SCI 184b Blog about Energy

The Museum of Science is one of those iconic museums in Boston that every elementary , middle and high school student has an oppotrunity to go to.  I thought once I graduated I would never be able to have another field trip with my school because A) I am not a science major and B) who has field trips in college anyways?  But I was wrong.

Last Tuesday, I went back to the Museum of Science for a field trip in a science class that I never thought I was going to have to take in college.  The museum was very interesting, more so now than in my younger years.  I was more interested in the sustainability wing,  the dinosaur wing, where they had an actual dinosaur!  This dinosaur was on loan to the museum by a private owner who bought the dinosaur at auction and 75% of the bones are from the same single dinosaur.  I also saw a beautiful skyline of Boston while in the human wing, where human skeletons were on display.

At the sustainability wing, there was a map of Massachusetts which showed where wind speed and power were the highest and lowest in the state.  Most of Massachusetts I found out has a low capability of producing wind speed.

Indian Point Power Plant, located in Buchanan, New York, has been a controvery issue in the state for some time now.  With an explosion of one of the reactors last fall, Governor Cuomo wants it shut down. Within 25 miles of New York City, Indian Point provides about 15 % of clean electricity to the residents of New York.

Fear of what has happened in Japan and what could happen at Indian is real because the plant is just 23 miles North of the Bronx, which is most vulnerable to an earthquake because one of its reactors sits on a fault line.  That is the main reason Governor Cuomo wants the reactor to be shut down.

Pro’s:

Provides clean and renewable energy

Affordable electricity to city and state payers

Source of jobs

Con’s:

Carbon emission (air pollution) in city and state will increase by 5-10%

Would create fuel burning plants

Drive up the sale of electricity at about $1.5 billion a year (city & state)

However nothing has happened yet to determine its closure.  The licenses on Unit 2 expire in 2013, while Unit 3 license is set to expire in 2015.   The Governor wants the power plant to shut down and it seems that he will do anything in his power to shut it down, so I guess we will just  have to wait and see!

References:

http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Indian%20Point%20Nuclear%20Power%20Plant

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/07/report-closing-indian-point_n_892269.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-24/living/nuclear.plant.visit_1_nuclear-fuel-nuclear-power-plant-uranium-pellets?_s=PM:LIVING

The MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center was quite the experience.  After getting off the Red Line at Kendall and navigating our way through MIT’s campus we finally arrived.  Upon our arrival we attended a PowerPoint discussion about plasma fusion from a 4th year PhD student Geoff.  Throughout the whole presentation I found at times the things he was talking about went straight over my head and understood little to what he was saying, however his enthusiasm was a warm welcome to the complicated material he was teaching me. After the lecture we got a tour of the facility by another graduate student, Ian.

The Alcator project has been a work in progress since the 1940’s.  The one MIT students are currently working on is the Alcator C-Mod.  It operates with extremely strong magnetic fields, and with this approach, it makes it possible to produce very dense and well-compacted plasmas in a compact device.  This is all part of research to the ITER project, which is a multi-nation effort to make fusion energy the way of the future by providing clean renewable energy.

This class was quite the electric shock.  We had a guest speaker come into class today, Thomas Vales to talk to us about electricity.

Thomas Vales is the Laboratory Coordinator for the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at Suffolk University.  He has been involved in technology science and electricity for over 30 years working at Macpherson in Acton and Omni Spectrum in Waltham along with many more mechanic shops throughout his years.  According to Vales he is never “un-busy.”

He set up three demonstrations, the sterling engine (on the left) creates energy by being based over heated water. The medicino motor (on the right) is a solar device and has a continuous pull from the magnets on the baseboard.  The peltier  junction (middle) is a wind device that is powered by having one metal plate in hot water and the other in cold water, when the hot water beings to cool down the speed of the windmill also slows down.



This last one was the most exciting thing we had done in class so far.  This machine is known as Tesla coil and is a big electricity conductor.

I find it hard to believe that some people still deny global warming.  I think those who deny it are idiots and uneducated along with ignorant people. There is enough scientific evidence out there to prove that it does indeed exist.  Instead of continuing this debate of whether or not it exists, we ought to be putting our energy into finding a solution.

