Energy Harvested From Evaporation Could Power 70% Of The U.S.

Looking kinda flimsy in the lab demos:

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bloggs.fredbloggs.fred
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Spores expanding when they get damp, powering the country?

That's a parody, right?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote on 9/27/2017 10:18 PM:

Interesting. The one approach uses the force of the expansion/contraction directly by changing the length of tapes. The other form uses the power indirectly by moving weight to let gravity drive the device. That would seem to be not very space efficient.

This is an idea that will need a lot of work, but it is not ridiculous. Only Larkin would look at it and think either it has to replace gigawatt power plants or it is of no value.

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Rick C 

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rickman

That's rather old news: More:

Such an engine has some big problems.

  1. Ultimately, the energy to power this heat engine has to come from the sun. That means it won't work at night and in low humidity frigid (arctic) environments.
  2. The volumetric energy density is very low. Low energy density schemes tend to be inefficient and require large areas of land (or water).
  3. Finding an efficient generator or turbine that can operate with such little motion or low rpm is not easy.

Incidentally, the principle is much like that of the "dunking bird" toy: A few billion of those driving generators should work better than expanding spores.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Jeff Liebermann

Someone already thought of it: "Solution to World Energy Problems"

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Jeff Liebermann

It is another novelty heat engine of sorts. A bit like a biological version of the nodding bird that drinks water to cool its beak.

Or like the bicycle wheel rim suspended by rubber bands with an anglepoise lamp warming the ones nearer the top which contract.

Or the various toy heat engines which will run off a hot cup of coffee.

The main problem for such structures outside the lab is wind!

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Martin Brown
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Martin Brown

On Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 11:58:41 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrot e:

the-u-s/

True, but this is different for that purely thermo engine. These people nee d to engage some serious mechanical engineering and genetic engineering tal ent to devise something with some reasonable energy density and horsepower. Make those spores bigger and get them to self-organize into a better struc ture.

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bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

And the thermal efficiency in the PPM range.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

John Larkin wrote on 9/28/2017 1:09 PM:

Thermal efficiency is of no consequence when you aren't paying for the therms. More important are the other metrics such as size and cost of the structure required to produce other forms of energy from the therms.

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Rick C 

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rickman

That is so not true. It's one of the key issues with ambient energy harvesting, grotty efficiency making the required equipment too large to be practical for a lot of apps.

NT

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tabbypurr

You just contradicted yourself. It is not the thermal efficiency that is the problem, it is the size required. The size can be mitigated in other ways than by improving the thermal efficiency.

Before you can solve a problem you have to properly understand it.

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Rick C 

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rickman

About three times a week, somebody does a giant press release for some stupid new energy scheme, like thermoelectrics in your jeans or piezos in the pavement. The conversion rate to practical implementation is precisely zero.

Ocean thermal gradient power almost made sense, but the power density and the gradients are too low. Still made about 9000x more sense than damp spores.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

no it can't. If you want a megawatt of solar power and your tech is 2% efficient there is simply no way round the requirement for a huge amount of collecting area. And huge area costs $$$$$.

Of course.

NT

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tabbypurr

I've noticed that. Electronics is a bit the same though, ask people how many of them realise the connectors they use were designed in the 1800s, 1940s, 1950s etc and they would be shocked. Most buy into endless hype.

NT

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tabbypurr

Hey the gravity lamp made it to amazon.

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It's a 'feel good' purchase. I wonder what the energy pay back time is for it? ($70 will buy a lot of AA batteries.)

George H.

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George Herold

Everything generating a megawatt costs $$$$$. Do you know of a cheap way to generate a megawatt? The point is the "thermal efficiency" is a poor substitute for what you really care about, size and cost. So why bother with an indirect metric when you can use the metric you *do* care about?

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Rick C 

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rickman

Nuclear, coal, gas & hydro are reasonably priced. PV & wind turbine costs are ouch. Toy engine costs per megawatt are extreme.

Low thermal efficiency plus diffuse natural energy implies gross size & cost. It's like saying 'it's a 3 wheeler,' it tells one 2 things. a) no it can't haul your 40 tonne load, and b) it explains why.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Yep, toys can be expensive. But that doesn't make any of the above cheap.

No one cares about implications? As I have already said, low thermal efficiency can be mitigated by technology. What matters is what matters and it isn't always thermal efficiency. Thermal efficiency is not a road block.

Heck, look at all the people using low thermally efficient wood to heat their homes. Low thermally efficient ethanol by products are burned for heat. Heck, the lowest thermal efficiency is obtained by growing crops, feeding the crops to animals, feeding the animals to people and then having the people do manual labor. That happens every day. That would be around what, maybe 0.001% efficient?

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Rick C 

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rickman

Using human bodies to convert food to power is so last eon.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

Nuclear waste disposal still hasn't been properly priced yet, and there's a lot of resistance to charging a realistic price for the damaging effects of emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. Hydro can be cheap, but there's not a lot of it about.

PV & wind turbine costs are ouch.

They aren't. The problem is that photovoltaic and wind don't generate all the time, so you need back-up generators (gas turbines or pumped storage) to provide dispatchable power when you need it.

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PV and wind in good locations are already as cheap as power generated by burning fossil carbon, even if you don't charge for the damage done by the CO2 emitted when you burn fossil carbon.

A rather poor example. Make the three wheels big enough, and 40 tonnes can become trivial.

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bill.sloman

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