The gentleness of the slope might have some importance for engineering - but agreed, none regarding capacity. In the diagram. It is difficult to discern any difference in slope.
And the huge problem that the storage and receiving "tanks" will need to change level pretty dramatically. Are they going to be open air? Or covered? How will they manage dilution by rain, if open? They are hardly going to count as amenities for fishing, sailing, swimming, etc.
Sounds about right. You could imagine a larger volume - for example a warehouse 100m x 50m x 5m, but that's only a factor of 5.
I wonder how it compares with flow batteries? You need a different kind of TechnoGloop (TM), but the batteries don't need a hillside. So you could have two adjacent tanks, or one tank with some kind of diaphragm to keep the charged and uncharged gloop separate. And you could build that anywhere you wanted, at any scale.
(you could even combine the two techniques...)
Theo
There must be a way to use that energy to make some hydrocarbon (methane ?) and then transport that when needed ?
Yes, but energy, and notably big oil controls the political scene in the USA. Engineers only get a look in for stuff like Rockets and weapons.
Previous calcs showed 12.5E6 kg of this heavy liquid for 5000 m^3. If that were replaced by concrete blocks at 670 kJ/kg to manufacture, then that would equate to 342 of 200m trips worth of energy just to make the concrete.
The energy needed to make concrete is about the same as the PE of that concrete at a height of 67 km.
OK belay the concrete and use rocks from the cons doing hard labour in chokey. The Yanks have 1000000 of them banged up so no shortage there.
Doesn't fit in wires though ...
No. But it is stored energy that's relatively easy to transport and use.
I have no idea of the chemistry involved. But we start with:
Carbon+hydrogen+energy-> [x]-ane.
You will lose some energy, obviously. But Carbon in, Carbon out should make it fairly planet friendly ?
I wonder if we'd be wasting time here if we'd started that 25 years ago.
Perhaps the York Moors could be re-located to the valleys? All you need are suitable railway lines with re-generating engines, a lot of trucks and a flock of TNPs art students to load the wagons.
A money making spin off could be selling the stone for lowland garden rockeries.
>
I liked the way their "diagram" shows two plants with the same capacity, where the water one has about four times the volume and three times the height. So they would need to be using mercury or molten lead to achieve that.
13.6 iirc. A bit pricy and one or two environmental issues too.
A million of them will be able to give you about 100 MW. For a third of the time, just like windmills.
Trivial to do the sums, all the dimensions for Dinorwic are in the public domain, just add their magic density factor.
Current annual production, 4000 tonnes or 300 cubic metres.
It doesn't generate energy, it just stores it.
Reading the Grauniad - Mud. "A dense mineral rich suspension".
Andy
There's this one
The truck never needs to be charged, and in fact at night, it needs to empty the battery out so there is room for charging it via regeneration, the next day. The truck drives uphill empty, and that takes less energy than is regeneratively generated by driving downhill with a full load in the back. All thanks to electric motors that function as motors or as generators.
Paul
'Mineral rich suspensions' settle out unless there are some additional chemicals in there to hold the mineral in suspension. Most white paints these days are 'mineral rich suspensions', the minerals being whiting (chalk) or titanium dioxide. They are held in suspension because the paint has additives that make it thixotropic, i.e. it thickens up as it stands, to form a 'gel' with a structure, which stops the particles settling. The structure or gel is broken down by agitating or stirring, and all non-drip paints are of this form, as are drilling muds.
But I can't see how that will work in this case. If the mineral suspension is thixotropic it will thicken up and be more difficult to get moving again. Not only will it thicken in the reservoirs top and bottom, but also in the penstocks. If it's not thixotropic it will settle out, and mineral suspensions that settle usually form very dense hard cakes, difficult to redisperse.
I wonder how many quarrys have that kind of setup where the raw material needs to be transported *down* from the quarry?
I would expect a large proportion to have a more traditional arrangement where rock needs to be hauled out of a big hole in the ground, rather than the transportation of a mountain top down hill!
we started it over 100 years ago.
When we had a lot of *carbon* and not enough gas.
What you meant was CO2 and 2 x H20 in and CH4 and O4 out....
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