A Finnish Firm Thinks It Can Cut Industrial Carbon Emissions By a Third (economist.com) 58
The Ecoomist asks: How can we "green" the high-temperature chemical processes in industries like steelmaking or the production of chemical or cement. "Because it is tricky or impossible to produce such temperatures for some industrial processes using electricity alone, firms rely on fossil fuels."
But a Finnish engineering firm called Coolbrook thinks they have an answer: The easiest way to think about Coolbrook's system is as a gas turbine in reverse. A conventional gas turbine — as used in power stations or jet engines — burns fossil fuel to create a hot, high-pressure gas that spins rotor blades. That rotational energy can be used to run a thrust-generating fan (as in jet aircraft) or converted to electricity in a generator (as in a power station). The new system begins instead with an electric motor. The motor spins the turbine's rotors. Gas or liquid is then fed to the turbine. Once inside, the rotors accelerate the stuff to supersonic speeds, and then rapidly slow it again. The sudden deceleration transforms the kinetic energy contained in the accelerated gas or fluid into heat. If the motor is powered by green electricity, then no carbon dioxide is produced...
Laboratory trials have shown that yields from the electrified process could be significantly higher than what can be obtained with fossil fuels. Assuming that everything goes according to plan, the firm will try producing heat for several other industrial processes... Joonas Rauramo, Coolbrook's boss, reckons his firm's technology could eliminate perhaps 30% of heavy-industrial emissions. And, he says, it can do so without needing to invent anything fundamentally new. "It is a known science," says Mr Rauramo. "It has just not been applied in exactly the way we are doing it."
The article's subheading puts it succinctly. "Running a turbine backwards can produce green heat."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.
But a Finnish engineering firm called Coolbrook thinks they have an answer: The easiest way to think about Coolbrook's system is as a gas turbine in reverse. A conventional gas turbine — as used in power stations or jet engines — burns fossil fuel to create a hot, high-pressure gas that spins rotor blades. That rotational energy can be used to run a thrust-generating fan (as in jet aircraft) or converted to electricity in a generator (as in a power station). The new system begins instead with an electric motor. The motor spins the turbine's rotors. Gas or liquid is then fed to the turbine. Once inside, the rotors accelerate the stuff to supersonic speeds, and then rapidly slow it again. The sudden deceleration transforms the kinetic energy contained in the accelerated gas or fluid into heat. If the motor is powered by green electricity, then no carbon dioxide is produced...
Laboratory trials have shown that yields from the electrified process could be significantly higher than what can be obtained with fossil fuels. Assuming that everything goes according to plan, the firm will try producing heat for several other industrial processes... Joonas Rauramo, Coolbrook's boss, reckons his firm's technology could eliminate perhaps 30% of heavy-industrial emissions. And, he says, it can do so without needing to invent anything fundamentally new. "It is a known science," says Mr Rauramo. "It has just not been applied in exactly the way we are doing it."
The article's subheading puts it succinctly. "Running a turbine backwards can produce green heat."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.
A solution that doesn't involve wood? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Most Finnish solutions to environmental problems involve using wood or transformed wood - because guess what, Finland has a kajillion metric fuckton of wood it would be happy to sell you.
I'm not saying they're wrong most of the time - wood and wood derivatives could often very happily replace other less environmentally-friendly materials. I'm just surprised this solution isn't that.
Re: A solution that doesn't involve wood? (Score:1)
"destroying our entire society"
What's the downside to destroying something that is causing rising suicides?
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By that logic, mass suicides would be a good thing. Eliminate humans, problem solved.
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By that logic, mass suicides would be a good thing. Eliminate humans, problem solved.
Fewer people = less pollution and less overall destruction. In the current case it would also mean more afforable housing.
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*Nuclear power has entered the chat.*
Problem with nuclear power is that in the 1970s, Russia and China realized it would be a fundamental threat to their well-being, especially when energy availability in the US would get too cheap to meter (as Tesla hoped), so did campaigns to get people scared about it and run it off as an energy source.
No, it isn't perfect, but we have had 75+ years of nuclear development. China is making thorium reactors, other places are doing other designs which are a lot safer than
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China would be at great risk if the sea levels ro
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We really need to stop burning wood, also.
Nature has this miracle called photosynthesis which captures carbon from atmospheric CO2 and stores it in wood. The original and still the best "carbon capture and storage (CCS)" solution. We screw it up when we burn wood.
