Power, Water and Refrigeration in One Box 148
Roland Piquepaille writes "Engineers at the University of Florida have developed and built a system that can provide power, water and refrigeration from a single unit. This project, funded by the U.S. Army, will lead to units small enough to fit inside a military jet or a large truck. The prototype system is already more efficient than conventional turbines. And it is also environmentally friendly because it can use traditional fossil fuels as well as biomass-produced fuels or hydrogen and releases only small amounts of pollutants. This kind of system could be used as a mobile unit in case of hurricanes or wars. But it might also be connected to the normal power grid in fixed locations."
Wars? (Score:4, Funny)
Good thing we have plenty of both to field test the units!
Re:Wars? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wars? (Score:3, Funny)
In Kentucky... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Kentucky... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In Kentucky... (Score:2, Funny)
A: Because they're both fscking near water.
Re:In Kentucky... (Score:2)
Re:In Kentucky... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In Kentucky... (Score:1)
Dude, that's all you need... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dude, that's all you need... (Score:2, Funny)
Neato (Score:2, Insightful)
Heck, *I'd* like one. Be darn nice for a cottage retreat.
Re:Neato (Score:5, Interesting)
Small community sized, multifuel turbine based power generating plants are already perfectly available on the market. They used to make them just a few blocks from where I'm sitting right now. There is not and has never been (remember, once upon a time in the electrical age it did not yet exist) a need to be on a national grid just to get electricity. You can make your own if you want.
But the world bank does not finance local community projects in third world countries. They finance massive power dams with American equipment and labor, sucking said country dry of financial resources and reducing independence.
Why yes, it is a conspiracy; and a very effective one.
KFG
Re:Neato (Score:2)
I have a question for you. Am I right in thinking that the term "gas turbine" has nothing to do with gasoline, and is more about what makes the turbine move? So bio diesel could be used in this (and in any other) gas turbine? I'm thinking this must be the case, since the Army does its best to standardize on diesel.
Which makes me wonder (tenuously related to the subject at hand):
Why isn't DoD funding going to bio diesel research? I mean, other than the obvious reason that the government as a who
Re:Neato (Score:5, Interesting)
The Air Force *guzzles* fuel, the Abrams is a gashog, and the longer the supply line, the more vulnerable the army. Been that way since at least Napeleon.
Now, it's a Congressional study, so don't expect results within a half-century, but it's a start.
Re:Neato (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps the most perspicacious quartermaster until Sherman. His troops used to make black powder "on the go," as it were, by extracting nitrates from their own shit.
There is a legend that ole Nappy rejected Cugnot's steam tractor because he was frightened when it crashed into a stone wall. The stone wall story is fact, but the scaring Napoleon part of it is aprocryphal.
My guess is that Napoleon the quartermaster realized the amount of fuel that would go into this thing
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Re:Neato (Score:2)
(ST:TOS reference)
Re:Neato (Score:1)
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Re:Neato (Score:3, Informative)
Note from TFA, "Lear said further research is required to make the plant more compact and otherwise enhance its performance. That's one of the goals of the Army's Small Business Innovation Research Grant to the Gainesville com
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Triad Research. Triad [wikipedia.org] Research.
What's next, Cosa Nostra Engineering?
Re:Neato (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, ofcourse. That they could make 10 times as much money if they develop a viable alternative to oil is, ofcourse, not an incentive to them. They're only in the "pockets of the oil industry" because....what exactly? The oil company CEO's have the whole government brainwashed? Or maybe they just give the worlds best blow-jobs?
Whoever manages to be the first to bring a viable alternative to the market will be an overnight billionaire. The millitary contrat alone would be enough to quadruple Bush's family fortune. So what possible reason would any politician have to oppose (or refuse to support) research into alternative fuels? I just can't understand how some people can hold such simplistic world views. While there may be quite a few corrupt politicians, it takes a special kind of paranoid to beleive that they've all been bought off, and a special kind of ignorant to beleive that they're not intelligent enough to realize the profits (and political advantages) that could be made by developing alternate fuel sources.
Re:Neato (Score:2)
They don't have to have the whole government brainwashed, just most of the decision makers, i.e., the elected and those that serve at the pleasure of the elected. I don't know about blow jobs, but it's fairly obvious that they are very skilled at reach-arounds.
Your naivete is astonishing.
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Saying that something is "the truth" doesn't make it so. You need to present a LOGICAL theory, and then back it up with some sort of evidence. As it is, the "Gas Conspiracy" has no logic to it's basic premise, nor is there any evidence to back these absurd accusations. So no, it's NOT the truth, it's the product of a paranoid mind combin
Re:Neato (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The politicians don't do the selling. Whereases if they funded a government program to develop new fuels, they'd have first access to new technology which could put the oil industry out of business. So they'd go from selling your hypothetical guy 0 gallons of fuel for 0 dollars, to selling him several gallons a day at $1.25 (by your prices). And they'd practicaly have a monopoly for the first few years at the very least.
