California Punts Energy Politics In The Butt To Solve A Crisis. Greece? You listening?

[Silhouette]

Arrgh!! Do you know how mirrors are manufactured? Or steel or coatings or any of the many materials, chemicals, and manufacturing processes involved here? No I didn't think so.

So, you're saying cars and all other things made with steel that have a mirrored surface shouldn't exist? Keep reaching pal. Your argument is done for... Your fuel requires steel manufacturing too. Sunshine is free and requires no mining, solvents, transportation, steel or other things...all other things equal. Ever seen the inside of a coal or oil power plant? I think there's some steel and mirrored surfaces in there too.

I called you out as a moron and now you are moving the goal posts, got it. And do you know where steel comes from good lord, hint its mined.

And I've called you out as a moron. Which one of is the actual moron? The one saying that oil and nuclear power plants don't use steel? Or the one saying all power plants use steel, so that being equal, the one using free clean sunshine as a fuel is the more profitable and smarter choice?

eh? moron...

 

[BluesLegend]

Arrgh!! Do you know how mirrors are manufactured? Or steel or coatings or any of the many materials, chemicals, and manufacturing processes involved here? No I didn't think so.

So, you're saying cars and all other things made with steel that have a mirrored surface shouldn't exist? Keep reaching pal. Your argument is done for... Your fuel requires steel manufacturing too. Sunshine is free and requires no mining, solvents, transportation, steel or other things...all other things equal. Ever seen the inside of a coal or oil power plant? I think there's some steel and mirrored surfaces in there too.

I called you out as a moron and now you are moving the goal posts, got it. And do you know where steel comes from good lord, hint its mined.

And I've called you out as a moron. Which one of is the actual moron? The one saying that oil and nuclear power plants don't use steel? Or the one saying all power plants use steel, so that being equal, the one using free clean sunshine as a fuel is the more profitable and smarter choice?

eh? moron...

Nobody said anything about oil and nuclear power, you opened your ignorant mouth about how solar/steam is clean as a fresh winter snow and you got called a moron, that's all that happened.

 

[Silhouette]

No, you were desperately fighting to smear solar thermal electricity by saying that sheet metal mirrors were "too damaging to produce".

Don't conveniently forget the complete spin you were weaving and now act all innocent. What a pile you are. Are you unware that your own words are quoted at the top of this page?

 

[Silhouette]

So, anyone else think that producing sheet metal mirrors is more damaging to the earth than mining petrolium or uranium and then burning them to run steam turbines just like geothermal or solar thermal do for free...without any damage to the environment from their fuel?

 

[g5000]

I am a huge fan of solar thermal power, but a few misconceptions in this topic need to be cleared up.

Reverse Osmosis is a joke and my money is on that some oil company convinced California politicians that "you need to burn a lot of oil to turn seawater into fresh water by using high pressure through tiny filters".

Reverse osmosis is not a joke. It is being used successfully in the Middle East, and in Guantanamo Bay. All of our water in Gitmo came from a desal plant because Castro cut off water to the base decades ago.

Also, US naval ships use desal plants.

It does take a butt load of electricity to make desalinated water using reverse osmosis.

Or, you could just load a receptacle with seawater, boil it and extract the condensed steam as fresh water. It's called "distilled water"... you may have seen it for sale at your grocery store. Using just mirrors and the sun. No oil.

Boiling water requires the expenditure of energy to boil that water.

Also, the California solar desalinization prototype is not desalinating seawater. It is desalinating water that is not nearly as salty as seawater. They are recycling irrigation water.

As for "no oil", that is not quite true. The thermal fluid used in parabolic troughs is oil.

Wow those simple sheet metal parabolic mirrors look HORRIBLY complicated to set up shining at that centrally-located tube just feet away from the concave concentrating line along the array! Such TRICKY AND EXPENSIVE technology to shine a magnifying reflector at a pipe and run 300 degree c high temp fluid to heat exchangers to run a steam turbine too! (I wonder if they can figure out to use the same hot water that way?? Or oil that can be superheated?)

