New Mini-Turbine is Capable of Powering an Entire Town

By itninja

15 May 2016
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www.naturalblaze.com...
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The scientists from GE Global Research are now performing tests on a turbine that is approximately the size of a desk. But more interesting, is this mini-turbine has the capabilities of powering a small town of up to 10,000 homes.
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While typical turbines are generally driven by steam, resulting in a much larger scale, this specific turbine is actually driven by what the researchers call supercritical carbon dioxide. This is highly pressurized, not to mention extremely hot. This supercritical carbon dioxide (C02) is capable of reaching temperatures of up to 700 degrees Celsius. The C02 is incredibly hot and under so much pressure, it will form a supercritical fluid. This supercritical fluid in neither a liquid or even a gas, in fact, it is both.
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This article (New Mini-Turbine is Capable of Powering an Entire Town) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
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anonhq.com...
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Sounds exciting to this layman.
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I'd still prefer to see one of the 3-4 DIFFERENT purported "zero point" technologies produced--that could supposedly put a suitcase sized unit in every home and vehicle that would power them for a year for about $0.50.
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However, if this new turbine improves efficiency and could be reasonably priced . . . great. Maybe a community of preppers could purchase one etc. etc.
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Though I still suspect that Tesla Corp's Wall battery thing and solar cells might be a better way to go.
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Assuming the Nation survives long enough for such to be readily available. LOL.
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a reply to: BO XIAN

Interesting to see how much energy is expended making this "supercritical" fluid.

There seems to be a sh*tload of breakthroughs on technology that could and hopefully will stop, the need for taking the natural gasses from the earth, this is the first i have heard of this one! Cheers s&f

heres another that is very interesting if you dont already know of it....
www.dailymail.co.uk... -hotter-sun.html

I hope it doesn't suck the CO2 from the atmosphere. Al Gore will have it shut down, because it's taking money from his pockets

a reply to: nightbringr

This layman would think that would be a very important issue!

So, do you think this will amount to anything? Is it that much of an improvement?

a reply to: Davg80

INDEED.

Interesting link.

I've long felt that they had breakthroughs in fusion under wraps to avoid producing too much cheap power etc. etc. etc.

Time will tell on all such things.

I hate unmitigated greed that results in unnecessary continued suffering and pollution of the planet.

a reply to: thinline

I don't think I want to get started on farcical Al . . .

He's sure been a faithful stooge of the oligarchy.

originally posted by: nightbringr
a reply to: BO XIAN

Interesting to see how much energy is expended making this "supercritical" fluid.

The efficiency is increased by 5%, which is significant, when using CO2 as the working fluid instead of water/steam. The critical temperature for CO2 is about 30*C which means that above that temperature, CO2 will not condense into a liquid no matter what the pressure; it is a single phase fluid that varies in density based on temperature/pressure.
The turbine "the size of a desk" is a 10 megawatt turbine and wouldn't include the heating system, generator, switching gear, phase controllers, and other necessary infrastructure to deliver the power. It still needs heat input somehow but doesn't have the complexities of a disengager for condensed fluid because it is a single phase working fluid.

Laws of Thermodynamics

You can't win.

You can't tie.

You can't quit.

As it was mentioned, how much energy does it take to get the CO2 to go "supercritical"?

a reply to: pteridine

Thanks. I mostly understand. LOL.

. . . probably as much as a lot of shrinks would.

In addition to being more efficient, the technology could be more nimble—in a grid-storage scenario, heat from solar energy, nuclear power, or combustion could first be stored as molten salt and the heat later used to drive the process.
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GE's system might also be better than huge arrays of batteries. Adding more hours of operation just means having a larger or hotter reservoir of the molten salt, rather than adding additional arrays of giant batteries.

Source: MIT Technology Review, April 11, 2016 - Desk-Size Turbine Could Power a Town

The key here is "molten salt" and "grid storage". Heating molten salt does cost more but any source can be used to heat it up. They use the molten salt to heat up the CO2. The article states it may "take a minute or two" to heat CO2 up vs. the upwards of 30 minutes for water (I am assuming conventional/current methods).

Why grid storage? Because you will need to store the energy created from a fusion reactor in some manner. And guess who is making an ARC (Affordable, Robust, Compact) fusion reactor? MIT. And what energy blanket scheme are they using? Molten salt. So why use a conventional turbine if you can use your fusion device to heat molten salt and shoot that over to heat CO2 to turn your small turbine?

Seems there was another company using the term "compact" in their name too. Oh, that's right, Lockheed Martin Skunkworks' Compact Fusion Reactor (aka, T4).

its sounds like a good efficiency gain. not a breakthrough energy source. nice though.

a reply to: Davg80

The German fusion reactor actually did more than one plasma shot. The news article does not mention what the Wendelstein 7-X achieved. That news did not come out until April.

W7-X did over 900 hydrogen plasma shots and reached a temperature ~100 million C with it lasting up to 6 seconds.

ATS link here

BO XIAN, the higher powered Tesla battery was removed from the market, very quietly, last month. The real answer for home storage is flow batteries.

Egads man! The reason molten salts are suited for storing heat is how much they can take! I have been doing some reading and here is what it says:

[FLiBe] has a melting point of 459 °C, a boiling point of 1430 °C

Wikipedia entry - Flouride Lithium Beryllium Salt

That salt is what is in the ARC reactor will be using. They use lithium because when the high powered neutron hits it a tritium particle is produced and the heat is transferred into the salt. When the salt is at the desired temp it is circulated out where it can be used (in this case, to make supercritical CO2). When it has given up what it needs, back to the reactor. All they need to do is add deuterium to keep the fusion reaction going.

The cool thing is that this molten salt circulation system is what they tested out at the Chinese tokomak so it works!

originally posted by: JIMC5499
Laws of Thermodynamics

You can't win.

You can't tie.

You can't quit.

As it was mentioned, how much energy does it take to get the CO2 to go "supercritical"?

That just means that it will be one phase and not in equilibrium with its liquid no matter what the pressure. This is not another state of matter and it exists anytime the fluid is above its critical temperature and pressure. When that happens it is 'supercritical.' Since it is a working fluid, it has to be heated to provide energy to spin the turbine. This is how thermal energy is translated into mechanical energy and then to electrical energy. The efficiency is the energy output relative to the energy input.

C.P. Snow's version of the three laws
1.You can't win (that is, you can't get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).
2.You can't break even (you can't return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).
3.You can't get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).

There is a 4th law sometimes stated called the "zeroth" law that is pretty much common sense. If two systems are in thermal equilibrium independently with a third system, they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.

ETA: www.technologyreview.com...

a reply to: BO XIAN

All: I've already begun my initial prepping for my colonoscopy . . . so I'm not likely to be all that chipper to reply in much detail, if at all.

I do appreciate all the thoughtful contributions to the thread, however.

Cheers.