2) As fo
Re:Neato (Score:2)
2) As for the oil companies themselves, they're in a similar situation. SOMEONE is going to invent alternate fuels and alternate fuel vehicles. If an American company doesn't do it, a European or Japanese company will. What makes more sense: be the first and try to put your competition out of business, or sit on your hands and do nothing, praying that nobody will manage it in your lifetime?
The investment horizon for a CEO of a mayor corporation isn't his lifetime. He's not concerned about his 401(K). He's
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Re:Neato (Score:2, Flamebait)
Yeah and the guy's a conspiratoid freak who just wants his purdy wittle car back. If my memory serves right, his book was turned into a movie recently. He blames the demise of the car on every conspiracy he can come up with. Meanwhile GM los
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Say what? I see Toyota and Honda leading, Ford following by licensing Toyota's technology, and GM...doing nothing. Help me understand how they are the leader.
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Or try this [gm.com] if you want the official lowdown.
Re:Neato (Score:2)
How much oil, do you think, the military is using? Compared to the rest of the country — very little. They don't need bio diesel. If a tank becomes 0.1% slower because of the fuel, then fook the fuel's "environmental benefits". If it came to using the tank already, environment is of the least concern.
It is the other way ar
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Innovative ways to create bio diesel, is what I was thinking. And this sort of hooks into your Napoleon comment above. Imagine if the military were not only not dependent on foreign oil, but could easily, cheaply, and quickly create their own bio d in the field? I'm not saying it's possible (I don't know enough one way or the other), but it would be a huge advance in logistics. And logistics are literally half the battle.
Re:Neato (Score:1)
40 gallons per acre of cultivated soybeans. 504 gallons to fill a single Abrams tank.
See any soybeans in this image?
Tank on the go [usmc.mil]
KFG
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Now, I'm not saying that your bio d algae will be keeping up with the point of the spear, but if you are setting up ponds along the way, or even just near base areas, that means less fuel you have to ship/truck in. Which means more transport space for other needed supplies.
Now, if that tank in the picture is in the middle east, making bio diesel is akin to synthesizing coal in newcastle. Maybe worse, given how pond water would tend to evaporate in an arid clime. However, there are many pla
Re:Neato (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Neato (Score:1)
S'ok. Beats hell out of Kentucky Fried Gerbil. .
KFG
Re:Neato (Score:2)
Re:Neato (Score:3)
Re:Neato (Score:2)
I doubt that, there are ways to make electricity that are both cheaper and cleaner than portable gas turbines.
"clean water"
According to TFA, the unit provides one gallon of DIRTY water for every gallon of fuel. Would it not be vastly more efficient to simply ship 10,000 gallons of bottled water than to ship 10,000 gallons of fuel plus X number of turbines?
"$900 hammer"
Wake up, there are no $900 hammers, just dodgy accounting to cover the cost of "black ops".
Spinoff to hybrid cars (Score:2)
refridgeration? (Score:4, Insightful)
But I think this unit could supply heating too, after all te rest product after all conversions have been done is carbon dioxide and hot air/heat. Just combine the radiators from the absorbtive cooling with the inlett fan of a inflatable sports hall and there you have your warm shelter. (if you don't like the refugees you could use the exaust from the generator too to put everybody to sleep
Re:refridgeration? (Score:1)
Just as your window mounted air conditioning unit can if you turn it around. It will also provide . .
This is innate to the process.
KFG
Re:refridgeration? (Score:5, Informative)
I think the idea here is medical supplies that need to be refrigerated -- blood, perishible medication, etc. There is more to keep cool in a rescue operation than just food. Besides, the cooling mechanism was included to increase the effeciency of the turbines. The ability to have refridgeration or to generate water were nice bonuses since the original idea was to save fuel when generating energy.
Re:refridgeration? (Score:2)
Your town is obviously somewhere poleward of the snowbelt, then. Places closer to the equator have the opposite problem. Take New Orleans, for example -- they certainly weren't worried about staying warm. Given the geometry of a sphere and the current average temperature, there's more land, and certainly people, in the warmer areas than the cooler.
Besides, heat is easy. Just start breaking up the f
Re:refridgeration? (Score:1)
Roland Piquepaille!!!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Stupidity, Madness and Hype in One Box (Score:1, Flamebait)
"If you're in a forward base in Iraq, it costs you the same per gallon of water as it does per gallon of fuel," said William Lear, a UF associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. "It would be better to just have to send fuel out there, especially if you could get refrigeration and water out of it - which is what our system achieves."
