OT Hydrogen economy, not?

[Balanced View]

Martin Brown wrote:

James Arthur wrote:

Balanced View wrote:



Environmentalists have always said corn was a shitty choice for
ethanol, it was the government and the
corn lobby that pushed for corn ethanol.

Do you have a source for that view?

The furthest back I can find an article with online free access is
at New Scientist 2007,

Thanks Martin.

Since
o Gore said [blah blah blah]

Since when is Al Gore "environemntalists"?? He is *one person*.

Balanced View said environmentalists had always opposed
corn-based ethanol.

That contradicted my memory, so I dug a bit for the history.
Al Gore popped up on the radar.

I was speaking generall. "Conservatives" *do* use "Al Gore" to mean
anyone who has any concerns about the environemnt.

I assume Al Gore is/was in tune with environmental-types,
and would've heard their objections to corn, if such
objections were being made. I heard none.

Heard none here? Or what? Didn't hear on teevee or read in the media,
or heard Gore talk abut? I've been against corn-derived ethanol ever
since I heard people blithering about it. So what - who am I? - just on
single paltry insignificant citizen, not any media darling and not a
billionaire (or even a millionaire) and nto a politician - so is Gore, or
any other politician, going to listen to me, or include my comments in
their media events? Hell, no. IOW, of course you would never have
'heard' *my* objections to basically dumping corn into SUV gas tanks.

I have no idea whether Gore is "in tune with environmental-types"; I have
serious and numerous concerns (and no, "concern" is not a synonym for
"iron-clad ideology"), but I don't think that makes me an "environmental-
type", because I am not anti-business - I think it merely makes me
someone who looks further than my own nose, and is worried about the
future of life on this planet. There are a lot of folks like that, who
aren't 'heard', becasue they aren't a majority, and not a "squeaky
wheel" minority.

And it might be that Mr. Gore heard and ignored those
cries--I don't know--but it seems more likely that
he was going with the flow.

More likely? Well, sure, why not - after all, I don't know anything
about "the flow", I have a glitch in the part(s) of the brain that deal
with social 'instincts' and I never have been able figure out squat about
"the flow", other than that I've consistently heard ideas being talked
about an average of 15 to 20 years after I've started thinking about
them. So Gore probably *is* "going with the flow", soemthing I never
have been ableot learn to do - which is why he is a rich politician, and
I'm not.

Anyway, that was my effort to reconstruct the environmental
vibe vis-a-vis ethanol when it started.

Anyway, again, I was speaking generally.

If you remember differently, feel free to post some
links to articles. I'd be happy to read them.

I don't particualrly think it matters a whole lot. Whatever the
articles, teh fact is that the idea of using ethanol as a fuel is *old*,
not new. I think, and have long thought, that using *food crops* to fuel
cars, esp. ones which are wontonly wasteful, is a stupid idea. I know
other poeple who are have also thought that for a long time.

And you're right, we were, and are, irrelevant.

And he has nothing whatsoever to do with *my* views about the
environment,

[snip]

Convenient, since I was pointing out that Gore is not "all people with
environmental concerns".

Too many greenies are meanies: blaming, angry, accusing others,
and wrongly. That doesn't help.

Too many *PEOPLE* are meanies.

[rambling snipped]

Sorry, none of that's relevant. Yelling at people,
or blaming people--especially the wrong people--these
aren't helpful. That other people do it doesn't make
it more effective. It's not effective.

You're right:
- saying that people in general need to adopt a more postive attitude and
clean up their individual acts, rather than relying on someone else to
solve their problem, *is* ineffective, becasue it's so much easier to
pass the buck;
- protesting extremist party chauvinism *is* ineffective, because too
many people like the simplicity of it;
trying to separate general principles from party chauvinism *is*
ineffective;
- and my ideas *are* irrelevant, because none of them can/will ever make
any damn difference - you yourself say you haven't 'heard' objections to
this or that idea of his from "environemntal types", yet ignore or
reject, and snip, the objections someone does mention, which well
illustrates the irrelevance of what I was trying to say. Yes, sorry to
have been so rude as to talk about my own objections to ideas like fuel
ethanol from food crops, and my own environmental concerns, and reasons
for those concerns. And sorry for my irrelevant posts about switchgrass
in connection with teh topic of fuel ethanol.

