Coal Power Online

Donald Whitehead asked:


Uses of self made power

Wind Power Generators and solar technology offers a way to produce an endless fountain of electricity for the home or for any other uses around the house like to power a work shop area or perhaps to run pool equipment, or saunas, whirlpools, central heat and air, washers and dryers, hot water heaters. Athough units can be built to supply entire homes with electricity the home owner can be very versatile with design in size, capacities, and whether they would like the electricity to just operate certain pieces of home equipment and appliances or if they would prefer to have enough of a supply to run the entire home.

Use conventional electricity to run smaller appliances:

You may just want to build a system that would supply electricity to all of the units in your home that run on 220 and stay hooked up to the grid and use smaller amounts of electrical power from the electric company to run things like televisions, toasters, refridgerators, lights etc. Just this would still probably easily cut a power bill in half.  Lots of people are hopping aboard as they find out how wind power generators and  solar kits can be very valuable home improvement additions. Many come to realize that not only could it save them large amounts  of money in one respect  but also that the added benefits of increased property value made it a worth while improvement as well as being eco-logically beneficial too!

Clean energy resource

Not only is wind power generators up and coming for their versatility, cost effectiveness, and ease of installation but they address the present global warming issues (environmental) in a very big way, that being that the technology uses the wind and the sun which are both excellent renewable energy resources that dosen’t harm the environment in any way. The mining of Fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, are all non-renewable sources of energy and are not only being drastically depleted but are heavily dependent upon in our society to produce electricity by being burnt which harms our atmosphere with the by product that is let over.

For those who don’t understand how the wind power generator and solar system works, a wind turbine or windmill is constructed which harnesses the wind and turns a generator, mounted in the prop area of the windmill, a car generator, which produces electricity that travels through a stator that in turn runs down through wires that take it to various other pieces of equipment that is incorporated in the system to register and transform the energy both coming in and going out to be stored and or be used in desired increments of various watts or volts. The solar part of the system comes into play moreso when the wind dies down and their isn’t sufficient wind to turn the propeller. The solar panels, which are strategically placed, catch the sunlight through special cells and store energy (electricity) that way.

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DFAWichita asked:

Wichita citizens confront their state Representatives about their votes on the Holcomb Plant Expansion

Baguiobizz asked:


There are three feasible energy providers other than crude oil and coal. They are the wind, sun(solar power), and nuclear plant.

The solar energy is a free source of electricity. We basically receive sunlight everyday so it is wise to put sunlight into good use. Unlike gasoline, solar energy does not produce a by-product that harms the environment. The solar energy will let you save more, do more and conserve more. You can have a solar generator at your own home right now.

Save More

Installing solar panels at your house may be a little expensive at first. But once you get to run the equipment, you will be able to spend a little or no money in the next months.

 

Do more

Since the electricity you receive is from the sun, you have the opportunity to use more electricity at lesser cost. This ensures productivity.

Solar energy at home allows you to make a solar cooker. A solar cooker basically cooks food without the need of fuel. The small container can cook meals for up to 5 people. You can boil, roast, bake, and even fry in it. Food may take time to cook in the solar cooker but given that it saves me on the fuel, I’d rather catch the opportunity.

Solar home lighting allows you to store solar energy for later use. The solar panels have cells that trap the energy and are readily utilized when you need a light.

During those cold nights, you might just want to avail of the solar heating system. Today’s solar heating panels are aesthetically pleasing so you can decorate your house with it without looking like a laboratory. It is a bit expensive but your investment will return in 3 to 4 years and you will enjoy a free hot bath after that.

Conserve More

By using solar energy, you will help in preserving the non renewable sources of energy. You also save the environment from pollution caused by burning of fuel. It’s time to move today while it is not yet too late.

Discover how you can lower your electric bill by up to 80% - Home Built Wind Power Generator

Andrewsaxamophone asked:

This was fucking sweet. A GP30 gathers a train for the EJ&E, a manifest w/ typical coal power backs up, a Metra east bound scoots past the site, and a coal train takes off.

Dylan Sun asked:


Foreign companies that own clean coal technologies and work with their Chinese counterparts to tap China’s coal reserves, one of the world’s largest, may get good returns as China is seeking to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and ease its increasing thirst for oil. “In the coming five years, China will make major advances in rational utilization of coal. Foreign companies willing to invest in China would gain big profits with a small capital,” says Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai.

Bo made the prediction during the first China (Taiyuan) International Coal and Energy New Industry Expo 2007 last week. In fact, several big-name foreign companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc, South Africa-based Sasol Ltd., General Electric (GE), ABB Group and Siemens AG, have worked with Chinese companies to produce electricity and substitutes for crude oil derivatives from coal.

