Compressed Air Energy Storage Power Plant 30
DarrinWest writes: "There is an article on Science Daily about a compressed air energy storage power plant in Ohio. Cool idea. It stores off-peak power by pushing compressed air into an old limestone mine, then bleeds it off to generate electricity during peaks.
The mine was started in 1942 and closed in 1976, according to this article. The thing that is most amazing is the size! 338 Million cubic foot mine. It is 2200 feet below the ground and spans 7763 acres.
At up to 1500psi, how much energy is this? As a fraction of nuke? What would happen if that bubble popped?"
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:1)
Why do we accept the negative consequences of dam building when positive returns seem minimal? I think much of the problem rests with pork barrel politics, a process that has seldom served the country as well as it has the pocketbooks of local politicians and their friends. And once a dam project is approved in Congress, bureaucratic inertia sets in. Halting construction, even though the negative aspects far outweigh positive returns, is an unlikely scenario.
I am sure not everyone will agree that dam building has few redeeming qualities. Some people would mention flood control for urban areas, a commonly used excuse for constructing dams. But does an upstream dam really protect the floodplain of a river from flooding? Do we really have many dammed rivers that have not also had flooding disasters downstream? Do dams simply delay the economic disasters of major floods rather than prevent them forever? Ask the people downstream who have survived a broken dam if the trauma was worth the protection offered against a few years of minor flooding. Is the protection-from-flooding feature attributed to river dams simply another ecoparadigm, an acceptance without objective evaluation of the true worth?
Compressed Air Storage (Score:2)
Re:On a similar note... (Score:2)
I did a check on this, and the numbers seem to indicate that the power lines to residential homes lose about 7-8%, while large power lines will lose about half the energy over a transmission length of a few hundred (american) miles. As those distances are common, there would probably be a fairly substantial benefit to be able to store energy locally.
We don't really have an energy production problem, we have problems with storage and transportation once the energy is generated in a usable form.
/Janne
Re:What do they do if it cools down? Make Popsicle (Score:3)
Hot air would; however, you'd almost certainly store the compressed air at room temperature, just like you do in a compressed air tank.
When your pump actually compresses the air, you do get heating, but you'd bleed this off through a radiator before storing it (or store air in the mine slowly enough that the earth would be an adequate heat sink).
Likewise, depending on the rate at which you let the air expand, you may get cooling when taking it out again, but this is a secondary effect (and can be reduced by using a nearby lake as a heat sink/cold sink).
Re:What do they do if it cools down? Make Popsicle (Score:4)
Most of the energy is not stored as heat. It's stored in the fact that the air is compressed. It takes a certain amount of work to compress it in the first place, and the air is capable of performing a certain amount of work as it expands.
Heating the air will change its pressure, which will change the amount of work it can do, but the resulting energy difference will just be the amount of thermal energy gained/lost. Not a vast amount compared to the total amount you're dealing with.
Lastly, the temperature underground is quite stable. As soon as you're more than a few tens of feet below the surface, the earth above you will insulate quite well. This is why deeply buried water pipes don't freeze in the winter.
Re:How much power (Score:1)
Basically, there is no machinary I know of that can harness compressed air with such absolute effeciency. I would say that the energy derived from this setup would be significantly less than 96 trillion joules.
Re:What do they do if it cools down? Make Popsicle (Score:2)
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Re:What do they do if it cools down? Make Popsicle (Score:3)
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How much power (Score:5)
<LITERAL>Well, lets do some simple physics. You can't get the power out from the data provided, but you can get the energy. Energy is just pressure times volume. Converting into more useful metric units, that's about 9.6 million cubic meters and a pressure of 10 MPa. That gives a total energy storage of about 96 trillion Joules, or 27,000 MW/hr; about enough to run the state of California for an hour at off-peak consumption rates. In comparison, one gram of TNT stores on the order of 4 thousand Joules of energy, so that's about 24 kilotons, or a fairly small nuke. Anyone want to check those figures?</LITERAL>
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:1)
Nope. [sciencewise.com]
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I don't think so (Score:3)
I am afraid they'll be looking for a very long time. A radioactive isotope is radioactive because the nuclei of its atoms are intrinsically unstable and will sooner or latter desintegrate, releasing harmful energy and particles. The stability of the nucleus is not affected by any physical (pressure, temperature) or chemical parameters. Only nuclear reactions resulting from collisions between particles can change the nature of atomic nuclei, and it is very hard to imagine a biological organism to perform such nuclear reactions. At most they can resist the damage and sequester the radiocative nuclei, but we can already minimize the volume of radioactive waste using glass and ceramics. The waste still remains.