I made no excuses; I simply posted some facts.
Ethanol is an example to learn from. That's all.
Let's not repeat it.

I wasnt' paying attention to who wrote the post; I was excrutiatingly
clear to say "too many people", and simuilar statements - I did *not* say
"all people" and did not point to any specific person. I guess my point
was far too obtuse.

Sorry to have interrupted the Gore:corn-ethanol hair-splitting. Please
continue.

Environmentalists were for biofuels NOT made from food stocks, most were
posting messages to groups like
this years ago to the effect :

" If you took all the oil producing crops in the USA it would not be
enough for even
current consumption".

It's agribusiness and the government looking for some magic bullet to do
it all, most greenies support using a
mix of resources, new technology and conservation, eg wind, solar, hydro
and biofuels from waste and none
food crops grown on marginal land. Anyone who has been involved in
Biofuels for more than a month knows
corn is a piss poor crop for ethanol production....

 

[danny burstein]

No, circular diameter is cross-sectional area. No need to integrate over
the sphere's entire surface area, multiplying by Lambert's cosine law to
account for less intensity around the edges.

Ah, I see my mistake. When I glanced at the OP's calcs
I thought he was gettign a figure for the total surface
area of the sphere, rather than the cross-section ("disk"
equivalent) number.

Although I'd guess you still have to fudge the numbers
down a bit to factor in the extra atmosphere in the
way at the edges...

 

[daestrom]

Oops.. y'er right. I also goofed going from sq km to sq meters. Argh
and thanks.

Rehashing the numbers again...

Diameter of earth is 12740 km.
Surface area of a sphere = 4 * Pi * r^2
Area = 4 * Pi * 6370^2 = 5.10*10^8 sq km

However, only half the globe is illuminated at one time, so the
effective illuminated area:
Area = 2.05*10^8 sq km
= 2.05*10^14 sq meters

Watts = 1366 watts/sq meter * 2.05*10^14 sq meters
= 2.80*10^17 watts

Nope. By calculating the area of the sphere, and multiplying by the solar
radiation, you're *assuming* that all the sphere's surface is perpendicular
to the sunlight. Kind of hard to do that.

Don used the cross-section of the earth instead. It's a smaller number than
surface area, but you don't have to integrate the surface versus cos of the
incident angle.

I think Don's numbers are closer.

daestrom

 

[daestrom]

Go to wiki and you'll find which boats they were too (specially
lengthened IIRC).

No, but one had what was affectionately known as, "the bat cave".
Originally for surface launched missiles. Good friend served on it but he
won't talk about it to this day. Even though much was declassified (read
the book), he still considers himself bound by the security agreement he
signed while on board.

daestrom
P.S. One was modified with some 'skids' to make setting down on the bottom
a bit easier though. Nuc boats of that era usually took seawater suction
from below making actual 'bottoming' impossible without some such
modification.

 

[daestrom]

Hmm, sounds like an X-ray pumped laser to me.

And what US agency was interested in high-power lasers that were
'portable/mobile' in the mid 1980's?? Maybe as part of a network to
eliminate 'incoming' threats.

daestrom

 

[danny burstein]

daestrom
P.S. One was modified with some 'skids' to make setting down on the bottom
a bit easier though. Nuc boats of that era usually took seawater suction
from below making actual 'bottoming' impossible without some such
modification.

Ah, that's the boat that Captain Crane commanded
(with Admiral Nelson over his shoulder).

I can think of two declassified trips they made where they
hooked into underwater comm. cables.

 

[daestrom]

That is one thing that REALLY bugs me: People who think their tiny
view of the world is exactly like everywhere else, and what works in
one place will work everywhere. Then they complain about attitudes?

