Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

thevilla

I haven't seen a newt since I was in my teens 50 years ago.  They were plentiful around here then.  That said, I don't really go looking for them

Martyn1981

QrizB said:

70sbudgie said:

I'm not actually sure that newts would impact this sort of construction. It's not that you can't build if you find them, you just have to make provision for them ( I've seen a newt hotel that was a solution on one project).

I met someone once who worked as a newt wrangler. They were licensed and everything.

Never heard of a newt wrangler, but it brought back memories of a very short 'documentary' (<cough>) that I once saw a decade or so ago.




On an ever so slightly more 'truthful' basis, here's an update on the Welsh tidal stream project in Morlais:

HydroWing unveils Welsh tidal plans

HydroWing is gearing up for the deployment of its latest Tocardo T-3 turbines at the 10MW Morlais energy scheme in Wales.

It was the largest tidal stream project in Wales to be successful in the UK government’s latest Contracts for Difference round and will be located at the Morlais tidal energy facility in Anglesey, which is managed by the social enterprise Menter Môn. The site is the UK’s largest consented tidal energy scheme.

 “The Morlais project is a major milestone in our quest to become the largest provider of tidal energy arrays in the world,” said Richard Parkinson, managing director of HydroWing’s parent company Inyanga Marine Energy Group.

NigeWick

Martyn1981 said:

Never heard of a newt wrangler,

One of Granddad's brothers aged 16 was shown as a "cowboy" in the 1901 census. This was just outside Kingston upon Thames...

Coastalwatch

Oh my, along with global warming then what a calamitous legacy we are leaving future generations.

With both main political parties advocating a nuclear future then just who should we be voting for in the coming general election?

UK Has £10 Billion Per Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning Bottomless Pit

The decommissioning costs for the UK’s nuclear generation are coming home to roost, and they are laying golden eggs for the firms that won the business. For UK citizens, not so much. Despite the very high costs of both the new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Site C, the rapidly rising costs of clean up and the much cheaper alternatives available, the country’s current administration remains committed to the technology. Something is likely to give.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/19/uk-has-e10-billion-per-nuclear-reactor-decommissioning-bottomless-pit/

Martyn1981

Well worth a watch. An idea (one of several in fact) to store waste heat, perhaps for later use. But the potential may be high enough / economical, to allow for the waste heat to be moved (by truck trailer) to a place in need of that heat/energy.

No idea if this is viable, but certainly sounds interesting.

Moving waste heat from industry to homes.

50% of global energy generation is heat, much of which is used for industrial processes. As much as 50% of that industrial heat is simply lost to the atmosphere each year. Industry is often too far from cities to be connected by pipework. So, how about a well insulated shipping container that can handle 1300 degrees Celsius and be delivered to small operators who need low grade heat, or to district heating systems to keep you toasty warm in the winter? Everyone's a winner!! Maybe we could call it 'Uber Heats'!

zeupater

Martyn1981 said:

Well worth a watch. An idea (one of several in fact) to store waste heat, perhaps for later use. But the potential may be high enough / economical, to allow for the waste heat to be moved (by truck trailer) to a place in need of that heat/energy.

No idea if this is viable, but certainly sounds interesting.

Moving waste heat from industry to homes.

50% of global energy generation is heat, much of which is used for industrial processes. As much as 50% of that industrial heat is simply lost to the atmosphere each year. Industry is often too far from cities to be connected by pipework. So, how about a well insulated shipping container that can handle 1300 degrees Celsius and be delivered to small operators who need low grade heat, or to district heating systems to keep you toasty warm in the winter? Everyone's a winner!! Maybe we could call it 'Uber Heats'!

Hi

Guessing that the current 'Elevated Temperatures' design wouldn't cover such high levels, I'd love to see the transport hazard labels for that one .... maybe a graphical representation of a crematorium or something along the lines of cars, buildings & people being consumed by a flaming pile of waste ... then again there's the mitigation of accident effects through speed reduction and escorted vehicle convoys, so not exactly a cheap option ....

Not a nice thought, but at some time or other it'd be bound to happen, so might as well start thinking about it up front !!