Once proved feasible industrially and commercially, large coal chemical projects involving about 6 billion U.S. dollars of investment are expected to start in China’s coal-rich western regions, including Ningxia, Shaanxi and Shanxi, according to local economic planning agencies.

Sasol Ltd., which has commercially-proven coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology, a sort of indirect liquefaction technology, planned to develop two CTL plants in cooperation with China’s Shenhua Ningxia Coal Group (SNCG) and Shenhua Coal Group, each with a capacity of about 3 million tons of coal-turned oil per year.

The company and its Chinese counterparts are carrying out feasibility studies, said Chen Liming, executive vice president of Sasol China. The projects would become demonstration projects during China’s 11th five-year plan period that ends in 2010.Shenhua Group, China’s largest coal company, has said it would produce the country’s first barrel of liquid fuel from coal in 2008 in Erdos of Inner Mongolia, using self-owned technology known as direct coal liquefaction. “There are no impassable obstacles in developing technologies for converting coal into oil, but the effect of such technologies should be tested with small trial operations because they cost much money and call for sound risk-control abilities,” said Zhang Yuzhuo, who is in charge of Shenhua’s coal liquefaction business. Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s second-biggest oil company, and SNCG have agreed to study the feasibility of a plant in China with a daily capacity of 70,000 barrels.

Siemens has also signed an agreement with SNCG to provide key gasification equipment for a coal-based dimethyl ether (DME) project, with a planned annual production of 830,000 tons. Coal already provides up to 70 percent of China’s energy needs, mostly for the power sector and steel industry. Meanwhile, oil imports have been increased to fuel China’s booming economy, spurring the nation to look for technologies that can turn some of its coal reserves into fuel and other chemicals. “We are under much pressure in oil supply,” said the Chinese commerce minister. Development and application of clean coal technologies have been described as key areas in the 11th five-year plan for the country’s coal industry.

Derek Dashwood asked:


From Chinese antiques history, the way we speak of carbon depends on which kind we relate to best. Marco Polo did not drag sacks of coal back from China, rather diamonds and gemstones. This was Chinese carbon that had risen above it’s station, as my English cousin Sir Frawncis would say, and blossomed into diamonds that enlighten our hearts. Amazing, versatile diamonds which can also on a drill bit, cut through everything else on a construction site. Or carbon is most often seen and found as dirty old coal, causing fear that the coming Olympics will become a farce on many levels.

The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute have created a color map of the pollution around mother earth. Pollution on this world map measures NO2 in the air, that is dirty coal emissions. Red, which is most of east China from Beijing to below Shanghai,is dirtiest. Dark blue, as in most of Canada and the Sahara desert is clean air. While America and Europe have cleaned up in recent decades, central Germany, London, Moscow, north Italy are red zones. So we know they are not creating diamonds in those locations, but filthy poisoned air.

These foul coal plants without the new filters are powering their energy needs with something that emits poisonous NO2 into the air we breathe. Hello, there Black Hat Wong Coal. Not wearing your newly designed diaper filters again we see. Look at you spew, Bart Coal: you should be ashamed of yourself. Look at that red map zone, watch those people in filthy air with masks to their faces as they hurry to get inside out of the filthy air. And this is the air to breathe for elite athletes of the world in the coming Olympic Games.

No surprise that the world’s faster marathon runner has studied the terrain and decided it would exact too much damage to his lungs and body to run that fast, up and down those demanding hills. He, not a Roman slave, decided after several practice runs in which he ran past people holding masks to their faces, that forcing greater inhalation of that air, into those perfect lungs, was not worth the risk. So one by one, participants to these rather Black Bart Coal Olympics decide they will pass until the Committee decides on a more democratic and less hypocritical Diamonds Olympics.

Australia and Canada, democracies with the new diamond finds and minds, would say pick me, pick me. China has much dirty coal, Canada and Australia also has the coal. But we have diamonds, and democracy too, and in such volume anew, that the net has created short cuts for diamonds from mine right to you. We do not ship coal, you know who to see for that. But our net warehouse keys are unlocked and nobody’s in there, to sniff down her nose and say you’d pay me that little for this much, what do you take me for?

