More Alternative Power
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After my editorial on Wind Power, I received quite a few emails on various other forms of alternative energy, including one fellow CO resident that had purchased a diesel auto with the intention of converting it to run off vegetable based fuel. I think that's cool and someday I hope I tackle some project like that.
While I like the idea of an electric or hybrid car, I think I'd be more interested in converting some of my home to alternative power. And living in Colorado, I've got lots of choices, lots of sun, good wind, even good possibilities with using the earth.
I was volunteering at my son's school the other day and one of the other Dads mentioned that he was putting in a ground source heat pump. I'd never heard of it and at first I thought he was doing some geothermal work, but that's not it. It's basically like your normal heat pump, even can use lots of the same equipment, but it doesn't use heat exchange with the air. Rather it uses the earth itself as the place in which to exchange heat. Since the temperature is relatively stable below the surface, it's a great place to do this.
He was planning on going down 80 feet, though if you have enough land, you can work horizontally instead of vertically. It's a great idea, sounds clean and easy. It's one more thing to consider, especially for me since I'm not sure I could get approval for a windmill or even solar panels in my neighborhood. Once I get a little further along in life and have more time and resources to devote, I'm sure I'll get something done.
The only thing that worries me about plans like this is that it's a spot solution for the world. At least potentially. While it seems that if everyone used something like this, along with LED or fluorescent bulbs, we'd really reduce energy costs and things would be better. But what about the waste heat?
My concern is that if hundreds of homes in one location started dumping heat, or drawing it out, or the ground, what would be the effect? I can't think of one, but I'd certainly have concerns that it could have some sort of unintended consequence.
Steve Jones
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Steve, I mentioned this in your previous discussion, "Now that said, geo-thermal will cover most heating/ac costs " under "water power."
The problem is replacing the pipes every so often, but it works. From what I have seen, the bottom line is living costs money.
Every breath we take produces more and more CO2, one of the 'evil' green house gases, which plants seem to enjoy.
The earths crust in miles thick thankfully, and has plenty of means of storing heat and gases. As it does an admirable job keeping the 'magma' in place.
Now on my other soapbox...
Were the planet truly overheating the crust would be getting thinner, sadly for some the opposite is true, eventually our planet's core will cool down. Because the earth's crust exists this demonstrates and proves billions of years of general cooling.
"Nearly 26% of the radiation reaching our planet is reflected back into outer space before it hits the Earth's surface. This reflection of solar energy is primarily due to clouds, but also includes scattering by dust and other particles. (Remember Mount Pinatubo). Another 19% of this radiation is absorbed directly by the atmosphere, but 51% is absorbed by the Earth's surface, primarily the oceans. Reflection by the Earth's surface, including glaciers and the polar ice caps, adds about 4% to the loss column."
This translates into a transfer of about 70% of the impinging solar radiation to the heat budget of the Earth (i.e. 51% absorbed by the Earth and 19% absorbed by the atmosphere). Thus, to balance our budget, we must find ways to remove an equal amount of radiation. These losses primarily occur as reradiation of longer wavelength radiation back into outer space. Reradiation from the atmosphere into space accounts for the bulk of this loss (70%); direct radiation from the Earth's surface to outer space, unimpeded by absorption in the atmosphere, accounts for 6%."
Can one stop weather or change weather on purpose, for example? The earth is not a closed system, heat is vented, otherwise it would not be cooler at night, nights would just get warmer and warmer, and days would be ever so warm till we all died. The planet is cooled by disipating heat into outer space and a possible fraction into the earths crust; the upper upper atmosphere is hovering around -90 degrees. With our best efforts we have been able to over the history of humanity raise the temperture (possibly) 1-2 degrees( even lets run with a ten degrees)change, say, the upper atmosphere is still -90 degrees, that seems cold to me. Not to mention outerspace, its colder still.
"Note that 45% of the heat absorbed by the Earth's surface is reradiated directly to the atmosphere before leaving into outer space. Transfer of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere accounts for a far greater percentage of the heat input into the atmosphere than does direct heating of the atmosphere by the sun alone. Compare the 19% absorbed by the atmosphere directly with the 51% that comes from the Earth's surface. Thus, most of the heating (and cooling) of the atmosphere is moderated by the ocean and land surfaces."
http://www.oceansonline.com/winds.htm
The message of my story is that "everything is ok" and "weather" happens.
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As long as the ground beneath my house doesn't melt from the heat, I'm ok
My house a little outdated and not sure how much I want to spend to improve it with something like this, especially since I just bought a furnace, but my next house...
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Where I live (Winnipeg, Manitoba) There are quite a number of homes and business that are now being built using geothermal heat as you describe. One new community (hundreds of homes) will be exclusively heated by geothermal heat pumps. It is initially expensive (about 3x the cost of a top quality furnace) but cheaper to operate over the longer term.
Francis
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Apparently it is possible to run a standard diesel engine on recycled vegetable oil.
There is a bloke around here that gets his supply of vegetable oil from fish and chip shops. He filters it then adds some sort of chemical thinner, may be even white spirit, and it works. Provided the old vegetable oil is filtered properly it shouldn't do any harm to the engine.
I have one friend who is an Alfa Romeo nut case who has done 300,000 miles in an old Alfa 75 converted to LPG. Mind you he is an ex-nuclear sub engineer so he is able to do any engineering work that is necessary to keep an Alfa running.
LPG cars are slightly less fuel efficient but if you take the cylinder head off after 100K it will look like new. Your exhaust will last longer too.
European car magazines don't really compare American cars to European ones other than to say that Corvette's don't have any suspension and American cars are allergic to corners. It would be interesting to see what technologies from either side of the Atlantic could be applied to improve the vehicles.
I'm under the impression that the Japanese produce the most sophisticated petrol engines but the Germans produce the best diesels.
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