A 90% Efficient Power Plant Your Home

[IChing]

Senertec Dachs: A 90% Efficient Power Plant Your Home

And it is called micro-CHP (for combined heat and power). Micro-CHP adopts the concept of co-generation, which is when heat is simultaneously collected and distributed from a generator used to produce electricity. Systems powered by natural gas or heating oil have been available on the market. The system burns rapeseed oil, an oil which is also known as Canola Oil, the name popularized in Canada to distinguish the edible rapeseed hybrid from the original plant's oil which was used for industrial applications but mildly toxic to humans. The new renewably-fueled Dachs is made with German engineering quality. Senertec has built on their knowledge as Germany's largest supplier of traditional micro-CHP systems (which at 3,000 installations per year still leaves some room for the scenario planners to play). A Dachs has a continuous output of 5.5kW of electricity and 12.5 kW of heat from 20.6 KW of fuel, for an efficiency of 90%. Compared to generators which lack the system for utilizing waste heat, co-generation can reduce CO2 emissions up to 30%; with a renewably fueled Dachs, you create a negative CO2 balance in comparison with heating by fossil fuel and pulling electricity from a fossil fuel burning electrical utility.>>>snip

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/senertec_dachs.php
expensive but progress.

edited for photo of the German device:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. interesting

I'm living in a house with geo-thermal heating. I'm thinking bringing in my solar panels from home and letting my landlord use them with us to help with electricity. Wonder if this power plant would be a better idea, though.

[NNadir]

2. These kinds of systems are a good idea, actually, although the "efficiency"

only applies in winter.

Cogeneration is simply one of the best ideas in energy.

[skids]

4. Well, hot water even in summer, but yeah...

...though the extra heat in summer could also be used for air conditioning, with the right types of systems.

[NNadir]

5. Unless of course, you need more air conditioning because you have

a power plant in your house. This may offset your savings on shower water.

This reminds me of when I was a little boy. I lived in a small hot room (Cape Cod type house) over the Kitchen. When it got really, really hot in my room, I'd run downstairs and get ice from the refrigerator, always putting in new trays so I'd have lots of ice when the other stuff melted. I'd prop a bucket of ice water in front of the fan.

I was real embarrassed when I grew up and learned the laws of thermodynamics. No wonder I started sleeping in the nude when I was eight.

It's kind of like putting a window air conditioner in the middle of the room alway from the window and running it like hell. You always think there must be sumptin' wrong with the air conditioner.

It sounds though like an excellent driver for canola fields. D'ya think we can get JohnWxy to shift from corn?

[skids]

7. The heat is obviously directionally chanelled.

...but the refrigerator story is a classic. As far as the corn, I don't know, but it would sure help a whole heck of a lot on many fronts if we weren't one of the last "first world" nations to still prohibit the growing of industrial hemp.

[NNadir]

9. So your theory of biofuels is that there is a particular magic plant?

I don't know if I believe that. How many first world nations that have legalized hemp are producing exajoules worth of biofuels from it?

On the other topic, cooling in summer, what does a home cooling tower cost? Or maybe this product is geared to people who have swimming pools as heat sinks. What's your guess?

[skids]

10. One of these...

...not usually made for residence size applications these days, though:

http://www.cogeneration.net/Adsorption_Chillers.htm
http://www.adsorptionchiller.com/

...so in the summer, heat your water (by any means), and once you've got an excess of hot water, feed it to your AC. In the winter, use the excess heat directly.


WRT biofuels I think the secret to doing them right is to pick crops where the fuel is a coproduct, not a main product. Hemp certainly fits the bill. Developing nations, well, they don't exactly have the capital to do it, even when they aren't having their governments repeatedly overthrown by global criminals.

[NNadir]

11. Are we talking developing nations or first world nations?

I thought you said the US was the last "first world" nation not to have legal hemp?

What is the market for the non-oil portion of hemp? Billions of tons?

As for the chiller, the picture I see is a rather large device. Is it available for first world nations or third world nations?

[skids]

12. The market is hereasyet unascertained.

Like I said, the adsorption chiller is not generally made for residence-size applications. Just another product not downscaled due to competing cheaper products in a cheap fuel environment (and another glaring testimony to our collective shortsightedness and oblivious conformance to corporate whims.)

