There is no "for now" regarding the statement Steve made.
Even if there isn't enough to go around (your argument) for everyone, this doesn't change the fact that whatever amount there is remains clean burning, environmentally friendly and renewable.
One might even come to believe that if there was a demand for veggie oil and biodiesel, that someone might actually find a way to supply that demand.
Anthony
On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 05:19:33 GMT, Logan Shaw
I got pretty seriously interested in mailorder/internet BBQ sales a few years ago. I packaged up some meat with little thermal data loggers (Onset Hobo) in the middle and sent it to friends around the country using various refrigeration methods. I got them to send the dataloggers back to me. I didn't like the data I collected. I could make it with 2nd day air in the winter but not in the summer, at least not with the margin I wanted to see to accommodate a package sitting in a receiving department or on someone's porch half a day.
The one thing I didn't test which is on the agenda is a combination of brine ice packs and foamed-in-place insulation. I have the equipment to make the ice packs so that's not a problem. I need to a) gain access to FIP equipment and b) a round tuit. A) is now not a problem but b) is....
I recently got some literature from 3M about a new time-at-temperature disposable tattletail that is designed to degrade and tattle at about the same rate as food does. That might be the margin of safety I need if it works. I could label the box for the customer to toss the product and get credit if the tattletail has fired when he opens it.
Maybe I'm a little paranoid but knock on wood, in 10 years I've yet to make anyone sick. I like it that way.
John
I can only hope that the casual reader gets it.
They won't. There isn't enough. 'They' only see it from there own little world of reality.
six billion people demand.
There Ain't' no more....
What is so hard to understand here??????
Do you have kids?
Best, Dan.
Duane Bozarth wrote
Yes, necessarily with the MOST EFFICIENT power stations in the sense I was using the word efficient.
And that is the most efficient approach, transporting the electricity, not the coal.
Using MV transmission lines is very efficient indeed, the only real downside is that they dont look that great.
Thats is talking about a different efficiency. I was clearly talking about the efficiency of moving the coal to the power station or moving the electricity from the power station. Different animal entirely.
Not with the efficiency I was clearly talking about.
Larry Caldwell wrote
Nothing. Its a subthread discussing the claim that the price of electricity will be increasing with the cost of oil. Of course it wont because very little electricity in the first world comes from oil anymore. It comes from coal and even when some diesel is used in the coal mining, its a very small part of the total energy that is turned into electricity.
Sure, and makes a lot more sense than say the terminal stupidity of burning corn for heating.
It should be feasible to design a decent system for burning it now.
Dunno if that is available commercially tho.
Larry Caldwell wrote
Not in this subthread.
Nope, I was clearly commenting on the claim that the cost of electricity would track the cost of oil. That is just plain wrong.
You didnt notice that the subthread had diverged.
Never said a word about complete unison.
There was NO correlated effect on the price of natural gas or steaming coal in the early 80s when the price of crude oil and gasoline spiked dramatically.
Bullshit aint one of yours.
Nope, natural gas and coal didnt 'track' in the early 80s, didnt even spike at all then.
Its still completely irrelevant, its never priced in $A.
He clearly doesnt have a clue about any of the basics.
Wrong again.
The steaming coal contracts have NOTHING to do with the price of oil at all.
Its a tiny part of the energy being transported in those trains.
Dont need to, I have considerable money invested in those.
Your suspicious are completely irrelevant.
Different situation entirely to your claim that the stockpiles would run down due to the coal mines closing due to their costs increasing.
Nope.
And by then Katrina wont be having any effect, you watch.
Nope.
There doesnt need to be.
You clearly dont.
That the cost of the diesel is a tiny part of the value of the energy on that train.
The effect will clearly only be marginal. No one said that there will be no effect, just that it wont have much if any measurable effect on the PRICE OF THE ELECTRICITY.
It certainly wont track the price of oil.
Corse it does.
Even you should have noticed the difference between US and China living standards.
The reality is that americans can afford the higher cost of gasoline, it mostly just produces lots of bitching and moaning and has very little impact at all on gasoline consumption.
They dont have the same immense wealth that allows more choices.
Duane Bozarth wrote
Didnt need to when the post before that was clearly discussing what effect the price of oil would have on the price of electricity.
That is what context is about. I dont propose to write every single sentence so that it covers all the bases in that one sentence, that makes it much too hard to read.
Your problem, try reading for comprehension instead of nit picking particular sentences.
Corse there is, tho that can often just be historical reasons, ones that made sense when the cost of oil was low, and dont anymore when it makes a lot more sense to site coal fired power stations next to the coal mine and transport the electricity instead of the coal.
....
It isn't so "clear" when there's three miles of beltline directly into the plant that has coal already on it that is far substandard...
Utah Huntington initially put the analyzer on site -- when ash content exceeded the setpoint, an alarm was raised and a signal was run also back up the mountain to the mine. It wasn't long before they learned to run up to the limit and exceed it because by the time the alarm came they had just gotten rid of the entire volume of product on the belt--something over three miles.
It took two years and going all the way to the Chairman of the overall company to get the muscle to move the analyzer to the other end of the belt. Politics being what it is, the mine managed somehow to reverse the decision and last I knew the analyzer was back at the plant and the problem still existed (and I suppose it probably still does).
The result is that the plant doesn't pay much in transportation costs, but pays heavily in reduced thermal efficiency and excess maintenance costs on pulverizers, etc. Perhaps the population of plants we saw were the "odd men out" so to speak, but every one of them had similar institutional problems regarding the captive customer that were so entrenched that the mines didn't perform well at all. Those plant managers would have gladly bought contract coal and had overall better plant economics by avoiding the thermal derating and excess maintenance and minimizing forced outage time.