Anyway, the issue shouldn't be one of transport ... it's a planning problem and therefore shouldn't it be for local authority planners in the relevant areas to solve within their own functional responsibilities, boundaries & environmental policy & aspirations ... as for 'Industry is often too far from cities ...', I find that rather odd and would welcome some data to support the claim - if it's really 'too far', then where do the workers live & travel from on a daily basis ?!

HTH - Z

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Well worth a watch. An idea (one of several in fact) to store waste heat, perhaps for later use. But the potential may be high enough / economical, to allow for the waste heat to be moved (by truck trailer) to a place in need of that heat/energy.

No idea if this is viable, but certainly sounds interesting.

Moving waste heat from industry to homes.

50% of global energy generation is heat, much of which is used for industrial processes. As much as 50% of that industrial heat is simply lost to the atmosphere each year. Industry is often too far from cities to be connected by pipework. So, how about a well insulated shipping container that can handle 1300 degrees Celsius and be delivered to small operators who need low grade heat, or to district heating systems to keep you toasty warm in the winter? Everyone's a winner!! Maybe we could call it 'Uber Heats'!

Which got me thinking about specific heat capacity. phase change and density of energy storage and whether we could have heat delivered on a lorry in a modular box where they would simply swap out the depleted module and replace with a fully 'charged' one?!

Thermal energy storage - Wikipedia

Salt Hydrate sounds interesting - potentially a winters worth of heat in a 4-8m3 volume

Martyn1981

zeupater said:

Martyn1981 said:

Well worth a watch. An idea (one of several in fact) to store waste heat, perhaps for later use. But the potential may be high enough / economical, to allow for the waste heat to be moved (by truck trailer) to a place in need of that heat/energy.

No idea if this is viable, but certainly sounds interesting.

Moving waste heat from industry to homes.

50% of global energy generation is heat, much of which is used for industrial processes. As much as 50% of that industrial heat is simply lost to the atmosphere each year. Industry is often too far from cities to be connected by pipework. So, how about a well insulated shipping container that can handle 1300 degrees Celsius and be delivered to small operators who need low grade heat, or to district heating systems to keep you toasty warm in the winter? Everyone's a winner!! Maybe we could call it 'Uber Heats'!

Hi

Guessing that the current 'Elevated Temperatures' design wouldn't cover such high levels, I'd love to see the transport hazard labels for that one .... maybe a graphical representation of a crematorium or something along the lines of cars, buildings & people being consumed by a flaming pile of waste ... then again there's the mitigation of accident effects through speed reduction and escorted vehicle convoys, so not exactly a cheap option ....

Not a nice thought, but at some time or other it'd be bound to happen, so might as well start thinking about it up front !!

Anyway, the issue shouldn't be one of transport ... it's a planning problem and therefore shouldn't it be for local authority planners in the relevant areas to solve within their own functional responsibilities, boundaries & environmental policy & aspirations ... as for 'Industry is often too far from cities ...', I find that rather odd and would welcome some data to support the claim - if it's really 'too far', then where do the workers live & travel from on a daily basis ?!

HTH - Z

LOL, I'd call you a cynic, but that's exactly where my mind went too.

However, I later thought about petrol/diesel tankers, H2, or LOX tube trailers, and I suppose, so long as the storage containers are built to an agreed transport standard, and the drivers are required to have the relevant higher certification ...... then maybe?

As the vid points out, the economics of doing this at temps below 100C never stacked up, but maybe 1,000C+ will?

zeupater

Martyn1981 said:

LOL, I'd call you a cynic, but that's exactly where my mind went too.

However, I later thought about petrol/diesel tankers, H2, or LOX tube trailers, and I suppose, so long as the storage containers are built to an agreed transport standard, and the drivers are required to have the relevant higher certification ...... then maybe?

As the vid points out, the economics of doing this at temps below 100C never stacked up, but maybe 1,000C+ will?