And that's exactly what this unit does. It consumes ridiculous amounts of fuel to cool off the milkshakes and hamburgers for the troops that are there to 'o
Re:Stupidity, Madness and Hype in One Box (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Stupidity, Madness and Hype in One Box (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I'm sure it'll be used for this, but its primary function is really going to be for ice packs and drugs and blood, oh my!
It's basically an oridinary gas-turbine with some clevel thermodynamic engineering of the airflow to gain compression that will give "5 to 8 percent more efficiency than a traditional turbine
Re:Stupidity, Madness in One Comment (Score:2)
Oh, and one more thing:
If you had bothered to RTFA, you might have read this part:
Re:Stupidity, Madness in One Comment (Score:1)
do i get the sudden urge to slurp on my bong
Re:Stupidity, Madness and Hype in One Box (Score:5, Funny)
re: In other news, Congress repeals the Laws of Th (Score:3, Funny)
It's about time Congress did something useful.
But what about.. (Score:1)
Dean Kamen's Stirling Generator (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dean Kamen's Stirling Generator (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dean Kamen's Stirling Generator (Score:2)
Re:Dean Kamen's Stirling Generator (Score:3, Interesting)
No mention of efficiency in that article at all. That's the very reason why stirling engines failed to catch-on against the dangerous steam boilers it was meant to replace.
The water-filtering feature of the Kamen stirling generator is interesting, but electricity = water filtering, so it's not a big deal.
Re:electricity=A/C (Score:2)
The military is in dire need of a good APU source; they try everything. The existing turbines they use are a mess, so anything better is an improvement. This is why they have poured so much
Friendly(er) (Score:5, Informative)
People say that that's "friendly," but, really, it's friendlier. You have to get the hydrogen, which generally means investing energy into its production, so, hydrogen is only as friendly as the means of production. Biomass is probably biodiesel in this case, which also releases pollutants, but makes less CO2 when burned.
Even so, it sounds like a rather nice unit, and, yes, it is friendlier.
Re:Friendly(er) (Score:2)
What is is about the "news" from Roland Piquepaill (Score:3, Insightful)
Avoid specifics as much as possible, and wrap it up on in miltary and engineering terms, and call it technology news.
Also: Frome the article "A few percentage points (improved efficiency) might not seem like much, but it makes a big difference when fuel is scarce or expensive"
So get a diesel engine instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine [wikipedia.org]
environmentally friendly military project ? wow! (Score:1, Funny)
Mad Max (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mad Max (Score:2)
Title (Score:3, Funny)
Marine applications? (Score:2, Informative)
Lithium Bromide Absorption Chiller? (Score:5, Interesting)
This technology has been used on ships for years.
For those of you old as I am, remember the old Arkla-Servel Gas Refrigerators? They used a very similar absorption technique, with all gravitic pumps. No moving parts except the door. Beautiful design. Some camper refrigerators still use the technology. They use an ammonia-water-hydrogen mix in the absorber.
These things work very similar to those athletic "cold packs" that get cold when they are mixed, except in this case, the active ingredients are looped back to be separated by thermal processes then remixed in an endless cycle. This is an oversimplified explanation, but its roughly how they work. In the far more efficient absorption process, a hygroscopic absorbent is used in lieu of a compressor to effect the pressure differences required for the phase changes responsible for the heat transfers.
In a Lithium-Bromide system, the process runs at a vacuum so the boiling point of water is below room temperature. By doing this, the actual refrigerant is plain old simple WATER!
Very environmentally friendly. In the event of a rupture, you lose vacuum and the system stops working. No explosions or smelly spraying as an ammonia-based system will do.
Why do I know about this? For those of you who have read some of my previous posts, I used to work at the Chevron Pascagoula Oil Refinery. It was the first job I had. We had a absorber unit over there which we used to keep our LNG tanks cold, using nothing more than waste heat from the refinery. I was fascinated as hell by that box, which looked like nothing more than two large pipes sitting one atop the other, one was hot, the other cool, while the LNG tanks were cold.
This was in the early 70's, and it was "old technology" then, but fascinating as hell to me. Luckily, when I let the management at Chevron know I found the thing so interesting, they put me in charge of it and I could study it to my heart's content.
And why am I posting here? I am very frustrated.
Over 100 people have just died during this latest heat wave to hit Southern California. I want so bad to start work on building another absorber, much like the one at Chevron, but I want to put the Generator unit at the focal point of a linear parabolic reflector, oriented East-West so it will track the sun without having to move it, and get the Sun to power the whole thing. So the hotter it gets outside, the colder it will get inside. I want to use those brand new "Segmented Electro Magnetic Array" motors they are developing for washing machines to give me fine control over the refrigerant pumps so I can track out variances in insolation and loading so I can keep the fluids balanced in the system. There is a lot of work on programming AVR microcontrollers so the system becomes intelligent enough to make the most cold as the system parameters vary.
