Kraaken combines ocean thermal generation, AI computing, freshwater production and storm mobility in one offshore platform. The engineering question is whether all of those physical flows and interfaces can reconcile in the same 100 MW system.
A floating data centre that generates its own electricity from the ocean, cools itself with seawater, produces drinking water for a coastal community and can sail away when a hurricane approaches is almost tailor-made for the current AI data center hype bubble. Optimal Transit’s Kraaken concept is ambitious even by … [continued]
Ireland’s National Heat Study distinguished useful fabric improvements from extensive renovation and found that deep retrofit should not automatically delay replacement of fossil heating.
For several years I have been arguing that “fabric first” becomes a trap when a sensible building-efficiency principle is turned into a universal sequencing rule. Insulation, draught-proofing, ventilation and building repair can all be valuable, sometimes very valuable, but that does not establish that every household should complete extensive renovation … [continued]
HyFlux’s superconducting motor could substantially improve propulsion power density, but its commercial value still depends on the aircraft, cryogenic fuel system and airport infrastructure around it.
HyFlux has an unusually interesting hydrogen-aviation proposition because the technology at its centre appears somewhat credible, if incredibly difficult to engineer and maintain. The UK company wants to exploit the extreme cold of liquid hydrogen already carried aboard a future hydrogen aircraft to cool a fully superconducting electric motor. Superconductivity … [continued]
OTEC can turn tropical ocean heat into electricity, but the small temperature difference requires enormous seawater flows and deep-water infrastructure.
Ocean thermal energy conversion has an appealing proposition. Tropical oceans can have surface water around 25°C while water roughly a kilometre down is near 4°C to 5°C. Put a heat engine between the two reservoirs, use the warm water to vaporize a working fluid, run it through a turbine, condense … [continued]
Reach stackers look like difficult battery applications, but their short-distance, high-power duty cycle and natural charging opportunities increasingly favour electrification.
A reach stacker looks like exactly the sort of machine batteries should struggle with. Large models can weigh more than 70 tonnes before picking anything up, then lift loaded shipping containers weighing another 40 tonnes or more several rows deep and several containers high. They work in busy freight terminals … [continued]
Norway found a real remote-access risk in a connected Yutong bus, but its older European comparison could not establish that the risk was uniquely Chinese.
When Norwegian transit authority Ruter put a Chinese Yutong electric bus through cybersecurity testing inside an isolated mine, the investigation started with two very different concerns. One was geopolitical: could the bus act as a visual-surveillance platform near sensitive facilities such as Lutvann, home to Norway’s intelligence service? The other … [continued]
Peak oil, low EROI and peak cheap oil gave way to minerals and other constraints, while Nate Hagens’ broader expectation of approaching contraction remained remarkably durable.
Nate Hagens has spent most of his intellectual career inside a forecasting tradition that expected physical resource constraints to force industrial societies into contraction. He was a major contributor to The Oil Drum and eventually its managing editor, while the nonprofit that now produces The Great Simplification grew directly from … [continued]
Leipzig’s 16 hydrogen refuse trucks were reportedly available for deployment only 45.6% of the time after two years in service.
Garbage collection is not a technology demonstration. Municipalities need trucks that leave the depot every working morning, finish predictable routes, operate compactors through hundreds of stops and come back ready to do it again. That is why refuse collection has become such a useful test of competing zero-emission drivetrains. Battery-electric … [continued]
Ports need more investment for bigger ships, resilience and decarbonization just as some of the bulk cargoes that funded them begin to decline.
Ports are being asked to make infrastructure decisions that will last thirty, forty or fifty years while several of the assumptions that paid for their existing infrastructure are changing at the same time. Ships are getting larger, requiring deeper channels, larger cranes and more capable tug fleets. Climate disruption is … [continued]
OceanX survived severe Yagi wind and waves with little reported nacelle inclination, but its stayed, weather-vaning architecture is the more interesting result.
OceanX gave me two immediate reasons to be skeptical. It puts two turbines on one floating platform, and it puts the rotors downwind of their supports rather than in front of them. I had looked at both ideas years ago and found good reasons why the wind industry had largely … [continued]
