Jim H. Adams
Efficiency of a Carnot engine and Earth's thermodynamics, Wave Power, Photovoltaics and Wind Turbines, Icelandic energy and the EU, Entropy and Quantum Heat Engines.
Geopolitics recommended:
Ben Norton youtube
Warwick Powell youtube
Jeffrey Sachs youtube
Efficiency of a
Carnot engine
and Earth's thermodynamics.
The first states that the power efficiency of the Earth is proportional to (Th - Tc)/Th, where in degrees Kelvin Th is the hot temperature and Tc is the cold temperature.
This is based on a Carnot cycle which except for quantum thermodynamics is a maximally efficient thermodynamic engine. We assume the power of a storm is on average a fixed proportion of this maximum efficiency. This means that the power of climate change storms is proportional to temperature difference and not temperature, and goes down with higher temperatures. Rainfall associated with higher humidity may increase. Temperature rises can have severe consequences such as forest fires.
Wave Power
Wave power engines suffer from a problem that high energy obtained in storms is not comparable with normal operations. Engines have to accommodate this wide energy range.
An assessment of Ireland's Wave energy resources was made in 2005. Theoretical wave energy of 525 TWh exists within Irish waters. The total electricity generation in Ireland is 30 TWh. The 2014 Offshore Renewable Energy Development Plan identified 31,000 MW of wave energy in Ireland that could be extracted without significant environmental impact. This is mainly on the western seaboard.
In the EU as of 2023 wave power is not employed for commercial operations after a long series of trial projects. In small-scale tests Slater's duck has 81% efficiency. In China the Nankun floating wave power station generates 1 MW.
The European Marine Energy Centre has supported the deployment of wave and tidal energy. A 2017 University study focused on the failure to develop market ready energy devices.
The amount of funding for Caderache nuclear fusion is 18 billion euros. By comparison the US has funded $25 million on eight wave power projects.
These were cancelled by the second Trump administration. Wave power is better implemented than nuclear fusion.
Photovoltaics and Wind Turbines
Hydroelectric power generation is the third common component of renewable energy.
Photovoltaic and wind turbine power is sporadic requiring extensive grid connections. Battery storage for these increases efficiency and can be sold when power generation is low.
Wind turbines generate power approximately proportional to turbine height, the square of the blade length and the cube of the wind velocity. Say offshore wind is twice the speed of onshore then the power output will be eight times that of a comparable onshore turbine.
Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) means that as developed in China floating deep water wind turbines may be necessary.
Icelandic energy and the EU.
I met the engineer Nick Rouse 20 years ago. We discussed the idea of a DC electricity cable using volcanic geothermal energy from Iceland to Scotland. Nowadays I think industry should be located in Iceland itself and it should be EU policy to enable this for green energy reasons.
In Iceland 99.94% of electricity production is hydro or volcanic geothermal. The potential is immense, at least 10 times more power for geothermal.
Aluminium production has relocated from the US to Iceland for cost reasons. It takes 70% of electrical energy consumption and in 2020 had 800 MW capacity.
Entropy and Quantum Heat Engines
Thermodynamics uses concepts like free energy and distributions of energy states called partition functions.
Thermodynamically a measure of disorder called the Gibbs entropy uses the same formula for a distribution of states as Shannon entropy in information theory. Shannon's formula for entropy in negative bits is the sum of the expected values of the information content of each outcome's probability multiplied by the negative to the base two of the logarithm of that probability.
In Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics the particles have definite positions guided by a wave function.
Quantum heat engines can potentially surpass classical efficiency limits of a Carnot engine by using quantum coherence which is the ability of the wave function to exist in superposed additive states.
This superposition is used in quantum computers.
Thermodynamic engines which use latent heat may already be using quantum energy.