Shell, Diamler, and the European Union and local interests in the project. I would also point out, however, that there are more people and cars within a few miles around where I sit typing this than there are in all of Iceland, which has about 300,000 people (even though they have a high ratio of cars to people). The scale of the energy problem is different. Iceland used about 3.619 billion KWH of electricity in 2001, less than 1 tenth of a percent of U.S. consumption, to build the infrastructure to produce and transport the hydrogen and to convert the vehicle fleet in the U.S. to hydrogen, even with a massive conservation effort, is at best quite a few years off. Rich

richhagen · « **Reply #8 on:** July 16, 2006, 04:20:46 PM »

Tom, You mean we can't trust the honest spammers and con artists to post an accurate title on their posts? The poor man from nigeria who wanted me to send him my bank information to help him move some millions of dollars out of his country for a 10% assistance fee wasn't telling the truth? My gosh, what is this world comming too.

Tom, I did appreciate your efforts. If you ever make it East by Chicago, let me know, and you will have my humble roof over your head, a hot meal, cold beverages and a tour of my town waiting for you. Rich

TomW · « **Reply #9 on:** July 16, 2006, 04:29:11 PM »

Rich;

Thank you for the supporting words and the friendly and generous offer. I seldom venture East of the Mississippi these days but we used to go to the blues bars over your way in my wild youth. If I get the opportunity to go East again I will keep you in mind. Last time was to Indiana, Kentucky and south thru Georgia back in '98 or something. I tend to avoid the Chicago / Gary metro area if possible due to the insane traffic.

Cheers.

TomW

dinges · « **Reply #10 on:** July 16, 2006, 04:33:16 PM »

Them Nigerians read this board too, BTW.

A couple of months ago I posted a question on this board on advice of buying a small 20W PV panel. A little later, someone (who misunderstood the post) wanted to buy my panel (thought I was selling, instead of buying, I suppose). He happened to be in Nigeria too. Told me how to send it to him. And how he was going to pay for it.

Him being in Nigeria and all, he probably has much better use for it than I. His insolation situation will probably be better than mine.

I write this as I'm looking at that panel right now.

Peter.

kitno455 · « **Reply #11 on:** July 16, 2006, 05:26:19 PM »

recent story on NPR indicated that all 400+ nuclear reactors in the world are heavily government subsidized, and cannot compete with natural gas and coal even now, on a $ basis. and it seems that populations dont demand change until it hits them in the pocketbook....

allan

DanB · « **Reply #12 on:** July 16, 2006, 05:42:30 PM »

I think fossil fuels are fairly heavily subsidized as well. I expect the real cost of them would blow peoples minds.

Goose · « **Reply #13 on:** July 16, 2006, 05:56:36 PM »

I don't know if that is true or not, but I would rather have subsidized clean energy than something that is destroying our planet.

hiker · « **Reply #14 on:** July 16, 2006, 06:14:54 PM »

how about 12cents a gallon for fuel--i was watching are public service station a while back--and i think it was brazil that had fuel for 12cents a gallon..some millionair went over there to check out there homegrown fuel--he said it could be done over here[usa]..even prarie grass works great,,some big oil companys aproached him and said--uknown we could lower the price of fuel if you go through with this..

havent heard anything sence...just goes to show you whoes really in power ..

nothing new.

Goose · « **Reply #15 on:** July 16, 2006, 06:21:10 PM »

TomW,

What's bull about it? What do you think is going to be on a post, where the title says "Opinions on Nuclear Power"? I sure wouldn't think it would be talking about Viagra.

"If this title said "Free Viagra" would you expect it to contain free Viagra?"

I would expect they would talk about Viagra, whether it is free or not, I wouldn't read it because everything is working good in that area!

That is my point, the subject had something I don't care to read about! So I don't read it. I do that all the time on this board and a few other boards.

"cheap shots are from cheap people. Thanks for proving my theory."

Is that the definition of calling the kettle black? I'm not sure because of my reading comprehension, and being clueless.

Goose · « **Reply #16 on:** July 16, 2006, 06:21:46 PM »

Facts? yes they are Tom, but not from me. I tried to find a link first, but PopSci didn't show anything yet. So I Typed in word for word what they said! If you have a problem with those facts, you should email Popular Science. Not cheap shot me, Sir!

I read Brazil is more than 40% also, I was just typing it right out of the magazine. Maybe they are talking about more than just transportation.

