# Information on future heating sources



## by_the_fireside (Sep 18, 2008)

Hi all,

Just wondered if anyone knew of any good research sites relating to future heating sources?

Cheers


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## free75degrees (Sep 18, 2008)

By The Fireside said:
			
		

> Hi all,
> 
> Just wondered if anyone knew of any good research sites relating to future heating sources?
> 
> Cheers



www.hearth.com   ;-P


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## Nofossil (Sep 18, 2008)

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that virtually all future energy will come directly or indirectly from nuclear sources. Here's my thoughts:

While there are some wild-eyed folks out there who claim that the best source is tapping directly into raw nuclear radiation and turning it into electricity, many studies have shown that exposing humans to this radiation is extremely dangerous and causes cancer. Despite that, I expect that solar photovoltaic systems will continue to be used. 

Of course, you could use the heat energy from nuclear radiation to heat gases and then drive turbines situated in the path of the high pressure gas. The same caution about human exposure applies, but I expect wind turbines will also continue to be used.

It has been discovered that radiation from nuclear sources can be used to drive chemical reactions that result in chemical energy that can be stored, transported, and released as needed. While this is a relatively inefficient process, I expect that we'll be burning wood, coal, oil, and natural gas for some time to come.

In addition to the sun, we could use uranium and other fissionables in fourth-generation reactors to produce useful energy with far higher efficiency and far lower risk that current nuclear plants, which are already far safer in lives per kwh than virtually any other energy source. We just have to get over our panic reaction to the word 'nuclear'.


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## Jim K in PA (Sep 18, 2008)

Nofossil - I have not seen a better expression of the above anywhere.  Kudos.

Nuke baby nuke.

 :coolsmile:


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## WoodNotOil (Sep 18, 2008)

Nofossil - Do any of the new nuclear technologies you mention produce less waste?  If we build more nuclear facilities, where is the waste stored?  It reduces CO2, but at a cost.

I would much rather see energy produced regionally or locally in a means that is compatible with each area.  For instance, Vermont could utilize small scale wind (in locations that make sense), hydro (in our own rivers not imported), and nuclear (smaller and safer than Yankee).  Some solar may even make sense.  Arizona might for instance produce electricity from steam heated by the sun.  

Energy issues are unfortunately about making money, not about the environment, low cost, or safety.  We have the technology to solve the energy problems of the world several times over, it just isn't profitable enough for anyone to be willing to do it.  Yet.


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## free75degrees (Sep 18, 2008)

I think we are going to reach a critical threshold on solar PV technology where it will become cheap and efficient enough that it will be our primary source.  Of course solar is just another form of nuclear, just that the harmful parts are many many miles away (unless you spend too much time on the beach).


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## Nofossil (Sep 18, 2008)

WoodNotOil said:
			
		

> Nofossil - Do any of the new nuclear technologies you mention produce less waste?  If we build more nuclear facilities, where is the waste stored?  It reduces CO2, but at a cost.



Fourth generation reactors can in some cases use what is now regarded as high-level nuclear waste as fuel. They also capture a vastly higher percentage of the available energy in the fuel that they consume. They are intrinsically safe in terms of meltdown.

Unfortunately, they are being developed in South Africa, France, India, and other places around the world. Very little research is happening here, as both our corporations and politicians are not willing to take the PR risk involved in educating a public that has been mislead by hype and hysteria for decades.

Here's an interesting one for you: Did you know that there was a huge study that looked at the correlation between radon levels and lung cancer by zip code for the entire country? The result might surprise you as it did me: There's a strong and clear _negative_ correlation. The higher the radon levels, the lower the incidence of lung cancer. Here's the graphs from the paper (Bernard Cohen was the author). The dotted lines show the expected mortality based on the model currently used to calculate radiation risk.Interesting that the highest mortality occurs in the zip codes with the lowest radiation. It's tempting to assume that effective radon reduction would put you squarely in that part of the graph....

Perhaps we all have a bit more to learn....


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## 90durham (Sep 18, 2008)

I saw something recently about an extremely developmental deep well geo thermal system being developed in Australia, can't remember any details but if they go deep enough and can capute the energy it may be a future source.


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## pybyr (Sep 18, 2008)

[quote author="nofossil" date="1221782322
Fourth generation reactors can in some cases use what is now regarded as high-level nuclear waste as fuel. They also capture a vastly higher percentage of the available energy in the fuel that they consume. They are intrinsically safe in terms of meltdown.
Here's an interesting one for you: Did you know that there was a huge study that looked at the correlation between radon levels and lung cancer by zip code for the entire country? The result might surprise you as it did me: There's a strong and clear _negative_ correlation. The higher the radon levels, the lower the incidence of lung cancer. Here's the graphs from the paper (Bernard Cohen was the author). The dotted lines show the expected mortality based on the model currently used to calculate radiation risk.Interesting that the highest mortality occurs in the zip codes with the lowest radiation. It's tempting to assume that effective radon reduction would put you squarely in that part of the graph....

Perhaps we all have a bit more to learn....[/quote]

Nofo, I was OK with nukes when I was very young, but over the years, seeing the way that people and institutions (both gov't and business) can readily, rapidly, totally, and catastrophically botch up handling and maintenance of even far simpler technologies (and lose things... like laptops and firearms) with far smaller-reaching/ shorter lasting consequences, have come to think that regardless of the merits of the technology in the abstract, people are too likely to- even if inadvertently- do something that'll really leave long term regrets for generations to come.  but i'd be interested in learning more about the 4th gens you refer to, just out of interest.

also, although the radon item you mention is interesting, we all know that both positive or negative correlations may or may not really be usefully or reliably indicative of causation.  one of my favorite send-ups of that disconnect, and also a send-up of fear-hyping in general, is
http://www.dhmo.org/truth/Dihydrogen-Monoxide.html
and
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html


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## Nofossil (Sep 19, 2008)

> Nofo, I was OK with nukes when I was very young, but over the years, seeing the way that people and institutions (both gov’t and business) can readily, rapidly, totally, and catastrophically botch up handling and maintenance of even far simpler technologies (and lose things… like laptops and firearms) with far smaller-reaching/ shorter lasting consequences, have come to think that regardless of the merits of the technology in the abstract, people are too likely to- even if inadvertently- do something that’ll really leave long term regrets for generations to come.  but i’d be interested in learning more about the 4th gens you refer to, just out of interest.



Just Google "fourth generation nuclear reactors" - all you could ever want to know.

I, like you, distrust organizations in general and the government in particular. In my mind, the proper and most beneficial role that government can play is establishing and enforcing commonsense ground rules that ensure that people and companies don't do things that are dangerous to others.

Having worked for years in aerospace, I can assure you that it's possible to establish a VERY effective tension between for-profit corporations and government regulators, even when vastly complex technologies are involved. Commercial aviation is a great example. There are thousands of planes in the air all the time, many of them 30 years old or more. The cost-effectiveness and safety record is utterly remarkable, and they are much more complex than nuclear reactors.

There's another couple of threads on OWB legislation. It's obvious that the 'commonsense ground rules' that I mentioned above are something we can't take for granted, and there are plenty of examples of corruption and malfeasance in the press every day. Still, it can work as long as neither side gets too much power and the boundaries are clearly defined.

I'm hoping that on the OWB front we can work in the direction of educating both users and regulators on the available technology so that regulations prevent harmful behavior without getting in the way of creative solutions.


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## free75degrees (Sep 19, 2008)

pybyr said:
			
		

> also, although the radon item you mention is interesting, we all know that both positive or negative correlations may or may not really be usefully or reliably indicative of causation.  one of my favorite send-ups of that disconnect, and also a send-up of fear-hyping in general, is
> http://www.dhmo.org/truth/Dihydrogen-Monoxide.html
> and
> http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html



hahahaha, that is probably the funniest thing I have ever read.


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## Willman (Sep 19, 2008)

> it’s possible to establish a VERY effective tension between for-profit corporations and government regulators,


 Yeah I see the tension between the SEC, Treasury et al with the Wall Street crowd. Thats working real well and it isn't really rocket science. I thought it was spelled nukleer.

I have been following a company called Valcent. They grow algae and extract fuel from it. Algae also supposedly scavenges C02 while growing. Still in infancy but holds promise IMHO. Also don't count out Hydrogen yet. These fuels have very short half lives.

I feel as all the people in their mcmansions that have tvs in every room of the house, leave all the lights on to deter would be burglars etc trimmed down their energy requirements we could get by with less generation. Maine has a surplus of power and it is sent out to all the other NE states.


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## Nofossil (Sep 19, 2008)

Willman said:
			
		

> Yeah I see the tension between the SEC, Treasury et al with the Wall Street crowd. Thats working real well and it isn't really rocket science. I thought it was spelled nukleer.



I didn't say it always works - I said it can work and work very effectively. We have good examples of what does and what does not work.

I think it's 'nuculer'.



> I have been following a company called Valcent. They grow algae and extract fuel from it. Algae also supposedly scavenges C02 while growing. Still in infancy but holds promise IMHO. Also don't count out Hydrogen yet. These fuels have very short half lives.



Algae and artificial photosynthesis and PV all suffer from the same basic problem - sunlight doesn't have much energy per square meter. You need a LOT of square meters to collect enough energy to be useful. All these things can help, but it's sobering to look at how much collector area you'd need to support all of New York City's energy needs.

Algae does in fact scavenge CO2, which gets released again when you use the algae for fuel - just like growing and burning wood. It's carbon neutral.

Hydrogen is not an energy source. It takes more energy (usually electricity) to produce it than you get by burning it. It's a way of storing and transporting energy, but it does not solve the problem of generating energy in the first place.



> I feel as all the people in their mcmansions that have tvs in every room of the house, leave all the lights on to deter would be burglars etc trimmed down their energy requirements we could get by with less generation. Maine has a surplus of power and it is sent out to all the other NE states.



Bottom line is that _at any given level of conservation, more energy means a higher standard of living_, and less energy means a lower standard of living. Energy allows us to travel, to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer, to have light instead of darkness, to produce the products and materials than improve our quality of life, and so on. I'm not against conservation at all - it's a good idea, just not a long-term solution.

I'd like to make sure that my children and their children have plenty of energy available to them. There's no virtue in huddling in a cold dark house. I participate in this forum because I want to help people learn how to be warm and cozy without polluting the air or wasting non-renewable resources. Technology is what makes life better. Wood gasification and fourth generation reactors are both examples of technologies that, if widely used, would make the world a better place.


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## WoodNotOil (Sep 19, 2008)

Nofossil - When gasifying wood, I think it is carbon negative?  I think I remember reading that it only releases around 1/3 the carbon the tree took in.


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## Nofossil (Sep 19, 2008)

WoodNotOil said:
			
		

> Nofossil - When gasifying wood, I think it is carbon negative?  I think I remember reading that it only releases around 1/3 the carbon the tree took in.



As far as I can determine, wood burning is exactly neutral. Every carbon atom in the tree came from the air, and every atom is returned to the air when you burn it. If the tree died and decomposed instead of being burned, the same thing would have happened to the carbon.

Think about it - if the carbon is not going up the flue, then where is it going? You might get a tiny bit in the ashes, but that's trivial compared to the total mass being burned.


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## free75degrees (Sep 19, 2008)

Maybe a lot of the carbon isn't given off in the gasifier because it was in leaves leaves that fell off over the years.  Plus the roots and small branches are not burned.  All of this extra carbon eventuall gets back in the air though so it is carbon neutral.  What we need to do is bury the wood deep in the ground so it turns into oil.

I heard that while burning wood may be carbon neutral, it actually has a net decreasing effect on greenhouse gases because rotting wood gives of some methane, which is worse than co2 for global warming, and gasification burns up all of the methane.


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## ISeeDeadBTUs (Sep 19, 2008)

Actually . . . If we kill off half the earths inhabitants, the rest of the poulation could just move from one hemisphere to the other as the seasons change. Combined with sweaters and going naked - don't forget sunscreen - we could eliminate the need for central heat. With all the people walking around naked, we'd no longer need TV for entertainment, nor the Net for naked bodies. Without refridgerators, we would go and hunt/collect our food each day, thus eliminating our need for 'work' and the gasoline we piss away going to and fro.

