Quick Energy

Brian Westenhaus of New Energy and Fuel points out that using LEDs for lighting could reduce US electricity demands by 10%. His discussion about new affordable LED technologies for lighting is worth a look.

Brian Wang at NextBigFuture points to this article about a new thermoelectric material that should help recover much of the waste heat lost from combustion processes. In a typical gasoline engine, up to 60% of the energy of combustion is lost as heat.

Torrefaction of biomass is a method of roasting biomass in an oxygen-free atmosphere at temperatures of about 300 C. This process allows biomass to be co-fired with coal in power plants, and makes biomass far more practical and economical to transport and use. Much biomass is wasted every year, often requiring expensive disposal. By converting biomass into a useful form, what was garbage can become useful energy.

Steam Turbine vs. Gas Turbine Efficiency

A new nuclear reactor being built in China will be the first commercial nuclear plant in the world to operate at high enough temperatures to use the Brayton gas turbine cycle--a more efficient cycle as noted in the graphic above. It is more efficient because it runs at a higher temperature (basic thermodynamics). High Temperature Reactors (HTRs) can utilise gas turbines that are driven by inert helium gas that has been heated in a nuclear reactor to extreme temperatures. The Chinese reactor will initially use steam turbines, then later switch over to gas turbines.

A steam cycle could then be "tacked on" to the end of the gas turbine cycle to improve overall efficiencies even more.

The HTR being built in China is a type of modular helium reactor (MHR), and as different aspects of the design are proven and standardised, it should be much faster to build in the future.

More information at NextBigFuture

All The World's Power From These Little Dots

Image Source

Can you see the black dots on the map? The dots cover the land area necessary to provide the current energy needs of the human world, given only 8% energy efficiency of the solar to electricity process used. Solar thermal gets about 30% efficiency, and most photovoltaics get close to 10% or more.
Solar thermal energy is an abundant resource most constant and plentiful in the near-equatorial desert regions of the world--such as North Africa. Europeans hungry for more energy are looking south to the African desert for electricity that may allow Europe to limp forward despite a suicidal Kyoto gesture being pushed forward by EU bureaucrats.

A small modular solar thermal plant such as this could produce 25 MW of electrical power. If you could also utilise the waste heat from the plant, your total energy production would at least double. A large power grid spanning huge distances of North Africa, the Arabian peninsula, and parts of Europe, would allow the abundant solar resource of the Sahara to be exploited by wealthier and more productive Europeans to the north. The image above depicts such a large grid that also includes other renewable energy sources available in different parts of the grid.
H/T Treehugger (from Spiegel) via Peswiki