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Entropy (symbol S) is the measure of molecular disorder - heat noise and other energetic behaviour that is hard to organize in order to channel the energy to achieve useful work…
Until the 19th Century energy harvesting was the only way to keep warm and make our homes light.
Galvani (1780) and Volta (1799) first showed us how to make electrical cells and batteries, and then around 1830 Faraday worked out how to make electrical generators and motors. During the 20th Century human demand for electricity skyrocketed from the odd pocket flashlight which used a watt or so, to Edison lamps driven by local generators that needed between 100 - 1000 wattsto the full-scale industrial and commercial products of the modern era, which require huge supplies of electrical current sometimes measured in megawatts!
Happily, Mr Faraday's generaters could be connected to gasolene engines in local units, to Mr Perkins steam turbines, and, by the mid 20th century to national grids to which were added Mr Whittle's gas turbines and Mr Fermi's nuclear fission reactors, which was fine as long as fossile fuels such as oil and gas were cheap and nobody cared much about either environmental pollution or global warming…
In 1976, OPEC was born, Fossil fuel producers began to manage supply to increase profits, so provoking the first 'oil crisis' when the 'alternative scene' led by hippys and beatniks (social rebels) started to develop curious ideas about 'low energy living' (i.e. cheap ways to keep warm) and 'carbon footprints' (cheap ways to communicate). Schumacher wrote a book called Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered! A revolution was about to gain velocity!
The establishment fough back hard, armed with huge propaganda machines oiled with vast amounts of cash, because their investment in huge power plants and bulk fossil fuel consumption seemed to be threatened. 'Alternative' and 'appropriate' became dirty words! The world moves on: the second oil crisis, the recession ... XRG will produce mathematical models of both technical innovations and the financial costs and benefits in each case Find out more about the technologies being considered:
Organic Rankin Cycle and Kalina Cycle turbines
Thermoelectric devices and Nano materials
Thermoacoustic devices and Nano materials
Hydrogen Economy and NEA Combined Heat and Power
Thermoelectric devices and Fuel Cells
Biogas and Microbial Fuel Cells
e-mail XRG here -or - Return to Index page
April 2009