Hitting an Energy Cost Wall

The UK and EU countries are struggling to provide enough energy to its economy. The problem is not in every energy source, in gasoline the price hikes have been largely accepted. In gas and electricity they are developing. We see a true price shock when it comes to domestic electricity. A kWh now costs .70 Euro where it cost .20 for the longest time. Not great if you run your whole houshold on electricity.

Russia is meanwhile burning gas because it can’t just throttle down wells and shut them. Shutting down a gas well can mean it will not start again, and it is pretty difficult anyway, Statoil had a competition to find solutions to its many leaking (supposedly closed) gasswells. There will be so much methane soon it won’t matter really.

But as the EU tries to starve Russia of cash, Russia tries to crash the EU and make it suffer in the winter. All because of a silly expansionist (or restorist) vision that Putin got indoctrinated with by Dugin (the fascist philospher, yes why not try hard core fascism again!). This is a crisis that is desirable from a CO2 emissions perspective, but the transition will be chaotic, and it seems the bank/fossil lobby is gaining power by it, not losing it. We have too little alternative energy sources!

The lakeys in the right wing parties meanwhile have no solutions, although plenty of renewable energy sources are being built and you can now borrow to install renewables with many banks. But what can they do about a tripling of the power bill. Not much apparently. They always listend to banks, and banks had to always do what the fossil industry liked, and the fossil industry is now failing. The sugar high has to end, there’s not enough sugar!

The focus is still on those with low wages, but a descent household of 2 kids in a well to do home will not like to see so much money evaporated. Companies also pay energy bills. What use is a lot of computers, lights, in a room when your clients suddenly have no money. People are losing a year’s savings or more in some cases. This will men less spending. Deflation of prices until production is depleted and then again inflation, in the EU at least.

At the same time people want to spend on insulation. Some people live in the new homes that are build to require zero energy. Because the grid is used as a buffer even they now have to pay more for electricity they take from the grid than they get for the electricity they give to the grid. The energy system is simply not prepared and has to little storage either for heat or electricity.

Categories
albedoenhancement

Using PET reflectors to Cool Earth

PET bottles are made by the billions each year, to be precise, 583,3 billion, that is 583.300.000.000 bottles which is an insane number, given the world population is only ~7 Billion people (so maybe wrong?)!

Let’s say its half that, so 300 billion bottles. We can make something else from that PET plastic, namely reflective sheets. If we assume the same thickness we can make the same surface area as those bottles. Taking one bottle as 15 cm diameter, 40 cm high, this is .32 m2 of surface, like a common sidewalk pavement tile. If we multiply this we find we have 96.000 square kilometers of surface.

We can make PET 94% reflective. At the equator the Sun power is 1000 Watt per m2, so this material reflects back 94% of it, which is 940 Watt/m2. For the 96.000 square kilometers this is 9,024 x 10 with 13 zeros, or 90.240.000.000.000 or 90,24 TeraJoule of energy.

The world recieves about 3 400 000 EtaJoule per year, an EtaJoule is 1 with 18 zeros, so 6 more than a TeraJoule. This really is a lot, so the energy send back to space by the reflector may not do much, but it may compensate the loss of sea ice, and it may be used in ways that amplifies its own effect, for instance in mountains, where the colder air then causes snowfall which then cause more white surface to form.

If you reflect 94% of the light back in a region, it will seem like the sun is 94% dimmer there. It will become cold, and rain will fall and probably freeze, I yet have to get a good model to simulate those effects. The wind over the area will also cool down.

If the PET is used on the ocean, preferbly a quiet part of it, then the albedo gain will be quite pronounced. Land Albedo (reflectance) is ~30%, but ocean albedo is near Zero! The water will still be able to radiate heat because the PET will take on the same temperature and will be quite thin. So floating PET on the ocean can help cool it, and the air at the same time.

This kind of idea seems idiotic, but if you consider you can keep oceans alive, seacreatues alive, cool the atmosphere, prevent violent storms (because there will be no evaporation) the advantages start to add up.

Maybe we can stop using PET bottles and cool regions enough so we dont need bottled water anymore!

Comparing Reflection and Temperature

Basic test setup, on insulating material, a piece of paper, a piece of special material, next to it the roof deck.

