The real bad thing about our planet is that 20% of the population
( the developed countries), consumes 80% of the produced energy,
while the remaining 80% people is stuck with 20% of the energy.
My idea is to balance the scale by reducing the need to use hydrocarbon
powered heating and cooling systems in our part of the world.
Iīm also concerned about our environment. I woke up 1960 when I
was told that our plant chimneys task was to spread all over the world their
poisonus exhaust gas.
I thought that was a crazy way to deal
with the problem. Why didīnt they purify the gas instead?
I went on beeing
mad at our engineers who did so little effort on the matter. They seemed
to think that the atmosphere would swollow it all, but I tought that
if I have a bucket and fill it with
water drip by drip, I will end up with a full
bucket and overflow.
Since 1990 I have been working with solar heating systems, both as
manufacturer and as an installer on site. That way I learned a lot about
Swedish buildings and their heating systems. We had to look in closely to the problem, beacuse our solar system
didīnt seem to give as much energy as we estimated. But
we found out that the old heating systems often where in a poor condition,
so they vasted to much.
I had the opportunity to visit Dayton Ohio US in
Nov 1982 for a few weeks, and was acommodated in a bungalow with combined
heat-refrigeration
system. I couldīnt measure the energyconsumption, but I fear it
was enormous. As I have seen what can be done when I was installing solar systems, I
see thease
pages as my way to do kick off.
Heating systems are dealt with in one way, and cooling systems another way.
I will come back to it later. What is energy ? I wouīnt get stuck in a filosophical question so Iīll stick
to the pure physics.
When you do something, you use energy, eighter
you produce, or you consume. In fact you only transforms the energy, as it
is indestructable following the first law of thermodynamic.
There is nothing in the universe that lack of energy
But you canīt use it all. Letīs divide the energy into two parts: exergy and anergy, where
anergy is unuseable because it donīt contain enough (heat, speed, height,
electrical power) or whatever is meant to be.
Letīs assume a gallon of boiling
water: it slowly cools of because
it follow the second law of thermodynamic. Now when it holds the ambient
temperature, all the exergy is gone, but you
could imagine empty it further by cooling it down to 0 K degrees, but
that will cost you
energy, so thatīs no point.
The tricky thing is to find usable exergy nearby and use it, or find
anergy that is transformable to exergy.
HISTORY
Since ancient days, we have used the sun, wind and water as the
source of power. Using
the wind for sailing power is pretty obvious, but Archimedes
214 bc burned the sail of the roman ships thru a focal lens, thatīs
hard to beleive.
And a french Laurent Lavoisier 1743 - 1794 melted platina the same
way.(melting
point 1773 C degree) He was later executed by the revolutionary
court. "The republic donīt need science" the judge said.
A swede (Cristoffer
Polhem 17th c) invented a system of rods, (stånggångar) to get power
distant
from the water source.
Nothing is new below the sun.
In mid 19th century, a few engineers build their own solar powered
steam-engines
fully functionally, but not compeatable to other energy sources. Some of
them broke down, and the engineers went bankrupt, but, again a swede
(John Ercsson)
designed one model as was made 50,000 units. Even then there was loud
voices
about using fossil fuel would lead to world destruction.
The development
has been in parallell with the society in general. This stopped
in the late 19th century, when we learned to use fossil oil. Using the
oil may
have tilted the balance in the atmosphere, but nobody
knows if
thatīs critical to our survival on earth. I donīt want to yeopardize that
so I want to reduce that possibility. I want us all to be more intelligent,
and
use more of whatīs free (echological) energy.
I will go on refuelling my car whith gasoline until something new
appears, and I beleive
the fuelcell is marketed soon.
Stig
