Forum Topic

Energy conservation

While trolling through the BBC website I came across a couple of interesting articles about energy. Made me idly speculate as to the true magnitude of the necessity for energy conservation.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7972865.stm  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7938001.stmIn twenty years time could we be driving cheaper electric cars that recharge in minuets? The dream of the fifties, free electricity?Probably not, but is there a energy revolution just round the corner?

Peter Wright ● 6392d5 Comments

I guess there will have to be an energy revolution,we're running out of everything.  I liked the laser system,hope it works.  It seems very similar to a British(well we got it working!) WW11 invention,the cavity magnetron. As far as I can tell it does for laser light what the CM did for radio waves. Ealing connection...Ex Ealing genius Alan Blumlein worked on it,along with lots of other things. (Wiki)  I suppose the whole system can be likened to a microwave oven (which uses a magnetron),but using laser light and having a different target,i.e. not frozen peas. Nice trick if it works.  The fast charge battery probably wont save much energy, only the nervous energy of the impatient phone charging  person. We can only get out of a battery what we put in,this one just does it quicker. That has the drawback that you need much thicker cables to handle the much higher current(esp.car batteries) and we're nearly all out of copper,25-40 years estimated supply left.

Tony Wood ● 6392d

Could use aluminium to some degree or some alloy yet to be developed.http://www.interstates.com/Resources/Energy_Savings/aluminumvscopper.html

Peter Wright ● 6392d

Yes Peter alluminium/alloy is the way it will go but not in all applications,it's not too good at low voltage high current,RF or high mechanical stress applications,no doubt they'll solve some of those problems soon.I've just taken delivery of some RF cable that used to be solid copper,but this is aluminium with a copper plating,works fine. Where there's a will and all that.

Tony Wood ● 6392d

Many years ago I was a student of mining & metallurgy at The Royal School of Mines.  The scale of the global reserves of base and other metals was a matter of some concern - not much point in becoming a miner if all the mines would run out soon.  At that time, figures of twenty-five years reserves for copper and oil were being bandied about.  As was pointed out then (and I believe still holds true), the global reserves are not fixed.  As supplies appear to run down, the price will go up (basic economics!).  And as the price goes up, it becomes viable to extract metal from sources more difficult and more expensive to exploit.Forty years on - we've not run out yet.Oh, and I left the mining business after about 6 years - didn't like the work even though the mines were going strong!

Robin Hall ● 6392d

Robin  Surely copper is an element and as such in finite supply?  It's true that there may be sporadic small deposits scattered around,but hasn't the bulk of it already been mined? I doubt we'll be able to synthesize it,the only man made elements so far all seem to be spin offs from nuclear reactions and as such fairly hot.  I think when we start talking about sucking oil out of Canadian shale,that the writing is on the wall. A friend of mine is a geologist specializing in petrochemicals,a few years back I asked him the situation. His reply "We're stuffed..the Americans know were it all is and there's not much left".   That's sort of backed up by the news this week that the Russians are militarizing their land claims in the polar regions. 

Tony Wood ● 6391d