OT We have a long way to go

[kamenges]

Originally posted by Peter Nachtwey:

Are you saying the local coal plant also generates steam or hot water for home heating?

That was the way it was explained to me. I was a little surprised by that too.

Originally posted by Perter Nachtwey:

The dams don't need the water to generate power so they must let it spill.

That I don't get. All I have been hearing over the last two years is that every major water reservoir in the US is at a decades low. Wouldn't they be retaining water in these cases? But either way, you are correct. You either run the water through the turbines or you run it through the spillway. A certain amount of water needs to go past that dam every day one way or another or the level will change.

Keith

 

[LadderLogic]

I used to work at a thermal power plant in St.Petersburg (the original one, not the one in Florida ). As a matter of fact that was my first engineering job after the graduation. That was a plant built just for that: steam and hot water, no electricity. Three rather large boilers, designed to use either natural gas or heating oil, produced overheated steam at about 50 bar; part of which was used in a series of heat exchangers to heat water. Via a network of pipes we were providing hot water and heat to an area of apartment buildings with total population of a couple of hundred thousand people - and some busunesses as well. Nice 450 feet tall concrete smokestack(I could never bring myself to climbing it although maintaining all the red lights on it was my responsibility; thank God there was an electrician working for me who used to be a fisherman so he did not care about heights).

On paper this all looks nice - centralized heat generation as opposed to a whole bunch of small furnaces in each house is supposed to be the lowes-cost way. However, there were always two problems: heat losses in distribution networks and maintenance. No matter how well one tried to insulate the pipes (mostly underground), quite a lot of heat was lost in transmission. Even in the middle of winter one could easily trace the pipes by the melted snow on the ground. On the other hand, if something happened in the middle of the winter and water stopped flowing... oh, boy: the whole huge area may remain without any heat (it's a relatively mild area but still Russia, remember) for about a week, while all the torn pipes are being replaced. As a matter of fact it did happen in 1982 and the older people remembered when did they have to struggle in frozen apartments the last time before that: in 1941, during WWII, when the city was under siege.

And, of course, the maintenance: once a year the whole system, including the pipe network, had to be shut down for about a month. They always did it at the warm time of the year, in May-June-July so heating was not an issue. But not having any hot water for a month is hardly an attractive option.

So there. I do prefer my own boiler and my own furnace at home, however ineffective it may be from the point of the overall society.

 

[OkiePC]

. . . I haven't seen many coal plants since here we have damns, . . .

Peter, Those big concrete things in the rivers with all that water are called dams.

Well duh, the point I was trying to make is that I didn't know that power came from anywhere else until I was in college and they were just build Trojan.

Peter, I think Dan was just trying to tease you about your spelling...

Paul

 

[leitmotif]

Are you saying the local coal plant also generates steam or hot water for home heating? This is all new to me.


Well duh, the point I was trying to make is that I didn't know that power came from anywhere else until I was in college and they were just build Trojan. What a flop that was, it bet someone screwed up their boiler chemistry. I din't leave the northwest until I joined the navy. And don't forget WPPS or 'whoops' as it came to be to known.

What is really insane is that our local news was blaming the wind farms along the Columbia river for harming fish. According to the stupid ABC new reporters the wind farms generate too much energy. The dams don't need the water to generate power so they must let it spill. Apparently this hurts the fish more than using the water to generate power.
Go figure. It seems to me that the same amount of water must flow from the dam whether the water is used for power or not. If the water isn't flowed by the dam then the water level will change.

Peter
Calm down I was just giving you a bad time over use of word damn vs dam.

I dont think the fish folk will ever be happy until the dams are completely removed. As far as the media since when have they been qualified to talk anything technical? My favorite was that oxygen burns.

One of the big squaks over dams is that they create nitrogen "saturation - correct term??" I think that is more so an effect of spillage than water going thru turbines.
I do not believe we have anywhere near the wind capacity to require the utilities to even take one unit off line much less full spillage to maintain stream flow as they are required to do. I would bet they leave all on line and just throttle back.