The only thing I haven't figured out is how to keep the beer cold.


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## Redox (Sep 20, 2008)

ISeeDeadBTUs said:
			
		

> The only thing I haven't figured out is how to keep the beer cold.



Brew better beer and you don't need to keep it so cold...

I think NoFo summed it up pretty well, but I don't think ALL our energy will come from "nukular" energy.  So far, I've yet to see a nuclear powered airplane, though I have heard about solar powered airplanes.

The answer is going to be a mix of sources.  Putting all your eggs in a single basket can only lead to problems as they have now with our dependence on oil.  PV and wind can take a good chunk out or our demand for oil and lessen the need for those nasty nukes.  The future is warming up for biomass and other alternative technologies.

What we NEED is a sensible energy policy free of partisan politics that goes in different directions.  Ethanol in its current form isn't going to pan out, but something similar will.  Algae and switchgrass seems a little farfetched, but if enough people put their heads together it could work.

Anyone notice that Warren Buffet just bought Constellation Energy?  It's been lost in the static on the airwaves, but all over the news here.

Chris


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 20, 2008)

Redox said:
			
		

> So far, I've yet to see a nuclear powered airplane, though I have heard about solar powered airplanes.



All airplanes are powered by nuclear energy.

The reactor is just located a few tens of millions of miles away.  It's a very dirty reactor, spewing radioactive waste throughout the local environment, to the point that it has been known to cause visible glow in the atmosphere when the local containment system fails.  Due to a major design "flaw," it eventually _will_ suffer a catastrophic meltdown and destroy all life on Earth.  A minuscule fraction of a fraction of its energy output is captured (talk about inefficient!) and converted into chemical bonds for storage.  By decomposing those chemical bonds, stored energy is released, and utilized.

Every bit of energy you have ever used, and most likely every bit of energy you ever will use, is nuclear energy.  The only question is how direct or indirect.

Joe


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## pybyr (Sep 20, 2008)

BrownianHeatingTech said:
			
		

> Redox said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



although that big reactor in the sky that you mention is a fusion reactor.  

I'd be a lot more comfortable with fusion than fission, if we can someday come up with a way to sustain & contain gradual fusion on a scale that we can harness the energy from.  All you end up with for waste, after you put the hydrogen through the fusion reaction, is some extra helium, which, even if inadvertently released en mass, would only make us all go around with funny voices for a while.   Or capture it and fly some dirigibles with it...  

I have fewer worries that inevitable recurring human ineptitude of human individuals and institutions could really lead to lasting adverse consequences with the output of fusion (helium) as compared to the long lasting radioactive isotopes from fission that have this nasty habit of throwing off beta and gamma particles and rays for hundreds to tens of thousands of years.


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## heaterman (Sep 21, 2008)

Unless someone comes up with a feasible way to harness nuclear fusion we are pretty much tied to existing technology and the refinement of it. 

None of the politicos seem to want to really get behind the only thing that will help put immediately and that is conservation. They are all so scared to suggest something that may require a little change in our lifestyle that they wind up promoting things that will ultimately ruin it completely. 

The technology is on the shelf right now that would enable every home in the USA to use at least 1/2 the energy presently consumed for heating, cooling and hot water. It's called a ground source heat pump. Most of the better ones will return a minimum of 3 units of energy for every unit of input and some are crowding 5:1 ratio. Why doesn't the gubmint' get behind something like that. Even GB himself heats and cools his ranch house in Texas with a GSHP system. So why don't they promote it the the American people?  If I were president..........


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## TCaldwell (Sep 21, 2008)

long live the garn!


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## Nofossil (Sep 21, 2008)

heaterman said:
			
		

> Unless someone comes up with a feasible way to harness nuclear fusion we are pretty much tied to existing technology and the refinement of it.
> 
> None of the politicos seem to want to really get behind the only thing that will help put immediately and that is conservation. They are all so scared to suggest something that may require a little change in our lifestyle that they wind up promoting things that will ultimately ruin it completely.
> 
> The technology is on the shelf right now that would enable every home in the USA to use at least 1/2 the energy presently consumed for heating, cooling and hot water. It's called a ground source heat pump. Most of the better ones will return a minimum of 3 units of energy for every unit of input and some are crowding 5:1 ratio. Why doesn't the gubmint' get behind something like that. Even GB himself heats and cools his ranch house in Texas with a GSHP system. So why don't they promote it the the American people?  If I were president..........



There are lost of other resources besides the energy consumed in heating your house. GSHP systems require wells, compressors, heat exchangers, and so on. Lacking any better yardstick, cost is a reasonable approximation of resources consumed. In situations where GSHP systems (or any other approach) makes economic sense, you don't need a government program. As far as I know, there's no government program encouraging wood gasifiers, but they seem to be doing just fine at both the residential level as well as the commercial level.

I have a deep and abiding distrust of the government's ability to accomplish anything without creating massive unintended side effects. Ethanol comes to mind....

Some people don't make the best choices, but I think individuals acting on there own with good information have a much better batting average than any centralized authority.

So... give us individuals some good information. What's involved in a typical GSHP installation? What are the typical costs? What are the siting requirements?


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 21, 2008)

nofossil said:
			
		

> So... give us individuals some good information. What's involved in a typical GSHP installation? What are the typical costs? What are the siting requirements?



The usual rule of thumb is 25-50% more than a conventional system.

Installation in areas like NH tends towards the high side, because of the cost of drilling wells.

Open-loop systems which discharge the water to the surface once used are fine when only a few individuals are doing it, but would cause water table issues if used extensively.

Closed-loop systems are more expensive to install and less efficient to operate, but they do avoid that problem.

Houses with existing forced-hot-water systems usually cannot be converted, as maximum water temp on water/water systems is about 120 degrees, and you really want to run lower than max, anyway.  Some forced-hot-air systems do not have sufficient ductwork size to handle the airflow requirements.

Oil-, gas-, pellet-, or wood-fired boiler can operate on a single 15A circuit for the entire heating system, typically.  A typical geothermal heat pump requires 70A circuit for a 5-ton unit, producing about 50-55kbtuh on a closed-loop system.  Many houses in this area would require two 3.5-ton or two 5-ton systems, giving a total breaker requirement of 120-140 amps.  Put too many of those on the grid, and expect to see some major brownouts (and don't expect to operate them on a generator, in case of a power failure)(also don't even contemplate using a PV system, obviously).

*However...*

Systems can be sized for the summer cooling load, up here, which is going to be lower than the heating load.  That means a smaller system with less requirement to extend the depth of the existing well, and lower electrical demand.  A backup fossil-fuel system kicks in during peak heating load to make up the difference (and can be used on a generator).

Efficiency will increase with variable-speed drives, just as it has with furnace fans and the like.  Spinning up the compressor gradually will reduce starting amps, lowering the circuit ampacity requirements.

Even with current technology, efficiency is phenomenal, and even with our expensive electricity here in NH we can see good ROI numbers for many houses.  The customer just needs to be able to stomach the high up-front cost.

These are not for do-it-yourselfers, which is a drawback for the few DIY folks who know what they are doing, but ensures better installations for the large number who do not.  Most geothermal distributors are careful about making sure that the systems are correctly-designed before selling them to contractors, as they know that a rash of badly-done systems will kill their industry.

Combination air/water systems (which supply radiant heat, some radiant cooling, and backup forced-air cooling when the radiant isn't enough) will push the efficiency envelope even higher, as well as increasing comfort, for those who are willing to spend the money on the upfront cost.

Labor-saving technologies will reduce the cost of radiant installations, making these systems more competitive, at least for new construction or major remodels.

*In other words...*

There are no magic bullets, and we certainly can't all switch to geothermal, both due to some house designs which are just not convertible at any vaguely-reasonable cost, and due to the fact that we'd collapse the current electric grid if we did.

But geothermal will be a component within a larger package of conservation (based upon improving efficiency, not having less - as you note, folks will not put up with lowering their standard of living) and alternative sources for energy production.  Biomass-fueled systems will be another part of that package.

This will happen sooner if the government stops tampering with the market by foisting ridiculous things like ethanol on us all.  There are no "one size" solutions, and central planning can never achieve what distributed decision-making can.  Without tampering in the oil markets, oil would have increased gradually in price and folks would have developed and installed these technologies over the past couple decades.  Thanks to government tampering, we had cheap oil for years and no one wanted to convert to alternatives.  Now, they can't force the price to stay low anymore, and folks are going broke trying to heat their houses, or cashing in the kids' college fund to pay for conversion to newer technology.  And the government's solution to the problem that they are responsible for causing, is to give them even more power, so they can make an even bigger mess in the future.

Even with the damage they've caused, if the government were to just step back and let Americans do what they do best, we'd have this close-to-solved within 10 years.

Joe


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## sweetheat (Sep 21, 2008)

I worked as an ironworker building a nuke plant, what a gong show. Its is a wonder it has not turned into chernoble. to complicated, to much can go wrong, not enough oversite by people who really really don't care. Im sure it would be the same with a fourth gen nuke plant too. What about tidal power, wind power, hydro power. R&D;in solar PV and solar evacuated tube. Blah,BlahBlah words just gather your wood and shoot a deer and continue living your life. sweetheat


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 22, 2008)

sweetheat said:
			
		

> I worked as an ironworker building a nuke plant, what a gong show. Its is a wonder it has not turned into chernoble. to complicated, to much can go wrong, not enough oversite by people who really really don't care.



We don't use the design that Chernobyl used.  That sort of chain reaction is not possible in a modern light-water reactor.



			
				sweetheat said:
			
		

> Im sure it would be the same with a fourth gen nuke plant too.



Pebble-bed reactors can't even melt down.  The design is such that nuclear physics will prevent a melt-down, even in a worst-case (total loss of coolant) scenario.  The coolant is integral to the reaction, and removing it will (as a matter of physics) cause the reaction to fail.  The decay heat of the fuel pellets is not enough to melt the carbon pebbles, so even a dead-dry reactor cannot melt.

The ultimate in passive safety.  Simple, and totally effective.  You could go in there with a pickaxe, smashing valves and pumps and controls at random, and you could not cause a meltdown.



			
				sweetheat said:
			
		

> What about tidal power, wind power, hydro power. R&D;in solar PV and solar evacuated tube.



Tidal and wind disrupt currents in the ocean and the atmosphere, with dramatic detrimental effects on the surrounding ecology.  Hydro destroys entire valleys.  PV requires semiconductors, the manufacturing of which involves major mining operations and lots of toxic waste.  Solar thermal panels are not practical for dedicated heating use in much of the world.

There are no "clean" energy technologies.  There are some that are cleaner or dirtier than others, but none are zero-impact.  Few are even vaguely clean, when you figure the whole lifecycle of the technology.  Many of the "green" technologies are far, far from it.

You could store all the nuclear waste humanity could produce in a couple centuries in less geographical area than even a moderate hydroelectric dam floods out.

Not that nuclear is some sort of magic-bullet, either.  But considering the whole lifecycle of the various technologies, nuclear is one of the cleanest things going.

Joe


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## Hansson (Sep 22, 2008)

nofossil said:
			
		

> So... give us individuals some good information. What's involved in a typical GSHP installation? What are the typical costs? What are the siting requirements?



I can tell you how it works over here.
Everyone is switching to GSHP here.The pellet market is losing a lot of costumers.
The price for pellets have go up much the last years 

The usual GSHP installation cost rough around 15000 $. Then it`s a drill hole thats is around 500 feet and a 8kwh heat pump.
The heat pump can go on a 16A 220volt fuse. The Cop for the new models are 5.When the output water is 35 degrees to the radiators and the fluid from the rock is 0 degrees.

In the future i think we are going to see more heat pumps that are running on electricity from windmills and so on.

I found a movie that show how the drilling works.The language is in unfortunately in Swedish 
http://www.tabrunnsborrning.se/filer/avantibergvarme.wmv


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## Redox (Sep 22, 2008)

So you ARE using hot water on the heating side!  I've been waiting to see that evolution on this side of the pond for a while.  Over here, the heat pump would have a fan coil to distribute the heat to the house thus creating a draft and using up more energy than a water pump, but it would give you air conditioning in the summer.  I believe that you are going to do a lot more with 35C water than 35C air.  If the house were built from the ground up with a radiant system, this could work very well.  A COP of 5 seems to be the sweet spot for a high temperature refrigeration system.  

