Supermicro is, like, totally harnessing green energy sources to churn out servers, dude Supermicro has said it will start building servers and storage boxes at a new facility that can make 600 racks per month, powered by a 3MW fuel cell system to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It opened the first of five production hubs – Building 21 at its Green Computing Park in San Jose – in March last year, near its 1.5 …
And pumping out more CO2 than simple burning as the Oxygen that would have gone to easily filtered out Sulphurous and Nitrogenous oxides is instead added to the Carbon.
But CHP (combined heat and power, not California Highway Patrol) is definitely a better choice than using grid power so on that front it is a more efficient use of energy.
And pumping out more CO2 than simple burning as the Oxygen that would have gone to easily filtered out Sulphurous and Nitrogenous oxides is instead added to the Carbon.
Nope. In every CH4 molecule (methane) there's only one carbon atom, which can only bind two oxygen atoms. There's no way that excess O2 (which is present in the air used for combustion anyway) can suddenly cause more CO2 to be produced because that would require more C, thus more CH4. And with the fuel cell tech keeping SOx and NOx out of the reaction you don't have to scrub them from the exhaust, ergo, better in that respect.
But natural gas is not pure CH4 it's loaded with all manner of impurities and other fossil feedstuffs such as coal or oil are even more so. CHP while being overall a more efficient process tends to generate less power per unit of fuel so the amount of CO2 per KwH will be slightly (almost insignificantly) higher.
For combustion in a fuel cell the natural gas needs to be cleaned of the impurities first if you don't want to trash the catalysts in record time.
But natural gas is not pure CH4 it's loaded with all manner of impurities and other fossil feedstuffs such as coal or oil are even more so. CHP while being overall a more efficient process tends to generate less power per unit of fuel so the amount of CO2 per KwH will be slightly (almost insignificantly) higher.
For combustion in a fuel cell the natural gas needs to be cleaned of the impurities first if you don't want to trash the catalysts in record time.
Make your mind up, is it "loaded with all manner of impurities" or "cleaned of the impurities first"?
Make your mind up, is it "loaded with all manner of impurities" or "cleaned of the impurities first"?
I think we're at cross-purposes here, in a conventional combustion plant the impurities are burnt along with the fuel, the N & S oxides may be scrubbed or vented, for fuel cells they must be removed before "combustion" .
I was comparing the full fuel cycle for both sorts of generation and a fuel cell of the type they are probably using will generate slightly more CO2 per kWH, admittedly not a hugely significant amount but it's there none the less.
But CHP (combined heat and power, not California Highway Patrol) is definitely a better choice than using grid power so on that front it is a more efficient use of energy.
Only if the heat is productively used. The surplus heat is fairly low grade, so unlikely to be much use for most industrial processes other than as warm wash water. And I'm not sure there's much heat demand in San Jose.
My guess is that by using fuel cells they either avoid distribution reinforcement charges (tend to be very high), avoid taxes or reap subsidies, and the waste heat is used to generate cooling through an absorption chiller, instead of conventional screw-compressor chill units, but it is really inefficient - COP of 1.2, for those that care about such things.
Not green as in "not using fossil fuels".
Quite.
This is bad news indeed, previously "Clean" and "renewable" meant pretty much the same thing, or at least both were in alignment.
The benefit of this is that the threat of Global Warming encouraged people to conserve energy. This had the side benefit of preserving rapidly diminshing fossil fuel , and hence the end of the world.
If they've found a way to use up all the natural gas "Cleanly" then the above wont apply and we'll start pissing it away like theres no tomorrow.
Then theyll probably find a way to convert oil & coal to gas .... or straight to electricity in the same fashion.
"Fossil fuels are not "rapidly diminishing".
Learn the difference between reserve and resource and stop showing your eco-ignorance."
I've read this:
The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Society
Not to mention half a dozen other books on the subject and many documentaries. Have you?
I also know the first law of thermodynamics and understand why that is an issue regarding oil reserves.
You may be correct however in that I'm not sure what you're getting at with the two unrelated words reserve and resource.
Resource = the oil
reserve = how much is left ?
do i win a cookie?
Then theyll probably find a way to convert oil & coal to gas
Some 45-odd years ago I remember going with my grandad to get coke (for heating) from the gasworks. It was the waste product after they'd turned coal into town gas for the gas mains in the pre-natural gas days. Filthy, smelly stuff as I recall. They have to add a smell to natural gas so it can be detected, no such problem with coal gas :)
Ah the natural gas conversion. That was help start me down the electronics path. The fitters doing the conversions had lots of cable and battery holders they were scrapping off, every lad (and it was lads) in the street ended up with boxes of kit which we used to cobble up all sorts of circuits. The shocker circuits using some of the old transformers were fun...
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