Goose · « **Reply #17 on:** July 16, 2006, 06:38:24 PM »

Come on guys. This message board shouldn't be used to find a date. I thought I remember somebody talking about hijaking posts in another post? Don't remember where that was?

nanotech · « **Reply #18 on:** July 16, 2006, 08:28:03 PM »

I still fail to see how so many people can say that nuclear power is a "green" power.

Just the dump trucks used in the mining process of the fuel consume 5,000 litres of fuel a day. FIVE THOUSAND LITRES!! That's 1,321 US gallons!! EVERY DAY!!

And that's for each and every dump truck!! In the (relatively) small mine in Australia there's 24 of these trucks running 24/7. That means 120,000 litre (31,704 US gallons) of fuel are used each and every day in only ONE mine, and that's only to transport the ore from the open pit mine to the processing station. That's not the fuel used to dig the ore up, that's not the fuel used to process the ore, that's not the fuel used to transport the fuel to the reactor, that doesn't include the fuel used to transport the processing waste back to the mine, nor the fuel used in transporting the waste fuel from the reactor, or the fuel used to actually BUILD the reactor.

I can't remember off the top of my head and I can't be arsed to look it up (too hot around here today), but I do know it's some magnitude of TONS of ore required to make a couple OUNCES of nuclear fuel.....

That also doesn't include the ecological disaster of an open pit mine that can span up to 50 square miles......

Now, I fully understand that nuclear power in these areas is certainly better than any of the other available options, but it certainly is not 100% "green" as some make it out to be.......

DanB · « **Reply #19 on:** July 16, 2006, 09:00:59 PM »

I think the bottom line - is that energy is expensive and nobody really realizes the price. Most of the price for our fuel today will be payed by future generations. Nuclear has it's place - its certainly not 'green'. I think number one is conservation and folks will not do that untill they realize that the stuff is expensive. Here on the front range their building gobs of 4000 square foot houses, half glass, with lousy insulation and inefficient appliances and folks buy them up. People drive huge cars and their driving more miles per year on average than ever. Obviously - we need more expensive energy. Gas needs to be much more than $3.00/gallon - and I say that living 35 miles from town. There will be no 'solution' untill the 'problem' really hits home for everyone.

richhagen · « **Reply #20 on:** July 16, 2006, 11:47:46 PM »

Sorry Goose, I'll try to stay on topic. TomW's been helping manage stuff for free around here for, well about forever in terms of the Board's history. I did reply - on-topic below. Again, sorry for the deviation. Rich

Goose · « **Reply #21 on:** July 17, 2006, 03:46:13 AM »

no problem Rich, I was just playing around. The hijaking doesn't bother me.

Thanks

Goose · « **Reply #22 on:** July 17, 2006, 03:53:57 AM »

Amen to that Dan, just look at all the talking(about alternatives) now that gas is at or over $3. But I agree with you it needs to be even more expensive. I still see all the soccer moms driving around with just themselves or maybe a kid or two in a big suburban! On top of that they pass you on the interstate going excess of 80mph. Can't be conserving much or even caring about it at that rate.

kitno455 · « **Reply #23 on:** July 17, 2006, 05:44:54 AM »

for years i have been talking up higher gas taxes, and everyone thought i was nuts. now we have the same effect going on, but instead of the government getting the cash, its going into oilmen's pockets!

last weeks copy of newsweek had green energy as its cover story. mostly fluff, solar panels on office towers, the rise of the hybrid car, etc. but its been a long time since that sort of thing was a cover story. maybe americans are waking up?

allan

fungus · « **Reply #24 on:** July 17, 2006, 09:04:53 AM »

Petrol (gasoline) is even more expensive here in the UK. 1 liter is hitting almost a pound here($1.8 USD).

Don Cackleberrycreations · « **Reply #25 on:** July 17, 2006, 09:22:47 AM »

Actually its a 30 year cycle.

Go back and look . In the 40s there was quite a bit of hype on conservation , eletric cars and bikes even wind mills . This wanst solely do to the war effort either .

Then again in the 70s a few ideas were improved and few had been forgotton but the renewable engery flag was raised. Once again eficient housing (this time geo domes, Tpees and the like were front page news) Solar collectors, PV panels were said to be the future of our energy needs .

Jump to the 2000s and its front page news again atleast for a couple years.

Go back and look at the old popular mechanics and popular science magazines.

A few of the orginal alternative power magazines still exist as do some of the DIY magazines.

Though sadly many fell to political BS like mother earth news which went from practical DIY projects to yuppie crafts and martha stewart gardening.

