On 2/7/22 8:51 PM, Michael Orshan wrote:
Renewable has three issues right now and generation is not one of them, yet most people focus on generation.  The issues are intermittency, transmission lines and financing new assets.  We are forcing the retirement of revenue producing assets they have been paid for.  By storing air in pipelines until needed we are solving intermittency. By generating closer where the energy is used we are greatly reducing the need for transmission.  By reusing the infrastructure we are saving a paid for asset.  Yes the conversion efficiency is low, but who cares.  The storage is incredibly huge.  Inertia energy itself pays for itself 50x this way and its instant.  Look up Long Duration Energy Systems.  This is the scramble that is going on right now.

Mike -

From your executive lineup, I'm sure you guys are doing both the engineering work as well as the financial/legal work to try to make this concept viable.   It seems like a "niche" application but not as niche as the CAES perhaps.  It seems like you are cashing in on the serendipity of the nature of NG power generation infrastructure.  I had a shop teacher in HS who taught ICE basics on a small diesel engine he had converted to run (low power/speed) on compressed air.

I trust that even if YOU don't work hard on the problems of conversion efficiency, it seems likely that others *are* working on that problem to cash in on the marginal gain.   The "efficient market" to the rescue.    Since the conversion efficiency (I believe) is primarily about heat/coolth dissipation on both ends, that low-grade heat on the re-generation side is appropriate (direct solar collection, geothermal, heat-pump).    I'm not positive, but it seems as if the transmission losses are less than with electricity.

I see from your preliminary literature you are also planning for the direct use of "waste" heat on one side and "waste" coolth on the other as an industrial product.   The passthrough of compressed air to industry is also auspicious... minimizing the conversion inefficiencies by skipping intermediate steps...  I doubt many industrial contexts have a compressed air source, but rather have to create it on-site with ICE or Electric to-mechanical-to-compressor.

As an amateur complexicist, I am a fan of multi-scale systems....  so I look forward to systems like yours not being scaled (only) to mega-industry.  I wonder at how far out the existing distribution chain you can push compressed air practically?  I doubt there are (m)any mechanics or private homes, for example, who could give up their NG feed (heat mostly) for compressed air, even if the upstream distribution were converting.   The new(ish) DC-powered residential scale mini-split heat-pumps would seem to operate well off of any mechanical energy source (not just PWM modulated variable speed DC motors) and the decompressed chilled air from the air-motor would go right into boosting the efficiency rather than being yet another source of waste heat.  Not a perpetual motion machine, just a system where some of the intrinsic inefficiencies are exploited/recovered elegantly?

The big win seems obviously to be the major NG pipelines and existing electric generation stations.  I can't tell from your literature if converting existing NG turbines to compressed air is even reasonable... seems like this is probably why CAES is burning NG to bring the charge up to the performance scale of existing turbine designs?    I believe that many of these plants were designed/modified to be "peaking" plants which it seems your tech is ideal for...   let the

Again, it is nice to hear someone here with a practical application/aspiration in the domain of infrastructure/industrial/energy transformation.   Many of us are a bit too close to the academic side of problem "solving".

- Steve




On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 6:46 PM Marcus Daniels <[email protected]> wrote:

    The conversion losses seem like a big issue?

    *From:* Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Michael
    Orshan
    *Sent:* Monday, February 7, 2022 5:42 PM
    *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
    <[email protected]>
    *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Another Stunning Hydrogen Development -
    Retake Our Democracy

    Marcus

    That is a famous prototype. Recently Hydrostor made headlines
    building new CAES plants.  The main issue is the need of a salt
    cavern.  The amount of possible sites is very small.  The caverns
    are used to mine salts for bleaches/chemicals or to store natural
    gas.  This tech is $111/kwh.

    On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 6:14 PM Marcus Daniels
    <[email protected]> wrote:

        For comparison

        
https://schaperintl.com/is-the-juice-worth-the-squeeze-compressed-air-energy-storage-for-grid-scale-power/

        *From:* Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of
        *Michael Orshan
        *Sent:* Monday, February 7, 2022 3:42 PM
        *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
        <[email protected]>
        *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Another Stunning Hydrogen Development -
        Retake Our Democracy

        Hi Frank:

        We need any, but hopefully renewable energy, to generate power
        for the compressors.  This also creates heat which we can
        recycle for more electricity or use for industrial purposes. 
        Our efficiency isn't high, but once we are in the pipelines we
        have a huge battery.  60 miles, 36 inch diameter can hold
        240MWh.  We can be instant inertia energy or generate.  Our
        storage costs are about $50/kwh. Batteries are $400/kwh for
        example. Also, we can store compressed air for months upon
        months.  Also, if we can build the renewables close enough to
        the plant we can go DC/DC which is a 25% energy savings not
        having to convert to AC.

        On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 11:05 AM Frank Wimberly
        <[email protected]> wrote:

            How do you compress the air?  Any method I can think of
            uses energy.  From what source?