Who thinks that all this smoke and pollution going up into the air is good for the environment???

To think there are Presidential candidates out there right now stating that we need to drill more oil and deny climate change is ridiculous.  The energy policies of the top two Republican Presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, states nothing about solar or wind, instead they want to increase oil and coal, and limit the EPA’s control over environmental regulations.  This is not good news at all; the only renewables that is mentioned is nuclear energy by Romney.

Here are some facts:

Here is a video from Bill Maher bashing the deniers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OwFSLm4pII&feature=related

And here is a video of the deniers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7BGZnDkOVQ&feature=related

The second video comes from scientists and scholars who study climate. They seem to have a theory that “global warming” is propaganda made up by governments around the world and is politically generated. But they are people too and since we are all citizens of the Earth, wouldn’t it make sense for everyone to want to make the world a better, safer, and cleaner place to live?

http://www.cfr.org/united-states/campaign-2012-candidates-energy-policy/p26796

http://www.startribune.com/blogs/124540024.html

Our lab experiment in class today dealt with solar energy.  We had a rather interesting lecture on solar, nuclear and other renewables today in class.

The materials we used in this lab were similar to last weeks lab.  The NXT robot, a mini solar model and a generator (coils) hooked up to the USB to connect to the computer a ruler and flashlight.  We used the ruler to determine the distance between the light and solar model.  We took 4 runs in total, one without the light, one 1 inch away from the light, 5 inches and 7 inches.  We then had three color slabs (pink, blue, red) which we put over the solar model and did three runs again with each light at the same distances.  All of this was on LabView and was calculated through Excel.

The results:

with light 5 inches away:

Light 7 inches away:

With light 12 inches away:

Light 1 inch away:

Pink 1 inch away

Pink 5 inches Away:

pink 7 inches away

orange 1 inch

orange 5 inch

orange 7 inch

blue 1 inch

blue 5 inches

blue 7 inches

Solyndra was a company based out of Fremont, California who manufactured solar panels …and who also received a $535 million loan from us taxpayers.  The company declared bankruptcy in January of 2011.  The company simply could not compete anymore with China, who leads the world in solar manufacturing.  With the rise of Chinese solar manufacturing, it brought down the prices of panels by 40% and U.S. companies could simply not compete.

It is upsetting to know that a Green company has failed when the world is desperate for renewables.  But what is more upsetting is that Solyndra was a company that went bankrupt with a government loan that taxpayers funded.  Part of Obama’s stimulus package was to loan billion of dollars to green technology companies to help create jobs and also help to decrease our dependancy on foreign oil.  That was a nice thing to do, but at least make sure when you are giving billions of dollars to companies they will be able to actually stay afloat in today’s market.  Even though the country was in a horrible recession in 2009 (some will argue that we are still in one today), the government should have been spending their money elsewhere, or no money at all.  With the passage of the $787 billion stimulus package it only added to our national debt and that right now is the biggest concern, not to mention one of the top national security threats to our country.  We need to stop spending money and loaning out to special interest companies that many politicians are in bed with.  It is a very frustrating when average Americans see countless dollars wasted instead of being invested in things that actually matter like education and job creation.

It is hard to wrap my head around this Solyndra scandal and the $535 million dollars we wasted by giving them a loan. People need to listen more, the Department of Energy even showed signs of wariness when it said that the loan needed to be restructured. There needed to be more research done before the government handed out this kind of money because there was no financial, legal or marketing reviews done before they gave them the loan.  It was complete irresponsibility on the Obama Administration in failing to do just that.

A clip from YouTube:

Resources:

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/abc-news-investigations-year-solyndra-scandal/story?id=15199603#.T0PYJGBuFuU

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/opinion/the-phony-solyndra-scandal.html?_r=1

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/16/you-thought-solyndra-was-bad-theres-more-on-the-way/

http://www.newsytype.com/10807-solyndra-bankruptcy/

I first heard about Hydraulic Fracturing (also known as “fracking”) when I watched the documentary Gasland.  Gasland’s director Josh Fox went around the country to find the truth behind fracking, and what he found was rather shocking.

