Volcanic ash proves cheap and highly effective for solar energy storage

www.newatlas.com ^ | May 14, 2024 | Loz Blain

[Jonty30]

Basically, you can heat it up and cool it off for forever and it never breaks down. If it loses efficiency, it can be replaced and this stuff can be recycled.

Presumably coal ash can be put to work just the same.

[Yossarian]

ASH ALERT!

(Sorry, old habits die hard...)

[Tell It Right]

Don’t trust it. Large scale energy applications like that are still best handled with fossil fuels. Storing power always has too much conversion and storage loss. The only reason to use alternative power sources and storage is at the residential level to provide energy even when the Dims are making energy inaccessible or too expensive to use.

[FreedomPoster]

Sorry, but in general when dealing with thermal storage, if there isn’t a phase change involved, there isn’t enough energy involved to be interesting. This is more Green energy money wasting, most likely.

[Jonty30]

For home power and heat, however. Maybe?

[jacknhoo]

That’s going to take a mighty big ash.

[Jonty30]

There are probably a billion or two tonnes of coal ash that is sitting somewhere.

Coal ash is one of the largest types of industrial waste generated in the United States. According to the American Coal Ash Association’s Coal Combustion Product Production & Use Survey Report, nearly 130 million tons of coal ash was generated in 2014.

https://www.epa.gov/coalash/coal-ash-basics

[Ciaphas Cain]

I'm actually an old enough lurker to get that reference :-)

Man, this site has seen some crazy days.

[Mr. K]

What happened to all those people? FR has no one worth picking on these days. There are some random PITA’s that just act like immature liberals, but its not the same.

Quiddom’s quatrains were always a hoot.

[trebb]

Yeah - instead of having wind farms, we can have mirror farms directed at huge ash-holes - did I get that right?

[Jonty30]

I’d rather have the solar power directed toward the ground than frying birds.

[mewzilla]

I think this is the paper...

Evaluation of volcanic ash as a low-cost high-temperature thermal energy storage material for concentrated solar power

Paging Iceland!

[butlerweave]

Being blanketed in volcanic ash also kills

[PIF]

Volcanic ash is rock ash. Not a household powder. Nothing surprising about being able to heat and cool. Earth recycles rock all the time.

[PIF]

Core energy only comes from 2 sources: Nuclear and Coal.

[PIF]

coal ash is not rock. So it would be completely different in performance characteristics.

[PIF]

What happened to all those people?
—

They died off or were kicked by admin

[Jonty30]

That’s just engineering. We’d just to see it’s limits. Coal ash is an unrealized resource, when it comes down to it.

[PIF]

That’s just engineering.
—

Uses for an item are not found through engineering, but through science.

[Jonty30]

Finding uses may be for science, but making it happening is engineering.