"Power From Farts" or "Wouldn't The Hoses Be Uncomfortable?"

[Seil]

I know they're not going to use hoses - it'd be much better to put us in a plastic bubble and let the methane collect for a bit, Fart jokes aside, what do you guys think of methane power? Between animals and humans - hell, even some plants - we can produce a fair bit of power.

Talking about various other power sources here. (http://forum.nuklearpower.com/showthread.php?t=33975)

[DFM]

WHO RUN BARTER TOWN?

[Azisien]

Why do I need to think of it? Any well managed landfill already puts it to good use.

Edit: No, I am not going to walk around with a shit gas bubble to forward the cause of green energy. Willing to find another way.

[Archbio]

Two men enter, one man leaves!

[DFM]

No, I am not going to walk around with a shit gas bubble to forward the cause of green energy. .

BREAK THE DEAL, FACE THE WHEEL!

[Geminex]

Edit: No, I am not going to walk around with a shit gas bubble to forward the cause of green energy. Willing to find another way.

How about fashionable solar-panel hat? Solar panel and battery mounted on headgear, possibly on a top hat. Or a beret.

Even better, how about one those caps with a propeller, only it generates electricity using wind power!

[Amake]

Farts are so last century. I've got an idea that could revolutionize not only energy production, but the theory of relativity. Here's what we need:

1 television set including DVD player
1 porno
1 bag of potato chips
4 teenage boys

And of course some means to harness the ambient heat generated from the combination of these elements.

[bluestarultor]

Methane is already pretty easy to harvest. Animal waste, for instance. Plenty of it, natural byproduct of raising animals, good source of methane.

The answer is shit; spread it around. ;)

[Seil]

How about fashionable solar-panel hat? Solar panel and battery mounted on headgear, possibly on a top hat. Or a beret.

Even better, how about one those caps with a propeller, only it generates electricity using wind power!

What about a backpack? (http://www.voltaicsystems.com/) Right now all it's being used for is to plug in your iPod or PSP or DS or whatever, but at the same time it does have some pretty neat potential.

[Art of Hilt]

What about a backpack? (http://www.voltaicsystems.com/)[/color]

Jesus Christ that is fantastic.
The Generator can produce enough power to charge a laptop! It's out of stock, so thankfully I don't have to fight the will to buy it, but I don't know if I can resist once it comes back in.

[Tev]

Didn't ThinkGeek sell those backpacks and the solar power trench coats as well?

[Seil]

solar power trench coats as well?

... I... well.... um... huh.

Well, it would make the lobby scene from the first Matrix more interesting.

[Tev]

Something like this (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/finally-attractive-solor-clothing-the-zenga-ecotech-solar-jacket.php) but in nerdier trench coat form is what I saw on ThinkGeek once.

http://www.treehugger.com/zenega-solar-jacket.jpg

[Seil]

http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/nes_emulator_solar.jpg (http://gadgetfreaks.wordpress.com/tag/technology/)

This is... actually pretty awesome. Why doesn't it come standard?

[Hanuman]

Photovoltaic cells have yet to hit a 1:1 ratio of electricity used to make it vs electricity produced in it's lifespan.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/03/worlds_biggest.php
Stuff like this is an exception, mirrors are generally low cost both energy and economically speaking.


What the DS and other such things SHOULD have are adapters that connect into little manual generators, then its just a matter of modding or buying a pre-modded bike with gears set up to slot the generator in, then you could charge your DS while riding around, alternatively you could just put a crank on it for extra juice without the bike. Simple.

[Tev]

alternatively you could just put a crank on it for extra juice without the bike. Simple.If technology is backsliding to the point where I'm going to have to hand-crank my PSP, I'm done. Surely there are better, less 1850's ways of doing things.

[bluestarultor]

Photovoltaic cells have yet to hit a 1:1 ratio of electricity used to make it vs electricity produced in it's lifespan.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/03/worlds_biggest.php
Stuff like this is an exception, mirrors are generally low cost both energy and economically speaking.


What the DS and other such things SHOULD have are adapters that connect into little manual generators, then its just a matter of modding or buying a pre-modded bike with gears set up to slot the generator in, then you could charge your DS while riding around, alternatively you could just put a crank on it for extra juice without the bike. Simple.

