The Electric Car
in [Design]
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From: John Larkin on 4 Oct 2007 20:31 On Thu, 4 Oct 2007 19:48:13 -0400, krw <krw(a)att.bizzzz> wrote: >In article <0aqag3dsg5b5o55af2t1e683nte7gnkii2(a)4ax.com>, >jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com says... >> On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:37:43 GMT, Rich Grise <rich(a)example.net> wrote: >> >> >On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:35:03 +0000, jimp wrote: >> >> In sci.physics Rich Grise <rich(a)example.net> wrote: >> >>> On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:55:02 +0000, jimp wrote: >> >> >> >>> > Do you understand the difference between combustion and a chemical >> >>> > reaction? >> >> >> >>> Then, please educate us. What, exactly, is the difference between >> >>> "combustion" and "a chemical reaction"? >> >> >> >> In the common vernacular, combustion occurs when you light a candle and >> >> a chemical reaction occurs when you toss a chunk of sodium in water. >> >> >> >> Or, in other words, things don't burn until the fuel is gas and the >> >> fuel/oxygen mix is brought to the ignition temperature, again in the >> >> common vernacular. >> > >> >Careful with that "common vernacular" stuff - Engineers probably don't >> >like it very much. >> > >> >> Yeah, I had that once. It was very painful. > >Did they give you penicillin for it? Cipro is my drug of choice. John
From: Willie.Mookie on 4 Oct 2007 20:55 On Oct 3, 5:11 pm, John Larkin <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > On Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:29:09 -0000, Willie.Moo...(a)gmail.com wrote: > > >THE ANSWER - LOW COST HYDROGEN FROM SUNLIGHT > > >One simple solution I have is to reduce the cost of photovoltaics to > >less than 7 cents a peak watt - and use that DC power to produce > >hydrogen from DI water at very los cost. Then store that hydrogen in > >empty oil wells - about 100 day supply is needed for a stable national > >hydrogen supply system.. > > 7 cents a watt would be wonderful, but it's about 30:1 away from what > anybody is doing, even at the research level. And if we had such > power, the first rational use is to dump it into the grid, not convert > it to hydrogen at absurd net efficiency. > > Low cost solar would be great, but there's no particular link to > hydrogen. Too many "advanced" energy concepts are predicated on > ultra-cheap solar power, cheap enough to waste prodigiously. That > ain't gonna happen. > > John I am already building panels for $0.07 per peak watt and installing them in a variety of highly profitable installations. So I am producing energy at 1/5th cent per kWh in locations that have 1900 hours of sunlight per year or more. What's the highest best use of this energy. Well before I answer the following. Focusing on absolute efficiency and lack of appreciation of the importance of cost per watt reflects the sort of thinking that makes solar energy so expensive using other technologies. Consider your comment about dumping energy on to the grid. It is true that using electricity directly is the most efficient thing to do. Its nearly perfectly efficient - this much is absolutely true. But at what cost?. Is direct connection the most cost-effective thing to do? Does direct connection make solar energy competitive with other forms of energy? The answer is no. Consider these practical issues; (1) Lighting conditions change throughout the day, and from day to day, and no light is available at night. This means that the power that the solar panels put out vary. (2) Variable output has to be matched to variable load, otherwise efficiency drops to zilch. So, loads must vary in response to available sunlight, not demand. (3) Variable load that matches variable output tied directly to a power grid where demand varies independently of lighting conditions, means that no more than 12% of all grid power can come from sunlight under ideal weather conditions. Less ideal weather conditions drop this to 4% (4) AC power is what the grid uses. (5) DC power is what solar panels produce (6) An inverter must be added to the system to allow for this difference. (7) Adding an inverter and peak power matching hardware to solar panels cost $2 per peak watt. So, our 1/5th cent per kWh panels - with