Calling Alternative Energy Gurus

I have an interest in this area, and also have an old website which outlived its original purpose and became a semi-automatic news aggregation page for all sorts of alternative energy stuff.

Anyway, while looking at my own site (address not given, because I don't want you to think I'm promoting my own site), I came across an article that appears to have been written by a university student proposing a combination of several technologies which sounds like it has great potential. He's talking about hydrogen generation and storage, fuel cells, and a "vortex" generator. Unfortunately, a lot of it is too technical for me to judge if it's realistic or not...

Hence, my call for the gurus to have a look and let me / us know if this guy has stumbled onto the next big thing, or if its just a crock of wishful thinking.

His article is here.

(Note: This isn't my website, just something my news feed tool found...)

looking forward to your opinions...

Pcal

Pcal

Don't get your hopes up too far here.

Firstly I am a long, long way from being an energy guru. Secondly the article, I think, is very hopeful at best and fanciful at worst. Most of these types of alternative energy solutions are very expensive to produce and so far from being economic as to be laughable.

It seems to me that if they have difficulties harnessing wave power and tidal, they have no hope with a tornado for example.

I have to state my prejudice in that I am employed in a thermal power station, but for me the stand out contender for alternative energy is solar, whether it is PV, solar thermal or some other process yet to be discovered. The reason I say this is that solar is, for all practical purposes, infinite and dependable (unless some idiot creates a nuclear winter in which case the whole question will become academic.)

However, for the moment, even solar is not economic without artificially introduced subsidies and incentives, although I have solar PV on my roof.

I don't know your involvement in alternative energies so I hope my comment does not offend as that is not the intention.

Regards
Paul

An interesting article. I take it the paper was "put out there" to generate debate.

I think it is quite feasible to have both PV and wind generated electricity in certain
circumstances. Where I live we have plenty of sunshine and plenty of wind. I have
PV cells on the roof and would love to supplement that with a small wind turbine.

Geothermal sources of energy are being explored and these have great potential.
At present research and development is slow and costs extremely high.

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Originally Posted by Bushmiller

It seems to me that if they have difficulties harnessing wave power and tidal, they have no hope with a tornado for example.

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Understood... The idea of a tornado in every yard is a bit "out there", but other parts of the system seemed far more grounded. Especially the solar panel that strips water into hydrogen and oxygen - I can foresee great things for that if it works. Hydrogen will be massive once we crack the cost of generating it, revolutionising the transport industry overnight making electric vehicles finally realistic.

I also have PV on the roof at home (a small early system - ie: fantastic feed in tariff, but next to no hope of ever having left overs to actually feed in with), and persisted with a wind turbine on the block for several years. Gave it up as a bad investment however, as the Chinese charge regulator supplied with the Chinese turbine was absolutely hopeless - blew up and got replaced 3 times, and to my knowledge never actually put any charge at all into the batteries. Every time we went down there the batteries were minutes of CFL light away from dead flat. Gave up in the end and rewired it all for a single PV panel.

I have no great personal stake in any particular technology, just a keen interest - so, no offense taken... :)

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Originally Posted by artme

An interesting article. I take it the paper was "put out there" to generate debate.

I think it is quite feasible to have both PV and wind generated electricity in certain
circumstances. Where I live we have plenty of sunshine and plenty of wind. I have
PV cells on the roof and would love to supplement that with a small wind turbine.

Geothermal sources of energy are being explored and these have great potential.
At present research and development is slow and costs extremely high.

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Geothermal thing has been around in NZ for many years, maybe since the 1960's if not the 70's. I think the problem is not very many sites are suitable..... umm now I gotta drag up some long dead memories so I might get wrong.
From memory most sites the steam is too wet, there's no shortage of steam blow holes around the world. But the quality of the steam is the problem.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pcal

I have an interest in this area, and also have an old website which outlived its original purpose and became a semi-automatic news aggregation page for all sorts of alternative energy stuff.

Anyway, while looking at my own site (address not given, because I don't want you to think I'm promoting my own site), I came across an article that appears to have been written by a university student proposing a combination of several technologies which sounds like it has great potential. He's talking about hydrogen generation and storage, fuel cells, and a "vortex" generator. Unfortunately, a lot of it is too technical for me to judge if it's realistic or not...

Hence, my call for the gurus to have a look and let me / us know if this guy has stumbled onto the next big thing, or if its just a crock of wishful thinking.