Re:How much power (Score:1)
Efficiency is a separate issue, and you're right, it's not going to be 100%. However, it's not a heat engine, so there's not a thermodynamic limit on its efficiency like there would be for a natural-gas-fueled turbine or something like that.
The Assayer [theassayer.org] - free-information book reviews
What do they do if it cools down? Make Popsicles? (Score:3)
When they uncompress through turbines for power recovery, they are going to have to make up the loss, and I suppose this is why they intend to use hybrid (part combustion) turbines.
Granted, hydroelectric storage lakes take up more room, but at least you can boat on them in the summer and skate on them in the winter. I suppose it is better than no storage at all, but I think the real solution is to invest in generation on demand equipment (far more smaller generators) and cooperative load sharing agreements between widely distributed areas.
Re:Hot air and burst bubbles (Score:1)
Er... Well, y'know. You can't make an omelette without um... destroying a forest. Or something.
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:2)
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:1)
Scientists in Osaka discover radiation eating organism. Radiation eating organism attacks Tokyo! Godzilla helpless!
<tag, you're it>
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:1)
Personally, I'm a much bigger fan of hydroelectricity [bchydro.com] than the proposed method in the article. Granted, you'll be displacing wildlife (including people) whenever you build dams, but for the electricity you generate, it's probably one of the cleanest methods available.
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Do I play Hockey? [nhl.com]
Posting at -1 since April 18/01.
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:1)
The thing about finding organisms that feed on radiation would be that the organism would either have to be able to change the radioactive material into a different isotope as a part of its metabolism, or it would have to sequester the material within its body long enough to have the material naturally change itself.
Simple 2nd Year Chemical Engineering here, folks:
Mass In + Generation = Mass Out + Consumption + Accumulation
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Do I play Hockey? [nhl.com]
Posting at -1 since April 18/01.
Compressed Air Vehicle? (Score:1)
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:1)
Let's also not forget that the combustion by-products of coal, and most other fossil fuels, are carcinogenic.
Re:On a similar note... (Score:1)
Well you could do that, there is only one small problem with that. Energy transportation is far from loss free. I dont have the figures, but i would estimate that more than 5% of the energy (electric) produced in europe is lost in the transmission lines.
In order for levelling like you suggest, by transporting the energy to where there is need for it,would increase the transport loss dramaticly.
Conversely, by pumping water, you only lose a small amount of the energy, as hydroelectric turbines and electric water pumps are wery energy efficient. (approx 1% loss as far as I recall) => aprox 2% loss in the combined cycle.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hammer.
You need to get the details right (Score:2)
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Cooling and energy storage (Score:2)
Some people have already tried to answer the "how much energy" question, but haven't actually taken the compressibility of air into account. There are also a number of assumptions you need to make, such as the temperature of the air at various points in the compression (you will have to cool the air between stages of the compressor or the temperature and energy requirements go out of sight, and your efficiency goes into the mud). Suffice it to say that the numbers in #13 and #14 are in the ballpark (the real figure will be within -50%/+100%), but nowhere near good enough for engineering purposes
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On a similar note... (Score:4)
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He had come like a thief in the night,
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:2)
My initial sentiment would be the same but...
I've read on numerous occasions that hydroelectric power is one of the most destructive to ecosystems. The Aswan High dam in Egypt, finished in 1972, has caused horrific changes to the ecosystem in the Nile river valley and a lot of environmentalists what that thing torn down.
Many ecologists feel that dams on big rivers have put numerous animal species in peril [uga.edu].
The Hoover dam also displaced Indian tribes and burial grounds and destroyed the ecosystem there and created a flood plane over the wrong kind of soil.
IMHO, the more we rip apart and terraform and screw with the Earth, the worse off we will all be.
I wish alternative energy would get more publicity (Score:5)
Most of quelling of useful technology is done by: the old boys club not wanting to give up on the profits, a lot of it is mis-information, and the remainder of the reason why we use horribly inefficient power sources is lack of attention (by our sheep like media).