the addition of peak power matching, and with the addition of inverters - ends up costing 5.7 cents per kWh. Which is competitive, but even so, only 4% of the total power can be generated this way. NOW, lets consider my approach of generating hydrogen from sunlight at $100 per metric ton (1/5th cent per kWh, and 50,000 kWh/ton) using variable load electrolyzers. (1) The rate of hydrogen production is continually varied to match the lighting conditions by varying the exposed electrode area requiring no peak power matching electronics. (2) DC electricity from the solar panels is used directly in the DC powered electrolyzers requiring no inversion. (3) The cost of producing hydrogen in this way is less than $0.02 per peak watt, adding $28 per ton of hydrogen gas made in this way. (4) 1 ton of hydrogen gas has a higher heating value of 141.8 gigajoules. This is equal to; 6.2 tons of coal - at $55 per ton $341 providing $213 profit/ton H 2.5 tons of NG - $400 per ton $1,000 providing $872 profit/ ton H 23.2 bbls of liquid fuel - $80 per bbl $1,859 providing $1,731 profit/ton H (5) Hydrogen gas can be stored in gaseous forms in geological formations until needed so it can be used in 100% of stationary applications by piping it at high pressure to stationary power plants. (6) Hydrogen gas can be liquified and evaporated for use in mobile applications instead of liquid fuels providing a lower-heating value of 130.4 MG per kg - equal to about 1.05 gallon of gasoline per kg. One metric ton of liquid hydrogen is equal to; 1,050 gallons of gas at $1.80 per gallon $1,890 providing $1,762 profit/ton CONCLUSION Even though stationary power plants are 38 percent efficient and even though internal combustion engines, wankel engines, turbine engines, jet engines, turbo-jet engines are less than 20% efficient, and even though electrolyzers are 80% efficient, and even though storage of hydrogen in geological formation is only 95% efficient - making hydrogen from sunlight and water and selling gaseous hydrogen delivered bypipeline to stationary power plants, and selling liquid hydrogen liquified at power plants around the country and delivered at stations similar to gasoline - can allow us to dispense with 100% of our oil gas and coal industry and eliminate 100% of our carbon dioxide emissions with today's power plants, today's heating plants, today's automobiles, todays, ships, and today's airplanes with only slight injector and burner changes.
From: John Larkin on 4 Oct 2007 21:32 On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:55:47 -0700, Willie.Mookie(a)gmail.com wrote: >On Oct 3, 5:11 pm, John Larkin ><jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >> On Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:29:09 -0000, Willie.Moo...(a)gmail.com wrote: >> >> >THE ANSWER - LOW COST HYDROGEN FROM SUNLIGHT >> >> >One simple solution I have is to reduce the cost of photovoltaics to >> >less than 7 cents a peak watt - and use that DC power to produce >> >hydrogen from DI water at very los cost. Then store that hydrogen in >> >empty oil wells - about 100 day supply is needed for a stable national >> >hydrogen supply system.. >> >> 7 cents a watt would be wonderful, but it's about 30:1 away from what >> anybody is doing, even at the research level. And if we had such >> power, the first rational use is to dump it into the grid, not convert >> it to hydrogen at absurd net efficiency. >> >> Low cost solar would be great, but there's no particular link to >> hydrogen. Too many "advanced" energy concepts are predicated on >> ultra-cheap solar power, cheap enough to waste prodigiously. That >> ain't gonna happen. >> >> John > >I am already building panels for $0.07 per peak watt and installing >them in a variety of highly profitable installations. So I am >producing energy at 1/5th cent per kWh in locations that have 1900 >hours of sunlight per year or more. Where? Got links? >(7) Adding an inverter and peak power matching hardware to solar >panels cost $2 per peak watt. That sounds exhorbitant. I can buy small PF-corrected switching supplies for 25 cents a watt, and things like this have great economy of scale. > > >So, our 1/5th cent per kWh panels - with the addition of peak power >matching, and with the addition of inverters - ends up costing 5.7 >cents per kWh. Which is competitive, but even so, only 4% of the >total power can be generated this way. If you can generate electricity for 0.2 cents per kwh, you could sell it to utilities for 25x what it costs, so you should be a billionaire by now. Are you? John