An 8kw air-air heat pump is about 2-1/2 tons and would sell for about $5000 installed with ductwork.  The GSHPs I've seen start at about $4000 for just the unit and you still need a well.  One well driller I spoke with charges $11 a foot so that 500 foot hole would add about $5500 to the project.  This makes your $15000 quote in the right ballpark.  Convincing people to make this investment is a big hurdle as most balk at $5000 for a high efficiency furnace.  I couldn't convince my neighbor to spend the extra $600 for a condensing furnace!  First cost plays a big part in decisions over here...

I think a GSHP may be the best available technology around for people that want thermostatically controlled heat.  Those that have installed them seem to be very happy with them, but they still account for less than 1% (a guess) of new home construction.  I am starting to see an interest in the commercial sector, but still not much.  All this depends on an adequate supply of electricity, thus the need for wind and nuclear, etc.  

There is no one right answer for everybody's situation, but heat pumps have their plusses, once you get over the fact that you are heating your home with a refrigerant...

Chris


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## pybyr (Sep 22, 2008)

nofossil said:
			
		

> - snip-
> 
> I have a deep and abiding distrust of the government's ability to accomplish anything without creating massive unintended side effects. Ethanol comes to mind....
> 
> ...



I agree with you in many ways on both of the above statements.  Ethanol, at least under current production technologies & gov't mandates, is a bad joke yielding little if any environmental benefits, and imposing silly costs and inequitable cost shifts.  

However, fission emerged as a power source only after immense gov't investments in R&D;.  

And, to this day, the operation of the entire nuclear power industry industry is dependent upon the fact that the government stepped in to offer liability containment  [via the Price Anderson Act]  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act
on account of the fact that private insurers were unwilling and/ or unable to take on the potential scope of the risk.


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## Nofossil (Sep 22, 2008)

Don't get me wrong - I'm a libertarian, not an anarchist. Government has a very important role to play in many things, not least national defense. It's a sad but unsurprising fact that an enormous percentage of technological advances throughout history have been the result of military needs. Nothing focuses the mind like the threat of being conquered.

On a more mundane level, government needs to set the rules, and a democratic government operating under the restrictions of a good constitution seems to be as good a model as we've yet found. Benevolent dictatorships are more efficient, but it's hard to ensure ongoing benevolency..

Apropos to this forum, we need government to set the rules for things that affect others, such as the amount, type, and toxicity of emissions that individuals and corporations can generate. Ideally, these would be some wholesome intersection of common sense and hard science. Once the rules are set, government is also necessary to monitor and ensure compliance, ideally in the least intrusive and disruptive way possible.

We clearly can't have businesses or individuals 'doing their own thing' completely without restriction. OWBs burning trash and green wood in residential areas are clearly not OK, just as businesses dumping arsenic into the groundwater is not OK.

We also need government because we need something that's insulated from the passion and fads that grip popular emotions and distort judgment. Ideally, governments deliberate, seek expert counsel, and ponder the long-term implications before acting. I know that might seem a fantasy, but that's how it's supposed to work. The idea of 'statesman' might covey the thought.

Wood and biofuels done properly can be a significant player in th energy sources of the future. We need clear and logical regulations that spell out what's acceptable and under what conditions.We could also benefit from clear standards that allow consumers to compare criteria such as efficiency and emissions in a meaningful way so that they can make more informed choices.

By the same token, nuclear can and should be a part of our energy portfolio. Once again, clear and logical regulations based on actual science would go a long way towards moving us forward. Businesses will step up to the plate and invest if they know in advance what the rules are. 

In the current environment, people can sue businesses and often win huge settlements even when the business did NOTHING wrong. Essentially, the courts make up the rules after the fact, too often based on emotions and without any factual or scientific foundation at all. Study silicone breast implants if you want a sobering example of this. The nuclear industry is justifiably terrified of spurious lawsuits. Without clear rules about what they must do to be safe, they'll do nothing.


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 22, 2008)

Hansson said:
			
		

> Then it`s a drill hole thats is around 500 feet and a 8kwh heat pump.



An average house in this climate typically runs _at least_ twice that.

220 feet of well per ton would definitely push the performance up, though.  Never hurts to have more heat exchange area, except when it comes to paying the well driller...



			
				Redox said:
			
		

> So you ARE using hot water on the heating side!  I've been waiting to see that evolution on this side of the pond for a while.  Over here, the heat pump would have a fan coil to distribute the heat to the house thus creating a draft and using up more energy than a water pump, but it would give you air conditioning in the summer.  I believe that you are going to do a lot more with 35C water than 35C air.  If the house were built from the ground up with a radiant system, this could work very well.  A COP of 5 seems to be the sweet spot for a high temperature refrigeration system.



Water-water heat pumps are readily available, here...



			
				Redox said:
			
		

> An 8kw air-air heat pump is about 2-1/2 tons and would sell for about $5000 installed with ductwork.  The GSHPs I've seen start at about $4000 for just the unit and you still need a well.  One well driller I spoke with charges $11 a foot so that 500 foot hole would add about $5500 to the project.  This makes your $15000 quote in the right ballpark.  Convincing people to make this investment is a big hurdle as most balk at $5000 for a high efficiency furnace.  I couldn't convince my neighbor to spend the extra $600 for a condensing furnace!  First cost plays a big part in decisions over here...



Calculate out what they'll spend on fuel for the next 30 years...

Up here a typical homeowner will end up spending the value of their house on fuel, by the time they pay off their mortgage.  "Give me $30k now, and I'll save you $250k over the life of the system" isn't usually a hard sell...  I'm sure it's more difficult down in MD, as the equipment/installation cost will be a bit lower, but the fuel quantity used will be a lot lower.  Still, when folks see those sort of numbers, they tend to be willing to think about it.

Joe


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## heaterman (Sep 22, 2008)

-snip-

"Convincing people to make this investment is a big hurdle as most balk at $5000 for a high efficiency furnace.  I couldn’t convince my neighbor to spend the extra $600 for a condensing furnace!  First cost plays a big part in decisions over here…"

Therein lies the rub. I can count on one hand the number of customers that I have heard these words from........ "What's the best way to do it from an efficiency standpoint?"


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## pybyr (Sep 22, 2008)

regarding GSHPs, there's a fellow I'm acquainted with locally who's a builder, and installed a GSHP in his "last" house that he recently built for himself and his family (i.e. the place that he implemented everything he wants in a "keeper"); 

in his situation, he uses his single well, which has a sufficiently huge standing column of water that the post-heat-pump water is simply dropped back down the casing.

not all wells have enough flow/ depth of standing water table, nor would codes allow it in some places, but in his situation, it works like a charm, and avoided the cost of a second well

the other thing that strikes me is that in _many_ places, there are fairly abundant shallow aquifers only 20-50 feet down (the things people used to rely on back when wells were dug not drilled).  while those are too shallow to be viewed as a good idea for potable water in modern times, they seem like they'd be plenty deep enough to serve fine for heat pump purposes-- thus avoding the huge costs of drilling really deep wells for the HP


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## SteveT (Sep 22, 2008)

BrownianHeatingTech said:
			
		

> Up here a typical homeowner will end up spending the value of their house on fuel, by the time they pay off their mortgage.



You sure about that statement? Guessing at a $200K "typical house" and a 30 year mortgage, that's $6,666 per year for fuel.


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 22, 2008)

pybyr said:
			
		

> the other thing that strikes me is that in _many_ places, there are fairly abundant shallow aquifers only 20-50 feet down (the things people used to rely on back when wells were dug not drilled).  while those are too shallow to be viewed as a good idea for potable water in modern times, they seem like they'd be plenty deep enough to serve fine for heat pump purposes-- thus avoding the huge costs of drilling really deep wells for the HP



The issue with "surface water" is the quality, and the potential for fouling of the heat exchanger.  Those heat exchangers are expensive, and you don't want to damage them with contaminated water.  Realistically, if you can't drink it, you probably shouldn't use it for an open-loop heat pump.

And, of course, there's the "what if everyone did it?" problem with open-loop systems - if everyone is removing water and dumping it, they'll get the best possible efficiency for their heat pumps, but they will deplete the aquifer.  Putting it back into the same well is better, in that regard, but reduces the efficiency of the heat pump.



			
				EngineRep said:
			
		

> BrownianHeatingTech said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yup, I'm pretty sure of that.  Average is 800 gallons of oil per year.  Oil averages 8-10% increase per year.  Let's call it 8%, to be generous, and let's use the 2007 average price ($2.856 per gallon) to avoid the current spike that we're seeing.  Given $2.856 to start, and 8% increase per year, the 30-year cost of oil is $304,366.  That assumes a steady increase per year, so you can't use it to predict next year's price, but over the decades, it will be fairly accurate (and is probably very conservative).

Oil is only going up, in the long term.  I doubt it will stay steady, either.  Probably going to spike sometime in the next 20 years.

Joe


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## SteveT (Sep 22, 2008)

Not to quibble but there a couple of points that are misleading. 

First, I don't think there has been anywhere near 8 to 10% increase in oil price for a protracted period. Maybe there will be from here on but nobody knows for sure. Certainly, with the great increase year-over-year for the past few years you can get there for the recent past. But using a few years history to project 30 years into the future is, at best, tenuous. (As an example the reason that many houses in New England built in the early 1940's were not insulated because it made no economic sense. Oil was 5 cents/gallon. It would be much more than $4.00 or so if escalated at 8% for 65 years or so).

Also your are using constant 2008 dollars in your calculation. If you used inflation-adjusted $ it would give a far different result (i.e., calculate the NPV, not the total dollars at today's value). 

The bottom line is that I don't doubt that there is very good ROI for putting in high efficiency systems. It just doesn't compare well with the value of the house itself.


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## sweetheat (Sep 22, 2008)

nofo and joe please read the price anderson nuclear indemnity act. link provided by pybyr.  investors are not going to accept the risk. they will never be built. they can't be safe. much to complicated, over engineered machines that are bound to fail because of the corruption, and lack of over-site necessary to produce a quality nuke machine that will last several generations. the act has been criticized by environmental groups stating it will indemnifies the DOE and contractors even in cases of gross negligence. the question was by herts of the uk asking about future heating sources. the only one i saw was from Hansson about drilling and GSHP's, to expensive and a compromise of the ground water everyone relies on. wood technology, solar, wind, tidal,and hydro are our alternatives. sweeheat


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## Nofossil (Sep 23, 2008)

The safety and reliability of nuclear plants worldwide is quite impressive, despite sensationalist stories to the contrary. We've got a fleet of reactors running way beyond their initial design life with an almost unbeatable safety record.

Ignore the 'extrapolated mortality' - these are hypothetical deaths based on a seriously flawed model of biological response to radiation. Actual deaths due to all nuclear power related accidents comprise a very small number. Chernobyl stands at 57 as of the first 20 years after the accident according to the WHO, and it's by far the worst.

In comparison, coal is estimated to cause 10,000 deaths per year. While that number may be sensationalized as well, it's pretty hard to argue that nuclear has a track record that's bad compared to other options, especially on a per-kwh basis. How many people die each year in logging accidents? How many people fall off roofs installing solar panels? What's the risk from hydropower dam failures?

The problem is that we have been conditioned into an irrational fear of radiation that leads us to poor decisions when it comes to evaluating the actual risks of nuclear power.


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 23, 2008)

EngineRep said:
			
		

> First, I don't think there has been anywhere near 8 to 10% increase in oil price for a protracted period. Maybe there will be from here on but nobody knows for sure. Certainly, with the great increase year-over-year for the past few years you can get there for the recent past. But using a few years history to project 30 years into the future is, at best, tenuous.



That figure is based upon the last three decades of oil price numbers.  Feel free to verify it with the Feds, if you like.



			
				EngineRep said:
			
		

> Also your are using constant 2008 dollars in your calculation. If you used inflation-adjusted $ it would give a far different result (i.e., calculate the NPV, not the total dollars at today's value).



The calculation is based upon percentage change per year, effectively eliminating inflation in the past, since year-to-year inflation is small.

