The renewable energy changes and policy

MIT's Revolutionary Desalination Technique: The Future of Sustainable Water Solutions
Welcome to our latest video where we dive deep into MIT's groundbreaking desalination method, a beacon of hope in our global quest for sustainable water solutions. In a world grappling with freshwater scarcity, MIT's innovative approach stands out, promising a future where clean water is accessible and environmental harmony is maintained. Join us as we unravel the layers of this ingenious solution, exploring its potential to revolutionize the way we access and manage one of our most precious resources: water.

The Core of Innovation: A Specialized Membrane
At the heart of MIT's desalination process is a unique membrane, meticulously designed to allow only water vapor to pass through. This selective permeability ensures that the resulting water is not just pure but also free from the salt and impurities found in seawater.

Efficiency Redefined: Multi-Layered Heat Sharing
But the innovation doesn't stop at filtration. MIT's system incorporates multiple layers, each ingeniously designed to share and recycle heat. This maximizes energy efficiency and ensures that the process is not just effective but also economically viable.

A Creative Twist: Sideways Orientation
Discover how a simple yet effective design tweak, orienting the system sideways, ensures that concentrated saline effortlessly falls out. This prevents any build-up, maintaining the system's efficiency and longevity.

Self-Cleaning Marvel: Eddie Currents
Maintenance is often the Achilles' heel of desalination systems. But not in MIT's design. Learn about how Eddie currents are ingeniously used to continuously wash the membrane, keeping it clean, functional, and reducing the need for frequent manual cleaning.

But what about the excess salt, a byproduct of any desalination process? MIT's solution is twofold:

The Flow Method: We explore how a continuous flow of seawater replaces the concentrated saltwater as it's separated. This method ensures that the salt doesn't accumulate, thereby protecting the local marine ecosystem.

The Sink Method: We delve into how the denser, salt-rich water is allowed to sink naturally. This salt is then harvested and utilized, highlighting how salt, a resource with a history of diverse uses, is not wasted but valued.

MIT's desalination method is more than just a technological breakthrough; it's a testament to human ingenuity, a nod to sustainability, and a giant leap towards solving global water scarcity.

Who knows, maybe something to help with the CO2 from carbon capture, turn it into ethylene using solar power and if you need to sequester it, convert that into polyethylene blocks and bury them in old mines I suppose. There would be a lot of ethylene involved here, more than we might use if this comes into widespread use one day. Right now, the focus is on clean energy, transportation and industrial emissions, farmers too and they are already unhappy.

https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/new-carbon-dioxide-electroreduction-system-developed-reduce-co2-emissions/42641/

New carbon dioxide electroreduction system developed to reduce CO2 emissions

Europe is CRUSHING IT with Renewables

Wind & Solar at an all-time-high, Coal & Hydrocarbons at a 50-year-low or more. 2023 has been the first year when the European push for decarbonization started to look seriously, unambiguously, on track, and 2024 is looking fit to deliver a new record.

DIY-HP-LED said:

Who knows, maybe something to help with the CO2 from carbon capture, turn it into ethylene using solar power and if you need to sequester it, convert that into polyethylene blocks and bury them in old mines I suppose. There would be a lot of ethylene involved here, more than we might use if this comes into widespread use one day. Right now, the focus is on clean energy, transportation and industrial emissions, farmers too and they are already unhappy.

https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/new-carbon-dioxide-electroreduction-system-developed-reduce-co2-emissions/42641/

New carbon dioxide electroreduction system developed to reduce CO2 emissions

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Instead of burying the polymer, foam
it and use it for structural insulation. Win/win.

cannabineer said:

Instead of burying the polymer, foam
it and use it for structural insulation. Win/win.

Click to expand...

If it works and is economical and solar powered, we might be talking gigatons with carbon remediation. For captured carbon from industrial processes it should find a home for now, provided it gets commercialized.

cannabineer said:

Instead of burying the polymer, foam
it and use it for structural insulation. Win/win.

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Polyethene is food grade plastic as I recall, turn it into solar water distillation panels, pipes and tanks using robots to crank it out in shipping container sized units in a factory. You might get 60 or 75% of it built from polyethylene made from captured carbon.

cannabineer said:

Instead of burying the polymer, foam
it and use it for structural insulation. Win/win.

Click to expand...

Hot polyethylene, some graphene and sand and you can 3D print buildings or make bricks out of the stuff for construction. Make the structures to support those solar distillation panels and house condensing equipment. Make water tanks too or line cisterns and canals dug into the ground and covered in the solar panels to power the operation.

DIY-HP-LED said:

Hot polyethylene, some graphene and sand and you can 3D print buildings or make bricks out of the stuff for construction. Make the structures to support those solar distillation panels and house condensing equipment. Make water tanks too or line cisterns and canals dug into the ground and covered in the solar panels to power the operation.

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Why graphene?

cannabineer said:

Why graphene?

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Structural strength, if required, more sand less poly, a tiny amount in regular concrete does amazing things and it is being used now for this purpose.

cannabineer said:

Why graphene?

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Looking at the basic water distillation tech of the membrane and thermohaline cleansing of salt from the membrane it looks viable and I figure a business and industry can be founded on it. I think it is revolutionary and active systems might be able to get production rates of fresh water much higher per square meter. One might do this by preheating the water going into the cells with the heat pump condenser unit using recovered heat and by solar. Likewise, air entering the evaporation spaces under the membrane can be heated both to heat the seawater on the other side of the membrane and increase the amount of vapor the warm air can hold, aided by blowers moving moisture laden air to the condenser unit, which can be compact and with the warm dry desert air coming in it should increase production. One might also concentrate solar power on the panels.

