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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 20:10 - 08 Apr 2023    Post subject: Nature Reply with quote
Sitting in the back garden on a lovely sunny afternoon...

Energy from the Sun. How to harness it?

In nature there only seems to be solar. Plants suck up the energy from the Sun and convert it to either fats or sugars. Fat, i.e. vegetable oil, is basically diesel therefore Nature's answer to energy generation/storage is to make diesel Smile

I'm trying to think of any way nature harnesses the power of wind or tides Thinking
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Polarbear
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PostPosted: 20:40 - 08 Apr 2023    Post subject: Re: Nature Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
Sitting in the back garden on a lovely sunny afternoon...

Energy from the Sun. How to harness it?

In nature there only seems to be solar. Plants suck up the energy from the Sun and convert it to either fats or sugars. Fat, i.e. vegetable oil, is basically diesel therefore Nature's answer to energy generation/storage is to make diesel Smile

I'm trying to think of any way nature harnesses the power of wind or tides Thinking


Birds use wind power to their advantage but that's not really energy conversion.
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stinkwheel
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PostPosted: 20:50 - 08 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Technically the wind and tides are also solar powered. The wind rather more directly, the tides as a result of a massive gravity well.
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Kawasaki Jimbo
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PostPosted: 21:13 - 08 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Mother Nature would probably approve of us putting all that tragically sequestered carbon back into circulation even if it changes humankind’s status quo.

Biofuels from waste-processing activities seems to me to be the way forward, although the volumes are unlikely to compete with the quantities we’ve been able to hoik out of the ground.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 22:35 - 08 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
stinkwheel wrote:
Technically the wind and tides are also solar powered. The wind rather more directly, the tides as a result of a massive gravity well.


AFAIK there are only two natural systems of energy gathering/storage on this planet: the common photosynthesis of plants and the less common chemosynthesis of bacteria around volcanic vents. Wind and tide energy seem to be a uniquely unnatural human contrivance and I wonder if we should take the hint from nature and give it up as a fools errand?
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stinkwheel
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PostPosted: 23:06 - 08 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:


AFAIK there are only two natural systems of energy gathering/storage on this planet: the common photosynthesis of plants and the less common chemosynthesis of bacteria around volcanic vents. Wind and tide energy seem to be a uniquely unnatural human contrivance and I wonder if we should take the hint from nature and give it up as a fools errand?


Aye, synthetic chloroplasts would solve a lot of problems. There again, on a macroscopic level, the wind is effectively a planetary scale kinetic storage device for solar power.
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 09:31 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Tides are mostly caused by the moon, not the sun.
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stinkwheel
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PostPosted: 09:53 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nobby the Bastard wrote:
Tides are mostly caused by the moon, not the sun.


But the whole kit and caboodle is spinning in Sols gravity well.
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 10:09 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thats a bit like saying all fusion reactors on earth are solar. If you were to take the sun away the tides would still follow the lunar cycle.

Yes the sun can augment or decrease the size of the tide but the central driver is the moon.
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Islander
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PostPosted: 11:15 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nobby the Bastard wrote:
Thats a bit like saying all fusion reactors on earth are solar. If you were to take the sun away the tides would still follow the lunar cycle.

Yes the sun can augment or decrease the size of the tide but the central driver is the moon.


If you took the Sun away then there would be nothing holding the solar system together., no planetary orbits. It's at the heart of everything.

There are two sources of energy on Earth, one is the Sun with solar energy driving wind, ocean currents and life, the second is internal and is the radioactive decay of Th232, K40, and U235 driving tectonic activity and volcanism. Everything else is derived from these two sources.

Use of wind, tidal and wave energy is a no-brainer as is the use of solar whether it be PV, heating molten salt to boil water and generate power or solar water heating panels. There are huge amounts of energy available from the Sun and its global systems. There's a penalty of course, and that's the gradual slowing of the Earth's rotation but that's an imperceptible effect apart from over geological time.