Oil is used as the thermal fluid. The reason is that oil has a higher boiling point than water and thus can be heated to a higher temperature without having to pressurize it as much. Pressure requires pumps and specialized pipes that can withstand the pressure. That higher temperature fluid is in the primary loop of the power plant. The heat from the primary loop is transferred to pressurized water in the secondary loop which is then used to heat water in a heat exchanger which flashes to steam and drives a turbine which produces electricity. Then the steam is cooled and routed back round to be heated up again.

Pretty much all power plants work this way. The only difference between them is the heat source. Uranium, coal, oil, etc.

Good for you California! You figured out that sunshine is free and makes things really really hot if you use a magnifying glass. No mining, no fuel, no refining, no pollution, no waste...just free fresh water (& heat to drive steam turbines) every single day the sun shines..

Um, no. The fresh water is not free. Solar thermal farms are very expensive.

 

[Silhouette]

Yes, yes yes....oil first then the heat exchangers then the water boils. OK, so it was simplified to make a point.

Would you prefer distillation using boiling over reverse osmosis? And why? (Think of energy use here)...

 

[Silhouette]

Desalination plants will destroy the planet. This is beyond retarded.

How will creating fresh water out of rising seas destroy the planet using mirrors and reflected/concentrated sunshine as free & clean-forever fuel to do this?

 

[Silhouette]

This is funny: In Talk Of Solar Desalination There s a Salty Elephant in the Room Science Rewire KCET

Debunktion-dysfunction...

Unsurprisingly, some are suggesting that we turn to free energy from the sun to desalinate seawater. It makes sense on the face of it: all the naturally occurring freshwater on the planet has been desalinated by solar energy, as water vapor evaporates from the ocean and falls as salt-free rain.
With the drought declaration driving attention to California's water woes, people are asking whether we can use renewable energy to de-salt seawater on purpose. And we probably can, but there's a pesky problem that few seem to be discussing...

Yes, there has to be "a pesky problem" in order to dethrone competition you are deathly afraid of...free sunshine..

This article published Tuesday in the U.K.'s green-leaning paper The Guardian is a good example of the play renewable-powered desalination is getting as a potential approach to solving California's drought. But if you take a look at the piece, you may notice a glaring omission.
That omission: what do we do with the stuff we remove from the water?

You mean sea salt?

the elephant in the room: the endless supply of toxic waste "brine" that desalination produces by definition.....For desalination plants treating seawater, the problem of brine disposal is potentially even greater. One 1985 study of the contaminated ag waste water in the Central Valley's heavily polluted San Luis Drain showed the water contained 9.2 grams of total dissolved solids per liter of water. Clean seawater from the Pacific Ocean has around 38 grams of dissolved solids per liter.
That might not seem like a huge problem: after all, people will shell out between five and ten bucks a pound for sea salt, which is just seawater with the water removed. But it adds up. If the Carlsbad plant puts out 50 million gallons of freshwater a day as advertised, that means (at 38 grams per liter, converted from the metric) it's removing 417,270 pounds of salt and other solids a day from that water.

The obvious solution is to use water straight from the ocean and return what was already there back to it. The author neglects to note that one of the worries of the melting of the ice caps is that too much fresh water will enter the oceans. Got a solution, dump the sea salt back into the ocean as we use more of the fresh water here on land. Win-win.

In other words, to aim directly at the inevitable pun, the problem of what to do with the waste brine from desalination isn't insoluble. But it's still a big problem. And we can't have a real discussion of the costs and benefits of desalination as a tool for living with California's drought unless we face the issue head-on.
We certainly can't have that discussion if we fail to address it altogether. Even if we fuel the whole thing with solar energy.