We now have 9 years of history to draw on as to hemp cultivation and markets in a high-tech environment where the crop was previously prohibited, just north of our longest border. Have a read, I think you'll find it interesting.

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/%24department/deptdocs.nsf/all/econ9631

...and some notes from a global conference:

http://www.netcomposites.com/news.asp?4152

[NNadir]

13. It looks like 19,000 MT, perusing one of your links.

How many of these home generators will be run off a by-product of 19,000 tons?

I hear a lot about hemp, and have been hearing it my whole adult life, how hemp will save the world. I may have even advanced such arguments myself in the early 1970's, although frankly my agenda was somewhat different, really, than rope, fibers and bio-oils whether I explicitly stated as much or not.

I would be happy to see any biofuel make it to an exajoule of energy, even JohnWxy's pet project. But world energy demand is 470 exajoules, not one exajoule.

But such a discussion in a time of global climate change is purely an distraction. On some level it just produces wishful thinking.

Hemp isn't going to do anything, even if the President of the United States joined NORML.

The question about the chillers is also not realistic. There are far better developed technologies on a much vaster scale that need to be employed, like, now, not after oodles of research and promotion.

[whistle]

3. Rapseed oil, Canola Oil one and the same except for a genetic alteration

...yikes, you can not trust anyone where big money and profits can be made.

<snip>
RAPE IN A DIFFERENT GUISE

Dear Editors

<....>

Rapeseed oil is poisonous to living things and is an excellent insect repellent.
I have been using it (in very diluted form, as per instructions) to kill the
aphids on my roses for the last two years. It works very well; it suffocates
them. Ask for it at your nursery. Rape is an oil that is used as a lubricant,
fuel, soap and synthetic rubber base and as a illuminate for color pages in
magazines.

It is an industrial oil. It is not a food. Rape oil, it seems, causes
emphysema, respiratory distress, anemia, constipation, irritability, and
blindness in animals and humans. Rape oil was widely used in animal feeds in
England and Europe between 1986 and 1991, when it was thrown out. Remember the
"Mad Cow disease" scare, when millions of cattle in the UK were slaughtered in
case of infecting humans? Cattle were being fed on a mixture containing
material from dead sheep, and sheep suffer from a disease called "scrapie".

It was thought this was how "Mad Cow" began and started to infiltrate the human
chain. What is interesting is that when rape oil was removed from animal feed,
'scrapie' disappeared. We also haven't seen any further reports of "Mad Cow"
since rape oil was removed from the feed. Perhaps not scientifically proven, but
interesting all the same. US and Canadian farmers grow genetically engineered
rapeseed and manufacturers use its oil (canola) in thousands of processed foods,
with the blessings of Canadian and US government watchdog agencies. The canola
supporting websites say that canola is safe to use. They admit it was developed
from the rapeseed, but insist that through genetic engineering it is no longer
rapeseed, but "canola" instead.

Except canola means "Canadian oil"; and the plant is still a rape plant, albeit
genetically modified. The new name provides perfect cover for commercial
interests wanting to make millions. Look at the ingredients list on labels.
Apparently peanut oil is being replaced with rape oil. You'll find it in an
alarming number of processed foods. There's more, but to conclude: rape oil was
the source of the chemical warfare agent mustard gas, which was banned after
blistering the lungs and skins of hundred of thousands of soldiers and civilians
during W.W.I. Recent French reports indicate that it was again in use during the
Gulf War.

Check products for ingredients. If the label says, "may contain the following"
and lists canola oil, you know it contains canola oil because it is the cheapest
oil and the Canadian government subsidizes it to industries involved in food
processing.

I don't know what you'll be cooking with tonight, but I'll be using olive oil
and old-fashioned butter, from a genetically unmodified cow.

<read more>

http://www.ithyroid.com/canola_oil.htm

[NNadir]

6. I wish they would change the name "rapeseed" to something else.

Rakeseed maybe, or ropeseed or ripeseed or if used in biodiesel Volkswagen Jettas, Rideseed.

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Given the vast swathes of agribusiness monocrop it comes from...

...I think it's rather appropriate.