Saturday, July 1, 2017

Cooling instead of heating

The Problem: wind and solar energy produces energy only at limited periods during the day. Current proposals to store the energy include pumping water upwards, or heating work substance, which consequently releases the energy to produce steam. These methods are wasteful.

Possible solution: use excess energy produced during "bright" or "windy" periods for cooling instead of heating. In particular, wind power can be used to liquefy natural gas in Canada and Siberia. Solar can be used to produce LNG in the Middle East. Liquefied gas can be used to directly cool industrial facilities. Furthermore, part of the energy used for liquefaction can be recovered if one heats the liquid by the ambient temperature to produce jet, which can rotate a gas turbine through the nozzle. This scheme can make significant quantities of the gas produced during oil extraction economic (currently, most of it is burnt into the atmosphere, especially in the Middle East). In the future, one can even use excessive quantities of cryogenic liquids produced in the process for cooling superconducting power transmission lines.

No comments:

Post a Comment