Look, the Netherlands' use of district heating won't work in a lot of places
in the US. But it *would* work in some areas. Yet we don't use it anywhere
that I've found. It doesn't have to be a nuclear plant. We have two oil
burning plants that were converted to gas right here in my town within the
city limits. When operating, these steam plants produce about 1800 MWe and
about 3000 MWth 'waste heat'. Where does all the 'waste' heat go? Into
Lake Ontario. Why? Mostly because the company isn't interested in anything
but MW-hr production.

Could the University campus, that is adjacent to the plant property use it
for heating the six or eight months of the year when temperatures drop?
Considering the university already has a lot of heat piping from building to
building, the conversion couldn't be *that* expensive. But nope. They burn
NG instead.

They (politicians) are talking about pumping Lake Ontario water almost 50
miles to Syracuse to provide downtown with some 'cool lake water' for use in
'district A/C systems' for the summer months. But the A/C season is only
about 2 months long while the heating season is about 10 months. Does
*that* sound smart?

I know that many areas couldn't use enough 'district heating' to make it
worthwhile. Florida, Gulf Coast, west coast don't have enough of a heating
season to even talk about it. And in some parts of the country a 'country
mile' is just the distance you go to borrow a cup of sugar from the
neighbor.

But you're guilty of the same 'tiny view of the world' if you think the
entire US is all the same. There are several places in the northeast where
a few thousand MW of waste heat are being dumped all winter long, within 50
miles of a large city.

daestrom

 

[Mark Zenier]

Consider one little tidbit. In a recent issue of "Utility/T&D", a utility
trade rag, they proudly announced that about 1500 megawatts of wind generation
is installed in this country.

Er, an article in last Friday's Seattle Times, sourced from the AP,
said that there are 4,296 megawatts installed in Texas alone, and a map
shows that Washington, California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Iowa all
have more than 1000 megawatts installed. And there are plans in Texas
for 18,000 megawatts. And the power lines to carry it.

I was reading an article a couple of days ago on Jerry Pournelli's web site on
this subject. Jerry has a couple of advanced degrees, at least one of which
is in a science.

Nope. Psychology and Political Science. (One trip out to the University
of Washington main library, I searched the stacks for his thesis, but
it wasn't there).

Mark Zenier [email protected]
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

 

[daestrom]

What 'drag'? The extraction steam doesn't cause 'drag', it just doesn't get
to flow through the last few stages and create work in the turbine. Turbine
output goes down to be sure. If a lot is extracted, the later stages can be
smaller as well. The last stages of turbines can be huge and that is one of
the big problem areas. Maybe more extraction (if it can be sold for $)
could lessen these problems.

Well, if you want to do it half-assed I suppose. Most LST (Large Steam
Turbines) don't have 'controlled extraction' but rather 'uncontrolled
extraction'. That means the amount of steam that is diverted out the
extraction line instead of flowing through following stages is determined by
the back-pressure in the extraction line and the piping arrangement.
Downstream stages of the turbine are sized expecting that some of the
initial steam entering the turbine will not make it to the later stages. So
to use extraction steam to the most effective level would require a turbine
rotor change.

Not a great backfit, but could easily be accomodated in initial
construction.

Actually you would want any Offsite Heat to be from a Heat Exchanger,
that was removed from the Primary Coolant Loop by at least two stages.
This allows for a Primary Heat Exchanger leak from one side to the
other, without any radiation leaving the Plant, via a cross
contamination. Usually the secondary side of the Primary Heat
Exchanger is what drives the Turbine that produces electricity, and
any Primary Heat Exchanger leak would put some contamination into the
Turbine Loop, which has Radiation Detectors looking for just this
type of leak, and if it is Detected, Scram's the Plant.

In some circles we call that a 'reboiler' or 'clean steam reboiler'. Not at
all hard to do. And yes, it would be appropriate to use one for supplying
district steam for a couple of reasons not the least of which would be to
separate returning condensate from the rest of the steam plant. It would be
better *not* to use primary coolant as that water is too hot. Better to use
extraction steam or intermediate condensate (after heating) so the
temperature difference between heating fluid and reboiler steam is smaller.

daestrom

 

[Vaughn Simon]

The thing is that, if I have this stright, the US policy is that, if you
come out of the ocean and set you foot (literally) on dry US land, you're
automatically accepted into the US, but if ther eis an intermediary (such
as your cruise ship), it's "adios".