The effect of future inflation is to make my numbers more conservative, not less.  Only deflation would make the future numbers higher.  I don't think we'll see deflation unless you plan on overthrowing the government sometime in the near future...



			
				sweetheat said:
			
		

> nofo and joe please read the price anderson nuclear indemnity act. link provided by pybyr.  investors are not going to accept the risk.



Investors wouldn't accept the risk of shoddy construction.  The P-A act is the cause of shoddy construction and accidents.

Look at heating systems.  Code compliance is easy.  UL and W-H listings are hard, because those standards are set by the insurance companies, who actually have to pay out.

You can get anything insured, but only doing it safely will be cost-effective.  If UL were put in charge of nuclear safety, the standards would exceed anything the Feds might require.



			
				sweetheat said:
			
		

> they will never be built. they can't be safe. much to complicated, over engineered machines that are bound to fail because of the corruption, and lack of over-site necessary to produce a quality nuke machine that will last several generations.



Which shows that you don't actually understand the subject.  Pebble bed reactors are not complicated.  They are elegantly simple.  Most modern designs are.  Worst case is that you damage the plant beyond repair.  That's the worst case.  Short of hitting the plant with an tactical nuclear weapon, you are not going to have any significant release of radiation, and if you nuked the plant, the plant would not be the issue, now would it?



			
				sweetheat said:
			
		

> the question was by herts of the uk asking about future heating sources. the only one i saw was from Hansson about drilling and GSHP's, to expensive and a compromise of the ground water everyone relies on. wood technology, solar, wind, tidal,and hydro are our alternatives.



A major hydro dam is more dangerous than a nuclear plant.  By several orders of magnitude.

I would suggest putting down that axe you are grinding, and actually studying these issues objectively.  I doubt that will happen, given the phobias that folks have around nuclear power, but please try.  Research pebble bed reactors.  Count up the number of operating reactors, and the number of injuries and deaths resulting from their use.  Count up how many of these "complicated" machines are being operated by students at engineering schools.  Just in our neck of the woods, both MIT and WPI operate research reactors.  Cambridge and Worcester don't seem to be suffering from radiation leaks and reactor meltdowns, now do they?  And those facilities are operated by students...

Looking at lifecycle pollution levels, there really isn't anything as clean as nuclear.

Wind and tidal destroy ecosystems.  So does hydro, with the added "benefit" of creating better targets for terrorism than even nuclear reactors.  The production of semiconductors is a very dirty process.

Biomass is the cleanest of the alternatives you listed.  However,  the use of power tools (chainsaws and equipment) to cut wood would generate more pollution than nuclear, to produce the same amount of power that nuclear does.

The question is not whether we will damage the environment to produce energy.  The question is where the damage will occur, and how extensive it will be.  There's no one solution that will fit all areas and fill all needs.  The only certainty is that no one wants the damage to happen in his own back yard.

Joe


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## heaterman (Sep 23, 2008)

Like it or not, nukes are going to play an increasing role in the energy future of the USA and likely the rest of the developed world. It is virtually the only technology currently in place and scaled to deliver the kind of KW that will be needed within the next 10 years. The only other viable option is coal despite what T Boone Pickens would have us believe. Not saying he's incorrect but ramping up wind and natural gas to take the place of coal fired electricity and liquid fuel for vehicles is pie in the sky thinking. We could buy and erect every wind generator made in the next 10 years and not come close to providing the KW needed. The infrastructure to handle diverse output from alternating locations is just not there. I have watched with interest the construction of two 2.5MW windys about 10 miles from my house here in Northern Lower Michigan. They started the process over 4 years ago and while they are close to complete at this date, they still haven't made even a tickle of juice.
  I have an acquaintance who is an engineer in a nuke plant in Wisconsin. The plant he works in is upwind of me placing me right in the path of the fallout from a meltdown. I don't lose any sleep over it. From conversations with him regarding the operation of the plant and the double and triple redundancy built into virtually every system  in the place, I don't think I will ever have to worry about it either. A dental x-ray exposes a person to many times more radiation than is present right by the reactor. Workers who have had recent MRI's at a hospital set off alarms in the plant days after the test. As NoFo has alluded to, the newer type reactors are practically impossible to meltdown and my reactor engineer friend has said pretty much the same thing.
  Another friend of mine has a 24 year old son in the Navy. He and others his age are running the reactors on the USS Reagan. The oldest guy on the engineering staff is 29 from what he told me. The technology has gotten simpler not more complicated. The boat carries a 30 year supply on board so I don't think there are issues in handling and storing the glow in the dark stuff. I doubt they would use it in close quarters like a ship if there were. 

All that being said.........

The answer is;  Conserve first,  Reduce second  and re-use third. Then and only then can we think rationally about increasing production.

AFA alternate heating sources that may carry high initial cost due to higher efficiency and difficulty of installation, I think that a $15,000 to $20,000 system will look exceedingly cheap when compared to energy costs in the very near future. Our fearless leaders in DC have probably just lit the fuse on the biggest round of inflation this country has ever seen.  They basically just flushed the American dollar down the toilet due to firing up the monopoly money printing press at the Dept of Treasury. Unless I miss my guess, $150/barrel will be the good ole days within a year or two and $200 -$300 will be the normal range. I pray that I am wrong because prices in that area will basically shut down the economy of the whole world, not just the US.


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## pybyr (Sep 23, 2008)

sweetheat said:
			
		

> nofo and joe please read the price anderson nuclear indemnity act. link provided by pybyr.  investors are not going to accept the risk. they will never be built. they can't be safe. much to complicated, over engineered machines that are bound to fail because of the corruption, and lack of over-site necessary to produce a quality nuke machine that will last several generations. the act has been criticized by environmental groups stating it will indemnifies the DOE and contractors even in cases of gross negligence. the question was by herts of the uk asking about future heating sources. the only one i saw was from Hansson about drilling and GSHP's, to expensive and a compromise of the ground water everyone relies on. wood technology, solar, wind, tidal,and hydro are our alternatives. sweeheat



at times I risk becoming a contrarian among contrarians, and although I threw Price Anderson out there as the ULTIMATE example of a situation where gov't intervention is the only thing that got an industry off the ground, I AM intereested in learning more about these inherenrly meltdown-proof 4G reactors that people like Nofo and Joe are mentioning

but, and in response to some of the other messages down the thread from this one I'm replying to, I still have questions about what even an inherently-failsafe-meltdown-proof reactor generates for waste.

I've worked in private sector with some big corporate honchos, I've worked in government, and I've consistently seen in both settings that even when the investments are high, the stakes are significant, and the risks of error are significant, human individuals and institutions don't have a particularly good record (especially when you throw in greed, self-interest, incompetence, and politics, which have existed since time immemorial, and unfortunately are unlikely to be banished any time soon), the net results are not always ideally rational or optimal:

see, e.g.
http://www.35wbridgecollapse.net/

if we can't maintain major bridges less than a century old (or usually younger) from falling into structural problems where they fail unexpectedly in the midst of use  by the general public (and there are many more out there that aren't too close behind, and need constant watching)-- and the technology of bridge design and maintenance is NOT rocket science compared to any form of power plant, even a coal plant,-- then how will we, as a society, do at properly stabilizing/ encapsulating, and storing any sort of mid to high level rad waste that may still pose hazards on a scale of millenia, when some poor shmo of a future civilization may bumble upon it just like we from time to time bumble upon ruins from the ancients that we didn't know were there until we ran across them, like this
http://news.yahoo.com/story//afp/20080908/ts_afp/afghanistanculturebuddha_080908163926

I'd have been an engineer if I'd had the natural aptitude and quick horsepower under pressure at math.  I didn't and instead, ended up in a career dealing with the conflict points among and between people and institututions and money and politics.  It's convinced me that with some things, it's NOT about the TECHNOLOGY, it's whether we, as individuals and institutions, and nations and cultures, have the ability to deploy certain technologies in a sustainably safe and responsible manner-- and too much of what I see (see bridges, above) suggests to me that we tend, as individuals and as a species/ culture, or whatever, to over-state and over-rate our abilities to do so.

I'm not aiming to just flame away here.  convince me that the 4g or whatever reactors, or some other process, don't yield a lot of high level rad waste, or that we can really somehow manage the byproducts in a way that is safe from bungling and greed (last I knew, wer're still gridlocked as a nation on where to put any of the high-level stuff for the long haul), and I'm quite open to possibly changing my points of reference.

My "axe" of my worldview is basically that everything fails sometimes, sooner or later, whether the unforeseen problems leading to the failure are in the technology or humans/ institutions running it.   So I tend to prefer things that leave relatively small, relatively short-duration craters.

PS- I really appreciate the consistently high level of both knowledge and civility here in the boiler room- this seems like a place of a lot of smart and active minds who can disagree without becoming disagreeable, and that's invaluable not only to the advancement of technologies, but our survival as a species in these increasingly challenging energy/econonmic/ political times that we seem very obviously thrust into


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 23, 2008)

pybyr said:
			
		

> at times I risk becoming a contrarian among contrarians, and although I threw Price Anderson out there as the ULTIMATE example of a situation where gov't intervention is the only thing that got an industry off the ground...



The intervention certainly did allow the industry to get off the ground... with designs that were rudimentary.

Limited by the need for private insurance, designs would have been matured before being brought to production.



			
				pybyr said:
			
		

> ...I AM intereested in learning more about these inherenrly meltdown-proof 4G reactors that people like Nofo and Joe are mentioning



There's some basic info about the Generation IV reactors on Wikipedia.

Passive safety is the buzzword.  In order for a reaction to take place, a certain amount of neutron flux must be present.  Too little fuel in one place, and the neutron flux is not sufficient.  That's why uranium ore does not "melt down," but a concentrated pile of enriched uranium can.  You make the coolant an integral part of keeping the neutrons bouncing back into the fuel, so any loss of coolant allows the neutrons to escape the fuel pellets without being returned, thereby killing the chain reaction.

You further design so that the heat of decay does not exceed the melting temperature of the graphite blocks that carry the fuel, and it is literally impossible to melt-down, as a matter of physics.  The chain reaction will self-cancel, and the decay heat is insufficient to melt the core.



			
				pybyr said:
			
		

> but, and in response to some of the other messages down the thread from this one I'm replying to, I still have questions about what even an inherently-failsafe-meltdown-proof reactor generates for waste.



All reactors generate waste.  It's very dangerous stuff.  Pebble bed reactors are nice because each pebble contains multiple layers of containment for the fuel pellet, and you dispose of whole pebbles.  So raw, spent fuel is never handled.  The reactor has no fixed core to wear out, and you can refuel "on the fly," so there is no major maintenance overhaul with an exposed core.  The waste still needs to be dealt with, but each pebble can be used to its fullest extent, so less waste is generated (as opposed to a fixed-core design, where you take even the half-spent fuel out, because refueling is such a big deal).

In any case, the waste is dangerous, but the quantity is tiny.  The amount of land destroyed by flooding to make a single major hydroelectric plant is more than enough to store all the nuclear waste we'd generate in centuries, and have room to a comfortable safe zone around it.

Nothing is perfect, but having the waste contained and concentrated is a lot better than spreading the damage all over the planet with airborne pollution and such.

Bury it _deep_, and put some wells all around it, and we can generate geothermal energy from the waste heat of the decomposing nuclear material!

I joke about that, but deep-well geothermal is probably where we're going to be getting much of our power, in 100 years.  Technology like that and space-based solar arrays will take decades to bring to fruition.  Nuclear is not the ultimate answer, because it relies on a non-renewable fuel source.  But nuclear is something we have now, which can carry us until we are able to develop the technologies that are necessary to future energy production.

Joe


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## Redox (Sep 23, 2008)

Now that we have solved all the problems with nuclear energy ;-) , back to the heat pump and efficiency discussion.  

There are a couple different ways to use a water source heat pump.  The method that Hansson was referring to is a closed loop system that doesn't involve ground water at all.  The open loop systems (what I call pump and dump) aren't going to work on a large scale for the reasons noted.  If you happen to have a plentiful source of ground water, or even a large body of water like a pond, you can use this water in a once-through system as long as you have an environmentally friendly way to dispose of it.  You can't reinject it into the ground in most areas and dumping it in a stream will lead to thermal pollution of that stream.  If everyone did it, there would be big problems.  