From: Willie.Mookie on 4 Oct 2007 21:36 To reduce 1 ton of silica to silicon and oxygen using carbon has the following reaction; SiO2 + C ---> CO2 + Si and Si has an atomic weight of 28 C has an atomic weight of 12 O has an atomic weight of 16 So, 60 tons of silica when reacted with 12 tons of carbon produce 44 tons of carbon dioxide and 28 tons of silicon - So, each ton of silicon, normalizing everything, requires the reduction of 2.14 tons of silica using 428 kg of carbon producing 1.57 tons of carbon-dioxide. The heating value of pure carbon is 32.8 gigajoules per ton. So, 0.428 tonnes is 14.03 gigajoules. The efficiency of the smelting and refining process is around 30% - which means the total energy for ultra-pure silica - sliced into wafers 500 microns thick is 46.8 gigajoules per ton. If the source of this energy is carbon burning, then the amount of carbon incrases to 4.7 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of silicon processed. Approximately half the volume of a crystalline wafer is lost during the slicing operation. So, at 2.33 tons per cubic meter, each square kilometer of solar collector area contains 1,665 tons of silicon, and requires the processing of 2,330 tons of silicon. The total energy used to reduce this silicon from silica is 109,044 gigajoules. At 18% efficiency, a square kilometer of silicon produces 180 million watts of electrical energy when the sun shines. Placed in a location that obtains 1,900 hours per year, this means that in one year a square kilometer of silicon will produce 1,231,200 gigajoules in a year. This is an amount 11.29x larger than the energy cost of refining, purifying, and fabricating the silicon wafers. In short, 1 month of operation pays for this part of the cost of solar panels. There are other energy costs, but they unlikely add up to more than this total computed here. So, even in the worst case scenario, a solar panels pays for itself in 2 months - in terms of energy. A concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system increases this efficiency. Say sunlight is focused 100x normal intensity onto a photocell. That means that for a given amount of silicon, 100x the electrical output is produced. This means payback times are shortened accordingly. So, instead of payback in 30 days, payback can occur in as short as 8 hours. Carbon use can be replaced with hydrogen to produce the following reaction; SiO2 + 2 H2 ---> Si + 2 H2O So, 60 tons of silica plus 4 tons of hydrogen produce 28 tons of silicon plus 36 tons of water. The water of course can be reduced to hydrogen and oxygen again using electricity generated from sunlight. Normalized by the silicon produced, we divide by 28 - 2.14 tons of silica reacted with 0.14 tons of hydrogen produce 1 ton of silicon and 1.28 tons of water. The water may be captured and used to make 0.14 tons of hydrogen again using sunlight. A ton of hydrogen has a higher heating value of 141.8 gigajoules. That's 20.25 gigajoules per ton of silicon. Less efficient than carbon, but the overall process using hydrogen is more efficient. But even if we assume not, the increase to 68 gigajoules is easily sustained, especially if we use concentration ratios of 500 to 1 or more. That is an all hydrogen solar hydrogen economy is not only feasible, but highly profitable as well, absorbing only .4% of the energy it produces to sustain itself (assuming no CPV and 20 year lifespan) - less if we assume CPV and 20 year lifespan. By comparison the oil industry - especially in the refining process - uses 3.5% of the energy produced to sustain itself and operate the facilities. Adding hydrogen distribution hydrogen storage, hydrogen retrieval, systems, to create an integrated hydrogen economy -despite higher losses for hydrogen compared to hydrocarbons- is about equal overall in terms of total energy usage, and overall effriciencies are higher - with zero carbon footprint.
From: Eeyore on 4 Oct 2007 23:39
Jamie wrote: > Btw. > Our Electric company is building Hydrogen generator facilities. On the back of 'green' subsidies no doubt. Graham |