His article is here.

(Note: This isn't my website, just something my news feed tool found...)

looking forward to your opinions...

Pcal

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The hydrogen generation I am familiar with having built a few some years ago. Not so sure about the backyard vortex. It looks like it might need some more research, control might be an issue plus a few other things.

But here is the thing we need this sort of thinking out of the box to get things moving. I have no doubt that we can build successful green energy set ups. Its just a matter of research dollars and some committed philanthropists.

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Originally Posted by hughie

The hydrogen generation I am familiar with having built a few some years ago.

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Do tell! Was this a professional activity or something you did for your own purposes? How did you you do it, and how did it work?

Interesting stuff.

I'll throw my brilliant (IMHO) idea into the mix - apparently solar panels lose efficiency as they get hotter, and people often have separate roof-mounted solar water heating setups where the water passes through a network of (black) pipes. My cunning plan is to circulate water through an aluminium 'heatsink' backing for the solar panels, thereby combining the two functions. The water takes away the excess heat from the solar panels, increasing panel efficiency and heating water at the same time. Obviously, since the system only operates in daylight anyway, a tiny portion of the solar panel electrical output could be used to run the pump which circulates the water.....

A Cunning Plan, eh? :D

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Originally Posted by Mr Brush

Interesting stuff.

I'll throw my brilliant (IMHO) idea into the mix - apparently solar panels lose efficiency as they get hotter, and people often have separate roof-mounted solar water heating setups where the water passes through a network of (black) pipes. My cunning plan is to circulate water through an aluminium 'heatsink' backing for the solar panels, thereby combining the two functions. The water takes away the excess heat from the solar panels, increasing panel efficiency and heating water at the same time. Obviously, since the system only operates in daylight anyway, a tiny portion of the solar panel electrical output could be used to run the pump which circulates the water.....

A Cunning Plan, eh? :D

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It has merit, although I'm not sure if it would provide enough heat for the water side of things. My understanding is that the PV cells don't perform quite as well as the temperature rises above 25 deg C. Monocrystaline is supposedly a slightly better performer than polycystaline in this regard.

Regards
Paul

Water vortex generation was used on a trial in germany about 10 to 15 years ago(proved itself on a small scale)..
Water Vortex generators would be good used in an area with flowing creeks ect(small fall of height is all thats requires for small units)..

Thermal has promise, but bogged down in government red tape dont help..

Solar thermal has proved quite successful and tested in totally different climates, but
what has happened to it?

Anything that proves beneficial and costs are low and easy to produce, will not be favoured by the corp's.
They want profit with risk of running out to demand more profit...

You wont get funding or an easy run because of the greater picture from corp's

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hughie

Geothermal thing has been around in NZ for many years, maybe since the 1960's if not the 70's. I think the problem is not very many sites are suitable..... umm now I gotta drag up some long dead memories so I might get wrong.
From memory most sites the steam is too wet, there's no shortage of steam blow holes around the world. But the quality of the steam is the problem.

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I think artme was specifically talking about hot dry rock and similar geothermal projects. In basins with high geothermal gradients a series of wells are drilled. Water is then circulated down one well, is heated as it travels through fractures in the rock to an adjacent well up which the resultant steam is taken back to surface and circulated through a heat exchanger which in turn drives a turbine. Such projects mimick what goes on naturally in a natural geothermal project such as those in NZ and Japan.

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Originally Posted by kiwigeo

I think artme was specifically talking about hot dry rock and similar geothermal projects. In basins with high geothermal gradients a series of wells are drilled. Water is then circulated down one well, is heated as it travels through fractures in the rock to an adjacent well up which the resultant steam is taken back to surface and circulated through a heat exchanger which in turn drives a turbine. Such projects mimick what goes on naturally in a natural geothermal project such as those in NZ and Japan.

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Yes I too thought that was the process he was referring too. It seems to me that there is not much return for your effort (of drilling pehaps 4Km down into the earth's crust) and the potential for something to go wrong with the bore would be a constant cause for concern, although some oil drilling is quite deep. Maybe not that deep. At the end of the day you only have low pressure steam.

Regards
Paul

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Yes I too thought that was the process he was referring too. It seems to me that there is not much return for your effort (of drilling pehaps 4Km down into the earth's crust) and the potential for something to go wrong with the bore would be a constant cause for concern, although some oil drilling is quite deep. Maybe not that deep. At the end of the day you only have low pressure steam.

