Posted on 12/09/2018 8:30:45 AM PST by BenLurkin
MIT engineers have come up with a conceptual design for a system to store renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, and deliver that energy back into an electric grid on demand. The system may be designed to power a small city not just when the sun is up or the wind is high, but around the clock.
The new design stores heat generated by excess electricity from solar or wind power in large tanks of white-hot molten silicon......
(Excerpt) Read more at scitechdaily.com ...
In before the big boobs pic.
I have a great idea!
Let’s devote the entire surface of the Earth to collecting and storing solar energy and say we saved the environment!
Once the “possible bugs,” such as exploding or leaking molten silicon storage tanks and other safety issues have been worked out, this has great possibilities.
“large tanks of white-hot molten silicon”.... Powering a small city.... And what would that small city look like after a “terrorist/activist/luddite/???” decides to blow it up with a home-made bomb (for example like at the Murrow building in OKC)? All that silicon all over the place? Oh sure, it will immediately solidify and will be no worse than a windy day at the beach / sand blowing. Wanna bet?
hardly something new
No thanks. OK in SciTech’s neighborhood, but not in mine.
Let me get this straight; so a solar panel (less than 20% efficiency converting light to electricity) or wind (maybe 50% efficiency) is converted again to heat (more loss), which is later (more loss) converted to mechanical energy (more loss) which is converted back to electrical energy (more loss). This from the folks that are so much “smarter” than us???
Kewel...
I would save the project money and use a Stanley Thermos for storage...
Good point (otherwise known as ‘reality’). Wake me up when there’s some independent cost/benefit analysis. Conceptual designs only run conceptual houses and conceptual cars (but can be used to run real grant applications).
Not to mention the energy required to keep the silicon molten.
Beach sand is silicon dioxide. They are talking about molten silicon. Silicon melts at 2577 °F, so it's going to be pretty hot. If released from its container, molten silicon will react with oxygen rather dramatically.
Mind boggling isn’t it? I guess they figure that since the fuel is “free” all you have to do is scale the whole system up by 1/the efficiency factor and wala! Problem solved.
Fun stuff to play with, but some assembly is required.
What type of pipe or tube is to be used in the heat exchangers, at what pressure and safety margin?
Pls, don’t claim the internal and external tube pressure will maintain tube integrity.
Draining for shutdown will be interesting.
With a small error, your new toy becomes a large chunk of solid lava.
If the tube fails is the steam/lava mix explosive?
Liquid sodium as an intermediate transfer ?
Homer Simson works at a nuclear power plant.
And put more than half of it back in containers of white hot molten silicon. So simple. Why did it take wonks from MIT to think of this?
China is the leading supplier of elemental silicon producing 4.6 million tons of it.
The Blob remake?
But, molten silicon is a powerful solvent; have they identifire the material and insulation to be used for those "large tanks"?
TXnMA
Their container, at least the inner layer contacting the molten silicon, is all graphite. That will also burn dramatically. Keeping atmospheric O2 out of the system would be a key engineering requirement.
Using 'renewable energy' on earth is a dumb liberal pipe dream, but this might make sense for a moon base. Plenty of real estate to site a solar mirror site there without killing any birds or turtles. Collect energy for two weeks, store half in molten silicon and recoup that the next two weeks. May need to import the graphite and some of the other working parts from the earth, but the silicon can be sourced from moon itself, saving megabucks. And no O2 worries with the lunar vacuum. The moon there has no hydropower and no fossil fuels (and wouldn't want to waste O2 on latter even if they existed) so the main alternative to solar would be nuclear, which has its own cost issues.
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