musings of wrath

why are we using oil again?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/craven.html?pg=1&topic=craven&topic_set=

wow, that’s really cool stuff…

It’s odd… but the concept has been around for some time. It was already old and being used in some car temperature gauges when I was in junior high. But to be done on such magnitude. Nice. For some reason, it leaves me fearful of what might happen tapping 3k feet down into the earth and tapping that energy. I don’t think the process should actually cause environmental issues though as if I remember correctly it just uses temperature differential and doesn’t modify their temperatures… but my knowledge of the matter is so low that I worrywort about it. LOL

shooman out

wow syria blocks wired.com I found it interesting so I thought I’d share.

MY only question has to do with the amount of energy needed to get the cold water up the 3000 ft energy curve. IT implies that the initial pull is high energy cost and then that the system is a net energy producer afterwards. The article did not detail the energy transfer levels so its impossible to tell how effecient.

On the other hand the condensation and chilling effects are definately worthwhile (assuming that you are in a non-arid setting). Not sure about how well this would scale up, but there is no reason that it would not be useful, and has wonderful applications in other settings as well.

For isntance in space you could use a heat exchanger where you run the pipes outside to an array of small tubes that would bleed off the heat (a very hard thing to do in space), and on the other side of the craft has a similar array that heats the water using sunlight and then use the differential to geenrate power and chill/heat the craft as needed.

it’s just insane enough that it might work..

if you made the system that transferred the water also the filtration unit, you could use some “high salt liquid”, and generate enough current (electrically speaking) to power a PDA or maybe even a full computer. i could be wrong, you might be able to power a slew of computers if done right?

Actually that’s not how it works at all.

There is no need to pull the water up or anything like that. The energy occurs because electrons tend to transfer from extremes in temperature. So that if you have a lead in a really hot spot and another in a really low spot, electrons/electricity transfers along that circuit… forget in what direction… want to say cold to hot.

But like I said, my physical science is really really rusty now. I can’t even remember what this theory is called. It works though. The temperature gauges that work off this theory stick one end practically attached to the engine and the other end outside. The amount of electricity generated is what tells the thermometer how hot things are.

Because the greater the heat/cold difference, the higher the electric voltage flowing through the circuit.

shooman out

LOL. reading the end though, that’s also interesting… a giant siphon principle so that you always have cold water, condensation, and various other things. I didn’t think that was what they were doing but that’d work too wouldn’t it? They could get it to pour out over a generator and generate electricity that way too.

There’s a lot of tricks out there you could use.

shooman out

Quit being lazy and looked up more info. Most of this stuff is thermoelectric theory.

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~jsnyder/thermoelectrics/history_page.htm

Particularly dealing with Seebeck effect I think. But then again, now that I think about it… it might not be what they’re talking about.

shooman out