The point is with a dozen 700watt solar panels running the condenser and pumps only during daylight efficiency doesn't matter that much and the condenser can be separated from the generating panels. Make the panels the right size to fit in a shipping container and design it so the membrane can be changed periodically, and you should be good to go. Any uninhabited desert costal area with a population center within a hundred miles is your target market. With a modularized 40 foot shipping container system that can be expanded a lot, sounds like a business. After you build a 1 meter test rig to experiment with, then some prototype panels to test and show off to potential customers. Capital is required, but there are many wealthy Arabs with a real obsession about fresh water.

DIY-HP-LED said:

Looking at the basic water distillation tech of the membrane and thermohaline cleansing of salt from the membrane it looks viable and I figure a business and industry can be founded on it. I think it is revolutionary and active systems might be able to get production rates of fresh water much higher per square meter. One might do this by preheating the water going into the cells with the heat pump condenser unit using recovered heat and by solar. Likewise, air entering the evaporation spaces under the membrane can be heated both to heat the seawater on the other side of the membrane and increase the amount of vapor the warm air can hold, aided by blowers moving moisture laden air to the condenser unit, which can be compact and with the warm dry desert air coming in it should increase production. One might also concentrate solar power on the panels.

The point is with a dozen 700watt solar panels running the condenser and pumps only during daylight efficiency doesn't matter that much and the condenser can be separated from the generating panels. Make the panels the right size to fit in a shipping container and design it so the membrane can be changed periodically, and you should be good to go. Any uninhabited desert costal area with a population center within a hundred miles is your target market. With a modularized 40 foot shipping container system that can be expanded a lot, sounds like a business. After you build a 1 meter test rig to experiment with, then some prototype panels to test and show off to potential customers. Capital is required, but there are many wealthy Arabs with a real obsession about fresh water.

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Did that desalinator require graphene?

Unions are gonna have to wake up and smell the coffee.

cannabineer said:

Did that desalinator require graphene?

Click to expand...

That flat black solar collector might be a form of carbon that conducts heat and absorbs solar energy, or it might simply be a coated aluminum plate. The point is the idea is so good (it was iteratively improved by them and others) and the paper so comprehensive it allows engineers to begin developing and testing a wide variety of possible systems of almost any scale.

I guess I and a few others think it is one of the more important ideas and potential products to come out in a long time, in that can seriously improve the lives of lots of people and help to address a looming climate problem, drought. I do believe we will be hearing more about this over the next year or two. It's a bit like the $56/kWh battery, it will dramatically change the EV and power storage markets and the factories that build those cells are being built in America. You won't probably see the impact for a couple of years, but it should arrive. I think that is important too and it even drops the floor out from under the predicted cost curves of batteries, the trajectory of the curve crashed through the floor suddenly and make quite an impression on the chart.

The Inevitability of Wind and Solar

Technologically solved, and economically competitive: the 40% wind & solar level is now inevitable in any capitalistic electricity market, without requiring any subsidies or special considerations.

Soon, the target will move closer to 70%, when the technology catches up on the storage front, but for now, we're taking a look at a simulation which attempts to find the point of maximum profitability without the use of storage, and which arrives at 40-45% wind & solar energy share in the process.

The simulation is not a black box, and its inner workings are explained in detail, thus inspiring confidence in the output.

Bear in mind with the cheap $56/kWh batteries this summer the price will be even cheaper. Now you know why American and European automakers dread this.

Where is the BYD Seagull sold?
China
Launched for sale in China at the end of April, the Seagull has accomplished this milestone within a mere seven months. Positioned in the market with a sales price ranging from 73,800 yuan to 89,800 yuan ($10,400 to 12,600 USD), the BYD Seagull has carved a niche for itself in the competitive Chinese EV landscape. Nov 29, 2023

THE 200,000TH BYD SEAGULL ROLLED OFF THE ASSEMBLY LINE

The Affordable EV We've All Been Waiting For - BYD Seagull
All the hype in 2023 has been about the BYD Seagull and whether it will be the car to bring affordable, no compromises, small electric motoring to the masses. As it turns out, it absolutely should do. An incredibly joyful car, packed full of character and grown-up car features, and so affordable you might just be able to find the cash down the back of your sofa. This tiny little car is going to be HUGE.

Flying Through Giga Berlin

Heat Pumps: How cold rivers could heat your home

Heating our homes with cold water! Sounds absurd? It’s not. Heat pumps are revolutionizing the way we heat and cool our homes and cities. We went to the German city of Mannheim to find out how.

Let's see, if LFP battery prices drop to $56/kWh in China this June and American companies are buying equipment to make them and, in some cases, complete factory turnkey operations from CATL like Ford, how long will those government rebates last? I mean if these guys started selling LFP batteries for say $60/kWh and with a US government rebate they would be $25/kWh, NOT gonna happen! When battery prices get below $80/kwh they will beat ICE engine cars on price for the equivalent vehicle and I figure that is the redline for the subsidies on EV batteries.

The federal government pays $35 per kWh for batteries made in North America, which represents over one-third of the manufacturing costs at current prices.

If you are wondering why the government is blowing all this money on batteries and renewable energy. This thread attempts to explain it and the coming technologically driven economic changes we will soon be seeing in our lives. Sure, climate change motivated it, but we are also ready with a convergence of technologies and the motivation to employ them. It is the same in almost all countries from poor to rich, everybody sees the future now and there are reports and studies to support the new policy. Every country wants energy security and independence and now have a way to attain it, so policy will follow. Renewable energy generation and storage are now national security concerns, just like oil.