Geothermal will be the next big thing IMO especially with advances in drilling technology.
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DaddyStu
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PostPosted: 12:47 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Islander wrote:


If you took the Sun away then there would be nothing holding the solar system together., no planetary orbits. It's at the heart of everything.

There are two sources of energy on Earth, one is the Sun with solar energy driving wind, ocean currents and life, the second is internal and is the radioactive decay of Th232, K40, and U235 driving tectonic activity and volcanism. Everything else is derived from these two sources.

Use of wind, tidal and wave energy is a no-brainer as is the use of solar whether it be PV, heating molten salt to boil water and generate power or solar water heating panels. There are huge amounts of energy available from the Sun and its global systems. There's a penalty of course, and that's the gradual slowing of the Earth's rotation but that's an imperceptible effect apart from over geological time.

Geothermal will be the next big thing IMO especially with advances in drilling technology.


There is a third natural source just 90 mill miles away which we are technically unable to take advantage of at present - Fusion. There have been significant advances though. 50-100 years could see this as the primary source and all others relegated to obscurity.
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Islander
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PostPosted: 16:25 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
DaddyStu wrote:
Islander wrote:


If you took the Sun away then there would be nothing holding the solar system together., no planetary orbits. It's at the heart of everything.

There are two sources of energy on Earth, one is the Sun with solar energy driving wind, ocean currents and life, the second is internal and is the radioactive decay of Th232, K40, and U235 driving tectonic activity and volcanism. Everything else is derived from these two sources.

Use of wind, tidal and wave energy is a no-brainer as is the use of solar whether it be PV, heating molten salt to boil water and generate power or solar water heating panels. There are huge amounts of energy available from the Sun and its global systems. There's a penalty of course, and that's the gradual slowing of the Earth's rotation but that's an imperceptible effect apart from over geological time.

Geothermal will be the next big thing IMO especially with advances in drilling technology.


There is a third natural source just 90 mill miles away which we are technically unable to take advantage of at present - Fusion. There have been significant advances though. 50-100 years could see this as the primary source and all others relegated to obscurity.


That's the Sun. The first source of energy I cited.
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stinkwheel
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PostPosted: 16:46 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
In the future, I can see the tech for nano-machines becoming much more do-able, combine it with graphene and you can start taking advantage of small temperature differentials as an energy source.

Billions of nano-scale peltier type devices printed onto a surface with a graphene heat sink. Run water over them that's slightly warmer than the atmospheric temperature (or slightly cooler) and you should be able to generate electricity.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 18:13 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
I don't think anything in nature takes advantage of radioactivity but geothermal you could relate to chemosynthesis I guess, good shout though.

If you had a billion quid though and could either invest in wind, tide or solar I think I'd always pick solar as that's at least something already happening all around us every day.
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Islander
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PostPosted: 19:07 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
I don't think anything in nature takes advantage of radioactivity but geothermal you could relate to chemosynthesis I guess, good shout though.


A lot of natural processes are quite dependent on tectonics though - you gave an example earlier of the black smokers at divergent plate boundaries so without tectonics you wouldn't have those.

Easy-X wrote:
If you had a billion quid though and could either invest in wind, tide or solar I think I'd always pick solar as that's at least something already happening all around us every day.


If you were going for a certainty then tidal would be the best bet. Utterly predictable and not dependent on weather conditions unlike wind or solar. Smile
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 19:10 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Utterly predictable by a 28 day cycle that just happens to match the moon's?
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Islander
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PostPosted: 19:18 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nobby the Bastard wrote:
Utterly predictable by a 28 day cycle that just happens to match the moon's?


The 28 day cycle has little to do with tides, that's just the relative position of Moon and Sun. The Moon does generate tides though and the Sun adds a small amount to those in certain alignments. The point I was making earlier is that the Sun is the glue that holds the solar system together. No Sun, no solar system, no orbits. Smile
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stinkwheel
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PostPosted: 19:39 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Islander wrote:

A lot of natural processes are quite dependent on tectonics though - you gave an example earlier of the black smokers at divergent plate boundaries so without tectonics you wouldn't have those.