The story I got was that Trojan was shut down due to fears of tube failure in steam generators and utilities did not want to pay and Westinghouse would not warranty. Never heard anything about poor chemistry as the cause - if that was the case I do not blame Westinghouse.

Dan Bentler

 

[geniusintraining]

BTW, genius, what was the ROI in the heat recovery system? It seems like a no-brainer. I'm surprised it doesn't come as standard on TO systems.

Keith

Hi Keith,

It was part of the 'standard' at the plant I am at now, but the CA plant I was at it was an after thought (our original).... not sure on the RIO but I think it was less then a year on the retro that we installed in CA

If I am screwing with the system, I can see about 40-50% more raw gas usage in a given day.

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

You got me. The spell checker didn't catch it.

That is what happens when I post with my mind in neutral.

The story I got was that Trojan was shut down due to fears of tube failure in steam generators and utilities did not want to pay and Westinghouse would not warranty. Never heard anything about poor chemistry as the cause - if that was the case I do not blame Westinghouse.

Either the boilers were flawed to begin with or the boiler tube cracked due to improper boiler chemistry. In either case someones rear should have been burned for that fiasco. I remember boiler chemistry as being a topic of utmost concern because it one can ruin a boiler quickly when the water chemistry goes out of specifications.

I heard it is was steam generator leaks that caused the Trojan plant to shut down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

 

[leitmotif]

I was not there at the time so not privy to all the facts regarding boiler tubes.
I would think utility would not be stupid enough to try to stick Westinghouse with repairs if it was their own bad chemistry that screwed up the tubes. On other hand Enrom bought out PGE who was one of the utility partners and plant operator - not sure when that happened.

I am sure glad I sold Enron stock when they chopped the dividend.

Doncha just hate tehm tipos??

Dan Bentler

 

[killer]

Organic Rankine Cycle machinery.... waste heat to electricity.

In the mean time... a water to water heat pump will solve a lot of energy waste problems. Put the heat from where you don't need it to where you do.

 

[Plastic]

Coal, Dams, Gas, Other? Where does it come from? It depends on where you live.

Interesting link.
http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/apr/electric-grid/

 

[allscott]

To the OP, I worked in steel "mini mills" for years and yes the amount of energy and heat that goes into making hot rolled steel between the EAF, reheat furnace, and rolling mill is simply mind bogling. I never understood why more effort wasn't put into trying to recoup some of that energy.

For the company I worked for power was by far and away the greatest expense, followed by natural gas, then electrodes. Somewhere around number 12 was labour.

Hard to believe but 5 days after a coil has been rolled and is sitting outside it is still warm to the touch.

We used to use the coils for heating sources outside if people had to work outside in the winter. One year they used a bunch to thaw the ground for a new building they wanted to start construction on in the dead of winter. Other then that all of that heat was just wasted.

 

[TConnolly]

A CMO is a unit of energy measurement that is equal to the amount of energy in a cubic mile of oil. When talking about energy usage on continental and world scales, units like joules or KwH get so large they are difficult to comprehend. How do you wrap your mind around 160 exa-joules? But its not too hard to envision a cubic mile.

The world uses about 3 CMO a year in energy (all forms). Of that about 1 CMO is actually oil. Coal makes up another CMO. Natural Gas is about .7 CMO. Nuclear and Hydroelectric combined make up the last .3 CMO. Solar/wind/wave/etc make up less than one one-hundredth of a CMO.

To replace 1 CMO of fossil fuels we will have to construct 200 dams the size of China's Three Gorges dam, build 2600 nuclear plants, put in 1 and a half million wind turbines, cover the roof of every building on the planet with solar collectors, and we'll be short about a billion roofs. The cost: 60 to 90 trillion dollars, and its unlikely we could build that kind of infrastructure in less than fifty years.