Trevor, your friend the builder has what I think of as a hybrid GSHP by using well water and reinjecting it back into the same well.  There is a (small) risk of ground water contamination with such a setup, but it is going to be thermally equivalent to a closed loop system.  Electrically, it will consume more energy as the well pump is going to burn up more KW than the circ pump of a closed loop system.  Can we call this a poor man's GSHP?  Pay me now or pay me later...

Heaterman:  I run into the price vs. efficiency debate daily and have to justify the use of high efficiency equipment on a regular basis.  I usually bang out some ROI numbers before I get asked to "value engineer" out the high priced stuff.  The $600 furnace upgrade was a small example.  How about a $6000 device that would save $50,000 a year?  I've seen it happen...

Joe: Convert some more of the numbers in Hansson's post to English and be even more amazed.  500 feet may be a lot, but it adds to efficiency.  What I found MORE amazing was that they are heating with 95F water!  Those houses must be very tight and have hot water circulating through everything.  I would also argue that the house is probably a lot smaller than the majority of homes in the US.  We have 2 bedroom townhomes around here that only have 1-1/2 tons of heat pump.  The climate makes a difference to an air source heat pump, but not much to a GSHP.  

I'd appreciate a link to a water-water heat pump.  Every time I punch "heat pump" into Google, I come up with a lot of noise and not much signal.  My parents have a spring that is dumping 4 GPM of 55 degree water year round and I think I can do something with it.

Chris


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## Hansson (Sep 23, 2008)

This are the leding companys in sweden on heatpumps.
Look if you can find some info there
http://www.nibe.eu/
http://en.ivt.se/
http://www.thermia.com/

The inverter controlled compressors are the news here
http://www.nibe.eu/Domestic-heatingcooling/Ground-source-heat-pumps/Product-range/FIGHTER-1250/
http://en.ivt.se/products.asp?lngID=600&lngLangID=1


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 23, 2008)

Redox said:
			
		

> Convert some more of the numbers in Hansson's post to English and be even more amazed.  500 feet may be a lot, but it adds to efficiency.



And to installation cost, at least here in the Granite State.  Anything subterranean costs a pretty penny, here.



			
				Redox said:
			
		

> What I found MORE amazing was that they are heating with 95F water!  Those houses must be very tight and have hot water circulating through everything.  I would also argue that the house is probably a lot smaller than the majority of homes in the US.  We have 2 bedroom townhomes around here that only have 1-1/2 tons of heat pump.  The climate makes a difference to an air source heat pump, but not much to a GSHP.



The climate makes a difference in terms of demand.  You can heat identical 2000-square-foot houses here and in MD, but one is going to consume a lot more BTU's...

I'm aware why European homes take less energy, aside from that issue.  Americans like space.  We would consider average European housing sizes to be poverty-line or below.  They consider our houses to be pointlessly large and wasteful.  It's a cultural difference, but the technology isn't going to erase it.



			
				Redox said:
			
		

> I'd appreciate a link to a water-water heat pump.  Every time I punch "heat pump" into Google, I come up with a lot of noise and not much signal.  My parents have a spring that is dumping 4 GPM of 55 degree water year round and I think I can do something with it.



Climatemaster and Waterfurnace are two brands that spring to mind.

Just make sure you have a low-temp way to do something with the water - in-floor radiant is the best way to use it.

You also need a buffer tank (like thermal storage for a wood boiler, but smaller) to prevent short-cycling under times of low demand.  Make sure the tank is rated for chilled water, if you intend to use the system for cooling, during the summer.

Joe


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## Nofossil (Sep 23, 2008)

As humans we all tend to make the same mistakes. It's easier to see when others are making them than when we make them ourselves. This is a wood heat forum, so we can all be wise and smug when we see clueless public officials banning all outdoor wood burning appliances because someone smoldered a load of green wood in an old-style OWB.

We're smarter than that. We know that there are better technologies and better techniques. We know that wood can be a safe and clean energy source. We know better than to lump all wood burning technologies together and judge them on the basis of a poorly operated OWB. We would never make such a mistake.

Until we start talking about nuclear power.

There are technical problems to be resolved to bring 4th generation reactors to production. However, the most critical issues are political, and most of those are based on fear and misunderstanding.

Nuclear waste disposal is a good example. As it turns out, a lot of current waste could serve as fuel for some of the 4th generation reactor designs. Anything else could be encased in glass and dropped into a seafloor subduction zone (where a tectonic plate is being driven underneath another plate). A properly designed container would bury itself in the seafloor, where it will then over time be reabsorbed beneath the earth's mantle, melted into magma, and not reappear for millions of years - well beyond the time required to be safe. Subduction zones are deep, and the technology to retrieve items buried in the seafloor at those depths does not exist and certainly would be far beyond the reach of terrorists and/or rogue states. Also, impossible to do without being observed.

That's just one possible solution.

If your mind is open to learning new things, here are a couple that might surprise you:

1) The 'Linear No Threshold' (LNT) model for calculating the risk from low-level exposure to radiation is questionable. Data for US popuation shows lung cancer risk DECREASES with increased radon levels by zip code. Original studies are here - (links at the bottom of the page). They take a while to download. The language is mathematically complex, but the graphs are relatively easy to understand.

2) Apartment buildings were built in Taiwan with steel heavily contaminated by radioactive Cobalt-60. People lived in these apartments for 20 years. Cancer and genetic mutations among residents and their children were both about 95% LOWER than the general population. A good synopsis of the study is here.

3) The abstract of a Japanese study of cancer mortality in a spa town with extremely high radon levels.

4) Google 'radiation hormesis' for some interesting reading.

There are literally hundreds of these out there. You won't hear much about them. It isn't exciting or scandalous, so it doesn't make good news. Scientists are rightly very skeptical about data that contradicts what 'everybody knows', and it will take time for this to be absorbed and reflected in public policy.

However, I think it's safe to say that we don't really understand all there is to know about low-level radiation, and there's very solid evidence that our current thinking vastly overstates the risks of low level radiation exposure.

It's fascinating that a very high percentage of locations that have been historically health spas have extremely high background radiation. Perhaps over generations, people noticed that the residents of those areas lived longer and were healthier.


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## Hansson (Sep 27, 2008)

BrownianHeatingTech said:
			
		

> I'm aware why European homes take less energy, aside from that issue. Americans like space. We would consider average European housing sizes to be poverty-line or below. They consider our houses to be pointlessly large and wasteful. It's a cultural difference, but the technology isn't going to erase it.
> Joe



I believe the avrege Swedish house is 150 squarer meters. avrege !

The new building's are getting bigger.And the new building's laws are so hard that it`s impossible to build a house that are heated whit only electricity.You got to have a heat-pump or bioenergy.
If you build a new house and heat it whit electricity the limit are 55 kWh/m2..
55 kWh/m2 includes water for shower
You need a heat pump


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## sweetheat (Sep 27, 2008)

what will erase it is our over consumption. We will be there soon enough joe. we do not see any prescribed exposure to radiation if a person is well. I know sunlight works well for my psoriasis. what are GWHP's doing to your ground water in sweden? sweetheat


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## Hansson (Sep 27, 2008)

sweetheat said:
			
		

> what are GWHP's doing to your ground water in sweden? sweetheat



Well I dont now.I some towns they have placed the drill holes to close to other holes.
Then the cop drops.And it have been some cases whit polluted water.

Now you have have a permit for drilling.

In other towns it`s not allowed to have GWHP's. 
You must have the district heating that's heated whit waste and bio fuel.

It`s really popular whit GWHP's here.
Everyone is switching to it.

Except me.I like my boiler


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## oilbegone (Sep 27, 2008)

Anyone looked into the possibility of harnessing some of the energy from our wood gasifiers to power a micro combined heat and power device?


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 27, 2008)

Hansson said:
			
		

> I believe the avrege Swedish house is 150 squarer meters. avrege !



Last I heard, the average new house in America was in the 200 square meter range.



			
				Hansson said:
			
		

> The new building's are getting bigger.And the new building's laws are so hard that it`s impossible to build a house that are heated whit only electricity.You got to have a heat-pump or bioenergy.
> If you build a new house and heat it whit electricity the limit are 55 kWh/m2..
> 55 kWh/m2 includes water for shower
> You need a heat pump



Makes sense.  If I owned the electric grid, I'd make a similar rule, because you simply cannot support unlimited amounts of electric usage without having failures.  I'd probably based it on actual usage (ie, the more you use, the more you pay per unit energy), as that would mean that those who use more, pay more towards upgrading the grid to support their use habits.

Basing it on efficiency per area encourages larger homes which use even more energy, even if they are more efficient than other homes of similar size.  In other words, a 200 square meter home that uses 55kWh/m2 is going to use more power than a 150 square meter home which uses 65kWh/m2, which will use more power than a 100 square meter home that uses 75kWh/m2.  "Flat" rules tend to encourage "paper" efficiency, but not real world efficiency.

Joe


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 27, 2008)

oilbegone said:
			
		

> Anyone looked into the possibility of harnessing some of the energy from our wood gasifiers to power a micro combined heat and power device?



Yes.  The trouble is doing it at low temperatures, but I know of some design work in this area.  I wouldn't expect anything to happen in the next few years, or anything like that, but a thermal storage tank can hold a lot more energy in a smaller area, with less maintenance, when compared to lead-acid batteries.  The trouble is converting heat from water into electricity, and doing it in an efficient and reliable manner.

Joe


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## Willman (Sep 28, 2008)

Here's a cool setup. http://www.freewatt.com/index.asp
All that is needed is a way to power the generator with wood gas for fuel. Fairly common practice in WW2. Joe,they are looking for dealers, none in NH yet. Anybody see these set up yet ?
Will


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## sweetheat (Sep 28, 2008)

I looked at the freewatt website but saw nothing on wood gas, just available fossil fuels. Can anyone provide a link about wood gas in combo with a freewatt hydronic generator or that technology. thanks sweetheat


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## pybyr (Sep 28, 2008)

sweetheat said:
			
		

> I looked at the freewatt website but saw nothing on wood gas, just available fossil fuels. Can anyone provide a link about wood gas in combo with a freewatt hydronic generator or that technology. thanks sweetheat



if you want something off the shelf, with a warranty, it isn't "there yet" for wood gasification combined heat and power, but on the other hand, if you're a backyard mad scientist looking for ways to deploy your combination of ingenuity, & etc, have a look at these web sites:

successful combined heat and power using sledgehammer-simple early 20th century technology (Lister CS diesels, still available as copies from India (known informally as "Listeroids"), and which can be run on a tiny amount of pilot ignition diesel (or biodiesel) plus wood gas :
http://www.powercubes.com/listers.html

I am told that the better grade Listeroids are popular among the Amish and off-gridders, some but not all of whom have them set up to make use of the engines' byproduct heat.

gasifier kit for engine purposes
http://www.allpowerlabs.org/gasification/gek/

initial testing of one of these gasifiers with a 6/1 Listeroid
http://www.allpowerlabs.org/gasification/gek/gekreports/report1/report1.html

I have no financial affiliation with any of the above, but in the interest of full disclosure, I do have a 6/1 diesel in my barn awaiting some-day-future deployment for CHP on some kind of somewhat sustainable fuel.  At 800 pounds of iron and roller bearings for a 6hp engine, it makes "overbuilt"  an extreme  understatement, and should last a long time when I someday fire it up


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## SteveT (Sep 29, 2008)

BrownianHeatingTech said:
			
		

> EngineRep said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



OK. To your first point go to http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wtotusaw.htm

Per the EIA, the spot price for oil in January 1978 was $13.38. Twenty-seven years later, in January 2005, the price was $33.79. That's slightly less than 3.5% increase per year until - as I said - the "past few years". Your entire position is based on the extremely high increase in the past few years. That makes no more sense than using the price decline of the past few months to project a continuing decrease in oil price. Statistically, to trend something like this when there are periods of high volatility you should look at the slope of a "best fit" line. 

To your second point, your comments on inflation don't make sense. How does a calculation based on percentage change per year "effectively eliminate inflation"? The 1978 price was in 1978 dollars. The 1979 price was in 1979 dollars, etc.  All prices are in then-year dollars -- by definition they include inflation. And how does "the effect of future inflation" make your numbers more conservative? Are you now projecting increases at 8% plus the impact of inflation?

