Chicago Generates Twice the Energy for a Third of the Carbon
When generating electricity, roughly two-thirds of the energy is lost. Heat is created as a byproduct to spin turbines and later wastes away in cooling towers. Chicago has committed to produce 1.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2010 with a process call combined heat and power or cogeneration, which finds use for the generated heat. This process can be over 90% efficient.
Excess heat can be used for dehumidification, heating water, and process heat. In an ideal world, the electricity and heating loads for the given application are similar. Hospitals, prisons, paper mills, oil refineries, waste water treatment centers, and even large towns can be good candidates for this technology. Your car can even be an example, with waste heat from the engine being used to warm the interior.
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Case study: Antioch Community High School
Twelve micro-turbines are powered by landfill gas (LFG), producing .36 megawatt hours of electricity and heat for the 250,000 square foot school. This was the first high school in the country to utilize LFG for this purpose and savings are an estimated $100,000 annually in energy costs.
LFG is pumped from an adjacent landfill, which was previously a superfund site. The annual greenhouse gas reduction is equal to removing 3,000 cars from the road.
Case study: Chicago Museum of Science and Industry
Since 1933, the museum has been one of the largest tourist attractions for the city and now has another noteworthy feature. A 1.75 megawatt cogeneration system was recently installed that produces electricity, heat, and dehumidifies the museum.
The dehumidifiers can treat an impressive 10,000 cubic feet per minute and operate approximately 3,380 hours a year. Because the heating season in Chicago is about 7 months of the year, this function provides value to the museum during the cooling months as well.
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Illustration Credit: Graham Murdoch
Wouldn’t it be great if more high schools, museums etc. took the initiative to re-use waste. Just reading another post about how Vermont does not want to use waste and sewage for energy. That’s disappointing.
Dagny McKinley
http://www.onnotextiles.com
organic apparel
All we have to do is look for cooling towers to find a cheap source of heatenergy? Could waste heat from nuclear reactors be used to heat slippery road surfaces in winter? keep green houses warm? heat parking garages? heat buildings? factories? fish farms?
So does this mean that if we just tighten up the existing systems, and engineer the upcoming systems with energy efficiency and thrift in mind we can survive in a world with less oil?
Maybe higher oil prices are our first warning of the very ominous cost of extravagant wasteful ways
Bravo to one of my most favorite cities in the world!
One of the challenges from your idea Uncle B is that many power plants are located outside of heavily populated areas. This is partially to reduce pollution in urban areas and partially because land is more expensive. Piping water from cooling towers long distances would be costly and have large efficiency losses.
I don’t see why complimentary businesses like the ones you mentioned, factories and fish farm for example wouldn’t be good matches if it was planned accordingly. They tend to be in rural areas anyway. Businesses that use heat all year long will get more value out of the heat, making the project more cost effective. It could possibly be a good way to conserve water as well.
Sarah — thanks for this post. I’m actually associated with Recycled Energy Development (recycled-energy.com), a company that recycles waste heat in the manner you’re describing. We’re based just outside Chicago. You’re exactly right in your response to Uncle B: heat doesn’t travel well, which is precisely why we need to install these small power plants (called “combined heat & power” or cogeneration plants) at factories and large institutions across the country. The elephant in the room, though, is that current regulations make it very difficult for energy recycling to take place on a large scale. Utilities receive monopoly protections that are designed to keep out more efficient competitors. Sorry for the plug, but anyone who’s interested in more info can look at our backgrounder here: http://recycled-energy.com/documents/media-kit/backgrounder.pdf Thanks again for this post. The country needs more like them.
Whoops — looks like the hyperlink above is including the period I placed at the end of the sentence. Here’s a better link: http://recycled-energy.com/documents/media-kit/backgrounder.pdf
You raise a really good point about regulations as the last page of the pdf. It sounds like many applications of combined heat and power would be forced to size the system such that all the power is used internally and not sold to the power grid.
I wonder if thinking in upcoming years may change with concern over centralized power generation and the terrorist threat.
Former CIA director James Woolsey has actually made precisely that point: decentralized generation makes power plants less of a target.
In terms of the regs, theoretically, CHP producers should be able to sell to the grid, at least at a low rate. The problem is that the regulations enforcing this are enforced state-by-state — and the folks who run state utility boards are usually former utility execs. And, even if those rules were enforced appropriately utilities still have tons of advantages. So I think we have to think about appropriate places for general deregulation in the energy industry. Deregulation has become a dirty word since Enron messed things up so royally, but it doesn’t follow that utilities should be able to do whatever they want and keep efficient options out. There are constructive ways to make this work.
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