Hi

The underlying issue is that the tankers you reference transport from a necessarily centralised point of manufacture/storage to points of onward distribution and/or consumer sales ... what we seem to be discussing is distributing a what is effectively a waste industrial product from a number of existing, therefore not strategic, sites to points of usage (goodness knows where!) using a transport network which may not be capable of safely supporting the proposal without considerable infrastructure changes ....

Effectively, if you have a waste product at temperatures in the region of 1000C, wouldn't the more logical approach revolve around reducing the cost and mitigation issues of safe physical distribution by converting the stored energy to electricity on site & injecting it into the grid ..... wouldn't this also be raising the value of the energy from what is effectively low grade to one which is far more versatile and could be efficiently leveraged as a heat source by utilising heat pump technology?

At first thought the idea of transporting bulk-heat looks simple and could provide a low cost heat source, after-all aren't we talking about a waste product which could effectively be classified as 'free' as long as someone pays the transport, however, when the bulk-heat reaches it's distribution centres, how is it physically distributed to points of consumption? ... yes, it's possible via the likes of community scale heat-pipe networks, but who pays for the new infrastructure as this is where the cost viability becomes a little more flaky ... what was a 'free' by-product can suddenly become uneconomical .... think of transport alone, say 15 tonnes of 950C (1000-50) usable heat in a safely transportable load, what's that in real terms, ~15MWh.t (?) which in comparison to the current price of domestic gas at 7p/kWh values the load at ~£1000 for the consumer, fully delivered to the premises, including tax .... not much in the way of profit available there when you consider the initial investment and ongoing costs by the scheme operator, but aren't gas prices also currently well above long term averages, so what happens to the business model if gas returns to closer to 3p?? ... <Cough>

HTH ... Z

Martyn1981

zeupater said:

Martyn1981 said:

LOL, I'd call you a cynic, but that's exactly where my mind went too.

However, I later thought about petrol/diesel tankers, H2, or LOX tube trailers, and I suppose, so long as the storage containers are built to an agreed transport standard, and the drivers are required to have the relevant higher certification ...... then maybe?

As the vid points out, the economics of doing this at temps below 100C never stacked up, but maybe 1,000C+ will?

Hi

The underlying issue is that the tankers you reference transport from a necessarily centralised point of manufacture/storage to points of onward distribution and/or consumer sales ... what we seem to be discussing is distributing a what is effectively a waste industrial product from a number of existing, therefore not strategic, sites to points of usage (goodness knows where!) using a transport network which may not be capable of safely supporting the proposal without considerable infrastructure changes ....

Effectively, if you have a waste product at temperatures in the region of 1000C, wouldn't the more logical approach revolve around reducing the cost and mitigation issues of safe physical distribution by converting the stored energy to electricity on site & injecting it into the grid ..... wouldn't this also be raising the value of the energy from what is effectively low grade to one which is far more versatile and could be efficiently leveraged as a heat source by utilising heat pump technology?

At first thought the idea of transporting bulk-heat looks simple and could provide a low cost heat source, after-all aren't we talking about a waste product which could effectively be classified as 'free' as long as someone pays the transport, however, when the bulk-heat reaches it's distribution centres, how is it physically distributed to points of consumption? ... yes, it's possible via the likes of community scale heat-pipe networks, but who pays for the new infrastructure as this is where the cost viability becomes a little more flaky ... what was a 'free' by-product can suddenly become uneconomical .... think of transport alone, say 15 tonnes of 950C (1000-50) usable heat in a safely transportable load, what's that in real terms, ~15MWh.t (?) which in comparison to the current price of domestic gas at 7p/kWh values the load at ~£1000 for the consumer, fully delivered to the premises, including tax .... not much in the way of profit available there when you consider the initial investment and ongoing costs by the scheme operator, but aren't gas prices also currently well above long term averages, so what happens to the business model if gas returns to closer to 3p?? ... <Cough>

HTH ... Z

Yep, the vid suggests over 10MWh(t) per 20ft shipping container (the smaller ones). It lists, just as examples, the type of customers that may make use of it.

Hopefully the price of FF gas will become irrelevant in these calculations, since we need to move away from it, and should include the costs of externatilities.

As I said, I've no idea if the scheme is economically viable, but hopefully it will be.