What is Digg?19 Comments
- madmaxfuture, on 10/04/2009, -1/+16It's not a new source. Getting the oil industry to make use of it is new.
- inactive, on 10/05/2009, -0/+7good idea! this is what happens when you put someone in charge of the DOE who can think and isnt an ex-ceo of an oil company... bush was such an utter failure as president.
- Astaro, on 10/05/2009, -0/+4If it were still producing usefull amounts of power, it wouldn't be 'spent'.
'hot' in this case means dangerously radioactive. which will be true for tens of thousands of years, not just hundreds. - Tddupre, on 10/05/2009, -0/+4wrong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_heat - aaronfleishman, on 11/07/2009, -0/+3On one hand: If this were that simple/economical, it easily would have been implemented by now. The oil companies have lots of chemical engineers on staff and recycling a hot or cold stream/source is one of the fundamental concepts of plant & process design.
On the other hand: These are the oil companies we're talking about. - spacester, on 10/05/2009, -0/+3I think you have a point, but you stated it badly. I dugg you up anyway.
Certainly thermodynamics does show that there are limits to the ability to generate electricity from a given temperature difference (and flow rate and heat capacity)
i.e.
Qdot = mdot * Cp * dT
where Qdot is the heat flux available to turn the turbine.
But the horribly written article (see my rant there if it gets by their mods) does not indicate that such is the case with this application.
It's called "Combined Heat and Power" and has been around for many decades. If these oil guys are just now learning that they can make electricity from high grade waste heat, shame on them and good for Dr. Chu. - Androne, on 10/05/2009, -0/+2wow I feel so bad that you're actually getting dugg down right now. Anyway for anyone who would like to do a bit of research only a little over 30% worth of the energy can be extracted from steam in power plants that use steam to turn a turbine to produce power. If you geniuses can extract even 1% more energy than the top of the line models do now you'll be instantly rich.
The rest can be used to head homes and whatnot but it's proven extreemly difficult to extract more energy to produce electricity from steam than already has been done. - Skibadoweebop, on 10/05/2009, -0/+2Note to self: Buy Ormat Technologies stock.
- BaK1, on 10/05/2009, -2/+3Why don't they use "waste heat" from spent nuclear material instead of just storing it? That stuff stays hot for hundreds of years.
- replaysMike, on 10/05/2009, -1/+2I bet you can improve upon this model: attach a large hose to the blowhole of every politician and funnel it to power electric cars or baby seal factories or something.
- hereticoftruth, on 10/05/2009, -0/+1If it's worth it, do it. If not, find something better to do.
- prodgen, on 11/11/2009, -0/+1One of the biggest problems with this is the H2S content in oil produced fluids (in almost all steam fields). H2S is deadly and highly corrosive gas, hence the huge liability by sending it elsewhere. I know locally the companies will not release fluid until its been treated completely.. and by then its down lower than 100 F.
But at least they use it for farming. I know our local field sends over 40,000,000 gallens of water per day to them. - kcasper, on 10/05/2009, -1/+1You are kidding right?
At my company they could save several thousand in payroll per year by adding one sensor to the production process. That one sensor would keep product from falling on the floor during times when we need workers to work rather than pick stuff up. The adjustment will never happen because the engineers who design the process, don't work the process to find the problems, or even communicate with employees who do.
Cheap fix, saves lots of money, but will never happen because the people with the authority are blind. - dumptaker, on 10/05/2009, -2/+2Imma let you finish...
but Beyonce has way more waste heat than the oil industry - drr30, on 10/05/2009, -8/+7Turns out fundemental laws of thermodynamics define how much energy can be extracted from a temperature difference. If the turbine generating the heat is efficient (which they are approaching 1 percent of fundemental limit) there is no way to get more energy out of it.
- grbruner, on 10/05/2009, -2/+1You sir, have the kind of mind that hinders innovation.
- LumberingOaf, on 10/05/2009, -5/+2They had me at hot fluids.
- NiftyG, on 10/05/2009, -10/+0So, in order to use it, we have to keep drilling for oil.
Right. - TheIndigoSky, on 10/05/2009, -11/+1Pika-CHU!
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