Fracking is the process in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are injected into shale rock formations to break the rock and release the gas.  About 1-8 million gallons of water is used to frack just one well.  That is a whole lot of water wasted.  The biggest shale in the Northeast is called the Marcellus shale located in New York and Pennslyvannia.  The shale also continues in Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland.  The shale is already being fracked into in places like Troy and Dimrock, PA causing major water damage and destroying air quality.  There water has a brown rust look to it and some residents can even light their water on fire.  That is all thanks to the chemicals leaking into the aquifiers and wells of the residents of these communities.  The big culprit behind all of this is the oil and gas industry and the politicians in bed with these CEO’s and other top executives.

What scares me the most is that there is little government regulation and it seems that nobody cares.  Once the water is destroyed there is not way to get it back, and millions of people will be affected by it.  Since the Marcellus shale sits near the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, which are the main source of drinking water for major cities like New York and Philedelphia, not to mention all the residents of New Jersey, by fracking it will reunion the water water supply to areas.  And it is just not in the Northeast, but the beautiful West in places like Colorado, Wyoming and Montana and in the South are being destroyed.  People’s lives are being affected and destroyed, ruining not only their water supply but likelihoods.

People think that Natural Gas is going to be the future and solution to our dependancy on foreign oil, but the way companies extract it is going to reunion our water supply.  You may ask how could this be legal? I asked the same question.  Vice President Cheney pushed the 2005 Energy Bill through Congress to allow oil and gas companies to be exempt from the Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act,Clean Air Act and countless other environmental laws and regulations thus allowing companies like Chesapeake Bay, Halliburton, Cabot Oil & Gas and others to dig and drill for natural gas with little regulation and oversight from the EPA.

What really gets to me is that these companies will say that the water is safe to drink, but when asked to drink it themselves they refuse…I wonder why?

You can view the Gasland documentary here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTYaNWskXtE

Resources:

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/fracking/

http://gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTYaNWskXtE

http://www.desmogblog.com/chesapeake-energy-suspends-all-fracking-pennsylvania-after-blowout-eve-bp-anniversary

In this class we did a lab about measuring wind power.  We did this lab to measure how much electric energy we are getting and also we are measuring the voltage across the coils.

The equipment we used today was the NXT robot and a generator (coils) hooked up to the USB to connect to the computer.  In LabView, we had to make sure the ports that controlled the motor were ABC and the ports that controlled the voltage were 1,2,3 and 4.  Once set up with that, we clicked the arrow button to begin the experiment.  The voltage only takes 30 readings but we had to shake it back and forth at a faster or slower rate by the time the readings are calculated.

We had to take 4 readings.  The first shake was at 0 and the sum of square voltage of all 30 readings was 0.43157.  The second shake was 15 and the sum of square voltage was 0.075835.  The third shake was 50 and the sum of square voltage was 50.63826. The forth and last was 64 shakes and the sum of square voltage 169.098.

Today we measured force and distance with our Lego Mindstorm.  My partners and I had major difficulties with this lab.  The body of the lego was not reading the acceleration, speed, time, height, grams or MGH,  the only thing that was being measured was the mass and power level.

The total weight was 240 grams on the cylinder.  Every time we measured the number of turns per wheel we would take off a certain number of weight, our group decided to take off 20 grams each time we measured.  We had to do 4 runs measuring the mass and power level.

After we completed four runs did we realize that ours only measured the mass and power level and nothing else.  It was then when we asked the Professor for help.

After she played with it, nothing worked.  Then we switched batteries and finally computers and again we were getting incorrect calculations.  That is when she finally decided to give us her data.

The speed (rpm) = 21.5 Battery discharge = 83, Mass 0.21 Power Level = 40 (remains the same for all), Time=8.4, Acceleration = 2.55, Height = 2.35 (for all) grams 9.8 = (remains the same for all), MGH = 0.48363 (remains the same for all).

The Speed Changed to 43.85 for the second run, 47.2 for the third run and 50.2 for the forth run.  The Battery Discharge was 83 for the second run, 41 for the third, and 41 again for the forth.  The Mass was .17 for the second run, .13 for the third run, and .09 for the forth run.  Time was 4 for the second run, 3.74 for the third run, 3.658 for the forth run.  Acceleration was 10.71 for the second run, 12.6 for the third run, and 13.72 for the forth run.