STEM types, riddle me this (Green Deal)

[gwalchmai]

27 minutes ago, ARP said:

Captain Obvious, no need to turn this thread into something political

 

How can a thread about GND be anything but political?

[steve4102]

The Green Myth.

Lets take flooring as and example, Natural home grown oak compared the the Green Bamboo Flooring that is all the rage by the brain dead environmentalists.

Ask these questions of the salesperson at the Green Store or the proud environmentalist that has installed a Bamboo Green Floor.

Where does bamboo floors come from? China or other east Asia counties, right? 

 How does it get here and how much pollution was created during it's journey to your door step? 

How much fossil  fuel was consumed in it's manufacture and transporting it to your door step?

How is it harvested and how much energy is used to convert  bamboo grass or young bamboo to a viable flooring product? 

What is the process, how is it harvested and what amount of energy is used in the harvest, how is it transported from the field to the processing plant and what amount of energy was used, how is it processed, what and how much energy is used to compress bamboo and chemicals into a hard floor surface?

Not to mention that Bamboo is the main food source for the Panda.

Now lets look at the energy consumption to manufacture a Red Oak floor.

Grown right here, usually local and not much travel from field to mill to your door.

How much energy is consumed by a logger using a few piece of logging equipment, a few tractor trailers, a saw mill and a kiln to bring that real home grown wood floor to your door compared to "manufacturing" a product and shipping all the way from China to your door?  

 

[minervadoe]

Wind power kills birds.  Do this on a wide spread basis and it become a major ecological disaster. 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/

[pipedreams]

2 hours ago, Huaco Kid said:

I know what happens to car batteries at -20° / -30°.

What happens to electric cars at those temperatures?

There was an article last week during the bitter cold that electric car lost a lot of there travel distance. 

"Cold temperatures can sap electric car batteries, temporarily reducing their range by more than 40 percent when interior heaters are used, a new study found."

"At 20 degrees, the average driving range fell by 12 percent when the car’s cabin heater was not used. When the heater was turned on, the range dropped by 41 percent, AAA said."

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/electric-vehicles-dont-get-em-cold.php

When it was -20 they must of been useless, or could become a death trap.

Edited February 10, 2019 by pipedreams

[RenoF250]

I believe electric cars heat their batteries in the cold.  This was a problem with the Volt, if it was left in a cold garage it would start the engine to warm the batteries.  It is a problem but it is solvable, petro engines do not like being very cold either.

Technology to store power certainly exists but we do not have it on the scale necessary to do was AOC wants and aside from the financial impact their would be huge environmental impact making all of the reservoirs, batteries, etc. we would need.

I think the best shot is to grow algae with the sun and then burn the oil from that in existing vehicles.  That is zero emission but not really being worked on.  Could be using it to process sewage at the same time.

There are plenty of things that could be done but they will not be free and the government is not the one to do them.  The government mainly needs to learn to get out of the way and at best encourage certain practices by removing taxes, fees, permits.  If I wanted to take sewage from the local facility and grow algae how many permit, and  studies would I have to do?  How much money in permits and taxes?

This is her "big beautiful wall and Mexico will pay for it".  I think she may be much smarter politically that she gets credit for which is scary.  She may just lead the lemming (and us along with them) into the sea.

[gwalchmai]

25 minutes ago, steve4102 said:

Where does bamboo floors come from? China or other east Asia counties, right? 

It can be grown in Georgia, but yeah, the processing has effects.

[janice6]

1 hour ago, steve4102 said:

What type of energy is used to create the pressure needed for this conversion?

Coal fired electricity, or nuclear power, or fossil fuel energy? 

Nature and time.

[Cougar_ml]

Easy solution for grid tied batteries is store them underground, it almost eliminates any temperature changes.  The deeper underground you go, the warmer it gets.  

 

The biggest problem with trying to store electricity, is there are losses every time it's converted from one form into another.  Other than solar, electricity is produced almost exclusively as alternating current (AC).  You take a loss when it's converted into direct current (DC) power, which is how electricity is stored in batteries.  Then there are the losses when charging the batteries.  The batteries self discharge over time, so there is a small loss as well.  Then you convert the battery power from DC back to AC.  

None of that takes into account the energy used in order to harvest the resources to make the batteries in the first place, and then actual production.  They also have a working lifespan, after which the materials will need to be recycled or disposed of, and new batteries produced.

 

Then the argument will be made "why not just make everything work on DC power?"

