Alternative Energy...

[bmccrary]

Ok so heres the deal...

My thermodynamics teacher is a tree hugging feminist. Not to be rude, but thats pretty much how the cookie crumbles. i.e. the other day in class she used the the term "lay person" as apposed to "Layman."

Any who, back on topic. For some stupid reason for which I do not understand she has asked us to write a 5 page paper on alternative fuel resources along with their pro's and con's. I would rather do thermo problems finding power outputs that doing busy work with a paper, but oh well.

here is what she is asking for

a.) details energy production from sources other than buring coal/furnance oil
b.) gives and overview of the procs and cons of each of these energy sources/prodcution methods
c.)discusses solutions that you believe could be appropriate for the Peidmont region of North Carolina based on relevant environmental data.

She specifically said to not use sites like Wikipedia...

I have spent the past few hours doing some reading on coal consuption and its waste. Also I have been doing some reading on hydropower as well as windpower to mention as my alternatives.

The paper isnt due till the 23, but I would like to have it done by the 16th. With the current amount of HW assigned by my other professors I might be lucky just to get it done. The thing is only worth 5 percent of my grade... but that might make the difference between a C to B or B to A.

So I know some of you enjoy this sort of thing. Worldbook, aka wrighteme43, I imagine has gobs of info. But what about your other people? Not asking for political views on this topic, just straight facts about these sources.

Thanks guys!

-bryan

[champion221elite]

One interesting topic might be to research Wood pellets. I use wood pellets to heat my home and they are a great alternative energy heating source.

Pellets are formed from sawdust which is a waste product from sawmills, furniture/ cabinet making and any other type of manufacturing that processes wood. The sawdust is dried and extruded into pellets and sold to customers around the world for use in pellet burning appliances.


The making of wood pellets serves several purposes

#1. It provides a renewable source of heat from a material that would normally end up in a landfill.

#2. Burning pellets is considered "carbon neutral" since the carbon released from burning the pellets is the same as the carbon output if the wood was left to rot on the ground.

#3. Burning pellets can help reduce the need to burn fossil fuels in most cases.

Sorry for the long post, it was just an idea for ya.

[Fred]

Also look into gasifiers.
Electricity from wood waste

Essentially, you can start a vehicle on gasoline, and then once it's up to temperature, switch it over to vaporizing and then burning wood as a gaseous fuel.

Solar's coming along. Look into thin film solar panels. They will be coming out real soon now, and should lower the cost of solar quite a bit. Currently the initial costs are quite high.

[bmccrary]

Cool deal. Thanks for the info. If you happen to know of any good websites, be sure to post them as well.

Coal Combustion - ORNL Review Vol. 26, No. 3&4, 1993

I have read over this paper and it covers some interesting stuff about the end rusult of burning coal. It was rather surprising. I am proably going to use this info in my second paragraph to to lead into the topics I want to discuss in the paper.


-bryan

[JohnTex]

O.K., I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but here goes, anyway....

Attached is a web link to my company's site (aka "Big Oil", but your teacher would probably call us something else ). There are some good resources here, and I believe their bibliographies may lead you to other resources. I have found these extremely useful and informative, AS LONG AS YOU REMEMBER THEY ARE SPINNING THE FACTS TO SUIT THEM! Once you get past that, data is data, and you can draw your own conclusions. Don't assume that I agree with everything in here, but I hope it helps.

the outlook for energy: a view to 2030

Facing the Hard Truths about Energy - A Report by the National Petroleum Council

[fz6jason]

I graduated back in May with my BS in Mechanical Engineering. I took a great class (b/c of professor) called Alternative Energy theory. I'll give you some of the topics that we covered and I liked/can remember:

Wind energy, Fission, Fusion, Bio-Sources, Hydrogen, Ammonia Conversion (professors research), and fossil fuels to use as comparison.

I am out of town b/c of work so I just have my work laptop and no personal files, so I can't give you any links for another week.

I am with John though, I work for one of those "Big Oil" companies that everyone hates, but really just a energy service company. Remember to look at the data and draw your own conclusions.

[Hellgate]

What a great topic. The Company I worked for, up until three weeks ago, has gone huge into PV thin film solar over the last 2.5 years. Their goal, and they are well on their way, is to be largest supplier of Solar PV MFG equipment. In a nutshell the big problem with Solar is that without government subsidies residential Solar DOES NOT reach ROI within the life span of the solar panel; and never will. For you doubting Thomas' who will say BS, our CEO says so, so there.

Now for an industrial installation you can currently almost reach ROI with subsidies. The goal is to drive the cost for $7 a kilowatt down to $1 a kilowatt. This will be done through good old mass commercialization, ie: scale. Without that Solar is great for people want to drop off the of the grind and think they are being green.

The other problem with solar is what do you do at night? Well you need storage batteries; like the Prius (a car I love to hate). Without batteries solar is kind of worthless. So this leads us to battery recycling and the creation of new batteries to replace the ones you just recycled. This all creates waste.

As JohnTex is inferring, "Evil Big Oil" isn't bad, and our current energy system is very efficient.

Remember that every "green" alternative energy is not a green as it appears to be on the surface.

Have fun with the paper.

[craig007]

The fed's have done a lot of research on alternative energy. If you look on the web sites of the national laboratories, you will find a lot. Here are a few from Argonne National Lab (www.anl.gov):

http://www.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/prepr...08-80_0285.pdf

this one is big, but give you a good example of looking at the total picture of the net energy from producing ethanol

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/345.pdf

If you search the publications you will find a lot of stuff.
good luck

[BranNwebster]

Here is another syngas using Fisher Tropsch method



Fischer-Tropsch Archive

[bmccrary]

Wow guys! Thanks for the contributions! I will opening up a few colds ones here in a bit and start on some research. Like I mentioned before the paper isnt due till the 23 so I will be spending some time researching and getting some good ideas before I put together a paper.

FZ6Jason, I would like to get intouch with on getting some of your info. Might help alot.

-bryan