I'm wondering about it's economic scalability and application by the water industry. We already use sludge as fuel, would be nice to use the cold water entering treatment works to power them.
vegplot
Joined: 19 Apr 2007 Posts: 21301 Location: Bethesda, Gwynedd
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 15 12:41 pm Post subject:
Nice system and a good demonstrator of a large scale application.
I'm wondering about it's economic scalability and application by the water industry. We already use sludge as fuel, would be nice to use the cold water entering treatment works to power them.
You must have potential for heat exchange all over the place
We do use gravity where possible but there's a lot of mechanical equipment and people in flat places that requires power and pumping. We have investigated in line turbines on gravity fed supplies in pennines etc but returns at great and it can affect the pressure of supply. Raw water transfer systems may offer more potential but the Victorians generally designed them with low gradients. We are putting some hydro trubines in when some remedial work is done on the weirs on the river aire which will allow migratory fish up it again. Have you seen the new wid turbine in East Leeds?
selling heating to locals might be a good idea ,all the hot bathwater etc is under their homes so the heat is quite local to the consumer and if the kit could be developed to work in a main sewer getting some of the energy back might be possible
Nick
Joined: 02 Nov 2004 Posts: 34535 Location: Hereford
Interesting article. There is a lot of potential for extracting heat from 'waste' from all sorts of systems, and I think this is often preferable to extracting it from ordinary water, both in terms of efficiency and ecological effects. It is well known that dischargin warm water affects the ecology of an area, and extracting too much heat must have an effect too. Where you have tidal flow, such as London, or a large volume of water running out of a river, this would be far less marked though.
mal55
Joined: 15 Jul 2009 Posts: 168 Location: Erewash or in the dog house
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 15 12:47 pm Post subject:
It seems a pretty good idea to me. The Norwegians are also looking at producing electricity using the interface between saline and fresh groundwater. That would give them practically free heat once the system was in place.
And considering the conservation area its mined in,one would think it was better to obtain it from the other side of the World[as we do] where Green issue`s don`t come into it.