A lot of the really primitive bugs around black smokers use ion gradients as an energy source.

Mrs stinkwheel actually accused me of being an insufferable smartarse when we were watching one of Brian Coxs documentaries. He asked "How do we define life?" and I said, "A proton gradient across a semi-permeable membrane.". This turned out to be the correct answer. Very Happy

Pretty much all living things use this to power themselves. They create them in differing ways but a proton gradient is effectively your battery. Perhaps that's worth a closer look? Here's us powering everything with electron potentials.
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Islander
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PostPosted: 20:02 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
stinkwheel wrote:
Islander wrote:

A lot of natural processes are quite dependent on tectonics though - you gave an example earlier of the black smokers at divergent plate boundaries so without tectonics you wouldn't have those.


A lot of the really primitive bugs around black smokers use ion gradients as an energy source.

Mrs stinkwheel actually accused me of being an insufferable smartarse when we were watching one of Brian Coxs documentaries. He asked "How do we define life?" and I said, "A proton gradient across a semi-permeable membrane.". This turned out to be the correct answer. Very Happy

Pretty much all living things use this to power themselves. They create them in differing ways but a proton gradient is effectively your battery. Perhaps that's worth a closer look? Here's us powering everything with electron potentials.


IIRC the basic life around black smokers is dependent on sulfur compounds for energy - mostly archaea. There's an interesting food chain up from there with huge electrochemical potential.

There have been some interesting experiments on proton batteries using hydrogen stored in atomic rather than molecular form and activated carbon electrodes. The experimental systems have a very high reversibility. This could become the fuel cell technology that really unlocks electric vehicles with fast refuel comparable with ICE refuelling. Proton batteries are a fascinating development.

I don't think we'll ever move entirely away from electron flow though.
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Robby
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PostPosted: 20:11 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:

If you had a billion quid though and could either invest in wind, tide or solar I think I'd always pick solar as that's at least something already happening all around us every day.


If you want the best ROI, it's wind. That's why a lot more money goes into wind farms than solar farms in the UK and anywhere else with a coastline.

Solar is massively variable based on the season. The last few days I've been making 4x what I was in winter.

Tidal is a nice idea, but bloody expensive. Solidly anchored things in the sea, with moving parts. That said, it would be interesting to see how it could compare with the cost of nuclear for baseload.
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 20:15 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Tidal based on tidal lagoons would basically just be costal erosion measures In a lot of places.
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stinkwheel
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PostPosted: 20:32 - 09 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nobby the Bastard wrote:
Tidal based on tidal lagoons would basically just be costal erosion measures In a lot of places.


This, I don't know why we fuck about anchoring floaty things to the sea bed and building articulated snakes. Anyone who has seen them draining down a tidal lock or dry dock can surely see the simplicity of sticking a turbine on the end of that volume of water? It's understood technology too, we've been generating electricity using a head of water pressure for well over a century.

If you incorporated a salt marsh/mangrove area, that floods at one point and drains slowly via another like a river, you'd have a sustained release with built in ecosystem and carbon-sink too.
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Lord Percy
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PostPosted: 06:36 - 12 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Islander wrote:
No Sun, no solar system, no orbits. Smile


No solar orbits.

If the sun pinged out of existence, the moon would continue to orbit the sun.


Quote:
If you were going for a certainty then tidal would be the best be


Agreed.

The only energy this uses is the energy of earth's rotation, for which there is billions of years available.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 17:00 - 12 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
If tidal and wind power are so obvious to exploit how come nothing in nature manages it. I suppose the question is: can anything in nature convert kinetic energy into chemical energy?

With regards to proton transfer across a semi-permeable membrane* is that more or less efficient than electron transfer across a liquid electrolyte?

*I'll see if I can work that one into a conversation... still getting a lot of mileage out of "supererogatory"
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 17:03 - 12 Apr 2023    Post subject: Reply with quote
Nature tends to go about it the other way round, chemical into kinetic as it gets the chemical by using solar.
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