Lev, nothing is ever going to be 1:1. Why? Energy is lost in everything. IIRC, gasoline engines are at best like 30% efficient. The rest of it goes off as heat or plain old un-burned fuel, plus probably other things on a smaller scale.

Plus, a bit of R&D could go a LONG way with solar. In fact, the US hasn't touched solar development in ages. We're very good at coming up with new technology, but it's been decades since we actually advanced anything (speaking very generally).

[Azisien]

Photovoltaic cells have yet to hit a 1:1 ratio of electricity used to make it vs electricity produced in it's lifespan.

That's true, aside from being completely false. In fact, your buddy Wikipedia even disagrees with you:

The energy payback time is the time required to produce an amount of energy as great as what was consumed during production. The energy payback time is determined from a life cycle analysis of energy. The energy needed to produce solar panels is paid back in the first few years of use.[75]

Another key indicator of environmental performance, tightly related to the energy payback time, is the ratio of electricity generated divided by the energy required to build and maintain the equipment.

.....

In 2000 the energy payback time was estimated as 8 to 11 years[76], but more recent studies suggest that technological progress has reduced this to 1.5 to 3.5 years for crystalline silicon PV systems[70].

Thin film technologies now have energy pay-back times in the range of 1-1.5 years (S.Europe).[70]


Unless you're pretty rich though you're looking at the non-cutting-edge PVs I would imagine still 4-6 year repayment of energy debt, but that's still only a fraction of 20-30 year lifetime warranties.

[Sithdarth]

Photovoltaic cells have yet to hit a 1:1 ratio of electricity used to make it vs electricity produced in it's lifespan.


Would you please stop saying that. You say that darn near anytime someone mentions solar cells and every time someone comes in and gives you a link proving that is patently not true. Then like two weeks later you come in and say it again. It's not true unless you have some really shoddily installed panels, ie not angled properly/ in the shade. Repeating it over and over again isn't going to make it true and neither is ignoring the facts.

[stefan]

Photovoltaic cells have yet to hit a 1:1 ratio of electricity used to make it vs electricity produced in it's lifespan.


I should hope not, I mean, if you could break the laws of thermodynamics at will like that being green would be the least of our problems.

[Tev]

Back to Methane for a moment.....we could totally be farming sea-gass now that it's begining to escape from the frozen north! (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7050312.ece)

Huge quantities of methane below the Arctic seabed are showing signs of destabilising, according to research conducted in the East Siberian Sea.

Scientists aboard Russian icebreakers have discovered that methane is leaking from the sub-sea permafrost far faster than had been previously estimated, raising concerns that climatic tipping points may have been reached.

As a greenhouse gas, methane is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide but emissions from subsea permafrost are not included in climate change prediction models.

“The sub-sea permafrost should act as a cap or seal, preventing leakage,” Natalia Shakhova, of the University of Alaska, told The Times. “Beneath it there is methane that has accumulated at high pressure. But the permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.”

After water vapour and carbon dioxide, methane is the most significant of the gases that cause the atmosphere to retain heat. Levels have doubled since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution but 40 per cent of sources are natural, resulting from the decomposition of organic material in wetlands and other areas.

The permafrost that covers vast tracts of land in the far North is thawing, steadily adding methane to the atmosphere. The Arctic has warmed at about twice the rate of the rest of the planet. Climate scientists are concerned that as rising temperatures melt more permafrost, the added methane will raise temperatures further and so cause a wider thaw.

Dr Shakhova said: “The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict. This type of source has never been predicted by anyone and has not been included in climate models. We’re going to keep studying this region and investigating why this is happening.

“Our concern is that the sub-sea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilisation already.”

[bluestarultor]

Would you please stop saying that. You say that darn near anytime someone mentions solar cells and every time someone comes in and gives you a link proving that is patently not true. Then like two weeks later you come in and say it again. It's not true unless you have some really shoddily installed panels, ie not angled properly/ in the shade. Repeating it over and over again isn't going to make it true and neither is ignoring the facts.

I think Lev just prefers things that burn and explode.

[Sithdarth]

I should hope not, I mean, if you could break the laws of thermodynamics at will like that being green would be the least of our problems.

