Innovations in Energy

choi

本文通过一路BBS站telnet客户端发布

Wall Street Journal today (Feb 28, 2011) has a section titled Innovation in Energy
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/innovations-in-energy-02282011.html
, which includes the following.
(1) A Century of Innovation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166470216386188.html

(a) The illustration states, "Early 1910s
* The world's first commercial geothermal plant is built in Lardarello, Italt.
* First diesel-powered oceangoing ship is launched."

(i)
* electricity generation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation

Quote:

"The fundamental principles of electricity generation were discovered during the 1820s and early 1830s by the British scientist Michael Faraday. His basic method is still used today: electricity is generated by the movement of a loop of wire, or disc of copper between the poles of a magnet.

"Electricity is most often generated at a power station by electromechanical generators, primarily driven by heat engines fueled by chemical combustion or nuclear fission but also by other means such as the kinetic energy of flowing water and wind. There are many other technologies that can be and are used to generate electricity such as solar photovoltaics and geothermal power.

* Charles Algernon Parsons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Algernon_Parsons
(1854-1931/ He developed a turbine engine there in 1884 and immediately utilized the new engine to drive an electrical generator, which he also designed. Parsons' steam turbine made cheap and plentiful electricity possible and revolutionised marine transport and naval warfare - the world would never be the same again)

* geothermal electricity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_electricity
("Prince Piero Ginori Conti tested the first geothermal power generator on 4 July 1904 in Larderello, Italy. It successfully lit four light bulbs. Later, in 1911, the world's first commercial geothermal power plant was built there. * * * Italy was the world's only industrial producer of geothermal electricity until 1958. In 1958, New Zealand became the second major industrial producer of geothermal electricity when its Wairakei station was commissioned")

(ii) MS Selandia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Selandia
('Selandia' is the Latin name for the Danish island of Sjælland; ordered by the Danish trading firm East Asiatic Company for service between Scandinavia, Genoa, Italy, and Bangkok, Thailand; built at Burmeister & Wain Shipyard in Copenhagen, Denmark and launched on 4 November 1911./ She was the world's first ocean-going diesel-powered ship – previous vessel were steam-powered./ Built for cargo and passenger carriage)

(b) The illustration states, "1913  Oil refineries first use thermal cracking, dramatically increasing the amount of gasoline produced from a barrel of oil.

(i) Oil refinery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refinery
(caption of a drawing: Crude oil is separated into fractions by fractional distillation. The fractions at the top of the fractionating column have lower boiling points than the fractions at the bottom. The heavy bottom fractions are often cracked into lighter, more useful products. All of the fractions are processed further in other refining units.)
(ii) "Simply put, hydrocarbon cracking is the process of breaking long-chain hydrocarbons into short ones."
en.wikipedia.org
(ii) William Merriam Burton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Merriam_Burton

(c) bucket-wheel excavator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-wheel_excavator
(act as a continuous digging machine in large-scale open pit mining operations; Material picked up by the cutting wheel is transferred back)

The cutting wheel with buckets is in the right lower corner of the photo.

(d) synthetic fuel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel
(section 2 History)
(e) "Pure Oil Company was an American petroleum company founded in 1914 and sold to what is now Union Oil Company of California [doing business as Unocal] in 1965."
(f) Superior Oil Company
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_Oil_Company
(now part of ExxonMobil; Superior Oil was founded in 1921 in Coalinga, California by William Myron Keck, also founder of the W. M. Keck Foundation./ In 1938, the company constructed the first offshore oil platform off the Gulf Coast of Louisiana in cooperation with Pure Oil, another independent producer)
(g) The illustration indicates, "1939  A gas combustion turbine is used to generate electricty in Neuchatel, Switzerland, a simpler and more efficient way to produce power than steam turbines.

(i) gas turbine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_turbine
( rotary engine that extracts energy from a flow of combustion gas; section 1 History: "1939: First 4 MW utility power generation gas turbine from BBC Brown, Boveri & Cie. for an emergency power station in Neuchâtel, Switzerland")
(ii) To compare gas turbine with steam turbine, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation
(section 1.1 Turbines)

(h) oil tanker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker
(section 1.5 The supertanker era: In 1958, United States shipping magnate Daniel K. Ludwig broke the barrier of 100,000 long tons of heavy displacement. His Universe Apollo displaced 104,500 long tons, a 23% increase from the previous record-holder, Universe Leader which also belonged to Ludwig)



(2) Robert A Guth, A Window Into the Nuclear Future; TerraPower—with the backing of Bill Gates—has a radical vision for the reactors of tomorrow.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146061231899264.html

My comment:
(a) Please start by reading section 2 with the heading Green Wood.
(b) For "traveling wave," see wave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave
(Consider a traveling transverse wave (which may be a pulse) on a string (the medium). Consider the string to have a single spatial dimension. Consider this wave as traveling in the x direction in space)
(c) Kennedy Maize, Traveling Wave Reactors: Wave Goodbye. Power Magazine, Mar 25, 2010.
http://www.powermag.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/27/traveling-wave-reactors-wave-goodbye/
("Problems? Plenty")

(3) Russell Gold, The Power of Knowledge; With new monitors, homeowners can keep track of their electricity use in real time. It can make all the difference.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703293204576105964069755504.html

Quote:

"Unlike smart meters, which allow homeowners to view their total usage only after a delay, home-electricity monitors tell consumers specifics about their energy usage and what it's costing them in real time.

Mr. Tom Tassi "bought a TED 5000c, made by Energy Inc., Charleston, S.C. The $240 device (whose initials stand for The Energy Detective) measures how much electricity his house is using and how much it is costing him, minute by minute, and wirelessly transmits the data to a hand-held device. After installing the system, Mr. Tassi started wandering around his house with the wireless reader. He turned on the dishwasher and the television and watched his power consumption increase


Note:
(a) In quotation 1, the difference is "total" for smart meters and individual appliance for home-electricity monitors.
(b) The online but not the print edition of the report shows what a home-electricity monitor looks like.
(c) ballast (n):
"1: a heavy substance placed in such a way as to improve stability and control (as of the draft of a ship or the buoyancy of a balloon or submarine)
* * *
4: a device used to provide the starting voltage or to stabilize the current in a circuit (as of a fluorescent lamp)"
www.m-w.com


For def. 4, see electrical ballast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_ballast
--