New Techonolgy: Solar Thermal. This isn't Your Grandma's Solar Energy!

Well to be fair it isn't really new technology. We've know about the solar fresnel lens and its capacity to focus the sun's rays to a superhot "laser" energy source.

What is being done now is arranging an array of these focusers to harvest the really old power-generating donkey: steam. Nuclear plants merely use radiation to boil water to steam to run turbines in the archaic fashion. Solar focusers take the sun's rays which don't distort DNA for generations if there's an accident [like there always is and will be with humans involved].

So what they do is they set up these arrays of solar-focusers and have them track their heat rays on an elevated pipe filled with a special fluid. Temperatures can and do easily reach 300C [much hotter than boiling water BTW]. They run that heat through exchangers to boil water to steam and use that steam to drive turbines.

Solar fresnel concentrators work on all but the cloudiest of days. To overcome that problem they can be "farmed" in the Southwest where sunny days literally never end, or they can be hybridized with a carbon suppliment backup system for long stretches of cloudy weather. Solar concentrators even work in cold sunlight as is often found in Winter in the northern areas.

Also, during the day heat is exchanged into molten salt tanks that preserve the heat [trap it] in a method known as "saline gradient" batteries. Because of the chemical composition of the different gradient layers of salinity, heat does not travel upwards through the less dense layers of salt water. This heat can be exchanged and run through refrigerant boilers [that boil at much lower temparatures even] to run generators at low-use times..such as night.

So bear this in mind.

1. All nuclear power plants do is boil water to steam to run turbines.

2. Steam can be harvested in the West and Southwest in ABUNDANCE BEYOND BELIEF.

3. Steam can be naturally harvested from geothermal sources of which the West is teaming with [think Yellowstone National Park, just for one example..Lassen, the Cascade Range and various other places are riddled with near-surface heat to produce steam].

4. Steam can be naturally produced by simply focusing the sun's rays. These fresnel lenses are so powerful that you may be burned quite badly or blinded by just a moment of contact with them. There are youtube videos of fresnel lenses cutting through metal with the sun's focused rays.

Here's a couple demos:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkucHl4GgN8"]Concentrating Solar Power Plants 1 MW- 5 MW (Fresnel technology) - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3lWzZGEmbE"]AREVA's Kimberlina Solar Thermal Power Plant - YouTube[/ame]

 

God bless this technology if it pans out. We sure could use it.

 

Don't tell Obama or he might give them all the shovel ready projects money that he's hoping to extort out of congress this week.

He's sucker for unproven green schemes.

 

Unproven? Google "steam turbines". Then google "fresnel lens" and "boils water" and "cuts through steal". Really? You're saying fresnel doesn't exist? That the sun's rays can't boil water?

There are millions of acres of land just waiting to produce America's newest cleanest energy: steam from the earth and the sun.

Here's a map of the potential geothermal resources to do this. Also bear in mind that the entire region of the Southwest is like a vast ocean of wasteland just baking in the sun with nothing to do...yet...!



The energy source has already "panned out". There is a plant running right now in Bakersfield CA called the Kimberlina Power Plant. Look it up. Or view the video taken of its construction above.. They are only using parabolic reflection which doesn't appear to be as concentrated as a fresnel lens. If they managed to do that, the plants would be much smaller and cheaper to produce. To say there is great effort to suppress knowledge of this techonolgy would be the understatement of the 21st Century. It exists and it's simple. Therefore it's hard to monopolize. So that's why you will hear and see on this thread a drove of nuclear and carbon schills trying to tell you "why it's silly" or "why it won't work"..

Steam is simple and it makes them mad.

 

Have you ever heard of a Pebble Bed Nuclear Plant?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

Very safe, tons more energy, even less waste, and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more inexpensive.

It's too bad the envirowhackos are stomping on a technology that will make energy far safer, greener, and less expensive.

 

some people have short memories

Andasol - worlds most advanced solar thermal unit in Spain- 7.5 hours of storage capacity

and

http://www.geo-energy.org/plants.aspx

why do we have to have this same thread every month?

 

As long as this proven energy source is not begging the taxpayers for part of the next Obama stimulus slush fund then I don't have an argument with them over whatever it is they are doing.

