Solar power, possibilities

Reduction of overall energy use is one solution to the above problems. It requires money, technical advances, political power, and courage some reduction has been achieved, but much more is needed to reduce emissions of gases. One solution being advanced is use of processes to produce energy that do not emit gases. Hydropower has been exploited about as fully as possible, and supplies only a small fraction of total energy needs. Other sources such as wind and solar power are still much too expensive. 

A different approach is to reconsider the airship as a means of air travel. A first approach to this is considering an airship for high-altitude cruising (or as a stratospheric platform) powered by photovoltaic panels and using a reversible fuel cell system to store surplus solar power and use it when the sim is not visible. In this way, carrying possibly heavy batteries may be avoided. The envisaged relative shares of direct use of solar power, of elec-trolyser operation and of fuel cell power production are shown in Fig. 4.12. So far, testing of the equipment sketched in Fig. 4.12 has been performed on a 1-kW scale in the laboratory and in simulated airship conditions. 

Coastal communities in arid areas may need to produce a potable supply from seawater or brackish supplies. These sources require more extensive and expensive methods. The dissolved solids content of seawater is roughly 3.5%, 35% (i.e., 35 parts per thousand ) or 35,000 mg/L. This needs to be reduced to about 1% of this figure in order to meet the dissolved solids requirement of a potable water supply. Brackish waters, which have a lower salt concentration than seawater are a preferred raw water source when available, since the energy cost for salt removal is less [19]. It is possible under the right conditions to use solar-power for this purpose [20]. 

Both the United States and the former Soviet Union have sent nuclear reactors into space to power satellites. However, another giant nuclear reactor was there first—the sun, our local star. In the giant nuclear furnace of a star, nuclei react with one another and release enormous amounts of energy. You count on this energy to warm your air and water and to power your home, calculators, and other devices that run on solar power. Without this energy, life on Earth as you know it would not be possible. Is it possible to copy the reaction that takes place in stars and make a powerful generator that will provide electricity ... 

Storability is another important attribute of the chemical fuel hydrogen. Hydrogen makes it possible to economically store over time—for the winter season, for example—energy derived from intermittent sources such as solar power. Hydrocarbons (natural gas, petroleum, coal) obviously are easy to store. But how do you store sunlight or the heat from a nuclear reactor Storage works very well in solar power tower plants, where heat is stored very efficiently in 24-hour, day-and-night cycles in molten salt storage tanks.2... 

To ensure effective cathodic protection (CP) of gas pipelines in the remote arctic regions of Russia shown in Fig.l, where it would be uneconomic to run power lines and where conventional techniques such as small gas or diesel generators, wind and solar power plants fail, it is possible to use thermoelectric converters of heat into electricity and based on them standalone thermoelectric generators (TEG). 

Antioxidants need to be permanent. In the rubber industry, the problem of antioxidant loss by various mechanisms such as volatility and blooming has been coimtered by encapsulation in silica. The use of antioxidants in water pipes and other pipework raises the possibility of antioxidant loss by extraction or hydrolysis. Many pipes have a design lifetime of between 25 and 50 years, but their actual lifetime depends on antioxidant permanence. Underfloor heating and solar-powered hot water systems raise the temperature. 

Hollaway, L.C. (2011), Thermoplastic/carbon fibre composites could aid solar based power generation - A case study of a possible support system for solar power satellites . Journal of Composite for Construction, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 239-247. 

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