Actually, now that I'm thinking about the various plants, there was one group that didn't quite fit the mold...SaskPower which was lignite--they hauled lignite w/ scrapers from the surface mine and one analyzer was at the storage site pit. A sampling of loads were dumped there and analyzed that fed back to the mine as a crude "near-real-time" operations monitor. The problem there was that the lignite ash was mostly a clay-ish material that was much more difficult to monitor than typical bituminous coals where the ash is mostly rock and other contaminants introduced during mining (intrinsic ash is usually not the problem, iow).
Anyway, just commenting that from what I saw from working to keep the analyzers going for the utilities, the mine-mouth plants had their own operational problems that traded one problem for another--good site management over both the mine and the plant simultaneously would have resolved most of these issues, granted. But for some reason, I never saw an organization which actually operated that way.
Do that and the same people who buy tools at big box stores and take them back after doing their project will also be eating free BBQ...
What did you use for a shipping container? Obviously, the thicker the better. FIP is not the best isnulating material. I'd use a moded foam box. The seafood industry and meat industry aas well as phareceuticals use them all the time.
Here in the states, three major factors are considered:
1) You have to have a market. Despite Rod Speed's assertions about the ease of moving electricity, putting in new transmission lines is *not* a short-term project. And many sections of the grid are not really prepared for just dumping in another 1000 MW. Especially out west where the population centers are spread out and the network of transmission lines is not as finely meshed. While Rod may be thinking of his experiences in the UK (or some other country), building a number of transmission lines needed to carry literally several GW of power from several coal fields for 1000 miles or more would be *very* expensive (and have reliability issues). Just establishing the right-of-ways over already developed areas is a long and expensive process. 2) You have to have a method of cooling. Depending on the plant design, for every MW of electricity your plant generates, you have to dissipate between 1.5 to 4 MW of heat. Large bodies of water is one choice, but there are options. But even those large atmospheric cooling towers you see require a fair amount of water. A large plant using a natural draft evaporating cooling tower might need on the order of 12,000 gallons *per minute*. It's kind of hard to find that amount of water in the hi-western deserts of the US. 3) You have to have a fuel source. While it is expensive to transport 'unit trains' of coal, it is often done. VPCo (Virginia Power Company) used to haul 100 car coal trains from the West Va and Pa coal fields down to the eastern seaboard all the time. The right-of-way for many rail lines is already established in the 1800's.In the case of strip mining, the coal face is constantly moving so a plant that is 'near' the mine when you build it, will be quite a long ways away in
15 years. Yet you build a plant for 40+ operating life, so you end up having to transport the coal anyway. Roads, equipment, and rail is cheaper to update every few years than multi-mile conveyors.daestrom
Duane Bozarth wrote4
And anyone with a clue considers the context in which words are used and doesnt assume that it was the efficiency in that sense that was being discussed.
Your problem.
Sure, but those are clearly a lot less important than the intrinsic inefficiency of having to cart the coal considerable distances from the mine to the power plant, rather than moving the electrical power over the distance instead.
Duane Bozarth wrote
Dont believe it. And it certainly didnt happen like that here.
Corse its relevant to the claim that the current hike in the price of oil would produce a hike in the price of electricity.
It wont, you watch.
Awesome! If you ever figure out how to ship BBQ to western Canada, let me know! And when I get to Cleveland, I'll be sure to come to dinner.
Do you sell t-shirts? My fave is from "Charlie & Jake's" in Melbourne Florida. Across the back is their phone number...
777-PORK;-)
Obviously I gave the commercially available shipping containers a try first. Fine for overnight. Not fine for 2+ day delivery. Other things I've tested include thick packaging in styro peanuts (one of the best), multiple layers of rigid styro foam (decent), shredded newspaper (fair), even fiberglass batting (fair).
FIP isn't all the same. FIP made specifically for casting insulation in place is available with disposable metering units. I used one of those kits when I built my walk-in freezer. My freezer performs better than the industry standard 4" thick foam panels on a watts consumed per sq ft of external surface area so I think this has promise.
I did do a test with the Great Foam stuff that you can buy at the Hardware store. I heat sealed about 2 lbs of water in a poly bag and the Hobo in another, froze both to -20F and foamed them in place inside a 24" cube cardboard container using Great Stuff. I didn't ship this one but instead left it in my catering truck for two days which should approximate 2nd day service. The numbers there looked good but of course, buying the stuff at retail, the foam was far too expensive to use in production.
I have some other ideas to try, some of which might be patentable so I need to test and investigate the patent before I discuss them. One thing I want to try is packing the stuff, then letting it cold soak in my -20F walk-in for a day to thoroughly chill the bulk of the insulation.
This thread is spurring my interest again. There may be John G's bbq on the web yet :-)
John
Sure, there are always some scumbags to deal with but in the 10 years I've been in business, I have to say that they've been very few and far between. That same type of person also goes to restaurants and tries to get free food by complaining after the meal is finished. I've had only a little of that. I bend over backwards to please but if the person has finished the meal, cleaned his (usually a man) plate and then complains, unless he's a regular, he has to go away unfulfilled.
On a relates subject, I get fewer than 5 bad checks a year. The people who DO write me bad checks know they're doing so and usually have warrants out all over town. With no more bad checks than that, I don't ask for ID or otherwise hassle my customers. If I get one, I send out a postcard as notice and then take out a warrant to give 'em a little surprise the next time they're stopped for speeding :-) Otherwise I don't worry about it.
I have a theory that this kind of problem hinges on how you treat customers. I treat mine like family. I think that goes a long way toward avoiding all sorts of problems.
John
If the price of crude goes up to $200 a barrel, the price of ehtanol will also shoot up, and so will the price of vegetable oil. The result will be that the price of other farm products will also increase. More expensive food for the West, famine for Asia.
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