Check the main page AlbedoEnhancement.com

If the sun beats down on cities in a heat wave, you’d think there’s little you can do. But you can definitely reduce the heat, simply by reflecting light back into space. Its like having bright clouds overhead, the travel time of the light is just a bit longer. Like with clouds whatever is underneath does not recieve the solar radiation. Because the atmosphere is transparent to specific IR radiation it really leaves the planet, it does not warm up anything.

Above you see three materials, paper, special PTFE and plastic roof deck, and their temperatures under direct sunlight. The special PTFE is the coolest, still not the coolest possible temperature but cool enough to endure. White TiO paint will not cool like this meterial does, but I will test it. The trick is to radiate IR in the right frequency band as well. Most white paints don’t. You can see if they do by measuring their efficacy in the shade. If your paint is cooler than other paints in the shade it radiates IR in a different range.

The temperature difference can be quite large already I wonder if one can build an energy source out of a device that is actually shedding energy away from Earth?

The Water Gathering Lake

Lakes are drying up. This is because water absorbs almost all sunlight that hits it. Especially when the wind can carry the layer right above the water away, evaporation will be continuous. Of course if it can’t that layer will be saturated with water vapor, preventing more evaporation, but then the lake will get very warm.

A dew point map showing the temperature at which water condensates in the USA

The air is not dry in many places stricken by drought. That’s where all the water has gone. To get it out the air needs to be cooled to the dew point. Then the water will condensate, form droplets or a puddle. You can see it happen if you have one of those cooling bars you put in the freezer. Just take one out, put it on a plate and observe the water collecting on it, which can be quite a lot.

In principle all ingredients for a full lake are there, especially when the lake evaporates a lot : sun, a basin, a flat surface. What to do? Build a floating heat or solar PV cooling installation on the lake. Heat based cooling uses collected heat energy to compress a cooling gas into a liquid that can then be used to extract heat from the air or maybe even the water. Using heat exchangers/condensers you can then grap a lot of water from the air, and allow it to flow into the lake. Of course you have to prevent water from evaporating at the same time. This you do by shading the lake with the floating solar or thermal collectors. You can apply a few tricks to be even more effective.

The rainmaker system uses mechanical wind energy to drive compressors to cool air and condense water out of it. But it does not seem to make any products at the moment! StartupPolice.com

Especially when it is humid and hot, a dangerous combination, cooling the humidity out of the air provides both water and dry air in which we can perspire. All lakes are fit for water gathering equipment, the question is how simple can we make it, what is the most robust and low cost mechanism. Of course we can also look into ways to get the water out of our atmosphere in other ways..

Green Walls to Save Energy

Summary of article found here :

It is well known that living walls can reduce air conditioning demands on buildings during hot sunny weather, but little is known about their effectiveness at insulating buildings during cold weather. In this study we investigated the insulating effectiveness of a coating of English ivy Hedera helix covering the North wall of a solid brick-walled building in Manchester, U.K. in late winter 2012. Internal and external wall temperatures were monitored over a 36 day period on both bare and ivy-covered areas of the wall, along with the local ambient temperature. It was shown that the ivy covering increased the mean external wall temperature by 0.5 C and reduced temperature fluctuations; ivy covered walls were on average 1.4 C warmer at night but 1.7 C cooler in the middle of the day. As a consequence, calculated energy losses were reduced by 8%. The covering was more effective on cold days, but at temperatures above 12.2 C the ivy covering increased energy loss, because it shaded the outside of the wall from warming by short wave radiation. The results suggest that evergreen living walls can reduce heating costs, particularly when placed on the North of buildings, whereas on the South side deciduous climbers might be more effective.

Heatpump Damaging Your Brain

I live in a building where a ventilator is constantly causing a low frequency sound. It is very soft, but deafening, I developed Tinitus. We can’t hear low frequencies very well so they sound soft, it is also hard to locate them, I have not managed to find the source. So I am stuck with the option to add sound proofing to my appartment, wear ear plugs or slowely go deaf.