And where/when was inflation minimal? Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics site http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl. It now takes $3.36 to have the same buying power as $1.00 in 1978. That's about 4.1 percent per year.  The fact is that until the past few years oil prices basically got cheaper with time in that they did not keep pace with inflation.

Nobody knows what will happen with oil prices. I think most people (including me) expect them to increase. But that is based on assessing the global political situation, peak oil, etc. An annual increase of 8% may be real. It may be higher or it may be lower. But 8%/year  is not a position that can be backed up with your statistical projection.


----------



## BrownianHeatingTech (Sep 30, 2008)

EngineRep said:
			
		

> OK. To your first point go to http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wtotusaw.htm
> 
> Per the EIA, the spot price for oil in January 1978 was $13.38. Twenty-seven years later, in January 2005, the price was $33.79. That's slightly less than 3.5% increase per year until - as I said - the "past few years". Your entire position is based on the extremely high increase in the past few years. That makes no more sense than using the price decline of the past few months to project a continuing decrease in oil price. Statistically, to trend something like this when there are periods of high volatility you should look at the slope of a "best fit" line.



Go back and read what I actually wrote.

What was the percentage change from 1978 to 1979?  From 1979 to 1980?  1980 to 1981?  Etc.  Then average the percentages.

Total change divided by total duration is _not_ the best fit line.  It's the line that fits only the endpoints.

And for pity's sake, use the yearly averages.  Spot price for one particular month means nothing.  Statistics 101, there...



			
				EngineRep said:
			
		

> To your second point, your comments on inflation don't make sense. How does a calculation based on percentage change per year "effectively eliminate inflation"? The 1978 price was in 1978 dollars. The 1979 price was in 1979 dollars, etc.  All prices are in then-year dollars -- by definition they include inflation.



You're claiming there was significant inflation from 1978 to 1979?  From 1979 to 1980?  From 1980 to 1981?



			
				EngineRep said:
			
		

> And how does "the effect of future inflation" make your numbers more conservative?



Inflation will drive the actual numbers even higher.  The numbers I'm giving are in 2008 dollars, and do not include future inflation.



			
				EngineRep said:
			
		

> And where/when was inflation minimal? Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics site http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl. It now takes $3.36 to have the same buying power as $1.00 in 1978. That's about 4.1 percent per year.  The fact is that until the past few years oil prices basically got cheaper with time in that they did not keep pace with inflation.



I'd suggest reading up on the CPI.  It is a completely-meaningless number, with no bearing on reality.



			
				EngineRep said:
			
		

> Nobody knows what will happen with oil prices. I think most people (including me) expect them to increase. But that is based on assessing the global political situation, peak oil, etc. An annual increase of 8% may be real. It may be higher or it may be lower. But 8%/year  is not a position that can be backed up with your statistical projection.



8-10% can be backed up with the projection I used.  The actual number is likely higher, and probably much higher.  But I like to be conservative.

Joe


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## slowzuki (Oct 1, 2008)

I see combined heat and power units (CHP's) becoming more popular.  The fuel cell based ones basically tie to a natural gas source, sent it to a fuel cell and use the waste heat in the home.  I've thought about a little liquid cooled engine and condensing heat exchanger on the exhaust running a generator at our place.  If someone could clean woodgas up enough and reliably produce it, all the better, tie it to the engine!


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## Redox (Oct 2, 2008)

I've been considering the same thing, but it's hard to make the numbers work out.  It just seems like a small diesel idling away could power a lot of TV sets and heat the house for very little fuel.  I have discussed this at length with a couple "real" engineers and the consensus is that the inefficiencies in a small setup would be a deal killer.  I'm not convinced it couldn't work, though.

We have a lot of hospitals as clients and they always have big gensets in case of emergency.  Most are set up on vountary curtailment programs that allow the utility to run the client generators to reduce the demand on the grid.  They get a hefty rebate for this excess capacity, but waste the heat.  It ups the maintenance on the generators considerably, but pays off in the long run.  One facility is even using the waste heat off the generator to power an absorption chiller, which stretches the generator even further.  They basically take themselves off the grid on hot days and are rewarded for it.  

Deregulation has changed a lot about the way a lot of utilitys operate.  Currently, ours is giving out free programmable thermostats along with rebates if you allow them to control your A/C unit.  Hmm, I wonder if I could interest them in an agreement on my generator...

Yay, it's October!  Electric rates just dropped for the winter.  I gotta go reprogram a few things now.

Chris


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## pybyr (Oct 2, 2008)

just as in gasification boilers, there's some really interesting stuff going on, or looking like it will soon be going on, with wood gas CHP

see

http://listerengine.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=4c2ac9d13a99fb2df93387cd4317e071&topic=3817.0

http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/vedbil07


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## sweetheat (Oct 2, 2008)

any ideas on how to extract wood gas from a tarm or any wood gasification boiler and supply it to a small lister diesel motor? very interesting concept this co-generation. has Honda done any research with alternative fuels such as wood gas? I know the swedes and fins were using woodgas to power their vehicles during WW11 when their was no petro fuel. thanks for you input. sweetheat


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## slowzuki (Oct 2, 2008)

There is still some work on wood gas but it has some very real problems that are hard to fix.  Re small co-gen, it only makes sense if you are using the waste heat for sure.


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## Willman (Oct 3, 2008)

Check this out if you get a chance.
http://current.com/items/89359712_40_cent_per_gallon_biodiesel_already
Will


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## pybyr (Oct 3, 2008)

Willman said:
			
		

> Check this out if you get a chance.
> http://current.com/items/89359712_40_cent_per_gallon_biodiesel_already
> Will



sorry, but with all due respect, after having been a former diesel truck enthusiast, having played with homebrew biodiesel, and having arrived at the boiler room and returning to cutting my own wood only after having had a variety of short-lived  but failed intensive flirtations with biodiesel and the (significant but limited) ability to DIY-adapt Beckett oil burners to burn used cooking oil (with the limits imposed mostly by the ratio of population density : fried food consumption : other sustainable/ frugal/ DIY scroungers, which ratio is very unfavorable to me where I live) it's become apparent to me that biodiesel and its variants are kinda like the Epocryphal "Fish Carburetor" I've read about occasionallly since I was 9 years old and that supposedly gets 100 MPG, and that the conspiracy theorists say the automakers + big oil squelched: 

I.E. :   If it sounds too easy and too good to be true:   it is.

As someone with way more engineering and analytical horsepower than me once said: if it's a business claim, follow the dollars; if it's an energy claim, follow the net-overall BTUs from beginning to end of all the relevant processes.  

Modern agriculture requires absolutely HUGE inputs of fossil energy from everything from tillage to nitrogen fertilizer to seed production to harvest to transport to processing.  Soy or palm or even canola based biodiesel (especially considering the net energy to make the other reagents such as lye and methanol) are net-fossil-energy losers.  they only make sense if deployed to take a waste product like used cooking oil and make it into fuel, which is fine, to the extent that we eat a certain amount of fried foods.  It's a sham if deployed to create pseudo-sustainable fuels from agricultural processes from scratch.  The biggest/ fastest growth sector in global  biodiesel in the last couple of year has, regrettably, been palm plantations in slashed and burned former rainforest.

Unless and until someone breaks out of that whole set of paradigms, biofuels, including biodiesel, are mostly in the same bogus category as Ethanol.  Well placed connivers are making short term gains with false claims.

If someone can really come up with a way (like algae?) to readily produce a lot of bio-yielded combustible hydrocarbons with very little fossil energy input, and sustainable ways of capturing energy from photosynthesis to do so, then that'll be great.  And lots of people, thankfully, are trying to.  

but mostly, the big promoters are trying to make short run profits off of short-lived hype.


----------



## Hansson (Oct 3, 2008)

Maybe this is something for the future?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJbo3U3viRA


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## slowzuki (Oct 3, 2008)

I'd debate on the net fossil fuel use of biodiesel.  But I do agree, using some techniques to grow fuel do use a lot of fuel.  There are techniques of growing food and fuel that don't have major fossil fuel inputs, otherwise we never would have had farms before the tractor.  I'm not suggesting going back to horses but I am saying there are ways of using less fuel to produce crops.  Fuel has been cheap so we use it to create fertilizer, to pump water to crazy places, to do all kinds of things to crank up outputs.


----------



## SteveT (Oct 3, 2008)

BrownianHeatingTech said:
			
		

> Go back and read what I actually wrote.



OK. Let’s go to some exact quotes. 

*“Oil averages 8-10% increase per year”* and *“That figure is based upon the last three decades of oil price numbers.  Feel free to verify it with the Feds, if you like”.*

The earliest published price I can find is January 1978. That price was $13.38 per barrel – it increased to $13.41 in January 1979. Somewhere around $13.00 to $13.50 is probably a fair average for 1978 but let’s use $12.00 to help your case. If this doesn’t work for you, rather than a quip on the invalidity of any monthly price how about suggesting what you think is a valid oil price from 1978?

Start with $12.00. Using your average of 10% per year, in 1979 the price would be $13.20 (ten percent more than the prior year). In 1980, the price would be $14.52 (ten percent more than the 1979 price). Run this calculation out to 2008 and you end up with slightly over $190.00 per barrel. This number ignores inflation as it is calculated in 1978 dollars.

On inflation you say, 

*“The calculation is based upon percentage change per year, effectively eliminating inflation in the past, since year-to-year inflation is small”.* You also ask, *“You’re claiming there was significant inflation from 1978 to 1979?  From 1979 to 1980?  From 1980 to 1981?* and suggest my, *“reading up on the CPI.  It is a completely-meaningless number, with no bearing on reality”.
*

In 1978, 1979 and 1980 the inflation rate was 7.6%, 11.2% and 13.5% respectively. Those were higher than normal but over the past 30 years inflation has averaged 4.2% per year. Many people would claim that published data on inflation is not accurate, but solely because it understates inflation (that is good for the government as they use CPI for military pensions, social security increases, etc.). 

Using real numbers, in 1979 it would take $1.076 to buy what you got for $1.00 in 1978. In 1980 it goes up another 11.2% to $1.197. Run that calculation to 2008 and it takes $3.46 today to buy what you could get for $1.00 thirty years ago. Precise? Who knows? But I think anyone who buys a house, car, food, travels or whatever would accept that it takes $3.00 or $4.00 to buy what $1.00 bought in 1978. Over thirty years inflation is not “effectively eliminated”. (You would get the same result using the average of 4.2% annual inflation for the past thirty years). 

You can not look at the past thirty years and ignore it’s impact, “since year-to-year inflation is small”.

But let’s again help your argument and back off on this number. Let’s use $3.00 instead of $3.46. That says it costs $3.00 today to buy what $1.00 bought in 1978. So the 1978 oil price ($12.00) would be $36.00 per barrel in 2008 dollars. Or put another way there would be no price increase in real terms if the oil price was now $36.00 (oil would have merely tracked the diminishing value of the dollar). 

But you say it has gone up 10% a year (that is the calculation that brought the price to $190.00 in 1978 dollars). Using the adjustment to 2008 dollars ($3.00 to $1.00) your position would be valid if today’s oil price was about $570.00 per barrel.  And that is after adjusting the calculation twice to help your case.

Your position on oil prices simply does not hold water. I’m sure this will get a few more quips to invalidate this position. But the math is real.


----------



## BrownianHeatingTech (Oct 3, 2008)

EngineRep said:
			
		

> *“Oil averages 8-10% increase per year”* and *“That figure is based upon the last three decades of oil price numbers.  Feel free to verify it with the Feds, if you like”.*
> 
> The earliest published price I can find is January 1978. That price was $13.38 per barrel – it increased to $13.41 in January 1979. Somewhere around $13.00 to $13.50 is probably a fair average for 1978 but let’s use $12.00 to help your case. If this doesn’t work for you, rather than a quip on the invalidity of any monthly price how about suggesting what you think is a valid oil price from 1978?
> 
> Start with $12.00. Using your average of 10% per year, in 1979 the price would be $13.20 (ten percent more than the prior year). In 1980, the price would be $14.52 (ten percent more than the 1979 price). Run this calculation out to 2008 and you end up with slightly over $190.00 per barrel. This number ignores inflation as it is calculated in 1978 dollars.



