Posted on 04/14/2016 10:59:11 AM PDT by Red Badger
Doug Hofer, a GE engineer in charge of the project, shows off a model of the turbine. =======================================================================================================
GE Global Research is testing a desk-size turbine that could power a small town of about 10,000 homes. The unit is driven by “supercritical carbon dioxide,” which is in a state that at very high pressure and up to 700 °C exists as neither a liquid nor a gas. After the carbon dioxide passes through the turbine, it's cooled and then repressurized before returning for another pass.
The unit’s compact size and ability to turn on and off rapidly could make it useful in grid storage. It’s about one-tenth the size of a steam turbine of comparable output, and has the potential to be 50 percent efficient at turning heat into electricity. Steam-based systems are typically in the mid-40 percent range; the improvement is achieved because of the better heat-transfer properties and reduced need for compression in a system that uses supercritical carbon dioxide compared to one that uses steam. The GE prototype is 10 megawatts, but the company hopes to scale it to 33 megawatts.
In addition to being more efficient, the technology could be more nimble—in a grid-storage scenario, heat from solar energy, nuclear power, or combustion could first be stored as molten salt and the heat later used to drive the process.
While such a heat reservoir could also be used to boil water to power a steam turbine, a steam system could take 30 minutes to get cranked up, while a carbon dioxide turbine might take only a minute or two—making it well-suited for on-the-spot power generation needed during peak demand periods.
GE's system might also be better than huge arrays of batteries. Adding more hours of operation just means having a larger or hotter reservoir of the molten salt, rather than adding additional arrays of giant batteries. “The key thing will come down to economics,” says Doug Hofer, the GE engineer in charge of the project. While there’s work ahead, he says, “at this point we think our economic story is favorable compared to batteries.”
Americans love cars because they allow an individual to go wherever they want whenever they want. In other words "Freedom."
Liberals and Fascists love trains, because they go exactly where Liberals and Fascists want them to go, and they leave exactly when Liberals and Fascists want them to leave. In other words, "Total control."
I think you mean "Working Gas", rather than fuel. It's fuel can be anything that produces heat.
Sadly, you are spot on.
Yes, but that is not the sum total of how a heat engine works. You compress the gas, and while it is compressed, you heat it. When it is heated, it acquires more pressure and more volume than that required to compress it initially.
Heat increases volume and pressure. The increased volume and pressure produces work in excess of that required to compress the gas.
Now in order to reuse the gas, you have to cool it back down to it's former volume and temperature, and that requires cooling.
A perpetual motion machine. (I suspect it will use a lot more energy than it generates. Perhaps it should be paired with a small (an acre or so) coal powered plant. )
The supercrit CO2 is a turbine driving medium, not a power source.
So what’s the power source again?
Another economically challenged Energy program living off government grants that will never achieve real profits. I’m making parts for this loser.
What a quaint notion, Doug. You are probably in your 50s or 60s to believe such classical engineering-economics style thinking. No, the key thing is whether the white hegemonic power structure is smashed and brown people can take over to make sure men can use women's bathrooms and all microaggressions are dealt with severely.
>>No, the key thing is whether the white hegemonic power structure is smashed and brown people can take over to make sure men can use women’s bathrooms and all microaggressions are dealt with severely. <<
What do brown ppl have to do with the tranny issue? From my time watching politics, most of that agenda has predominately been pushed by whites. From the Aids epidemic in the 80s to what is going on today.
LFTR: http://liquidfluoridethoriumreactor.glerner.com/2012-what-is-a-lftr/
You’re right - there’s an uncanny resemblance...
The turbine might be compact, but what about the energy source? And all the associated plumbing, etc?
He’s not selling this as an energy source but an energy transformer. Heat to rotational energy to electricity.
It requires energy to operate just like any other turbine. The only difference is that it is more compact.
[ Adding more hours of operation just means having a larger or hotter reservoir of the molten salt, rather than adding additional arrays of giant batteries
LFTR: http://liquidfluoridethoriumreactor.glerner.com/2012-what-is-a-lftr/
]
The perfect power source for a Underground Colony.
Actually perfect for anyplace except for the American regulatory state, which makes such technology illegal. This is not new technology. See Wikipedia:
Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion
The General Electric program, which was based at Evendale, Ohio, was pursued because of its advantages in simplicity, reliability, suitability and quick start ability. Conventional jet engine compressor and turbine sections were used, with the compressed air run through the reactor itself to be heated by it before being exhausted through the turbine.
The US Aircraft Reactor Experiment (ARE) was a 2.5 MW thermal nuclear reactor experiment designed to attain a high power density for use as an engine in a nuclear-powered bomber. It used the molten fluoride salt NaF-ZrF4-UF4 (53-41-6 mol%) as fuel, was moderated by beryllium oxide (BeO), used liquid sodium as a secondary coolant and had a peak temperature of 860 °C. It operated for a 1000-hour cycle in 1954. It was the first molten salt reactor. Work on this project in the US stopped after ICBMs made it obsolete. The designs for its engines can currently be viewed at the EBR-I memorial building at the Idaho National Laboratory.
https://youtu.be/tyqYP6f66Mw
They look the same to me. All joking aside, it’s a big double standard that blacks can play whites but not vice versa.
“...i’ve seen too many ‘miracle’ technology announcements that haven’t panned out. i’ll believe it when i see it”
That’s what’s been missing, I haven’t seen the cold fusion LENR crowd in here pushing that Italian scam artist in months.
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