Translation: "I know my arguments against using seawater and solar thermal desalination are extremely weak, and therefore not even worthy of consideration seeing as how sea salt can be returned to the ocean...but I want the conversation to continue anyway so I have at least a small chance of an opportunity to scare the public into rejecting solar thermal desalination so that my industry (oil) can continue to dominate the energy monopoly we currently enjoy"

 

[Silhouette]

This site is complete bullshit and has to be called out. It calls itself the main deal for tracking solar thermal projects

Our sun produces 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts of energy every second and the belief is that it will last for another 5 billion years. The United States reached peak oil production in 1970, and there is no telling when global oil production will peak, but it is accepted that when it is gone the party is over. The sun, however, is the most reliable and abundant source of energy....Solar thermal power currently leads the way as the most cost-effective solar technology on a large scale. It currently beats other PV systems, and it also can beat the cost of electricity from fossil fuels such as natural gas. In terms of low-cost and high negative environmental impact, nothing competes with coal. But major solar thermal industry players such as eSolar, Brightsource, or Abengoa, have already beaten the price of photovoltaic and natural gas, and they have plans to beat the price of coal in the near future. Solar Thermal Energy Competing with Fossil Fuels

There are currently two methods for solar thermal collection. The first is line focus collection. The second is point focus collection....Line focus is less expensive, technically less difficult, but not as efficient as point focus. The basis for this technology is a parabola-shaped mirror, which rotates on a single axis throughout the day tracking the sun. Point focus technique requires a series of mirrors surrounding a central tower, also known as a power tower. The mirrors focus the sun's rays onto a point on the tower, which then transfers the heat into more usable energy...

That is an absolute lie. The "point focus" distant towers engineered by oil money to fail (to convince the public their competition shouldn't be funded) only warm up after considerable time to a simmer. Their hugely distant reflective sources to the fluid container is a joke. Just the dust particles in the air for the hundreds of feet between the reflection and the boiler cuts down the efficiency of the flat mirrored surfaces. In contrast, the "line focus" solar thermal quickly heats up to 300 degrees celsius with it's concave, magnifying mirrors located only a few feet below their target fluid.

This article is trying to convince people that concentrated (magnified) solar energy closer to the fluid it's trying to heat by hundreds of feet over the "point source' jokes out there is "somehow less efficient" than flat mirrors reflecting sunshine from hundreds of feet away.

Wow...just wow!

On a page called "major solar thermal players", from this sham of a website, these companies are mentioned:

eSolar, Brightsource, and Abengoa have plans to beat the price of coal generated power in the near future. Solar Thermal Energy Major Solar Thermal Players

I would sooner bet on a three legged horse in a race than these phasods for BigOil's "engineered to fail" ruse..

This site has more reverse compliment-sandwiches than a dog has fleas. Paraphrased: "Solar thermal while gaining slow acceptance, has lots of potential, despite the fact that it kills puppies and beats up old ladies and worships Satan"..

 

[Silhouette]

Could anyone read those articles and think they were anything but biased.

 

[EriktheRed]

I am a huge fan of solar thermal power, but a few misconceptions in this topic need to be cleared up.

Reverse Osmosis is a joke and my money is on that some oil company convinced California politicians that "you need to burn a lot of oil to turn seawater into fresh water by using high pressure through tiny filters".

Reverse osmosis is not a joke. It is being used successfully in the Middle East, and in Guantanamo Bay. All of our water in Gitmo came from a desal plant because Castro cut off water to the base decades ago.

Also, US naval ships use desal plants.

It does take a butt load of electricity to make desalinated water using reverse osmosis.

Or, you could just load a receptacle with seawater, boil it and extract the condensed steam as fresh water. It's called "distilled water"... you may have seen it for sale at your grocery store. Using just mirrors and the sun. No oil.

Boiling water requires the expenditure of energy to boil that water.

Also, the California solar desalinization prototype is not desalinating seawater. It is desalinating water that is not nearly as salty as seawater. They are recycling irrigation water.