Oddly enough, we're talking about purchasing home heating oil, not the per-barrel futures market.  I don't buy barrels of crude to heat my home; do you?

I take if from the fact that you are using "barrels" now instead of the actual home heating oil prices that you ran the numbers based upon home heating oil and found out that I was correct?  That's the only excuse I can see for suddenly creating this strawman...



			
				EngineRep said:
			
		

> *“The calculation is based upon percentage change per year, effectively eliminating inflation in the past, since year-to-year inflation is small”.* You also ask, *“You’re claiming there was significant inflation from 1978 to 1979?  From 1979 to 1980?  From 1980 to 1981?* and suggest my, *“reading up on the CPI.  It is a completely-meaningless number, with no bearing on reality”.
> *
> 
> In 1978, 1979 and 1980 the inflation rate was 7.6%, 11.2% and 13.5% respectively. Those were higher than normal but over the past 30 years inflation has averaged 4.2% per year. Many people would claim that published data on inflation is not accurate, but solely because it understates inflation (that is good for the government as they use CPI for military pensions, social security increases, etc.).
> ...



You're using dollars per year, instead of percentage change per year.  Apples and oranges.  And bad math.

As I detailed in the PM you sent me earlier, the attempts you are making to invalidate this model simply demonstrate that you are not even understanding the technique used.  You are replacing percentages with absolute values, and yearly averages with endpoints.  You are changing back and forth from heating oil to barrels of crude any time you think that it helps your case.  Picking and choosing monthly prices rather than yearly averages in order to skew the results is bad sampling, as well.  I notice that you have not even attempted to address the flaws in your claims.

And, as I said in the PM, if you think you can model it better, by all means have at it.  Complaining without offering an alternative is pretty pointless.  If you do the math honestly, you will come up with essentially the same results.

Joe


----------



## SteveT (Oct 3, 2008)

BrownianHeatingTech said:
			
		

> Oddly enough, we're talking about purchasing home heating oil, not the per-barrel futures market.  I don't buy barrels of crude to heat my home; do you?
> 
> I take if from the fact that you are using "barrels" now instead of the actual home heating oil prices that you ran the numbers based upon home heating oil and found out that I was correct?  That's the only excuse I can see for suddenly creating this strawman...



Actually I used crude price right along (except in the PM). Crude makes your case slightly less outlandish. If you want to make your position on delivered #2 go to:

http://www.oilnergy.com/1heatoil.htm#since78

_(note that these prices are without taxes, presumably to eliminate state to state variation. Please don't say that invalidates the contents_) There are several charts. One shows oil going from about $0.50 (1978) to $2.60 last year. You can look at another chart and get 2008 and see it has settled around $2.80 as of now.  Want to use a year to date average of about $3.30? Fine - that is a ratio of 6.5 over thirty years which is even less favorable to your “10% a year” statement than I got with crude oil.  That is a 6.7% annual increase and - again - is not factored for inflation.

As I said - show ANY valid oil price change from 1978 to present (average for the year, weighted average, crude or home heating) and demonstrate how it has increased an average of 10% till now. It can't be done.



			
				BrownianHeatingTech said:
			
		

> As I detailed in the PM you sent me earlier, the attempts you are making to invalidate this model simply demonstrate that you are not even understanding the technique used.  You are replacing percentages with absolute values, and yearly averages with endpoints.  You are changing back and forth from heating oil to barrels of crude any time you think that it helps your case.  Picking and choosing monthly prices rather than yearly averages in order to skew the results is bad sampling, as well.  I notice that you have not even attempted to address the flaws in your claims.
> 
> And, as I said in the PM, if you think you can model it better, by all means have at it.  Complaining without offering an alternative is pretty pointless.  If you do the math honestly, you will come up with essentially the same results..



You betcha I don't understand the technique you used. There is no "technique" to support 10% a year with historic data. And I think it is unwise to project oil prices because, as I said earlier, variation comes more from geopolitical factors than history. Projecting 10% in a sales pitch to a potential customer - and saying it is supported by history - is therefore unfair. If you really want to project future prices put a best fit line of "least squares" on the history. That MAY come close.

And I’m not switching dollars and percentages to skew the results. I assigned a dollar value in 1978 figured the percentage inflation and came up with $3.36. Don't believe my math? There are many inflation calculators on the web. Try any one. I went to several and found $3.36 to $3.38 as the amount needed in 2008 to buy what $1.00 would have bought in 1978.

*So what has happened? In thirty years home heating oil has gone up by a factor of 6.5. A very large contributor was inflation. In real terms (i.e. inflation adjusted) home heating oil has increased by 98% since 1978. And you don't calculate the annual change by dividing this by 30. It compounds! The actual rate is 2.3% per year above the rate of inflation. *


----------



## Nofossil (Oct 3, 2008)

Hansson said:
			
		

> Maybe this is something for the future?
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJbo3U3viRA



I *love* this idea. I toyed with the same idea on a larger scale when we built the house, but was way too busy to pursue it. Locally generated electricity is a wonderful idea, and ALL the generating losses go to heat the house. I think we'd want slightly larger units here, but it seems pretty good to me. Lots of homes here have backup generators, but they're not designed to be integrated into the heating system.


----------



## pybyr (Oct 3, 2008)

nofossil said:
			
		

> Hansson said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I also adore the CHP idea and got started in 2006 down the path of doing it with a Listeroid stationary diesel to be fired on used cooking oil.  I still have and am keeping the engine (which is an amazing item-- 800 lbs for 6HP, and running at 650 RPM, so stress and wear are slow.... gives you some idea how sturdily it's designed and built) for eventual use, for backup power if nothing else.  

In my case I was stymied by the fact that around where I live, other people have already soaked up all available sources of used cooking oil, and the project made less sense, or at least urgency, if it's to be fired on fossil fuel

I'd seen the Baxi Ecogen a coupla months ago on YouTube, and to me its most fascinating feature by far, is the way that the piston itself is a reciprocating magnet, with a coil around the cylinder, thus deleting the crankshaft and powertrain where a lot of inefficiencies and reliability problems show up over the long haul.

here is another really interesting thing, bigger than the Baxi Ecogen, and something that seems like someone could do on a home or farm scale if they were really into it (like some of the gang who are building their own gasifiers)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQAiH-FG9gE

also, here's another cool deployment of the concept that's been commercial for at least a half dozen years

http://polarpowerinc.com/products/generators/cogenset.htm

if only I didn't need to have the day job to pay the bills, and had a lathe and milling machine, CHP would top my list of things I 'm dying to mess around with.


----------



## BrownianHeatingTech (Oct 15, 2008)

EngineRep said:
			
		

> And I think it is unwise to project oil prices because, as I said earlier, variation comes more from geopolitical factors than history. Projecting 10% in a sales pitch to a potential customer - and saying it is supported by history - is therefore unfair.



Projecting prices is interesting, not a sales pitch.  These things pay for themselves too quickly for the projections to matter.

Anyway, your statement regarding "geopolitical factors" pretty much sums up your understanding of this subject.  Geopolitical factors will make oil go up, not down, so projections ignoring them would be conservative.  Or do you imagine that geopolitics will change and oil is going to be $0.10 per gallon again?

Joe


----------



## SteveT (Oct 15, 2008)

BrownianHeatingTech said:
			
		

> EngineRep said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Do you simply not get it? I never said oil was going down and I never projected $0.10 per gallon. I questioned your earlier statement that your projected increase was based on history. In a PM you accused me of misrepresenting what you said. The following are direct quotes - no interpretation....

In post #31 you said, *“Up here a typical homeowner will end up spending the value of their house on fuel, by the time they pay off their mortgage.  “Give me $30k now, and I’ll save you $250k over the life of the system” isn’t usually a hard sell…”*

When questioned you responded in post #35 with, 

“*Yup, I’m pretty sure of that.  Average is 800 gallons of oil per year.  Oil averages 8-10% increase per year.  Let’s call it 8%, to be generous, and let’s use the 2007 average price ($2.856 per gallon) to avoid the current spike that we’re seeing.  Given $2.856 to start, and 8% increase per year, the 30-year cost of oil is $304,366.  That assumes a steady increase per year, so you can’t use it to predict next year’s price, but over the decades, it will be fairly accurate (and is probably very conservative).*

When questioned again you responded in post #39 with,,

*“That figure is based upon the last three decades of oil price numbers.  Feel free to verify it with the Feds, if you like.”*

OK. As it relates to energy, "The Feds" is the Energy Information Administration. Your statement on oil price history is  absolutely wrong (and post #31 sure sounds like you use flawed history to attempt to make a sale). 

Go to this site -- http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/fsheets/real_prices.html. If you properly do the math, you will see that the "Nominal Price" (that is the price actually paid) has increased 4.9% per year since 1980; the "Real Price" (that is the inflation adjusted price)has increased 1.34% per year since 1980. (in a previous post, giving you every benefit in "eyeballing" a chart I said you could MAYBE defend 6.7% IF you totally ignored inflation (yes, I know, you don't believe the CPI  but that does not mean that 30 years of inflation amounts to zero. And please don't discount the EIA because the published data I found "only" goes back to 1980).

Anyone wanting to see the math, send me a PM.

Make it simple, Joe -- if there is ANY federal data on oil price history that supports your statements show us where it is. Again, I do not believe it can be done!


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## Redox (Oct 15, 2008)

Gentlemen!  A little decorum, please!  Or take it to the Ash Can.


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## Hansson (Oct 16, 2008)

nofossil said:
			
		

> Hansson said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



A company in my area was experiment whit a pellets boiler that had a Stirling engine.
I haven heard much about it in a long time now.

This is the boiler that they put the Stirling engine on.
It basically a storage tank that have a pellet boiler.
You shall have solar panels to it 

http://www.blekingesolvarme.com/images/Biosolpannan.gif
http://www.blekingesolvarme.com/images/biosol_genomskuren.gif
http://www.ulma.se/image/bio_karta.gif


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Oct 16, 2008)

Redox said:
			
		

> Gentlemen!  A little decorum, please!  Or take it to the Ash Can.



Indeed.  I'm done with this nonsense.  Anyone who cares to do the models can see the results for themselves.  Or they can trust the individual who says he hasn't modeled anything, but "just knows" that the model is wrong.  Continuing a discussion with someone taking that position is pointless.

Joe


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Oct 16, 2008)

On the subject of future heating sources, I figured some additional info on air-source and geothermal heat pumps might interest folks.

We have a few basic ways to do heat pumps.

The first is air-source.  Very economical and works fine, except for the fact that falling air temperatures end up negating the ability of the heat pump to supply enough heat for the structure.  As the temperature drops, the output of the heat pump drops, but the heat loss of the structure climbs.  This can be partially mitigated by using multi-stage equipment, and even multiple systems in parallel.  Very few systems can effectively/efficiently provide heat in below-zero weather, so we end up with a secondary heating system (resistive electric or fossil fuel, typically) that take over below a certain temperature.  Some systems use an outdoor sensor to switch over at a certain temperature, while others use a multi-stage thermostat which "decides" when to switch over based upon the actual performance of the system.  The latter technique is better, as it will automatically account for things like the difference in heat loss between a sunny day and a cloudy day.

Aside from the thermal balance point (the point below which the heat pump simply cannot function effectively), there is also an economic balance point.  That's the temperature below which the cost of running the heat pump crosses over the cost of running the backup system.  When the backup is resistive heat, or at current oil prices, that's not likely to come into play, as it will almost always be below the thermal balance point.  However, with a higher-efficiency backup system (eg, a condensing boiler tied to in-floor radiant heat), or if fuel prices are lower for the backup system then they are right now (eg, a wood boiler or waste-oil system, which uses low-cost or free fuel), then calculating that point can become important, because you may want to switch over at a temperature when the heatpump can still physically function, because of economic concerns.  Calculating that point is a matter of the cost per kwh of electricity (heat pump) and the cost per kwh or btu of the backup system (including efficiency).  Of course, there is always a bit of estimation involved, as fuel prices and electric prices are rarely stable.  A professional heating company should provide that information at the yearly service, to help the customer know when to switch over for maximum savings.