Thermodynamics has nothing to do with it. Any engine or power generator can eventually produce more energy than was used to create it. Rather it can transform more energy into a usable form than was required to build it. For example, any engine even with its horrible efficiency could eventually generate much more electricity than was used to build it. It can do this because it takes its energy from a fuel source. What it can't do is produce more or even as much energy as the fuel its running on. In terms of solar panels the fuel is sunlight. The only possible way a solar panel could ever not eventually pay back the energy needed to create it eventually is if it straight up stopped working or the sun stopped shining. Baring honest to god physical damage, and with simple maintenance, a solar panel will last decades easy basically because it has no moving parts to wear out. We've got panels from decades ago in space still working precisely as well as they ever did and the environment in space is a lot harder on things than here on Earth. The real problem has been getting people to buy them when it could take decades for them to make the money back in savings from not buying electricity.

[bluestarultor]

Thermodynamics has nothing to do with it. Any engine or power generator can eventually produce more energy than was used to create it. Rather it can transform more energy into a usable form than was required to build it. For example, any engine even with its horrible efficiency could eventually generate much more electricity than was used to build it. It can do this because it takes its energy from a fuel source. What it can't do is produce more or even as much energy as the fuel its running on. In terms of solar panels the fuel is sunlight. The only possible way a solar panel could ever not eventually pay back the energy needed to create it eventually is if it straight up stopped working or the sun stopped shining. Baring honest to god physical damage, and with simple maintenance, a solar panel will last decades easy basically because it has no moving parts to wear out. We've got panels from decades ago in space still working precisely as well as they ever did and the environment in space is a lot harder on things than here on Earth. The real problem has been getting people to buy them when it could take decades for them to make the money back in savings from not buying electricity.

No, see, he and I made the same initial misinterpretation of what Lev meant, which was that we thought he was saying solar was out because it didn't perfectly convert sunlight to the equivalent amount of electricity. Which nothing ever will because of the laws of thermodynamics.

That's not what he was actually saying, and he's still wrong, but we both just thought he was wrong in a different way at first.

[Hanuman]

Originally Posted by Photovoltaics
The energy payback time is the time required to produce an amount of energy as great as what was consumed during production. The energy payback time is determined from a life cycle analysis of energy. The energy needed to produce solar panels is paid back in the first few years of use.[75]

Another key indicator of environmental performance, tightly related to the energy payback time, is the ratio of electricity generated divided by the energy required to build and maintain the equipment.

.....

In 2000 the energy payback time was estimated as 8 to 11 years[76], but more recent studies suggest that technological progress has reduced this to 1.5 to 3.5 years for crystalline silicon PV systems[70].

Thin film technologies now have energy pay-back times in the range of 1-1.5 years (S.Europe).[70]
Well let's see, not even counting the variables such as all of the transport and factory services to gather, store and ship the materials to the factory, the nearest one is here (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=vancouver&daddr=25300+Northwest+Evergreen+Road,+Hillsboro,+O R+97124+%28SolarWorld+Industries+America%29&hl=en&geocode=%3BCQ6mzhy1vodPFX4JtwIdrR-s-CE_taQtjzlytw&mra=ls&sll=40.380028,-102.744141&sspn=47.771051,79.013672&ie=UTF8&z=7), so assuming a 20MPG truck transport the gasoline usage burns up 590.4kWH, adding an easy 4 months (on a 1 square meter panel the links example) to the PV systems payback rate in the wiki links that are:
assumed to be Sydney
Which is a very sunny place, in fact it has 2675h20m (http://www.livingin-australia.com/sunshine-hours-australia/) of sunshine per year, where as here we have 1935h20m (http://www.livingin-canada.com/climate-vancouver.html) of sunshine per year (72%) adding another month to post construction gasoline payback, weathering issues, and around a +25% waiting time on the payback in addition,
but in summery I have to admit since I did my initial research we've gone way past the 1:1 ratio in practical solar paneling applications... all of this assuming the panels are facing directly at the sun at all times, somehow.

Though considering the facts, how likely is it that a DS or backpack will hit the same 1:1, even if the lowest payback is a year that's still assuming a sunny climate with the panels directly facing the sun and outside at all times and that they are always charging something.

I guess that's my point, sorry if it got you agitated, Sith.