In short, I am old, have the stuff on how to do it in me, but don't have money to do it, and don't have the energy any more to commute and make pretty for the workplace. This is something that if I do it, I am going to have to do it on my own house so I don't have to spend all my energies making presentations, looking pretty for the management folks, and useless commuting.
Its frustrating to see how frivolously we - as a society - spend our existing resources. Here we are, burning through our fossil oil - which will never be replaced - at a rate of 85 million barrels per day. Investment bankers, IP lawyers, executives, etc are "earning" more money than I will see in a lifetime, yet my dreams - as an engineer/scientist - will never see the light of day due to my lack of "people skills" which are required by the executive corporate hiring manager... and I have no idea how to get one of those "grants".
And yes, it will probably take several million dollars to make the first one, as I will have t
Re:Lithium Bromide Absorption Chiller? (Score:1)
Re:Lithium Bromide Absorption Chiller? (Score:3, Interesting)
The real problem is that there is little practical reason to make such a system, as in 99% of the places where people live a simple two-stage indirect evaporative cooler provides a cheaper, simpler an
Re:Lithium Bromide Absorption Chiller? (Score:2)
Yes,yes, I could go *buy* a solar hot water system, but where's the fun in that?
Reply or mail me at angry.deity at some place called gmail dotcom.
Cheers,
Colaman
Re:Lithium Bromide Absorption Chiller? (Score:2)
Re:Lithium Bromide Absorption Chiller? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck.
what are you talking about? (Score:2)
What a stupid comment. US companies do a lot more research than Haier does.
Chinese companies do a good job of producing existing tech
Iffy numbers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Gee, I'm just going to hazard a guess that, in that second senario, they've "siphoned" off 2 percent to 3 percent of that energy.
They're trying to make it sound like you get water and cooling for free with this design. Really, it's just BS marketing. Water/cooling is convenient, since recent wars have been primarily in hot, arid countries.
5-8% improvement in effeciency is a very good thing, but you might as well say "You can siphon off some of that for powering iPods, and 'it was still 3 percent to 5 percent more efficient.'"
Also, the "cooling" aspect of it sounds like this might only be an efficiency improvement in hot areas, during the summer months. It is entirely possible the limited efficiency improvement may be outstripped by the added purchase and maintenance costs.
50 yr old ideas, rehashed and expensive (Score:2)
Intercoolers have been used for well over 50 years on all kinds of engines.
And every jet plane has some "air packs", which take some hot compressed bleeed air from the engines and thru intercooling and expansion provide heat and cooling for the cabin. Again been done for 50+ years.
And condensing water out of the exhaust is EXTREMELY inefficient--You've got really hot gases, 1000 degrees Celcius and up, wh
Re:It's too bad that... (Score:1)
Re:It's too bad that... (Score:1)
Re:It's too bad that... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's too bad that... (Score:1)
Picture (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Picture (Score:3, Funny)
Now all they need is a handle to make it portable. :P
Re:Picture (Score:1)
Re:Picture (Score:3, Funny)
"Here, you carry this."
"It weighs EIGHTY POUNDS!"
"But it has shoulder straps, see?"
Re:Picture (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Picture (Score:2)
Roofers carry 80 to 100 pound bundles of shingles up ladders all day in all weather conditions the whole year round. There are no shoulder straps. Most crews have a designated person to do this job who does nothing else. Shoulder straps would be a blessing for shingle-boy. So would rough, rocky or muddy, non-ladder terrain, and a gun (with which to shoot the boss and therefore stop carrying bundles up ladders).
Some modern crews have a mechanical lift to do the hardest part, the vertical portio
Re:Picture (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Picture (Score:2)
Re:Picture (Score:2)
I never claimed it was "insurmountable". I only said that "manportable" is a dirty word; a word that leads to infantrymen being loaded down like pack animals with almost their own weight in crap, when a reasonable operational load is commonly agreed to be 1/3 one's own body weight.
Re:Picture (Score:1, Redundant)
Interesting. The full article [ufl.edu] from the University of Florida only mentions a $175,000 grant from the DOE. It seems the Army picked up a huge chunk of the tab with the $750,000 grant.
Re:Picture (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Picture (Score:2, Funny)
What did you expect? You're a slav^H^H^H grad student.
Re:Evil military industrial complex! (Score:1)
Re:Evil military industrial complex! (Score:3)
Re:Evil military industrial complex! (Score:1)