            
<https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,%0D%0A+%0D%0A+Santa+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g>


            Frank

            ---
            Frank C. Wimberly
            140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
            
<https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,++%0D%0ASanta+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g>
            Santa Fe, NM 87505
            
<https://www.google.com/maps/search/140+Calle+Ojo+Feliz,++%0D%0ASanta+Fe,+NM+87505?entry=gmail&source=g>

            505 670-9918
            Santa Fe, NM

            On Mon, Feb 7, 2022, 10:57 AM Michael Orshan
            <[email protected]> wrote:

                Hi.  I'm a reader more than a contributor, but the
                Hydrogen discussion is close to my day to day.

                Many of us in renewables think Hydrogen might mostly
                be kick the can as Steve mentioned.  It is something
                that might be economically feasible in the 2030s and
                so the length of time oil companies sell oil
                increases.  Having said that, there are a number of
                very pricey Hydrogen projects getting funded.  That
                might be showing how profitable the O&G industry is.

                I'm working with a company we call Breeze
                <http://www.breezesqueeze.com>. It uses compressed air
                in pipelines to move turbines at power plants. 
                Without fossil fuels or using water this is getting a
                lot of attention. There are many advantages such as
                cold air where compressed air is released that can be
                used by data centers.  25% of all GHGs come from
                generating electricity.  45% of all water used in the
                US is used to create electricity.

                We see this as a better option than Hydrogen.  We do
                think Hydrogen fuel cells are a solution for mobile
                applications.

                Mike Orshan

                On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:27 AM Steve Smith
                <[email protected]> wrote:

                    On 2/6/22 8:31 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

                        
https://thebulletin.org/2022/01/whether-green-blue-or-turquoise-hydrogen-needs-to-be-clean-and-cheap/

                        // /Low-cost fossil fuel resources are finite.
                        Someday it will simply not be possible to burn
                        oil, natural gas, and coal for the affordable
                        heat, electricity, and motive power humans
                        need to power their prosperous societies. /

                    Must we always begin with the assumption that
                    growth in terms of geographical/geometric,
                    material and energy consumption/appropriation are
                    requisite to continuing/growing a "prosperous
                    society"? Tangentially (or not), if "green"
                    hydrogen implies a 2:1 ratio of CO2 production to
                    H2 but often begins with fossil fuels, it is
                    obviously yet another "kick the can down the road"
                    solution.   Harvesting solar and
                    direct-solar/lunar-derived energy (including wind,
                    tidal) and channeling it through our living
                    (including technological infrastructure and
                    agri-industry) systems to yield high-entropy
                    "waste heat" seems to be orders of magnitude more
                    sustainable (if still questionable on some very
                    long time-scale limited by a
                    Dyson-Sphere-like-limit). If the H2 is created by
                    cracking H20 (and capturing both to be recombined
                    later to release energy) using solar (and other
                    renewables) energy it is a *closed cycle*.  One
                    would presume the total amount of H2 we would have
                    stored/

                    From ecology there comes the observed phenomena of
                    "island syndrome" which can include island
                    dwarfism and poikilothermy which are both driven
                    by reducing the demand on finite resources without
                    giving up function or complexity.

                    From Alexander Payne comes the absurdist SciFi
                    flick Downsizing
                    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downsizing_(film)#Plot>
                    which postulates by shrinking humans by ???-fold
                    (5 inches tall ~= 12:1 in 1 dimension, 144:1 in
                    cross section and 1728:1 in volume/mass... )  the
                    movie implies no change in metabolic rates which
                    would nominally speed up with "shrinkage",
                    yielding (also) shorter lifespans.   Oh well..
                    Fiction.   But the point would seem well taken...
                    Gaia would get a 2000:1 reprieve from our
                    *current* energy/mass burden on her systems.

                    I'm not promoting shrinking people as-such, just
                    noting that our 0th order instinct is growth, and
                    supralinear if at all possible, up to and likely
                    achieving Kurzweillian asymptotic resource
                    consumption.

                    On that note, I believe that the myriad
                    technological singularity concepts all point
                    toward increased complexity and downscaling to
                    extend the use of material and energy, driving up
                    the effective collective metabolism of "the
                    system" and paradoxically *increasing* the rate at
                    which we approach any of the jillion ecophagic
                    gray-goo
                    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo>-like
                    scenarios neo-luddites like me might contrive.

                    I assume (but have not yet poked around for) that
                    Alifers have already studied the multi-scale
                    *structure* of negative entropy profiles in
                    complex systems-of-systems. I think Glen has his
                    ear closer to that rail than some here?  EricS?
                    ??? I'm still fascinated in the topic but gave up
                    my little-toenail-purchase in the community in the
                    early 2000s - Symbiotic Intelligence ALifeVI
                    <https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~rik/alife6/papers/SY51.html>.
                    This reads so naive yet (mildly) prophetic now...

                    All is lost! Flee the solar system!

                            On Feb 6, 2022, at 7:20 PM,
                            [email protected] wrote:

                            

                            Grey hydrogen?

                            
https://retakeourdemocracy.org/2022/02/06/another-stunning-hydrogen-development/



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