Just stop burning everything.
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We really need to stop burning wood, also. Nature has this miracle called photosynthesis which captures carbon from atmospheric CO2 and stores it in wood. The original and still the best "carbon capture and storage (CCS)" solution. We screw it up when we burn wood. Just stop burning everything.
Because that's so much worse than letting it topple, rot and release the CO2 that way. CO2 sequestration happens only in very very specific conditions, not in your average forest.
Re: A solution that doesn't involve wood? (Score:2)
Every tree sequesters CO2. Just don't cut them down and don't burn them. The carbon will stay out of the atmosphere for centuries.
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The new OL3 reactor is finally operational so that basically eliminated almost all the need for burning coal or biomass.
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What (Score:2)
So they use let's say 100% renewable energy to spin the turbine and accelerate some liquid into a wall, which heats it up.
Why would this be more efficient than using electricity to heat the liquid in question directly? You'd be losing some efficiency to friction in all sorts of ways, and not using any tricks like heat pumps do to make up for it.
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It does sound like that, now does it? I suspect it is just bad reporting and this really is about increasing combustion efficiency. On the other hand, if you have renewable electricity, you can use that directly and storing heat is not hard of you just want to recover the heat.
I think think is just more stupid reporting on "magic" carbon-reduction tech. These things basically never pan out. Yes, the human race is screwed so hard it is not funny anymore.
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I suspect without real numbers this discussion has no point. I would point out the differences in efficiency between resistive heating (which would be how you would 'electrically heat' most things) and say, a heat pump. Most people with heat pumps could witness this in a cold winter as the electric bill jumps up when the resistive heating kicks in.
Re:What (Score:5, Informative)
Why would this be more efficient than using electricity to heat the liquid in question directly?
I know it's not fashionable to RTFA, but in this case the answer to this question is even given in the fine summary. The issue isn't the amount of heat. It's the desired temperature. Some industrial processes need very high temperatures that are difficult or impossible to achieve via purely electric heating, so they use fossil fuels.
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There are a lot of processes that can produce precise high temperatures with electricity though. Induction furnaces are a good example; not sure about the precision for an arc furnace.
This sounds like it is trying to be a high temperature heat pump, but the explanation is really lacking for me.
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Induction furnaces are a good example
Induction furnaces are a good example of a specific solution to a very specific application, arc furnaces too. Burning things in a box is a far more generalised solution applicable to far more industrial processes.
You have created a solution for a very specific type of heat needed in a very specific process, not for industry in general.
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I think it's a matter of the temperatures required, there's probably a limit on direct resistive heating. They use it for aluminium smelting but that tops off at around 800C. Steel is like 1600C+ required which may be beyond resistive or it might be super lossy at that temp, limits of material science, at those temps the electrodes may just melt themselves.
As far as I know the majority of steel production is from burning xoke or gas so this probably trying to give an alternative.
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They use electric arc furnaces for a significant amount of steel refining. There is no physical resistive element (or technically the material they are melting is the resistive element).
It is possible if they use the electric motor to run the air compressor part of the gas turbine and provide air for the gas burner part that a motor/generator pair uses less power. The general issue is that often the air is over or under compressed generating extra heat in the wrong places causing inefficiencies.
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Interesting, if that's the case what issue do you think this is solving, if anything?
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They mention in the article making cement. And cement is claimed to be a major co2 producer worldwide. Likely they pointless mentioned using it for metal refining without really knowing there was already an efficient solution for metal refining. So they are probably talking about high-temperature chemical processing that need significant heating.
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Such systems won't work for initial iron ore smelting (iron oxide is not conductive) or for cement production.
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Induction furnaces can be used for iron ore smelting (or just about anything), you just need a source of carbon for the smelting process.
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Turbines limited by material science (Score:2)
Modern industry and military researchers have spent decades trying to increase combustion temperatures in turbines in order to maximize performance, but inevitably the material science can’t keep up. Modern turbofans are materials strained above 900c and limited to 1400c. For an industrial process the lower end is a more practical bound. It is tough to beat combustion for a heat process.
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Isn't that the unique thing about this though? They're not trying to get the turbine up to that temp but use it to speed up a fluid outside the turbine to get that up to those temps.
Overlooked source of FREE HEAT (Score:2)
So why not use that 'waste' heat AND you still have the nuclear plant making electricity a two-for-one.
