Posted on 10/23/2007 9:18:54 AM PDT by MainFrame65
Understand the chart. The input side is in BTUs which is a theoretical potential of energy contained in a fuel where as the output side is measured in useful work -- i.e. kWh or horsepower delivered.
In the average coal fired plant, the 'efficiency' (BTU input vs generation) is in the 35-40% range. A similar percentage is true in internal combustion engines.
It's about converting potential energy from one form to another form and in the case of coal or oil, via chemical reactions where heat is generated and transferred. That 35 - 40% efficiency has only been reached after a century of hard work and many millions of dollars spent to improve efficiency via small incremental steps. In reality, what we have today is incredibly efficient compared to earlier standards. That said, we are likely nearing the theoretical limits of efficiency now. There is no magic wand to remove the forces of friction, or to alter thermodynamics that would significantly boost efficiency beyond what we see today.
Can we get congress to change this law?
Can we get congress to change this law?
I bet you could get a significant number of miseducated Americans to sign a petition for that ... along with the petition to ban DHMO.
I'm not sure what it says about me or you but I totally understand what you typed above means.
Other than that, maybe we just retain enough individual insanity to remain sane? LOL!!
Sad, but, I'm older and wiser now and don't like the mushroom treatment by the majority of today's politicians. Freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will never flourish in a socialist state....Period.....
Lots of folks think (and indeed, I used to think) that we’re under-utilizing the rails, and that we could ship more cargo via rails and take trucks off the road.
I’ve been selling a bunch of hay to an extended family of guys who all work for the UPRR out of Elko. They’ve filled me in on so much stuff about the rail system this summer.
The rails are pretty much operating at capacity, which allows them to get choosey about their loads. The rails prefer to haul bulk commodities: coal, grains, oils, chemicals in tank cars, etc. After that, they’ll haul cargo in inter-modal containers.
The rails don’t like dealing with freight outside of containers. If it isn’t in a container, they charge you such a high rate that you go to trucks. What they really want to haul is bulk commodities.
Since we have an increasing amount of “just in time” inventorying, and an increasingly decentralized economy, it is very difficult to use rails to transport anything but bulk loads.
I’ve seen specs on some of the most modern combined-cycle NG plants that are up into the 60% range.
I did some computer systems work for a plastics company that got their raw materials - tons of HDPE pellets - via rail. They had a big vacuum system to shuffle the pellets around to the various blow-molding equipment bins.
From what I’ve read, the central problem is that high temp super conductors (HTS) is that the super-conducting property depends on the very exact orientation of grains of the super-conducting material. Get those crystals/grains only a few degrees misaligned, and your magnetic field goes to heck, followed by your conductance.
This is the central issue in transmission lines — they need to be flexible, unless you’re going to bury them. Burying power transmission lines is hugely expensive - it might make sense in urban areas, but for cross-country runs, there’s no way we could afford to bury them.
That’s exactly the type of material handling my UPRR hay customers told me the rail systems love: any commodity that flows, that can be pumped, augered, put on a conveyor belt, etc.
They don’t want to handle the goods. At all. Handling intermodal containers takes more labor than handling bulk commodities.
They must have some very high temps on the primary extraction cycle. I can’t imagine those running with any kind of baseload duty cycle if they have high temperatures.
For example, a solid state device like our computer processor or an LED light bulb is very efficient, but the energy supply it requires is very refined. There are many losses along the way from the energy in a lump of coal to the energy needed for modern devices.
It’s like filtering natural sunlight that contains a variety of colors to get only blue light. If we want only blue light then all of the other colors are “wasted” by the filter.
The amount of “wasted” energy is going to increase with time as we use more and more devices that require highly refined forms of energy. For example, cutting cloth with a laser rather than a shear is less “efficient” from an energy standpoint but makes up for this in increased speed and precision.
Hmm, I think in my case it was the nuns beating the @rap out of me for 12 years.
I think from grades 2-5, I averaged 1 paddling every 2-3 weeks; sometimes another switching when I got home too, mostly for fist fighting, sneaking out of the class, throwing pine cones or dirt clods, leaving the school property during recess to go into the woods, and most of that time with my good friend and neighbor....we played extremely rough and would fight a lot when one hurt the other pretty good whether at home, on the bus, or at school.... Army brats, and the teachers and parents just couldn't get over how much we love to fight one another. (Good training)
Correct. And those central stations are far more efficient than any distributed generation technology that I am aware of.
They turned it into a gas fired cogeneration plant. 12 gas turbines and a bunch of HRSGs feeding the big old 1200 MW nuclear steam turbine on site. Not as efficient as a nuke, but it works. But boy, do they suck up some natural gas. 
I know a guy who works there -- his office is in the containment building --- a damn good place to be if a tornado ever hits. ;~))
We already have it : a room temperature superconductor that converts ambient heat into DC current. It was announced at a materials conference, then immediately shut down on orders from the DOE.
That’s really sad. All that NG being used up. Better to have a nuclear unit and save the NG for better uses than a central generating plant.
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