Our brain is quite fragile. It has the consistency of soft butter. It is protected from the outside world by being ‘suspended’ in a liquid inside our skull. Vibrations can travel through the skull and liquid and brain just like they do through walls and doors and floors. The wave travels as a movement of contraction and expansion of the tissue, and this can break some neural pathways. We are all familiar with what happens when you wack someone against their skull, they can lose consciousness. Boxers and Footbal players and Rugby players can all suffer from brain damage, slow speech, ‘brainfog’.

A self professed expert on this topic assured me there is no brain damage from say heatpumps. But he was talking about easily recognizable debilitating brain damage, so parts of the brain actually gone. That is not what I think we should worry about. What we should worry about is erosion of pathways due to constant movement of the neural tissue, something that is very unnatural. As long as the movements are slow enough to allow the liquid ‘suspension system’ to help the brain accelerate and not rip apart, you can’t really say there is a problem. Horseback riding or driving in a noisy car come close.

Some publications that may be relevant

“Traumatic brain injuries could be caused by low-frequency vibrations”

“They team believe they have shown for the first time that brain injuries are caused by vibrational modes induced by impacts”

Ok this is by impacts, but they show that damage is done by waves traveling through the brain.

“Sounds you cant hear can still hurt your ears”

“”Low-frequency sound exposure has long been thought to be innocuous, and this study suggests that it’s not,””

The effect of low frequency noise (20-250 Hz)

” the subjects, regardless of the LFN sensitivity, showed tendency to make more errors during exposure to LFN than in the reference noise”

“The subjects categorized as high-sensitive to LFN also showed poorer performance than others during exposure to LFN in the Stroop Color-Word Test”

From this we can conclude low frequency noise disturbs brian function. How? By causing damage?

“Gavreau began to experiment with low-frequency acoustics with the intention of creating a viable audio weapon”

Mostly seemingly annecdotal evidence of the effect of infra sound on health.

“Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect”

“Positron emission tomography measurements revealed that, when an HFC and an LFC were presented together, the rCBF in the brain stem and the left thalamus increased significantly compared with a sound lacking the HFC above 22 kHz but that was otherwise identical.”

Categories
albedoenhancement

Increasing Local Albedo

One of my quests at the moment is to get an accurate idea of what local albedo changes will do to temperature. This is to make it clear for people what they can do to lower temperatures, which can be life saving, not only human lifes but of all lives. I’m working with a climate expert to find answers. The scale we work on now is still crude : 9km x 9km.

A random location in Pakistan

The above shows a region in Pakistan, with farmland next to dry uncultivated land. Possibly because of an underground aquifer or river, but also because of temperature differences. The albedo of green land and sand is similar about 30%, just in a different spectral regions. The model shows the temperature distribution under ‘normal’ conditions.

Normal temperatures

This image shows the sandy area is actually cooler than the agricultural area. This can be because the green shrub and black soil absorp more heat. If you increase the albedo of the entire area you get this result..

Enhanced Albedo Temperatures

This is the area with higher albedo 80%. The agricultual land is much cooler, it seems almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit! But we effectively turned the whole area in a polar ice region. I am working on a more detailed model. What would happen if you add alternating rows of white soil (calcium) between vegetation? If you know good models let me know.

A good question is also : If you increase albedo and the temperatures drop, does that mean it will start to rain? To be continued..

The Most Significant Climate Decision

This is a Roboeconomic post, which is about the now budding awareness of the fatal flaw in Capitalism. Repairing it does not turn it into Communism or Marxism. That is just the dumb Pavlov-response of the proponents of the current style of Capitalism. Any argument against it ends up with “Ah so you’re a communist!” just like any argument against what the state of Israel does ends up with “Ah so you’re an anti-semite”. You know you hit on a very strong ideological bastion if you get such a “there are only two choices” response. This is because capitalism in its current form is not designed to bring wealth but to protect the power of the banks.

The simple principle banks follow when doing business is to ask this question : “Does whatever it is increase my cashflow?”. If the answer is “Yes” the bank will do it (within the law mostly, but banks have done many things to find cashflow while breaking the law or at least moral standards). If the answer is “No” then they don’t do it! Wall Street banks have opened offices on tax havens to handle drug money, they opened loanshark offices in poor neighborhoods to extract onerous interest from already destitue people, they handled the credit card transactions of porn websites, banks generally don’t give a flying fuck about anything but increasing cashflow. I really believe that all misery in the world is caused by banks. 99% of all tragic content in the media is because of what banks did. I live in a nation anxious for homes and affordable energy and food because of what banks did.