Well, we took you for a hindrance, a lump of coal, so instead you no here any more. Just smiling bins of diamonds, gemstones, net price low bids. Bid low, sweet chariot, come back and see if you won. If not, then carry on, some low bid auction diamonds coming round again. Have fun. Skip the traffic accident and the fat lady who grabs; is that why the news says we will shop 17 percent more on the net this year, while retail sales stay stagnant. Oh, the kettle’s boiling, I will just click this low bid, make the tea, and we shall see, if that blue sky is the true blue diamond for the world, air we can breath, water we can drink. It could happen.

s.sankar asked:


1. INTRODUCTION: FUTURE ENERGY NEEDS

Mankind has recently enhanced its living standard and its population in an explosive way. In fact, the human population quadrupled and primary power consumption increased 16-fold during the 20th century [1]. The consumption of energy, food, and material resources is predicted to increase 2.5 fold in the coming 50 years. As a result of our efforts for better life, we have come to face, in this 21st century, serious global issues threatening our safe life or even our existence itself on our mother planet earth. These are issues such as global warming, environmental degradation, declining nutrition on land and sea from rising CO2, and rapid decrease of fossil reservoir. Since the living standard and the population of developing countries are increasing continuously, the demand of energy will be several times larger than that of today’s requirement by the time of the half way of this century.

In 2000, the world had 6.1 billion human inhabitants. This number could rise to more

than 9 billions in the next 50 years as shown in Fig.-1. This future population increase is mostly due to very rapid increase in less developed countries although the number in more developed countries will be almost constant (about 1 billion) or rather decrease [2].

Fig.-1 World Population Prospects [2]

The explosive increase in the human population inevitably requires an exponential increase in the consumption of energy, food, and material resources. One primary power source at present comes from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. However, the fossil fuels have two serious factors which prevent them from being used for a long term as primary power source. One is their limited amount that does not last long if used with the same or higher pace than that of today (Fig.-2). The other is their negative feature of emitting carbon dioxide, one of the green house gases, which causes the global warming.

Fig.- 2 Pattern of Global Energy Dependence [3]

Fig.-3 Atmospheric carbon dioxide monthly mean mixing ratios. Data prior to May 1974 are from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO, blue), date since May 1974 are from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, red). A long term trend curve is fitted to the monthly mean values [4]

Atmospheric CO2 has increased from 275 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial era begun to 379 ppm in March 2004 as shown in Fig.-3. Some scientists suggest that it will pass 550 ppm this century. Climate models and paleoclimate data indicate that 550 ppm, if sustained, could eventually produce global warming comparable in magnitude but opposite in sign to the global cooling of the last Ice Age [5].

Global energy demand continues to grow along with worldwide concerns over fossil fuel pollution, the safety of nuclear power and waste, and the impact of carbon-burning fuels on global warming. As a result sustainable energy sources like solar, wind, hydropower, biomass, geothermal, hydrogen, ocean thermal, tidal power etc are drawing prime attention, out of which solar power is the most promising one. Terrestrial solar power has too many limitations like atmospheric attenuation, daily and seasonal variation, and affects by climate conditions etc. To overcome these limitations concept of Solar Power from Space is getting momentum, which was first proposed by Czech-American engineer Peter Glaser as a solution to the oil crises of the 1970s [6]. Solar Power from Space is a proposed concept to place a gigantic solar power station in space orbiting around the earth that uses microwave power transmission to beam solar power to a very large antenna on earth where it can be used in place of conventional power sources.

2. SPACE SOLAR POWER (SSP) vs TERRESTRIAL SOLAR POWER (TSP)                   

The SSP concept arose because space has several major advantages over earth for the collection of solar power. Space is free from day-night cycle, atmosphere, clouds, dust, rain, fog and other climatic changes, so it would receive 30% more intense and at least eight times more sunlight than that of at ground constantly and continuously unaffected by the weather. In geosynchronous orbit it would receive sunlight almost 24 hours a day hence avoiding the expensive storage facilities necessary for earth-based solar power systems.  Since earth’s axis is tilted, it would be in earth’s shadow only for 70 minutes maximum at late night when power demands are at their lowest, during 42 days near the equinoxes [7] as shown in Fig.-5.

Fig.-5 Daily duration of eclipses as a function of the date [7]

3. SSP: SYSTEM DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGIES

The SSP system is composed of a space segment and a ground power receiving site (Fig.-6). Space segment consists of mainly three parts; solar energy collector to convert the solar energy into DC (Direct Current) electricity, DC-to-microwave converter, and large antenna array to beam down the microwave power to the ground. Ground power receiving site uses a device called rectenna (rectifying antenna) to receive and rectify the microwave power beam. The rectenna system converts the microwave power back to DC power which is then converted to conventional AC (Alternating Current), and is connected to existing electric power networks.