Regards
Paul

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Hi Paul,

Just a few comments:

1. There hasn't been much return on hot rock projects to date as the industry is still in its infancy. Any project that involves deep drilling is going to be capital intensive. Geodynamics weren't helped during drilling of their initial wells by rigs that weren't up to the job as well lost drill strings and other catastrophes.
2. The economics of hot rock projects is influenced to a large degree by the distance from the project to a population centre or industry where there is a demand for electricity. Where the population centre is some distance from the project as is the case with Geodynamic's Innamincka project the costs of power transmission effectively cancels out any cost advantage of hot rock derived power over conventionally generated power.
3. The depth to which a rig can drill is governed primarily by the pulling power of the rig and the pressure rating of the rig's blow out preventer. A 4000m well is within the capabilities of most triple land rigs I've worked on. Some modifications to rig equipment are necessary when doing hot rock work as temperatures and pressures at the wellhead can be higher than what would be present during an oil/gas drilling operation. The solution is simply to spend the money and carry out the necessary modifications. Geodynamics eventually twigged to this and brought in their own rig equipped with a decent sized drawworks and a state of the art top drive system....both essential when pulling and turning long drill strings and even more essential when working stuck drill strings.
4. Re low pressure steam. Habanero-4 flowed on test at a wellhead pressure of 4020psi....not low by any measure.

Cheers Martin

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Originally Posted by pcal

Do tell! Was this a professional activity or something you did for your own purposes? How did you you do it, and how did it work?

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No just a DIY set up, 12v 30amp DC using about 1.5L container. Set up to run on my Daihatsu Charade. Biggest problem was getting the container to fit in the engine bay. Roughly it augmented about 20-25% of the petrol consumption.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kiwigeo

I think artme was specifically talking about hot dry rock and similar geothermal projects. In basins with high geothermal gradients a series of wells are drilled. Water is then circulated down one well, is heated as it travels through fractures in the rock to an adjacent well up which the resultant steam is taken back to surface and circulated through a heat exchanger which in turn drives a turbine. Such projects mimick what goes on naturally in a natural geothermal project such as those in NZ and Japan.

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OK no worries, there was a mob out west drilling to set up such a project, havent heard much about them in recent times

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kiwigeo

Hi Paul,

Just a few comments:

1. There hasn't been much return on hot rock projects to date as the industry is still in its infancy. Any project that involves deep drilling is going to be capital intensive. Geodynamics weren't helped during drilling of their initial wells by rigs that weren't up to the job as well lost drill strings and other catastrophes.
2. The economics of hot rock projects is influenced to a large degree by the distance from the project to a population centre or industry where there is a demand for electricity. Where the population centre is some distance from the project as is the case with Geodynamic's Innamincka project the costs of power transmission effectively cancels out any cost advantage of hot rock derived power over conventionally generated power.
3. The depth to which a rig can drill is governed primarily by the pulling power of the rig and the pressure rating of the rig's blow out preventer. A 4000m well is within the capabilities of most triple land rigs I've worked on. Some modifications to rig equipment are necessary when doing hot rock work as temperatures and pressures at the wellhead can be higher than what would be present during an oil/gas drilling operation. The solution is simply to spend the money and carry out the necessary modifications. Geodynamics eventually twigged to this and brought in their own rig equipped with a decent sized drawworks and a state of the art top drive system....both essential when pulling and turning long drill strings and even more essential when working stuck drill strings.
4. Re low pressure steam. Habanero-4 flowed on test at a wellhead pressure of 4020psi....not low by any measure.

Cheers Martin

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Thanks Martin

The use of oil drilling technology would explain some of the drilling failures. Do you recall the temperature of the steam on habanero-4. Steam generators (mainstream) typically use steam at 565C with a pressure of 15,600KPa (significantly less than your 28,000KPa). The station I work in has a supercritical boiler where the pressure is 24,000KPa and steam temperatures are up to 592C.

Supercritical is the point where density of water and steam become the same and the steam functions as water (22,120KPa). There are steam generators in the world called ultracritical, which simply means the pressures are higher and they operate at the pressures you have indicated on the deep well. The combination of high temperature and pressure give tremendous energy to spin a turbine.

Having said all that, Hydro stations only use pressure and temperature does not come into it. The issue there is the health of the river system below the dam.

Regards
Paul