Hi Bryony and Michael, I really love your podcasts as they align almost perfectly with all my hobby-horses (my part two options were 'second-hand car salesman': thermodynamics, power plants, materials and economics). I started doing calculations on thermal storage in rocks or sand a few years ago before I discovered that my conclusions had been 'pre-discovered' by Seimens. With one major difference. I don't believe the hot rocks need to be in a box - thus reducing the cost of thermal batteries massively. I quickly found that sand requires much too high pumping costs and causes problematic pressure differentials. I then found that quartz rich rocks have issues with a a phase change at 573C causing them to possibly crumble to sand with repeated heating and cooling. So the optimal rock is a basic one such as basalt. I then went through a series of simplifications and ended up with a pile of rocks forming the structure of the 'building' with insulation and weatherproofing just laid on top. The issues is that stream raising temperature rocks will expand about 0.005 (50mm over a 10m wide heap) and the force this would generate if confined would crush the contact points to sand (400MPa if solid, less with void ratio but obv higher pressure at contact points) Lots of other issues with buoyancy, convection etc etc but all soluble IMO if the simple heap design is followed. What's needed is for somebody with influence (hint, hint) to get some action started at Drax, say. Spare thermal power station available from September, ideal position to get N Sea curtailed capacity while freeing some of the main north-south wires for Scottish.
@CleaningUpPod I used to listen to your podcast on Google Podcast which has been retired in favour of Google Music. Could you make your episodes available on Google Music? This way it will allow me to listen to the adio only, as before My battery would thank you for this! 😂
Gas is not cheap IN Australia. Domestic gas is expensive. We extract a lot of gas and sell it cheao overseas. We actually have domestic gas shortages forecast. Gas peaker plants cause our electrcity prices to rise. Victoria is a large consumer of gas for domestic heating and plans to phase out gas in homes. I've already gone all electricity and saving a fortune by no longer being connected to gas.
Thanks to Anand Gopal for joining us on this week's episode of Cleaning Up. For more, sign up to our newsletter at cleaninguppod.substack.com
MIn. 32:30: 6$ per MWh corresponds to 0.6 cents/kWh not 6 cents/kWh :)
Amazing interview, thank you.
Excellent
Hi Bryony and Michael, I really love your podcasts as they align almost perfectly with all my hobby-horses (my part two options were 'second-hand car salesman': thermodynamics, power plants, materials and economics). I started doing calculations on thermal storage in rocks or sand a few years ago before I discovered that my conclusions had been 'pre-discovered' by Seimens.
With one major difference. I don't believe the hot rocks need to be in a box - thus reducing the cost of thermal batteries massively.
I quickly found that sand requires much too high pumping costs and causes problematic pressure differentials. I then found that quartz rich rocks have issues with a a phase change at 573C causing them to possibly crumble to sand with repeated heating and cooling. So the optimal rock is a basic one such as basalt.
I then went through a series of simplifications and ended up with a pile of rocks forming the structure of the 'building' with insulation and weatherproofing just laid on top. The issues is that stream raising temperature rocks will expand about 0.005 (50mm over a 10m wide heap) and the force this would generate if confined would crush the contact points to sand (400MPa if solid, less with void ratio but obv higher pressure at contact points) Lots of other issues with buoyancy, convection etc etc but all soluble IMO if the simple heap design is followed.
What's needed is for somebody with influence (hint, hint) to get some action started at Drax, say. Spare thermal power station available from September, ideal position to get N Sea curtailed capacity while freeing some of the main north-south wires for Scottish.
@CleaningUpPod I used to listen to your podcast on Google Podcast which has been retired in favour of Google Music. Could you make your episodes available on Google Music? This way it will allow me to listen to the adio only, as before My battery would thank you for this! 😂
Hello, we'll look into this and hopefully get it up and running on google music ASAP. Thanks for letting us know
Whenever I hear the word "thermal" I expect to hear it followed by the word "runaway".
For me it's "underwear".
Gas is not cheap IN Australia. Domestic gas is expensive. We extract a lot of gas and sell it cheao overseas. We actually have domestic gas shortages forecast. Gas peaker plants cause our electrcity prices to rise. Victoria is a large consumer of gas for domestic heating and plans to phase out gas in homes. I've already gone all electricity and saving a fortune by no longer being connected to gas.
Just the first 60 seconds of introduction was a litany of fabrications and nonsense.
Please elaborate. I didn't hear much in the first minute that was noteworthy, or was even meant to be.
@@ronaldgarrison8478 Of course he won't elaborate because he's a fossil fuel apologist shill. Probably a stupid Trump voter too, with rocks for brains