Because of their relative low cost, and lack of need for a chimney, air source heat pumps with resistive backup elements can be an excellent match for a wood boiler being tied into a forced-air system using a heat exchanger and air handler.  The heat pump is operated for cooling in the summer, and to provide heat during the shoulder seasons (spring/fall).  The electric resistive heater costs very little to purchase and provides backup during the winter if you leave home; as long as you do not leave for extended periods on a regular basis, the operating cost of the electric unit is negligible because it simply isn't used much.  And the wood boiler is used during the winter to provide the primary heat source for the house.  Adding A/C into the deal and having the option to heat efficiently in the spring and fall without firing the boiler can often improve the livability of the system, particularly in the case where one family member is more passionate about heating with wood than the other(s).


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## Hansson (Oct 16, 2008)

An air to Air heatpump can be good.
I notice a test on swedish energy agency and they tested a Sanyo air heat pump in diffrent outside temps.
This was the power output in the house and the outside temp
  7°C 5,5kW
  2°C 4,5kW
 -7°C 4,1kW
 -15°C 3,5kW


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Oct 16, 2008)

Just as an air-source heat pump (be it a heat pump or an air conditioner or a refrigerator) pumps heat from the air against a temperature gradient using a refrigerant loop, a ground-source (geothermal) heat pump pumps heat from the ground using a similar principle.  The obvious advantage is that once you get more than a few feet below the ground, the temperature becomes very stable, so you no longer have the issue of the air temperature dropping as the heat loss increases.  The heat loss still increases as the temperature drops, but your heat pump is operating from a constant source temperature (50-55 degree soil), so the curves end up being much better.  The method used to actually couple the heat pump to the ground source can vary.  Some systems use refrigerant tubes buried directly into the soil; these are fairly rare, and I'm not really going to go into discussing that technology, as it really needs to prove itself more.  More commonly, the heat pump passes refrigerant through one side of a coaxial or flat-plate heat exchanger, and water is passed through the other side.  That water may be a closed system (often containing stabilizers and antifreeze) which runs through pipes buried in the ground, or it may be an open system, where water from a well or spring is used and then discarded.

A closed system is less efficient, since the plastic pipe used for the loop(s) impedes heat transfer, and water which has been cooled by the removal of its heat is being returned to the source (albeit inside a pipe).  Equipment must be de-rated to account for that (ie, a system rated for 60kbtuh output would only supply 48-54kbtuh), and the operating costs will tend to be a bit higher.  However, such installations avoid issues of freezing the water (since anti-freeze can be added), and are not impacted by water quality.

An open system is more efficient, since the heat is extracted from the water, and the cooled water is then discharged into a drain, allowing fresh, 50-55-degree water to be used for the incoming water.  The quality of the water (hardness, mineral content, acidity, salinity) can be an issue in these systems, and (even if it checks out initially) should be checked on a yearly basis to protect the system from any detrimental changes over time.  The ability of a well or spring to produce the necessary amount of water can also be a major hurdle.  Many residential wells only produce 5gpm on a continuous basis.  Geothermal systems need approximately 3gpm per ton, and most houses in this area would need a 5-10 ton system.  That is an awful lot of water to be extracting from the ground, both in terms of the risk of running the well dry, and in terms of having to dispose of the water (your neighbors probably don't want it dumped on their lawn).  A "dry well" or even a second drilled well in proximity to the first well can allow the water to be re-introduced into the local aquifer, but give it time to be re-heated by the earth.  A well which does not produce enough can still be used, by discharging some or all of the water back into the well.  This reduces efficiency to some extent (since already-cooled water is being re-introduced into the well), but generally not as much as with a closed system.  Being able to supply domestic water at the same time as geothermal water may require the use of a cistern for the domestic water.  The well pump fills the domestic cistern when the geothermal system is not operating, and a second pump draws water from the cistern and pressurizes it for use in the house.

The well pump itself may not flow enough for geothermal, and may need to be upgraded.  Variable-speed pumps are often a good idea in that case, as they will cycle less under the varying demands of the system, improving both efficiency and pump life.  Standard pumps may require large pressure tanks to reduce short-cycling.  Two-stage geothermal equipment can maximize efficiency by matching output more closely to the demands of the house, and reduce cycling issues as a result.  A clean, reliable spring or pressure-producing well is obviously the best match for geothermal.

As with an air-source heat pump, geothermal can be supplemented by resistive, fossil fuel, or other heat sources.  This can be useful if the well cannot produce enough water to supply the full load, and space or cost constraints prevent the installation of a closed-loop system.  In areas like the Northeast, where cooling loads are generally much smaller than heating loads, the geothermal system may be sized for the cooling load, allowing it to supplement the heating load, but not provide full heating of the structure.  Similarly, older homes which are being upgraded may have a system sized for the future (ie, after the windows are replaced and the walls insulated better), and temporarily use backup heat to make up the difference until such time as those structure upgrades can be performed; that eliminated the initial cost and future maintenance issues of an oversized system.

Thermodynamic efficiencies are obviously never more than 100%, but since you don't pay to heat the ground (the sun does that for you), the cost efficiency (electricity used versus energy delivered to the house) can be in excess of 500%.  Factoring in the conversion from kwh to btu, and you can get performance factors in the 20-30 btu/kwh range.  Of course, all that comes at a price.  The equipment itself is expensive, and installation is often very expensive (particularly if a well needs to be drilled or upgraded).  Some utility companies have loans, grants, or rebates for switching to heat pump systems, and may offer separate metering for the heating system (at a lower price per kwh), and those factors can offset the costs to a substantial extent.  Only a full analysis of the system on a case-by-case basis can make the determination as to what geothermal will cost to install and to operate for a given structure.

Obviously, if more homes switch to geothermal, open systems with open discharge may become a thing of the past, as the water table will not tolerate everyone drawing off many gallons per minute at the same time, and neither will the convenient places to discharge that water.  The electric grid will also run into issues if too many homes are switched to electric-based heating systems.  But these systems do offer an attractive alternative for many applications.

Joe


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## pybyr (Oct 16, 2008)

it would be really interesting if someone could develop a compressor, for both refrigeration and heat pump applications, that used the "linear motor" electronically commutated compressor-- 

with no crank, bearings, or rotating parts-- like the Baxi Ecogen's magnetized piston surrounded by coils -- except in reverse as a motor in a compressor.  

I have to thnk you could take a pretty huge leap in compressor efficiency with a design like that, compared to rotating induction motors

which would then make heat pumps, refrigerators, freezers, dehumidifiers, etc., all more electrically efficient- and probably quieter and more reliable.

development costs would not be insignificant- but seems like the potential range and depth of applications could be huge


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Oct 17, 2008)

pybyr said:
			
		

> it would be really interesting if someone could develop a compressor, for both refrigeration and heat pump applications, that used the "linear motor" electronically commutated compressor--
> 
> with no crank, bearings, or rotating parts-- like the Baxi Ecogen's magnetized piston surrounded by coils -- except in reverse as a motor in a compressor.
> 
> ...



I know a few tinkerers who've experimented with such things.  There are a number of issues to be overcome.  I think the biggest is seals that will survive the piston speed.  Hard to compete with scroll compressors.

Joe


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## Redox (Oct 18, 2008)

There was some research a few years back on a "sonic" compressor.  It was supposed to use sound to achieve compression, with no moving parts other than the valves.  This is an old document from Los Alamos that discusses it a little.  Scroll down to page 9.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00285648.pdf 

I do not recall seeing any more about it and I have no idea how efficient it was.

If efficiency were really a concern, the US would allow use of hydrocarbon refrigerants.  They are supposed to be significantly more efficient than current HFCs and the dangers can be minimized.  

Chris


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## Hansson (Oct 20, 2008)

Maybe this can be something 
http://www.stirlingpowermodule.com/


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## pybyr (Oct 21, 2008)

Redox said:
			
		

> There was some research a few years back on a "sonic" compressor.  It was supposed to use sound to achieve compression, with no moving parts other than the valves.  This is an old document from Los Alamos that discusses it a little.  Scroll down to page 9.
> 
> http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00285648.pdf
> 
> ...



I've always been told that some of the earliest refrigerators like the "monitor top" GEs used sulfur dioxide gas as a refrigerant.  since a number of those are still functional, and I have never heard of anyone getting socrched by acid fumes from one that let go, I have to assume that it wasn't a catastrophic problem.  I don't know whether SO2 is more or less efficient than HCFCs or hydrocarbons, but I have to think that they used it for a reason.

Anyone know what Crosley used as refrigerant in the "Icy Ball" fridge if you know what that was (if you don't, google around some) ?

speaking of refrigeration options, I was told by someone once that back in the days when electricity was not universal, and propane refrigerators were more widespread, that there were some that used water on the cooling side of the propane cooling equation.  Anyone know if there is any validity to that?   Anyone have any ideas on whether/ how it might be feasible to retrofit a water heat sink for a modern domestic fridge or upright freezer?   I have a spring that runs all the time whether I am drawing from it or not, and is a lot cooler than household air...


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Oct 24, 2008)

pybyr said:
			
		

> Anyone know what Crosley used as refrigerant in the "Icy Ball" fridge if you know what that was (if you don't, google around some) ?



Ammonia, I believe.

I think I have plans to build one around here, somewhere...



			
				pybyr said:
			
		

> speaking of refrigeration options, I was told by someone once that back in the days when electricity was not universal, and propane refrigerators were more widespread, that there were some that used water on the cooling side of the propane cooling equation.  Anyone know if there is any validity to that?   Anyone have any ideas on whether/ how it might be feasible to retrofit a water heat sink for a modern domestic fridge or upright freezer?   I have a spring that runs all the time whether I am drawing from it or not, and is a lot cooler than household air...



Yes, it's possible.  You can use a properly-sized plate heat exchanger to do it.  Many are designed for refrigerant applications.

Joe


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## pybyr (Dec 18, 2008)

those of you want a MiniNuke, apparently someone is supposedly bringing it to market

I have no idea of whether I think this is a good idea or a bad one- I would need to learn more.  I do know that it would take the intervention of a deity to get a permit to install one in VT...

begin quote from Electronix Express December 2008 newsletter (look them up at elexp.com- you need to subscribe to get their newsletter):

 1. A Micro Nuclear Reactor in Your Garden?
Hyperion Power Generation, a U.S. company based in New Mexico, has designed mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes. The company has already received firm orders and expects to deliver about 4,000 individual plants between 2013 and 2023. It also said that it has a six-year waiting list. So if one wants such a micro nuclear reactor, don't expect to receive it by 2014. The HPM will have multiple applications. Some of them include industrial ones, such as oil shale and sands drilling and processing or powering U.S. Military facilities. But the one that would offer the most basic and direct positive impact on populations in need, is that of providing a power source to remote communities, both for electricity and to pump and process water.

How much will such micro nuclear reactors cost? John Deal, the Hyperion CEO, says that such micro nuclear reactors should cost about $25 million each. In the U.S., where people spent more energy than in other parts of the world, such a reactor should be able to deliver power to only 10,000 households, for a cost of $2,500 per home. But in developing nations, one HPM could provide enough power for 60,000 homes or more, for a cost of less than $400. This is quite reasonable if you agree with Hyperion, which states that the energy from its HPMs will cost about 10 cents/watt. Hyperion power modules are about the size of a hot tub - approximately 1.5 meters wide. That means they are small enough to be transported on a ship, truck or train. Hyperion power modules are buried far underground and guarded by a security detail. Like a power battery, Hyperion modules have no moving parts to wear down, and are delivered factory sealed. Further, due to the unique, yet proven science upon which this new technology is based, it is impossible for the module to go supercritical, melt down or create any type of emergency situation. The waste produced after five years of operation is approximately the size of a softball and is a good candidate for fuel recycling."

So, what do you think of a micro nuclear reactor buried inside your neighbor's lawn? Would you feel safe?


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## BrownianHeatingTech (Dec 19, 2008)

pybyr said:
			
		

> So, what do you think of a micro nuclear reactor buried inside your neighbor's lawn? Would you feel safe?



I lived that close to a nuke for years.  Was in the same building with it, countless times.  Never bothered me.

Joe


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## Hydronics (Dec 19, 2008)

Regarding a previous post: correct, wood burning is carbon neutral, the issue with fossil fuels is that when used they release carbon that was stored many, many years ago, thus a net increase.


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