Assuming typical values for efficiencies like 15% for solar panels to convert solar energy into DC, 70% conversion rate in the space segment from DC to microwave, 90% beam (power) collection efficiency, and 80% conversion rate for rectenna from microwave to DC in ground segment, the estimated over-all efficiency is approximately 7.5 %. With such efficiency a SSP space segment would be of size of about 50 km2 (5 km x 10 km) to generate 5 GW DC power on earth (Fig.-6).

Fig.-6 : Reference Model: 5 GW GEO based Space Solar Power Station Designed by US Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA in 1979 [8]

3.1 -SOLAR CELL: EFFICIENT STRUCTURES

In the very near future, breakthroughs in nanotechnologies promise significant increase in solar cell efficiencies from current 15% values to over 50% levels. That might decrease required size of space segment by about 3 fold. Author proposes Metal-Metal junction cavity solar cell which theoretically promises to increase solar-electric conversion efficiency many folds.

A cavity of metal m2 (work function W2) with thin polish of metal m1 (work function W1, W1

·  The major loss in usual structures is the reflection loss (about 30%) but in M-M cavity solar cell once ray enters in cavity, undergoes multiple inner reflecti

Abhinav Sidana asked:


 

Have you ever though of cutting down your huge electricity bills? If your answer is no, you need to re-look into it once again. We all pay huge amount on monthly utility bills, however we can substantially reduce these bills by producing our own solar power electricity. We will need to install small equipment known as solar power electricity generator in our roof or backyard and you can get portable and reliable equipment below $200.

The electricity we get in our home is produced by renewable sources and while producing it we burn lots of oil, coal or gas and all these causes pollution and damage our environment and our planet. The carbon dioxide, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen are damaging our environment and carbon dioxide is mainly behind the global warming. By generating electricity from solar power will help us to reduce the pollution, which is not only good for us but we will provide clean environment to our future generation also. Solar power electricity generators are used in large number of factories worldwide, however the use of these equipments in residential areas is growing up.

We can also contribute towards making our planet safe and pollution free by producing the green and clean energy from solar power electricity generators and at the same time we will also save huge money, which would have otherwise been paid to the local energy supply companies. People are saving 50 to 70 percent of their electricity bills and even a few people are producing excess electricity from solar power electricity generators installed at their backyard or roof.

Srovets asked:

Today on my daily walk, I got a special treat. I BNSF unit coal train pulled up from the north and stopped. The engine on the head end decoupled and came past me, then after a series of switching moves, some KCS power lashed on to the BNSF engine and coupled onto the train and took off. Not only were there units on the front, but some on the rear pushing as well (distributed power). It is interesting to see railroaders at work doing what they do everyday.

Jon Kelly asked:


As fuel costs continue to rise, alternative sources of energy become more attractive to individuals and businesses. For those who are concerned about pollution or about the depletion of natural resources, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power have presented themselves as possible alternatives to oil and coal.

Yet as increasing demand for clean, renewable energy drives a growing market for solar energy products, many people are left wondering what such systems cost and where those costs come from. Sunlight itself is free to everyone, yet the types of technology used to harness the power of sunlight can be costly. If you are interested in purchasing solar power products for your home or business, knowing what you will be paying for can help you make the best investment.

Two of the main types of products that take advantage of solar energy are passive and active solar products. These two types of systems differ in how they are constructed and can also differ greatly in cost. Passive solar technology can be used to heat air or water using the sun’s energy. Unlike an active solar application, passive solar set-ups accomplish their task without the use of additional electrical components, such as fans that need an external electricity supply.

Some solar space heating or water heating systems are active solar heating systems that have various components that require external power sources. Because of their simplicity compared with active systems, passive solar heating systems generally have the lower cost of the two.

In addition to these solar heating systems, there are also solar power systems available. Rather than using the sun’s energy for heating applications, these systems convert solar energy into electricity. These products are often constructed from hundreds of a type of solar energy collection cell called a photovoltaic cell. The name of this type of cell makes reference to the fact that the cell generates electricity from light. As sunlight falls on a photovoltaic cell, the light’s energy is converted into electricity that can then be used to power many kinds of electronic devices.

Because of the complicated technology involved, these kinds of solar power systems can be very expensive. However, the cost savings may eventually more than pay off your initial investment in the solar cells.

When considering what kind of solar heating or power system to install in your home or business, be sure that you are purchasing your equipment from a reputable manufacturer or distributor who will be able to help you with any necessary repairs, periodic upgrades or additional conversion from traditional systems to a solar-powered system.

The best service will often be the most expensive, but you may be able to find grant funding to help offset the costs of equipment or installation. Many states offer grants for conversion to solar power, and doing some research into the grant programs for solar power systems in your area will help you get a sense of the how much financial assistance is available.