Month: March 2016

Just before spring break, our class took a trip to the Museum of Science with a list of exhibits to observe and talk about in class. The exhibits connect with the topic we are on in class at the moment; which is alternative energy sources. We were able to see exhibits on how wind and solar energy work, as well as a few exhibits that we were able to interact with that connects with our physics portion of the class.

This first exhibit I took a look at was the exhibit on how wind energy works. In the most basic terms one can use, wind turbines simply catch the energy of the wind and converts it into a form of energy that we are able to use. A turbine is very simple. It is made up of blades, a hub, low speed shaft, a gearbox, high speed shaft, electric generator, a yaw motor, and an electric controller. I wont get into how each piece of the machine plays its roll in the turbine, however I will talk about how the wind turbine works over all. The wind turbine is turned to face the direction the wind is blowing with the yaw motor. Once the wind turbine is put into place, the blades on the turbine are shaped in such a way to catch the motion of the wind, which in result the blades begin to spin on the turbine. While the blades are spinning, it is powering a generator inside of the turbine. Each turn powering the device more and more; it then uses the energy produces to power are needs just as fossil fuels do. The best part about producing energy with wind is that there is absolutely no increase to the green house gasses in our atmosphere.

After I then took a look at the exhibit which talked about the process of solar energy. The poster I read talked about how power plants use fossil fuels to create heat which then they use to boil water and create steam energy. Steam energy is simple, the steam rises and while rising it pushed a turbine which then generates electricity similar to the way that a wind turbine produces its energy. Solar energy is similar, however the sun is the energy source instead of fossil fuels. The process uses mirrors to focus sunlight at a central point, generating enough heat to boil water. From there the rest of the process of creating electricity is the steam energy generated from the boiling water. Such a simple fix can make such a large difference over all to the greenhouse gas effect that we put into are atmosphere by using fossil fuels that pump the carbons into the air. We have three different ways to collect the solar energy; towers, troughs, and parabolic dishes.

Geothermal energy is an incredibly green system of retrieving energy that the country of Iceland has been able to harness and use due to its geographical location on earth. Before we get into that, lets talk about what geothermal energy is. Geothermal energy is thermal energy generated and stored in the Earth. One is able to harness the energy through the inner layers of the earth that are warmer and you can extract this energy and use it for electricity or even heat energy. An example of how to harness the energy in the earth is through a process of drilling known as deep wells. Deep wells, a mile or more deep, can tap reservoirs of steam or very hot water that can be used to drive turbines which power electricity generators. There are 3 types of geothermal power plants in use today, and they are: Dry Steam Plants which use geothermal steam directly. Thermal energy is what we talked about in the last blog. A quick recap on thermal energy, is the energy that determines the temperature of matter.

This is an image of Iceland and how the natural heat from under the earths crust is rising to the surface in the form of stream.

During the course of the 20th century, Iceland went from what was one of Europe’s poorest countries, dependent upon peat and imported coal for its energy, to a country with a high standard of living where practically all stationary energy is derived from renewable resources. In 2014, roughly 85% of primary energy use in Iceland came from renewable resources. There of 66% was from geothermal. Generating electricity with geothermal energy has increased significantly in recent years. As a result of a rapid expansion in Iceland’s energy intensive industry, the demand for electricity has increased considerably.(Orkugardur).

Geothermal systems are home heating and cooling systems that gather heat from the earth. Geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) use the relatively constant temperature of sub-surface soil as the exchange medium. Beneath the Earth’s crust, there is a layer of hot, molten rock called magma. Heat is continually produced there, mostly from the decay of naturally radioactive materials, such as uranium and potassium. The amount of heat within the first 33,000 feet (or 10,000 meters) of the Earth’s surface contains 50,000 times more energy than all the oil and natural gas resources in the world combined.

Iceland was able to take this echo friendly step due to the location of the island country. The entire united states couldn’t run on just the geothermal energy source because of our geographic energy. This is why the United States and other countries around the world are working hard to find other resources such as wind energy, nuclear energy, hydroelectric energy and many more. Iceland is truly an inspiration to the rest of the world and a motivation to constantly try to improve how we power our planet.

“Harnessing Geothermal Energy.” Geothermal Energy. UF, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

“Geothermal | National Energy Authority of Iceland.” Geothermal | National Energy Authority of Iceland. Orkugardur, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

“Geothermal Heating and Cooling Systems.” – InterNACHI. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.

Thermo electricity is one of the newer more green ways for us as humans to power our day to day lives. Before we begin to talk about the devices that are used in the process; we should get to know how thermo electricity works. A thermal power station is a power plant in which heat energy is converted to electric power. In most of the world the prime mover is steam driven. Water is heated, turns into steam and spins a steam turbine which drives an electrical generator. It seems very simple but there are some roadblocks that make it hard to achieve the constant power in the process.

The tricky part about thermoelectric generators is that as you heat the hot side, the cold side of the generator heats up too.  In order to generate power with the a thermoelectric generator you need both a heat source and a way of dissipating heat in order to maintain a temperature difference across the thermoelectric materials. This is done with no moving parts by heating water in the PowerPot.  Water holds several times more heat than aluminum per pound, so it makes a wonderful heatsink.  Also, water never gets hotter than 212 F (100 C) at a boil, effectively limiting the maximum temperature of the “cold” side of the thermoelectric generator.  This is why you always need to have something watery in the PowerPot or else it is possible to overheat the thermoelectric generator (PowerPracticle). In basic terms what it is saying, is you need to be able to keep a consistency with the heat in the chamber that the water is flowing through in order to heat up the metal pipe that lays beside the hot water pipe.