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That waste heat is low temperature waste heat after the turbine, still hot, but not useful for much. And that waste heat is produced by all wood/gas/oil/coal plants and they also have to shutdown if they are going to heat up the external water supply they are using too much. That waste heat is used for greenhouses and other heating in a number of places in Europe.
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The trouble is it's low grade waste heat, and nowhere near the temperatures people are talking about here. Most nuclear power plants produce steam at lower temperatures than coal fired power plants. The UK AGR design is (using carbon dioxide as the reactor coolant) somewhat unusual in that it's specifically designed to produce steam output at similar temperatures and pressures to coal fired power plants, they can use the same turbines, condenser plants, etc. No water cooled reactors produce the same temp
Don't forget what you can do (Score:2)
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Having fewer (or no) children is _drastically_ more effective than changing diet or cars.
One fewer child is 58 metric tons of carbon footprint. Going car-free and vegetarian is about 3.5 metric tons of carbon footprint.
https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
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Glass half-full or half-empty (Score:2)
Assuming that everything goes according to plan
This is the kind of sentence that usually makes me laugh when someone pitches a new project to me.
Because as we all know, things usually go according to plan. All the time. In most projects.
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Assuming that everything goes according to plan
This is the kind of sentence that usually makes me laugh when someone pitches a new project to me.
Because as we all know, things usually go according to plan. All the time. In most projects.
We should know soon enough. This technology has been in development since 2010, and there is a pilot plant running now in Netherlands: https://www.brightlands.com/en... [brightlands.com]
No Sense (Score:2)
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Of all the possible liquids.. (Score:2)
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Learn Thermodynamics! (Score:3)
If they are trying to produce heat from electricity there is no need at all to use anything more complicated than an electric resistance heating coil.
Electric resistance heating is 100% energy efficient in the sense that all the incoming electric energy is converted to heat.
100% efficient. There is literally nothing you can do to improve on that.
No turbine or gas or fluid is necessary or even desirable.
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The article mentions processes operating at 1400-1600C, presumably resistance heating can't reach those temperatures. Not knowing anything about metallurgy, presumably if the temps are hot enough to melt ore, they're hot enough to melt the metals in a resistance heater.
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Electric resistance heating is 100% energy efficient in the sense that all the incoming electric energy is converted to heat. 100% efficient. There is literally nothing you can do to improve on that.
Not quite right. When generating heat with electricity, you can always use a heat pump, which (in case of single family homes) gives easily 3-4 times more heating energy than simple electric resistance heating. Of course, this is "cheating" as it uses an external heat source, but this is applicable to practically any heating need, where you would otherwise use resistance heating. Like it was already mentioned - the problem they are solving is getting the temperature high enough.
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"100% efficient. There is literally nothing you can do to improve on that." - err, heat pumps can exceed 100%. It depends on the input and output temperatures, amongst other things, but you can definitely exceed 100%. Most of the western world's plans to cut heating CO2 emissions are based on this.
Now IANAT (not a thermodynamicist), but the article subject might be a heat pump in disguise.
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If they are trying to produce heat from electricity there is no need at all to use anything more complicated than an electric resistance heating coil.
You can't use electrical resistive heating to generate the heat being discussed. Jesus man first line of TFS.
Also you got to stop considering 100% as a target for movement of heat electrically. That isn't a target. That is a baseline, one that many processes have surpassed.
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There are issues with resistive heating, not least of which being that the resistor part tends to melt when you heat it to 1,700C.
It would also be nice if we could go beyond 100% efficient, like heat pumps do. The issue with heat pumps is that they can't produce those very high temperatures.
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Um, EM radiation would be a leakage, so not 100%. Assuming AC power. And if the heating element glows...
Coal has a real use in steel and chipmaking (Score:2)
Coal is used to make steel and silicon wafers because its carbon sucks out the oxygen; de-rusts the raw ore, so to speak. The article is paywalled so I can't tell if it addresses this.
Wish I could see the article (or summary was clear (Score:2)
It's hard to imagine whatever this is doing as a continuous process with the "sudden stop". Or to compare it to the existing system. Seems like a thinly veiled ad at best.
I mean I love trying to get creative, but understanding and creating new catalysts is where I'd put my research efforts (to lower energy use). Last I heard we can't predict what will catalyze reactions ahead of time. We just put stuff together and see what happens. Then repeat stuff that worked last time.