Backwood homes still has some decent info but is becoming more and more a libertarian propaganda promotion (which wouldn't be so bad if the liberarian party actually had something to offer other than anarchy)

Granted the S club is on the oppisite side of thesame coin with radical green party propaganda.

You have to face it americans and most other industrialized nations citizens are lazy. They arent going to accept alternative power supplies unless they are simple and maintainence free. If they have to get off their butts they arent going to do it.

finnsawyer · « **Reply #26 on:** July 17, 2006, 10:17:16 AM »

A few years ago it was reported that it was discovered that bus sized "snow balls" from space were hitting the Earth daily. Real big surprise. Anyway, I sat down and by using their estimate as to how much water was delivered each day found that over four billion years it accounted very nicely for the amount of water in the oceans. So, this planet will eventually become a water world ala Kevin Costner's WaterWorld. Haven't heard anything about it lately, though.

richhagen · « **Reply #27 on:** July 17, 2006, 11:29:58 AM »

I agree with you on the taxing of energy to an extent. The amount of energy is set by supply and demand in the marketplace. If we increase the cost a bit, the demand will go down, it will be a bit painful, but part of it will go down do to conservation, which is a good thing. If we have a plan for what to do for energy in the future, I would think it would be a good idea to add a tax to what is used now if it is actually used to pay for the expensive infrastructure that will likely be needed for the future. That way the true cost of that much more expensive energy would in part be subsidized by the cheap energy that built up over millions of years that we are rapidly depleting. The alternative is a crisis, when adequate supplies of those fuels are no longer available, and we have nothing in place to utilize what could be available, plus our demand would be higher, making the problems even more daunting. An example would be using revenues to subsidize production of plants to use solar or wind energy to produce ethanol, or bio-diesel. Not the easiest, or cheapest of tasks, but that would be a more or less sustainable fuel supply which would at the very least stretch what we have and keep the farmers busy. Rich

Chagrin · « **Reply #28 on:** July 17, 2006, 11:46:59 AM »

40% is more accurate as far as ethanol production. You probably confused the 100% with their energy independence which is anticipated to happen this year (or might have already happened).

Phil Timmons · « **Reply #29 on:** July 17, 2006, 11:47:15 AM »

Point of order and request for clarification, here?

Reading back through some of this - is this section now called Diaries or Diarrhea?

I have new glasses and do not seem to be able read so clearly.

I did not get the bifocals they recommended . . . and probably should have.

on a grim reaper dark humor note . . . at least the DoD found a use for the nuke waste - more weapons.

Ok, now back to the discussion.

JW · « **Reply #30 on:** July 17, 2006, 12:55:10 PM »

Hi Fin,

Ya I heard something about this before. I believe what I heard, was that there were thousands of micro-comets hitting the earths atmosphere each day. I sure wish we could be sure that our future was a waterworld. That would simplify things greatly. Once hydrogen production is at full tilt, Id be willing to bet the world uses atleast if not more than an equivelent amout of oil in terms of water. I cant guess at what that number would be, but its got to be a large number.

But its interesting you brought that up. Perhaps with more exploration of mars, such a thing could actually be verified. The farther from the sun than earths orbit, should not effect such an occurence.

JW

BigBreaker · « **Reply #31 on:** July 17, 2006, 12:56:44 PM »

Yes - they have lots of petroleum resources per capita and have been more aggressive and efficient about extracting it recently.

Brazil is basically unique in it's combination of fresh water, long growing season, insolation and fertile soils. No other major country is going to duplicate Brazil's success exactly. The US and Europe might do something similiar using Brazil as inspiration, perhaps with cellulose.

Iceland has a very small population and basically sits on top of the Atlantic trench. It's not a surprise that they can power their small country on geothermal.

Nuclear is a real, scalable alternative to fossil fuels. Reactor designs exist that can run on different fissile materials, including the waste products of this current reactor generation. These nuclear technologies can extend our fuel resource for hundreds of years. Presumably that's enough time to come up with some better, like fusion. Google thorium.

Some said that water is limited for electrolysis and use in fuel cells. This is false. The water does not need to be fresh for electrolysis and in any case, desalinization is plenty energy efficient to use to get clean H20 for hydrogen fuel. Also the water needed to fuel the cells comes right back during use. Some of it may be vaporized but that isn't a major engineering problem.

Chagrin · « **Reply #32 on:** July 17, 2006, 01:02:52 PM »

It is possible for the average molecule to "break orbit", y'know. Just because we're bombarded by blocks of ice doesn't mean that there isn't a similar quantity of water vapor being released into space.

News:

Author Topic: Some facts around the world (Read 4609 times)