This is an image of a thermo electric generator. I am showing you this because this gives you a visual idea of what is going on. As you can see at the top of the generator, heat is applied to the device. The heat transfers to the electrons which are in the four individual chambers below the heat source. The electrons will begin to speed up and move around showing they have more energy witch allows the heat to transfer to the bottom where the heats energy is released and used for electricity. In this case the goal was to power a phone by using the generator. It seems silly to go through all this trouble to simply charge a cell phone, however this device doesn’t require any fossil fuels or nuclear energy which makes the process safe for humans, and for the environment as well. It also allows us to avoid adding to the green house gasses in the atmosphere.

This is more so what the device would look like in person. The water would boil in the power transferring the heat or steam power which would spin a turbine send the mechanical energy through the cord in order to power the phone. The process is incredibly simple.

For this device focus on the image on the right. This is another way that the heat energy can be used. As apposed to using the heat to create electricity and can be used for the process of refrigeration. Thermoelectric coolers are solid-state heat pumps that operate according to the Peltier effect: a theory that claims a heating or cooling effect occurs when electric current passes through two conductors. A voltage applied to the free ends of two dissimilar materials creates a temperature difference (LetsStayConnected). An example a one of these devices is a refrigerator.

This is the basic diagram of how the refrigerator works using the refrigeration process.

“How Do Thermoelectrics Work | Power Practical.” Power Practical. POS, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

“Let’s Stay Connected.” How Do Thermoelectric Coolers Work? (TEC). II-VI Marlow, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

“How Does a Refrigerator Work?” Real Simple. Real Simple, n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

Nuclear energy is the energy released during the process of nuclear fusion.  The nuclear fusion process, is a nuclear reaction in which atomic nuclei of low atomic number fuse to form a heavier nucleus with the release of energy. As of today, nuclear energy is considered as one of the most environmentally friendly source of energy as it produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions during the production of electricity as compared to traditional sources like coal power plants. Nuclear fission is the process that is used in nuclear reactors to produce high amount of energy using element called uranium. It is the energy that is stored in the nucleus of an atom (ConserveEnergyFuture).

Although the process seems simple and efficient, there are some cons with using nuclear energy to power the earth. For instance after the uranium is used, it needs to be disposed of, and the disposal of nuclear waist is not only dangerous; it is unhealthy for people to work around and unhealthy for the environment. One of the biggest issues is environmental impact in relation to uranium. The process of mining and refining uranium hasn’t been a clean process. Actually transporting nuclear fuel to and from plants represents a pollution hazard. Also, once the fuel is used, you can’t simply take it to the landfill – it’s radioactive and dangerous (ConserveEnergyFuture). There is also the fact that the nuclear power is used to make powerful weapons, and if we let this energy get into the wrong hands we could look at ourselves facing an overall nuclear war.

However nuclear energy is not totally bad. For instance, its more proficient then fossil fuels, we have enough uranium to power the earth for another 70 to 80 years, low pollution which would help the us with global warming, and it has lower operating cost then fossil fuels. For instance, A number of nuclear energy innovations have made it a much more feasible choice than others. They have high energy density as compared to fossil fuels. The amount of fuel required by nuclear power plant is comparatively less than what is required by other power plants as energy released by nuclear fission is approximately ten million times greater than the amount of energy released by fossil fuel atom (ConserveEnergyFuture).

In the past we have had some major issues with Nuclear energy that have created some major disasters in countries around the world. Lets look at what happened in the Ukraine in the city of Chernobyl. In the year 1986, he Chernobyl Nuclear disaster is widely considered to have been the worst power plant accident in history, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima, Daiichi disaster in 2011). The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles.  The official Soviet casualty count of 31 deaths has been disputed and long-term effects such as cancers and deformities are still being accounted for (ProcessIndustryForum). This is the perfect example of how unhealthy having nuclear waist around humans can be. The workers in the plant have been effected with diagnosis of cancers and deformities. Although the energy is efficient, when misused or there is an error in the process; nuclear energy can be incredibly dangerous.

This will bring you to an ABC news cast in america talking more about the Nuclear accident that happened in the Soviet Union.

This doesn’t just happen to foreign countries around the world, even the United States has had its own issues with Nuclear Energy. In 1961, the US military built a nuclear energy plant known as SL_1, to experiment with the nuclear energy. It was only a low powered nuclear energy plant that was built in the state of Idaho (Wikipedia). Due to an improper removal of a rod of uranium, three operators were killed in the steam explosion/ meltdown that occurred. This is the only nuclear disaster that has occurred in the United States, however it is listed as the 7th worst nuclear accident according to Process Industry Forums top ten worst nuclear disasters around the world.

Works Cited

“Pros and Cons of Nuclear Energy – Conserve Energy Future.”ConserveEnergyFuture. Conserve Energy Future, 06 Mar. 2015. Web. 03 Mar. 2016.

“Top 10 Nuclear Disasters in the World.” Process Industry Forum Top 10 Nuclear Disasters Comments. Process Industry Forum, 20 May 2013. Web. 03 Mar. 2016.

“SL-1.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 03 Mar. 2016.