Yeah, we have a very long ways to go. If we think about how much energy we waste, conservation and energy reclamation are the only cost effective alternatives, and right now, the only really viable alternatives.

I don't mean to get up on a green soapbox, because I'm not an environmentalist, not by a long shot, but I do think that in our industry we do have a responsibility to be conscious of the energy we throw away.

 

[allscott]

Alaric, do you mind if I ask where you found that? Very interesting.

 

[leitmotif]

Alaric
I liked the comment about solar roofs.
I dearly wish we would use a standard value of energy. Working with these EV guys equivalent gas miles?? How about BTU per mile. I can comprehend 10 (to 15eeenth power) BTU which is real ballpark value for world BTU consumption.

What I find frustrating and aggravating is industry who just dont give a lick and will not turn off a compressor over the weekend. They dont have smarts enough to avoid P'ing down pants much less empty their boots.

I suppose I am an environmentalist in that I think we should not be willy nilly do a reasonable impact of a project and total life cycle cost including environmental impacts remediation and repair when done with project. If grandpa and great grandpa had done more of this for us life would be simpler. On other hand we may (would?) not have the industry we have today.

I tried energy conservation and found that it is very hard to get a 3 year payback on investment which was the "standard" about 7 8 years ago. I can see this in a business sense but from the environment side maybe life cycle cost is the better criteria especially when you factor in cleanup at the end. Kind of pay now or pay (MORE) later. Sure wish I had all the answers tough enough for me to learn the questions.

FOR RENT
one good electrician, energy conservation and industrial hygiene guy. Well broken in and lots of man hours left. Send airplane ticket will travel.
Dan Bentler

 

[bkottaras]

A CMO is a unit of energy measurement that is equal to the amount of energy in a cubic mile of oil. When talking about energy usage on continental and world scales, units like joules or KwH get so large they are difficult to comprehend. How do you wrap your mind around 160 exa-joules? But its not too hard to envision a cubic mile.

The world uses about 3 CMO a year in energy (all forms). Of that about 1 CMO is actually oil. Coal makes up another CMO. Natural Gas is about .7 CMO. Nuclear and Hydroelectric combined make up the last .3 CMO. Solar/wind/wave/etc make up less than one one-hundredth of a CMO.

To replace 1 CMO of fossil fuels we will have to construct 200 dams the size of China's Three Gorges dam, build 2600 nuclear plants, put in 1 and a half million wind turbines, cover the roof of every building on the planet with solar collectors, and we'll be short about a billion roofs. The cost: 60 to 90 trillion dollars, and its unlikely we could build that kind of infrastructure in less than fifty years.

Yeah, we have a very long ways to go. If we think about how much energy we waste, conservation and energy reclamation are the only cost effective alternatives, and right now, the only really viable alternatives.

I don't mean to get up on a green soapbox, because I'm not an environmentalist, not by a long shot, but I do think that in our industry we do have a responsibility to be conscious of the energy we throw away.

Do I sense economy recovering in a jiffy here?
Just think of the labor involved.
Sign me up!!!

 

[TConnolly]

Alaric, do you mind if I ask where you found that? Very interesting.

I first encountered CMO in an oil industry trade rag. I keep a copy of it on my bookshelf here in my office. However, just google cuibc mile oil. There are quite a few articles on it - about just where we are and where we need to be. A lot of environmentalists don't like it because of how obvious it makes it that we aren't going to all be driving electric cars in ten years. Even if the car technology is there, its not going to happen because we simply won't be able to provide the electricity to charge them. I have no doubt that someday we will, but realistically its decades away. IIRC, private autos in the US consume somewhere around a quarter CMO, so even then thats going to take one hell of a lot of windmills and dams.


Slightly OT: Anyone see the new Star Trek movie yet? That girly electric motorcycle Chris Pine was riding when he showed up to enroll at Starfleet just seemed so "un-Kirk like." It should have been a 20th century vintage loud pipe leaky Harley - would have gone a lot better with the rogue persona.