This is not capitalism. It is just blind capitalism. It is not the process of increasing wealth of people. It is the process of increasing wealth for a very select nr. of people, those to gain from increased bank cashflow. The part where all the financing leads to more happiness (or could) is presented to us, as well as what happens if =people= make mistakes. Of course it is not people that do drugs that are wrong, it is those that produce the drugs and make it so that its the only affordable escape. It is not prostitutes that choose their seedy life, but the criminals that are somehow also making financial transactions that ship them to where they are totally disoriented and have no friends, because of migrant policies that the bank lakeys in politics have to promote in order to keep control over the biggest threat to their power, the less educated and less patient people in society.

It is clear that banks do not consider consequences as they maximize their cashflow. The obvious tweak we need to do to capitalism is to make sure they do. When it concerns climate change however we then discover that there is a dark relationship between fossil fuels and banks : The main source of cashflow for banks is the use of fossil fuels. In fact most of bank cashflow, if not 90% is related to consumption (burning) of fossil fuels. This is the reason the transition has to be financed by government or private investors, banks only step in when the immediate cashflow gain is just to big to ignore, which usually means there is a large fossil energy investment. The whole Hydrogen story that has no trouble whatsoever to find bank investment is exactly designed to secure bank cashflow and delay the transition to solar/wind/wave/geothermal

This is why any suggestion to change anything about the freedom of banks is immediately stomped on as ‘communist’ or ‘marxist’ or ‘socialist’. By whom? By obvious bank lakeys, fans of the banks, servants, people that feel exceptional because they have been chosen to sing praise to blind capitalism. People that all have no care for what happens after they die.

Making Highly Reflective Paint

To cool your roof or car or boat, you can paint it with special paint that will become highly reflective, so that the Sun is not able to warm it anymore. If you watch the video below from minute 13 you will see how it is done. In the first part he shows how to make a reflective paint but with risky material and waay more complicated.

The maker of the video above uses Acetone, which you should not handle without gloves! I may have given him this idea through a comment with links and am very happy he picked it up! 😉

How to make it:

  • Prepare Aceton and pieces of acrylic plastic
  • Put pieces of clear acrylic plastic in the aceton
  • Wait untill the acrylic is dissolved
  • Add a bit of aceton to a seringe, mixed with a bit of water 1 (water) to 4 (Acetone)
  • Add the water acetone mixture to the acetone with dissolved acrylic (amount depends on the dryness of the acetone)
  • Now you can apply it as a paint but wear gloves and do it outside close the bottle

The cooling effect in the video above has three causes

  1. Light reflection
  2. Emission by a material
  3. Thermal radiation

Reflection

When light is reflected it just bounces off the electrons, that absorb the energy of a photon and then throw out the same photon. This is why metals are reflective : Lots of electrons, and silver being the most conductive is also the most reflective.

What goes on in the bubble paint is that light bounces off spherical voids in the material multiple times until it leaves the material again.

Emission

Now every material has an absorbtion spectrum, meaning it will absorb light energy of certain frequencies and not of others well. This is because the energy of light in certain bands will push the electrons to another band, one it is used to occupying, and when the electron falls back the light is emitted again. This is what makes some materials emit light in certain frequency bands. The maker says that calcium emits in the infra red region that means the material can cool to outer space. This makes one paint cooler during the day than another, and this is what makes the paint he creates special.

Thermal radiation

The idea of radiation is based on temperature. It is based on the energy in the material that can cause photons to be emitted. Because of quantum dynamic principles the light can not contain more energy than is available, which then determines its color. This is why for example LED lamps have a ‘color temperature’ of say 2700 for sunlight and 4000 for bleuish (more higher frequencies). All materials radiate photons, and warm materials radiate infra red photons (we call it heat).

The neat thing about the paints is that thermal radiation happens no matter what, a black material radiates as much as a white material. This is why there is no difference between the paints at night : Its all just thermal radiation. The cool thing is (literally) that if the paint is on a heat conductive material it can suck heat from below and radiate it to the sky all night, but then during the day it will not allow it to heat up.