If , "brevity is the soul of wit," most will judge me witless or soulless much of the time. The less charitable will claim I am both, most of the time. Today I will try to be less verbose.

I grant that in many parts of the country that without heat we would be in a lot of trouble. On the other hand, without water we would be dead. Obviously electricity can generate heat when needed, but in most places at the current time and current market rates (pun intended) it is not the most economical way to produce heat, except under co-generation conditions. In recognition of that fact, however, only a few of the states that have incentives to develop additional clean or green energy production facilities actually incentivize co-generation of heat and power.

As I have pointed out previously, co-generation is the norm, and frequently required by statute in Canada and elsewhere. It really only makes sense. Further, any "modern" thermal electric generation operation plant will very likely be using what is called "combined cycle" which is to say, that secondary to the turning of a turbine that turns generator shaft a heat recovery process usually also creates a whole second generating cycle from the exhaust heat of the first process (typically a steam generator setup) thus extracting nearly double (or actually double) the energy in the burning fuel that merely putting it into a turbine or a reciprocating engine can achieve.

Single-cycle plants that do not take advantage of the secondary recovery process are much cheaper to build, but the lower capital costs are quickly outstripped by the lower operating efficiency. Single-cycle units can achieve (in large efficient ones) up to about 35 - 38% efficiency of the energy input as it is converted to electricity. Combine-cycle generation can go as high as 58 - 60% efficiency. But remember that is "just" the electricity generation efficiency. When combined heat and power is considered, using chillers for cooling or heat extraction for community or commercial heating, some calculations claim as great as 80 - 90% efficiency.

Is that hard to believe? Well, take a look at the design of power plants. They spend a very large amount of real estate and structure in most cases on just cooling the coolant. That is, those squat inverted funnel shapes are cooling towers intended to create a drop in the cooling water of 10 to 20 Centigrade degrees. They use vast amounts of water and in some plants the water can only be "re-cycled" through the system about 5 to 8 times before it has to be replaced because of the mineral buildup caused by the evaporation in the cooling process. In "closed" cooling systems, some systems use foam rubber balls circulating with the water to scrub the inside of the pipes on a continuous basis to reduce the need for down-time maintenance on the cooling towers.

Doesn't it make a lot more sense to be using those cooling towers to be the "engines" of a desalination process (if sea water is readily available)? Or similarly, why not make it into distillation power for "grey water" sources.

That's my real point for today. "Grey water" recycling programs are going into effect at far too slow a rate, partly because the value of cleaned "grey" water is too low. Make it pure distilled water, drinkable, saleable, pure and guaranteed safe, and you take a step to solving the OTHER invisible crisis looming in North American and much of the world, the shortage of drinkable water.

The other kind of "closed-loop" that is possible in this process is my old favorite; connect the power generation process directly to the sewage treatment process. Fermenters for sewage are slow and low efficiency, but they are growing in many places including Los Angeles. But a far more efficient way to deal with the biomass is straight into thermal de-polymerization. Take that 1100 degree Fahrenheit exhaust and use it to dissociate the chemicals in the bio-organics of the sewage into useable fuels for the electricity generating process itself. It may sound like that old rock'n'roll hit, "Money for Nothin' and Your Chicks for Free," and a pipedream, but the process is practical and we need to get the facilities to implement it started now. Today.

Love

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

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