Your Questions About Sustainable Energy Solutions

admin answers:

Hey Brandon, I have to agree with Jeff on the Aeronautics, I have a degree in that now, and I’ve found beyond understanding angle of attack on a wind turbine blade, it isn’t very useful for renewable energy studies.

If it were me, I would get a degree in thermodynamics. It sounds out there, but if you look to the future of alternative energy, that is the most common science involved. We have wood and other biomass fired boilers now that heat homes and domestic hot water, vacuum based solar collectors that use alcohol as a medium to heat water or operate hydronic floor heating units, and so on. All these things are using some kind of thermocycle system and a liquid medium. The future of large scale solar electricity is heading the same direction. The reason is simple efficiency. Solar electric panels today, while very neat, or horribly inefficient because they use only the incoming photons to drive free electrons from silicone wafers. It is very cool, but at 10 to 15 watts per square foot, most of the energy is wasted heating up the panel.

The Germans are working on a wildly new way to harness solar energy to make electricity. They are putting trough collectors in the Sahara Desert that heat oil to hundreds of degrees Celsius. This hot oil is recirculated into large insulated tanks. Then a water to oil heat exchanger is used to boil the water using the superheated oil. There are several advantages to this system, not the least of which is now we can convert over 60% of the incoming energy to electricity instead of 15%, a four fold increase. It took thermodynamics to come up with a radical solution like this. If this experiment works as well as they hope, in 10 years we should see plants like this in the US Southwest.

Geothermal heating is another example of where heating technology is going, and again, it’s the thermodynamacist that can figure this stuff out. Take a closer look at it when you have time. I wish I had a chance to go back and learn some interesting stuff like this, but I’m pretty locked into my career now. We do power our home with the wind and sun by the way, been doing it for 12 years now, it’s a good hobby and great resource, we could sure use some improvements down the road. Good luck Brandon, and take care, Rudydoo

admin answers:

All too true… I think people don’t want to have to “cop” to the results of our actions, change and “be hassled” by doing what might be better for our environment or really just be bothered with any of it.

It seems pretty obvious that we have been destroying our environment everywhere you turn. Regardless if we were causing global warming or not, we still need to stop the destruction of all of the natural habitats of so many other creatures existing on this planet, stop ravaging the lands and using up all of these limited resources that we have and find ways to live and use resources that are replenishable enough to consider nearly limitless.