We are getting some legendary thread drift here, but yes, I believe you
have that right. It is called the "wet foot/dry foot policy". The helluvit is,
these particular Cubans did not seem to be making for the US, at least not
directly. We believe that Mexico was their immediate goal.

The basic policy towards Cuba has been maintained by both US political
parties over the decades because the Cuban-American community wants it that way,
and they vote.

Vaughn

 

[Balanced View]

But what to do about it, now that we're committed ?

(Keeping in mind that farm collectives across the country have poured
their savings into building corn-ethanol plants...)

Any suggestions?

Cheers,
James Arthur

Welcome them to the Asylum? That's where the committed end up. They
should have looked at the math first,
I remember converting my first ICE to alcohol back in the early 70's via
information in the Mother Earth news
even then yields per acre were well known.

 

[Don Klipstein]

Yeah, keep away from sweet corn on the cob. Most people don't realize
that it's *full* of the stuff.

Making HFCS from corn is done thus, using enzymes:

1. Turn corn starch into ordinary corn syrup.
2. Turn 55% of the glucose in the corn syrup into fructose.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])

 

[krw]

Oops.. y'er right. I also goofed going from sq km to sq meters. Argh
and thanks.

Rehashing the numbers again...

Diameter of earth is 12740 km.
Surface area of a sphere = 4 * Pi * r^2
Area = 4 * Pi * 6370^2 = 5.10*10^8 sq km

However, only half the globe is illuminated at one time, so the
effective illuminated area:
Area = 2.05*10^8 sq km
= 2.05*10^14 sq meters

I think you're high here. The area illuminated is the Earth's disk,
Pi*R^2. The sun isn't overhead everywhere in the hemisphere.

Using your value of fossil fuel heat of 3.91*10^20 joules/year, I get:
ratio = 3.91*10^20 / 6.17*10^24 = 6.37*10^-5 = 0.000064

Not that 2X matters much.

 

[Rich Grise]

Well, you have a wonderfully large country too.

Just thinking about that - the US is about 3,000 miles wide - are
there even 3,000 miles (4800 km) IN Europe? ;-)

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

[1] see Steve Martin's "LA Story", a wonderful movie.

If you have a science fiction bent, you might also find "Last Action Hero"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107362/
and/or "Demolition Man"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/
fun to watch.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

You've got to fly, or better yet drive, from coast to coast to
appreciate how big this place is. In a plane, you can go hours without
seeing more than sporadic signs of human effects. Driving Interstate 10
west from San Antonio, it can be days.

If you want big, try Wyoming.

You see highway exits with signs like
"Highway 39
<- Podunk 37 miles gas food lodging
Jerkwater 24 miles gas food lodging ->
Next services 67 miles."

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

Yup. I did a little playing around this evening with MapQuest and
Photopaint and posted the results. It kinda puts things into perspective.

http://www.johndearmond.com/2008/07/20/dutch-solutions-to-us-problems/

It looks like Paul Bunyan's footprint! ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

*sigh* Yet another juvenile to enter my filter file. Where do they all
come from?

Well, sigh right back at you - can't you recognize a joke when you see it?

I really don't think Speff is all that juvenile. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

And what US agency was interested in high-power lasers that were
'portable/mobile' in the mid 1980's?? Maybe as part of a network to
eliminate 'incoming' threats.

Yeah, that's the ABL:
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/abl.htm

One of my jobs at this company has been to design tooling fixtures for
welding up the plumbing for the thing.

But it's a chemical laser, so not really apropos to the thread.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Martin Griffith]

Just thinking about that - the US is about 3,000 miles wide - are
there even 3,000 miles (4800 km) IN Europe? ;-)

Thanks,
Rich

South of Spain, Tarifa, to the top of Norway is about2700 miles, 4400
Km


martin