| Author |
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Chadhargis
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 07, 2009 - 08:55 pm: | 
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Very cool!
Fatty B. and I rolled through Oak Ridge one day looking for a pizza joint that's supposed to be real good.
It is a nice city, and people there say their teeth have never been whiter and their gardens are spitting out 50lb tomatoes. 
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Aptbldr
| | Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 07:01 am: |
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History buffs, check-out General Leslie Groves, builder of Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and the Pentagon. Speed, scale, and science. |
Crackhead
| | Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 07:17 am: |
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Well solar cells or wind turbines are used to produce electricity and split H2O. The heat generated would be used to heat the homes hot water tank.
I would have solar cells covering the southern side of my roof, but the dam holly trees provide just enough shade. And i live with in 500 ft of the bay, so i can't cut the trees down. But living so close to the bay makes for great wind power and geothermal transfer properties. In 2 years i should be able to afford to add a geothermal system with the hot water heater.
yea physics are a bitch, but you can't look at just one part of the conversion process. Energy doesn't disappear.
(Message edited by crackhead on October 08, 2009) |
Xl1200r
| | Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 09:43 am: |
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Energy doesn't disappear.
No, but no process is 100% effecient, which means the energy gets sucked up into some facet of said process. Which is why I think for the creation of Hydrogen we need to do it using resources that are free and abundant (like solar and wind). Trying to crack it out of natural gas is counter productive in theory. Granted, natural gas is used for an ICE and there's a lot of wasted heat energy, but I'd bet you're still ahead of the game after you figure in all the effort it took to get that hydrogen to drive your car down the road. |
Hootowl
| | Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 09:54 am: |
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I don't know...I'm all for solar and wind, but I just don't think it will be cost effective. Nanosolar has brought the price per Kw WAY down for solar, but there are still rare earth elements being used. How long can we manufacture panels before the well runs dry? The energy is renewable but the materials used to create the panels are not.
I'm sort of in the tank for oil from salt water algae in a closed loop system. There are strains that are 50% oil by weight. There are freshwater strains as well, but the process is water intensive. I'd rather see them focus on the salt water variety. Exciting stuff. |
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