Renewable Energy for Electricity

Sea water doesn't make good steam. It's too full of dissolved and undissolved solids that will gunk everything up.

Don't even think about it unless you've go a few million dollars to piddle away.

Then, think about it briefly, and go party with the money you saved by not pouring it into the ocean.

No, No, no, a thousand times NO!

I am beginning to understand why the sales at the Western Division of LynDoor™ Industries Power In Seawater Steam Energy Resources seem to be slipping... Oh, well, we can't get every sale.

Don't you remember? PISSER^© was supposed to be Power In Snowwater Steam Energy Resources.

No wonder sales are in the septic tank.

Oh NO! OOOPS!

That may be why I am getting all those complaints! I better do some document shredding revisions this evening.

That's a Build Underwater Mechanical Machinery for Electrical Resource....

The seawater would have to be desalinated first... A more practical approach would be to reduce the trash/garbage to gas via plasma arc or gasification and run a conventional gas turbine generator....

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_trashblaster/all/1

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

http://www.ge-energy.com/products_and_services/products/gasification/syngas_turbine.jsp

Can they make MagneGas with this process?

So far, we've consumed 500% more energy than we could ever make. We should go for a government grant!!!!

I don't know what that is, but you can make diesel...In the news....

"For Columbus County, Ezzell said, funding has been secured for a $35 million to $40 million facility that would take all of the county's municipal solid waste, convert most of it using the pyrolysis process, and take care of properly disposing those items through recycling, sales or disposal in a proper landfill.

That facility would provide jobs for up to 40 people during construction, with 10 to 15 full-time positions created to operate the plant.

Annual savings to the county would top $1 million, Ezzell said, including more than $810,000 for tipping fees for garbage that would be cut in half from current rates, and more than $200,000 in diesel fuel costs for county school buses. Ezzell said diesel would be provided to the schools and other county agencies at 10 percent below the prevailing market prices.

Pyrolysis, Ezzell says, involves placing carbon-based materials into a sealed container and heating the material to more than 1,000 degrees, at which point the material begins to consume itself.

"We can utilize tires, plastic, municipal solid waste from baby diapers to chicken bones to clothes," Ezzell said. "We can't use ferrous metals, aluminum, glass and concrete. They are not carbon-based."

A pyrolysis facility in California is using sludge from a sewage plant, Ezzell said. Most pyrolysis facilities are small, typically limited by the money available to build them."

http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2012/05/22/1179610?sac=fo.local

In a 19th century sort of way yes it would work, just not well or for very long. Certainly not in any sort of sustainable way.

Better to use fresh water and coal - far better, cleaner, more steam, less maintenance, etc, but still a 19th century solution. Burning garbage has to be done correctly least you let the bad combustion byproducts get into the air.

The constraint in steam power generation is not water.

Incinerator burn trash mainly to get it of trash, so you don't need to dump it somewhere. A little useful by product is some power generation.

Trash is not an efficient energy source.

Trash is a very efficient energy source if it is burned in a plasma gasification system. This aproach can be augmented with a GE gas turbine, which will generate enough electricity that 1/3 of it can be fed back to the torch to sustain it! The other 2/3 can be fed to the grid. It has been proven that such a system can completely pay for itself in 10 years.

Woodward....

We have been hearing this plasma drivel for years....

If this is such an obvious great idea, why are there no trash-plasma generating plants in the USA ?

Westinghouse has been studying this for decades and has developed sophisticated plasma torches..

What is wrong with all of these damn engineers !!????

Waste Management has installed a Plasma Gasification system in Oregon for solid waste processing. They have another under construction some where in the western USA right now. Read details here:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_trashblaster/

Burning trash is going to generate more pollution (and green house gases) than burning fossil fuels, and will ultimately generate less energy per pound of fuel.

There have been some strong negative reactions to pyrolysis systems up in Canada and other places due to the fact that certain gases reputed to be carcinogens are released in the process...

"There have been some strong negative reactions to pyrolysis systems up in Canada and other places due to the fact that certain gases reputed to be carcinogens are released in the process..."

I'm going to have to challenge that statement...Would you provide a link to the information source where these claims have been made?

Properly designed gasification (they utilize pyrolysis) plants coupled with co-generation including gas turbine/ steam generated from the turbine exhaust and fuel cells run from syn-gas production have an extremely high total efficiency compared to a regular power plant. The capture of CO2 in the gasification process is comparatively easy compared to capture from a regular power plant. There is also an issue as to which is the more critical component of "Global Warming" , CO2 or Methane which is a major release from dump-sites. If they were to combine the CO2 capture, the heat and hot water production from the fuel cells with algae production then the lipids and the biomass fuel produced could increase the overall efficiency and reduce any output of CO2 and other gaseous streams. The algae biomass could be used to supplement the garbage feedstock.

Yes, nice model there....

Seawater can be used to turn a turbine without going via steam. Wave power is one of many sustainable energy techniques being developed across the globe.

Trash incinerators do two things: they reduce the volume going to landfill and they make electricity as well.

Turning seawater into boiler feedwater requires some investment in treatment equipment. The size and type of equipment depends upon the size of the boiler and the composition of the incoming water. Not surprisingly, seawater composition changes with location; in the arctic it is weak in salt and in the Arabian Gulf it is strong in salt. There is a feature in Wikipedia about seawater for the reader who wants to know more.

This is much ado about nothing. As is this past jewel: Generator without fuel engine

I think the OP is long gone, as am I.

No. You'll need to desalinate the seawater first otherwise your boiler will scale up very quickly.

Until recently I thought desalination was one of the most power-hungry processes going? There are other alternatives coming on line to generate power, some will generate electricity WITHOUT steam. I've done a video, which is almost ready, in case you want a preview.

You may want to buy this and get an education of Boiler Feed Water before you attempt anything. It would be money well spent rather than flushing it down the Toil-lette.

http://www.powermag.com/powerpress/14.html?hq_e=el&hq_m=2453621&hq_l=1&hq_v=dff8206fd6

It's the new Handbook on Boiler Feed Water Treatment.