Direct current does have less line loss, the power loss from sending power through the power lines.  The problem is, the overhead lines going to residential areas are typically around 12,700 volts AC.  It gets stepped down to 240 VAC to go into the house.  It takes a lot of fancy equipment in order to change DC voltage from one level to another, then to change it back down.  For AC current voltage conversions it takes a very simple transformer with no moving parts or electronics involved, just a lot of coils of wire.  Having to do that at every house and business would cost in the trillions of dollars.

There are a couple of DC voltage transmission lines in the United States, they operate at extremely high voltages and travel over a thousand miles with no connections off of them in the middle, because the cost of converting the AC current to DC current and back again is only cost effective when the electricity has to travel far enough for the electricity saved by the greater efficiency of DC current in the lines to be enough less than the losses of the AC high voltage power lines to offset the cost of the equipment needed to convert it.

 

 

[ARP]

38 minutes ago, Cougar_ml said:

Easy solution for grid tied batteries is store them underground, it almost eliminates any temperature changes.  The deeper underground you go, the warmer it gets.  

 

The biggest problem with trying to store electricity, is there are losses every time it's converted from one form into another.  Other than solar, electricity is produced almost exclusively as alternating current (AC).  You take a loss when it's converted into direct current (DC) power, which is how electricity is stored in batteries.  Then there are the losses when charging the batteries.  The batteries self discharge over time, so there is a small loss as well.  Then you convert the battery power from DC back to AC.  

None of that takes into account the energy used in order to harvest the resources to make the batteries in the first place, and then actual production.  They also have a working lifespan, after which the materials will need to be recycled or disposed of, and new batteries produced.

 

Then the argument will be made "why not just make everything work on DC power?"

Direct current does have less line loss, the power loss from sending power through the power lines.  The problem is, the overhead lines going to residential areas are typically around 12,700 volts AC.  It gets stepped down to 240 VAC to go into the house.  It takes a lot of fancy equipment in order to change DC voltage from one level to another, then to change it back down.  For AC current voltage conversions it takes a very simple transformer with no moving parts or electronics involved, just a lot of coils of wire.  Having to do that at every house and business would cost in the trillions of dollars.

There are a couple of DC voltage transmission lines in the United States, they operate at extremely high voltages and travel over a thousand miles with no connections off of them in the middle, because the cost of converting the AC current to DC current and back again is only cost effective when the electricity has to travel far enough for the electricity saved by the greater efficiency of DC current in the lines to be enough less than the losses of the AC high voltage power lines to offset the cost of the equipment needed to convert it.

 

 

Exact type of answer I was hoping to find. Once I re read it a dozen times I hope it will sink into my thick skull. LOL.

[Peng]

Are you asking what the problem is with the storage of electrical energy?  Why it doesn't work?

You can think of it like Kinetic energy - it is the potential to do work.   

Anything that conducts electricity (basically everything does except perfect dielectrics which do not exist) will sap this potential over time.

Think of a brick on a table 6 feet high.  This brick has potential energy due to the height of it's position.  Now imagine the table has steel legs.  Over time this brick will retain it's height, right?

Now imagine the table has foam legs.  Over time the legs will collapse reducing the bricks energy. 

Energy storage has foam legs.

[Huaco Kid]

1 hour ago, Cougar_ml said:

Easy solution for grid tied batteries is store them underground, it almost eliminates any temperature changes.  The deeper underground you go, the warmer it gets. 

We've created increasingly more and more global-warming underground?!?

Oh, jeez!  Wait until OC finds out about this!

[steve4102]

4 hours ago, RenoF250 said:

I believe electric cars heat their batteries in the cold. 

OK, what heats them when they are away from an "outlet" and what fuel was used to bring energy to that "outlet"?

Can a stand along battery generate enough power to heat itself, without draining itself?

[RenoF250]

4 minutes ago, steve4102 said:

OK, what heats them when they are away from an "outlet" and what fuel was used to bring energy to that "outlet"?

Can a stand along battery generate enough power to heat itself, without draining itself?

They can heat themselves but they will go dead.  The Volt was using the engine to warm them up.  Yes, I know the electricity used to charge the car is not green, I am not arguing for electric cars.

[steve4102]

58 minutes ago, RenoF250 said:

hey can heat themselves but they will go dead.

No, say it ain't so.

[RenoF250]

44 minutes ago, steve4102 said:

No, say it ain't so.

What is your purpose?  Just be an ass?

[Huaco Kid]

21 minutes ago, RenoF250 said:

What is your purpose?  Just be an ass?

I took it as humor.

I've got battery pocket-handwarmers.  They heat themselves,  but the always go dead.

[Huaco Kid]

Actually,  they're pretty good.  Not near as good as the lighter-fluid handwarmers,  but I get two hours of  "pretty hot" out of them.

