Nigel Graham 2 | 16/01/2021 00:18:42 |
3293 forum posts 112 photos | Sorry Duncan - but if I was confused it was because the way you wrote it was confusing! I read it several times until it stopped looking like a something from nothing sum. I take your point about that stray solidus - too many " Bar/litre " boiler tickets, perhaps. Actually you do sort of bear out my main point, that a ground-source heating system is not the be-all and end-all that its proponents, and the politicians, imagine. I was not condemning them entirely but think them, like other energy-transfer systems, to have genuine needs and limits that constrain how and where they are used. Really, I consider nuclear-power to be the only practical solution for electricity generation on the national scale being demanded, but I do know it comes with a lot of controversial baggage, and is hellishly costly. Nevertheless, I think one of the worst mistakes that this country has made was to throw away our world lead, along with France, in developing it. Consequently we have to throw ourselves on the whims of Japanese business (making what we should be capable of making) and French governments (via state-owned EDF). (I live not very far from the former UKAEA Winfrith site, now a more general industrial estate. My last employer moved there, taking over and converting a very large building I think had been the apprentice-training centre. The two biggest reactors, beyond a further security fence, are now being scrapped.).
I have seen two alternator-driving Archimedian Screws, and I do wonder their power outputs. One, I forget the name but a in gorge near Manchester, has a digital watt-meter facing the adjacent public path. The other is on a weir on the R. Ribble at Settle. I think they both serve only specific, commercial buildings... but every little helps! The trust that restored a water-powered flour mill near Taunton installed a turbo-alternator of sufficient size for its own use. A spare cross-flow runner displayed in the tea-room, is quite a modest assembly. Lyme Regis Town Mill has a Pelton-wheel driven alternator. A peculiarity is that unless things have changed in the last few years, even if your domestic turbine puts all the stream water it uses back within feet of the intake, you still need an abstraction licence. I have a copy of an engineers' reference-book published a century ago - 1911, if I recall rightly. It closes its chapter of descriptions and basic calculations of various water-turbine types, with a confident prediction that the world's rivers could provide enough power for mankind's needs. That was at about the time scientists were starting to warn about greenhouse gases...
Dave - Please credit me with at least thinking about the problems and not falling for the false logic you illustrate by your satirical examples. I am perfectly well aware that the heat of the ground increases with depth... especially if we are talking of deep mines. I probably have the numerical relationship somewhere in my assorted text-books. It is what quantity of heat at what temperature that manages to reach the land surface at what rate in any one location that matters here.
My criticism of Greta Tornberg is not so much of her but of the way she is worshipped by politicians and the Press as some sort of saviour of the world. It is scientists I rely on for explaining the problems to me, and engineers for proposing sensible solutions. Not campaigners, unless they are accredited in those disciplines.
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Hopper | 16/01/2021 00:50:43 |
![]() 7881 forum posts 397 photos | Posted by Nigel Graham 2 on 15/01/2021 12:23:19:
All these replies are re-inforcing my belief that at best, ground-heat systems could provide only modest and very intermittent background warmth So we are arguing religion here. Belief. Not knowledge based on empirical evidence and science. Please stop wasting everyone;s time with your unfounded beliefs. The plain fact of the matter is plenty of these systems are in use and they work. Your "belief" that ground heat can not be transferred quickly enough to keep up with the system's needs is based on absolutely no evidence or experience whatsoever. The evidence from the many real-life installations is to the contrary. Lets stick with the facts and leave the belief for church on Sunday. |
Nigel Graham 2 | 16/01/2021 12:19:09 |
3293 forum posts 112 photos | Sorry Hopper..... I do solemnly commit to not committing heresy, nor questioning That Which Is Taught, again; and hereby solemnly abjure the placing of any opinion or question however honestly I do hold it, lest I do base my thoughts on Imperfect Knowledge and misunderstanding no matter how honest my imperfection of such Knowledge and misunderstanding thereof shall be and which may raise doubts against the Knowledge among any others of the brethren assembled hereinunder. Further I hereby solemnly accept it is the inalienable Right and Duty of my Betters to twist my words thereby to undermine me and my dark heresy as much as possible. (Mutters under breath, " But the joules do move - just not all of them. " ) |
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