As for "no oil", that is not quite true. The thermal fluid used in parabolic troughs is oil.

Wow those simple sheet metal parabolic mirrors look HORRIBLY complicated to set up shining at that centrally-located tube just feet away from the concave concentrating line along the array! Such TRICKY AND EXPENSIVE technology to shine a magnifying reflector at a pipe and run 300 degree c high temp fluid to heat exchangers to run a steam turbine too! (I wonder if they can figure out to use the same hot water that way?? Or oil that can be superheated?)

Oil is used as the thermal fluid. The reason is that oil has a higher boiling point than water and thus can be heated to a higher temperature without having to pressurize it as much. Pressure requires pumps and specialized pipes that can withstand the pressure. That higher temperature fluid is in the primary loop of the power plant. The heat from the primary loop is transferred to pressurized water in the secondary loop which is then used to heat water in a heat exchanger which flashes to steam and drives a turbine which produces electricity. Then the steam is cooled and routed back round to be heated up again.

Pretty much all power plants work this way. The only difference between them is the heat source. Uranium, coal, oil, etc.

Good for you California! You figured out that sunshine is free and makes things really really hot if you use a magnifying glass. No mining, no fuel, no refining, no pollution, no waste...just free fresh water (& heat to drive steam turbines) every single day the sun shines..

Um, no. The fresh water is not free. Solar thermal farms are very expensive.

The question is ultimately not how much it costs but is it worth it in the end.

 

[Silhouette]

The question is ultimately not how much it costs but is it worth it in the end.

Here's what you just said:

"The question is ultimately not how much it costs but what it costs in the end."

I've seen a lot of spins in my day, but that one just is pure lazy.

Why would free energy be costly if it produces fresh water to augment California's agriculture economy...or Greece's economic recovery by selling that reduced-overhead power to her sister countries to the north of her?

 

[EriktheRed]

The question is ultimately not how much it costs but is it worth it in the end.

Here's what you just said:

"The question is ultimately not how much it costs but what it costs in the end."

I've seen a lot of spins in my day, but that one just is pure lazy.

Why would free energy be costly if it produces fresh water to augment California's agriculture economy...or Greece's economic recovery by selling that reduced-overhead power to her sister countries to the north of her?

You know, I'm basically agreeing with you, right?

 

[Silhouette]

You know, I'm basically agreeing with you, right?

You agree that solar thermal is much better than oil or coal? OK. Then add that to your posts.

 

[EriktheRed]

You know, I'm basically agreeing with you, right?

You agree that solar thermal is much better than oil or coal? OK. Then add that to your posts.

I was only trying to clarify a point being made by others: solar may not be absolutely "free", but the costs involved are worth it in the long run.

 

[Silhouette]

You know, I'm basically agreeing with you, right?

You agree that solar thermal is much better than oil or coal? OK. Then add that to your posts.

I was only trying to clarify a point being made by others: solar may not be absolutely "free", but the costs involved are worth it in the long run.

1. The costs of setting up a linear solar thermal plant are VASTLY less than setting up oil drilling, transportation, a separate refinery, waste mitigation, carbon destruction of the atmosphere, pollution of the groundwaters and the actual regular ongoing price that electric companies pay for the fuel burned every day. PLUS, the costs of maintaining a military presence in the Middle East to babysit that straw....and the costs to national security overall..

2. So once the two types of plants are built, LINEAR solar thermal vs oil, and linear solar thermal already beating out oil by leaps and bounds in savings..then all that's left besides waste and environmental damage costs (which are absent in solar thermal)is the cost of the fuel itself at the power plant. With oil it's (fill in the current price per barrell per day $$). With linear solar thermal it's ZERO per day. Sunshine, last time I checked, is free to magnify and shine onto a tube filled with fluid, constantly recirculating, on its way to heat-exchangers...and from there...to steam turbines just like oil, coal or nuclear do...