I used to live near a nuclear power plant in Minnesota. I don't know why people are so afraid of good clean nuclear power. There used to be a lot of cancer there, and everyone jumped on the power plant, but it was shown that most of the cancers were not related to the power plant at all, there was solvents being dumped into the local water supplies that were causing intestinal cancer. People don't understand radiation cancers always occur in statistical rings, that certain percentage of the people a certain distance get some very specific cancers. Nevertheless, even after the nuclear power plant was vindicated - the media failed to report that the solvents killed the people, not the power plant.
Anyways, here we are burning coal and fossil fuels all day long. Fuel cells, gyroscope technology, ceramic engine and electric cars are getting the kibosh due to the retrofitting costs. And we burn, burn burn.
Today on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2001, Coal and Utility companies are lobbying the ever-environment-hating White House to reduce the clean air rules on power plants. Cheney said the administration energy policy will focus on more output for oil and natural gas.
They can continue to sell us electricity at higher prices, cut the cost, pollute the air, and keep real technology from proliferating.
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:5)
The nuclear waste is totally sensationalized. There are new reactor setups, breeding and tandem reactor designs which burn off most of the waste. The waste can be bound inside ceramics to become rather benign. Not like the Russians don't scram reactors all over the ocean floor already, we can properly dispose of waste.
Another interesting fact about waste and radiation, is that burning coal releases radiation into the air. You ask, how so? Well besides there being naturally occurring Carbon 14, there are other trace amounts of radioactive material found in coal. Burning coal releases them into the atmosphere. It takes 2 tons of coal to equal 5 pennies worth of fissionable uranium (size not weight). Low and behold, there is more radiation released into the natural world than where would ever be from a nuclear power plant.
Think of it this way - I hate thinking like a 100% pure capitalist, but the economic damage to a company being help liable for a nuclear waste/meltdown is infinite. The company would have to close. The media would never stop. So it must be worth it, and safe. I mean, airplanes crash all the time, more people die from airplanes than nuclear power plants, yet we all still fly. And even more from cars. Yet the risk is apparently worth the gain.
Of organisms can eat pieces of MIR for breakfast, we should be able to find something to chew on radioactive waste =)
And finally, yes, nuclear plants only break down because of being in disrepair. There is a lot of mythology about Chernobyl as well. People think mushroom clouds and Hiroshima. Far from it, Chernobyl released gas into the atmosphere, it was horrible, but the reactor was almost 50 years old and there are three other reactors there still operating normally. The resulting explosion/gas release was due to a test gone horribly wrong, the control rods were never put back in place and there was no anti-meltdown measures in place. Most of our reactor designs drop the core into some safe reservoir rather than let it sit and melt down above ground.
By the way, the Swedish who are obsessed with cleanliness, environmentally sound , safety consciousnesses, etc, etc, they run nuclear power and they are obsessed with the miniscule radiation emanating from your monitor right now. (MPRII).
Thanks for the input though
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:1)
Re:What do they do if it cools down? Make Popsicle (Score:1)
Re:I wish alternative energy would get more public (Score:3)
Actually, it's quite a bit easier than you would lead us to believe. Being as this is a mine site (man-made), it's likely that there are a small number of entrances, possibly even a single entrance, and that all ventilation access is known. Therefore, it's a simple construction job to make it airtight.
As far as size goes, you're not quite correct. Strictly speaking, any additional amount of air forced into a closed space will raise the pressure, and thereby store energy in the difference in pressures between the inside space and the outside (the atmosphere). Even if it's a gallon-jug of nitrogen at 14 PSI (sea-level atmospheric pressure), energy will be stored. Remember, a smaller pressure differential will produce as much energy as a larger differential if the volume of the enclosed space is larger. Basically, it will take longer for the pressure to equalize when you "uncork" the mine, and therefore you will drive the receiving mechanism for a longer period of time. Energy = Force * TIME.
As to strength, I seriously doubt that the pressure differential created will threaten the integrity of the mine. Rock is REALLY STRONG, especially below ground, in an unweathered and contiguous state. You couldn't stick Lake Meade on top of it, but I'm sure a few residential subdivisions wouldn't be a problem.