And lithium batteries have improved the world for everyone,  even though most people don't even pay attention to this.

Remember NiCads? (In my RC cars)  They immediately start degrading the first time you used them.  Let them get too close to "dead" once,  and they never came back.

[Huaco Kid]

NiHMs were a brief improvement,  until lithiums came along.

What's the next big thing going to be??

[Huaco Kid]

I still keep a shelf of lead-acid batteries charged up in the shed.

I can sufficiently light a room for months with one.  I can run a cb radio for months with one.  Probably a bearcat scanner for months.

[ARP]

1 hour ago, RenoF250 said:

What is your purpose?  Just be an ass?

No, he's just a thread hijackin' agitator.

[Huaco Kid]

1 hour ago, ARP said:

No, he's just a thread hijackin' agitator.

A liberal detracter!!

(sic)

[Peng]

Liberal free energy proposal, problem solved.

 

 

[steve4102]

3 hours ago, Huaco Kid said:

A liberal detracter!!

(sic)

Yeah, that's me a f*cken Liberal.

Kiss my ass.

[SC Tiger]

21 hours ago, gwalchmai said:

One way to store energy is to convert sunlight into biomass via photosynthesis, then convert the biomass into carbon via pressure. The resulting carbon been shown to be very stable and extractable.

I first read this and though you were being a smartass since what you are describing is basically how coal is formed.

21 hours ago, TBO said:

Nuclear power isn't a fossil fuel.... do they support it...



Sent from my Jack boot using Copatalk
 

No.  Even though it is very clean - as long as you don't break the nuclear plant.

20 hours ago, ARP said:

I'd like to believe that I'm a bit more intelligent than using that as an explanation. I can always pull out your explanation as a back up plan.

Sometimes, when presented with an idea that is truely idiotic, you cannot explain it because the person you would have to explain it to cannot comprehend it.

20 hours ago, minervadoe said:

Wind power kills birds.  Do this on a wide spread basis and it become a major ecological disaster. 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/

Use the chopped up birds in cat food.  

19 hours ago, Cougar_ml said:

Easy solution for grid tied batteries is store them underground, it almost eliminates any temperature changes.  The deeper underground you go, the warmer it gets.  

 

The biggest problem with trying to store electricity, is there are losses every time it's converted from one form into another.  Other than solar, electricity is produced almost exclusively as alternating current (AC).  You take a loss when it's converted into direct current (DC) power, which is how electricity is stored in batteries.  Then there are the losses when charging the batteries.  The batteries self discharge over time, so there is a small loss as well.  Then you convert the battery power from DC back to AC.  

None of that takes into account the energy used in order to harvest the resources to make the batteries in the first place, and then actual production.  They also have a working lifespan, after which the materials will need to be recycled or disposed of, and new batteries produced.

 

Then the argument will be made "why not just make everything work on DC power?"

Direct current does have less line loss, the power loss from sending power through the power lines.  The problem is, the overhead lines going to residential areas are typically around 12,700 volts AC.  It gets stepped down to 240 VAC to go into the house.  It takes a lot of fancy equipment in order to change DC voltage from one level to another, then to change it back down.  For AC current voltage conversions it takes a very simple transformer with no moving parts or electronics involved, just a lot of coils of wire.  Having to do that at every house and business would cost in the trillions of dollars.

There are a couple of DC voltage transmission lines in the United States, they operate at extremely high voltages and travel over a thousand miles with no connections off of them in the middle, because the cost of converting the AC current to DC current and back again is only cost effective when the electricity has to travel far enough for the electricity saved by the greater efficiency of DC current in the lines to be enough less than the losses of the AC high voltage power lines to offset the cost of the equipment needed to convert it.

 

 

One idea I saw was big flywheels with magnetic bearings.  There is loss but they can store energy for a lot longer than you'd think.  The idea was to use them for the night cycle in a solar plant.

17 hours ago, Peng said:

Are you asking what the problem is with the storage of electrical energy?  Why it doesn't work?

You can think of it like Kinetic energy - it is the potential to do work.   

Anything that conducts electricity (basically everything does except perfect dielectrics which do not exist) will sap this potential over time.

Think of a brick on a table 6 feet high.  This brick has potential energy due to the height of it's position.  Now imagine the table has steel legs.  Over time this brick will retain it's height, right?

Now imagine the table has foam legs.  Over time the legs will collapse reducing the bricks energy. 

Energy storage has foam legs.

I just had an idea for pretty much a zero-loss battery.  Well, pretty close.

[Moshe]

Technology has come along that would eliminate fossil fuels.  However, big oil either buys the patent, or eliminates the competition.  Sometimes, permanently.