 

if you want something to dream about, pray that this is actually workable technology

http://www.e-catworld.com/

 

Here's the US Department of Energy's page on the technology:

http://solareis.anl.gov/documents/docs/NREL_CSP_3.pdf

It shows maps of California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico and BLM lands with KW ratings per square meter.

It shows simple diagrams of how this technology works. Improve the visual by clicking "view" and going to at least 75% [wonder why they have it appear to small to read for the casual reader?..lol..].

The fresnel component seems to be absent from many designs. When this is inefficient, one wonders why? If it was too efficient, would the technology take off? Who is behind designing inefficient solar plants and why?

Hmmm... One of our posters here is all about bashing the solar plant in Spain over and over and over. As if it represented all that is or ever could be improved as to solar thermal? ...lol.. That's akin to saying "the Model T was a flop; why try to design a better car. Horse and buggy are much more reliable!".. Silly carbon junkies...tricks are for kids!

 

Your loony left friends don't want it...

Feinstein: Don't Spoil Our Desert With Solar Panels
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/21/feinstein-dont-spoil-desert-solar-panels/

 

How is this different from what they've been doing in Spain for years?

 

Nothing new. It has been done here for decades...

Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Mojave_Desert

 

How do they work at night? How long do the panels last? What toxic chemicals are used in the manufacture? Do they emit toxic gas/smoke if the house they are on burns?

 

So you want to replace one unrenewable resource that we have to import with another one?

We already import nearly 70% of our nuclear fuel.

 

Yeah they've been touting this since the 1982 Worlds Fair (International Energy Exhibition) right here in Knoxville. So did they get rid of the problems of moving the mirrors to focus the mirrors on the target and keep them from locking up in daily use? We also had demonstration windmills which locked up and other things that failed during their demonstration runs while on exhibt.
What we have left is the Sunsphere, a convention center and some waterfalls. Oh yeah and an ampitheater with a big tent over it. Everything else was torn down as costlly and unworkable.

 

Only because people like you won't let us mine our own proven reserves of that too. Just like oil, natural gas and coal.
We don't have an energy problem we have a government problem.

You've also obviously overlooked the fast breeder nuclear reactor. Which was nixed by you envirowhackos too.

 

The pursuit of profit does not give us the right to pollute the Earth and poison others.

Our oil reserves are only a tiny fraction of the global supply and the really deep reserves are not economically viable on the global market.

Ironically, the only way using our own reserves would work is with government intervention. The government would have to mandate that oil produced in America be sold only in America, effectively proving that the free market failed.

 

so turn off your computer and go live in a cave and quit consuming energy. Every minute you are on the net you are killing the world by your definition

 

So you believe that pollution can't be mitigated and energy can't be produced from clean sources?

 

Horse(*)(*)(*)(*). There are proven reserves in ANWR and off the coasts of Florida and California that are being kept from use by your kind. Your lies will not make your other lies true.

I see you'd rather subsidise Brazillian oil production than our own. Obamabot.

 

And they make up less than 2% of the global supply. Adding another 2% to the global supply will decrease costs by...drum roll...2%. Oil is a globally traded and valued commodity. The only way to get the cost of gas in the US to go down would be to say (*)(*)(*)(*) the Free Market and force US oil companies to sell their oil in the US at below market price. Effectively government price fixing.

I don't believe in foreign aid. Neocon.

 

Kudos. I was just going to post along these lines. As a Californian, I'm appalled that even when we give these enviro-wacko morons solar and wind, they disallow it on grounds that it will make a scorching (*)(*)(*)(*)ing desert look ugly.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/21/feinstein-seeks-to-block-_n_177646.html

Yeah moron. Like the Alaskan pipeline destroyed the caribou's ecosystem. Oh? What's that? Caribou populations have swelled since then? You don't say!

 

We have more energy in Natural Gas than we know what to do with.

 

And natural gas is pretty much non-polluting, unless you believe that CO2 is a pollutant.

 

Ah listen to the naysayers clustering around carbon. Like addicts they shake and tremble at the mere suggestion of looking sunward to create steam.

The plants are out there. They're building more as we speak. Ever driven across the Southwest? There's a little real estate there to build them on. It's kinda sunny too... a lot. Then putt up to Yellowstone.

The future is here. Sell your horse and buggy stock then invest in motor cars.