Tech | August 07, 2011 | 19 comments

Power hungry: the surprising link between energy and water

source: http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2011/08/power-thirsty

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JanforGore
Power and water are more interconnected than you might think, and that has serious consequences for a changing world, especially the American West.

Energy and water are as intertwined as the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a bottle of Evian. California likes to think of itself as being ahead of the curve. So when the state set out to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, regulators did all the right things - stringent tailpipe standards for cars, tighter codes for buildings, higher renewable energy standards for utilities. Then they took one of the most aggressive energy-saving steps of all.

They started a campaign to save water.

The link between energy and water is not always apparent, but the two are as intertwined as the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a bottle of Evian.

By now, everyone knows you save energy by turning out lights. And you conserve water by taking shorter showers. But it's just as true that saving water may be one of the most effective ways to save energy - and vice versa. "It's a 'buy one, get one free' deal," said Douglas Kenney, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School and the editor of an upcoming book that explores the nexus of water and energy.

In California today, the consumption of water accounts for 20 percent of the state's energy use. Much of that energy goes to heating water, but it takes power to gather, purify and distribute water, especially in places like southern California where water is piped hundreds of miles to supply Los Angeles' sprawling demands.

Nationally, energy production sucks more water from freshwater sources than any other sector except agriculture. It takes water to create the power we use to drive our cars, transport our groceries, and run our toaster ovens. Virtually every source of electricity in a typical American home or manufacturing plant - whether it comes from hydroelectricity, coal, natural gas, nuclear, biofuels, or even concentrated solar -- also requires water. Lots of water.

One reason for this problem is that electricity, as we've chosen to produce it, is pretty wet stuff. That's a growing problem, because in many places, finding water for energy isn't easy - and it's bound to get tougher as energy demands soar and climate change alters hydrological cycles in already arid regions. The energy sector is the fastest-growing water consumer in the United States, according to a January 2011 Congressional Research Service report [pdf].

Nationally, that's a challenge, but regionally it could be a calamity. As the Congressional Research report notes, "much of the growth in the energy sector's water demand is concentrated in regions with already intense competition over water."

Giant plug of concrete

The connection between energy and water - and the precariousness of that link in the western United States - is exemplified in a gigantic plug of concrete stopping the muddy Colorado River above Las Vegas, otherwise known as Hoover Dam. At the ceremony inaugurating the Depression-era public works project in 1935, then-Interior Secretary Harold Ickes noted proudly, "no better understanding of man cooperating with nature can be found anywhere."

Hoover Dam provided the two key ingredients - water and power - that freed the Southwest and southern California to go on a 75-year growth spurt. Lake Mead now supplies water to more than 22 million people, and it produces more than four billion kilowatts of electricity per year.

But Ickes likely never imagined how quickly man's cooperation with nature would disintegrate in the 21st century. In the American West, a burgeoning population created a double-whammy of surging power demands and dwindling freshwater supplies. The Colorado River, lifeblood of seven western states, is already as overdrawn as the federal treasury. Drought conditions during most of the 21st century have forced water managers to plan for a day when the region's vast system of dams and reservoirs no longer have enough water to store. Already, utilities have to scramble to respond on days when everybody in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles wants to crank their air conditioners during the same heat wave.

Sustained drought and insatiable upstream water demand have drained Lake Mead to the point that experts are predicting it may soon be shallow enough to be in deep trouble. Despite near record snowfalls and runoff this year that raised its level from historic lows in January, Lake Mead is still 113 feet below "full pool" - and is filled to less than 50 percent of its capacity.

Three years ago researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography warned Lake Mead has a 50-50 chance of running dry by 2021 and that the reservoir's water level could dip low enough to reduce or stop electricity production as early as 2013. Although this year's run-off probably forestalled this dramatic assertion, utilities around the country have already been forced to reduce or stop electrical production because of water issues. According to a survey done in California's 2009 Water Plan Update [pdf], states from Virginia to Nevada and Texas to North Dakota have all curtailed energy development projects because of water quality or quantity concerns.

Wet stuff

One reason for this problem is that electricity, as we've chosen to produce it, is pretty wet stuff. Plug an appliance into an outlet and you might as well open a faucet as well. Running an average refrigerator all day uses about as much water as a ten-minute shower (without a low-flow showerhead). According to the U.S. Geological Survey, electric power generation accounts for nearly half of the nation's water usage [pdf]; it takes on average 21 gallons of water to produce one kilowatt hour of electricity. In the arid West, those numbers add up. A report by Western Resource Advocates [pdf] notes that "thermoelectric power plants in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah consumed an estimated 292 million gallons of water a day in 2005 - approximately equal to the water consumed by Denver, Phoenix, and Albuquerque, combined."

Pretty much every step of energy production requires water, from mining to refining, processing to generation. Some of this water is "consumed" - evaporated as steam. Some of it is returned to watersheds in altered forms - like water heated during coal-fired electrical production and stored in cooling towers or ponds before being released - at higher temperatures - back into rivers. "Produced" water from coal-bed methane extraction releases underground water with high mineral content into watersheds. Deep drilling for seams of underground gas deposits rely on chemicals used in "fracking fluids," which contaminate water sources when they leak.

Other potential fossil fuel energy sources, like oil shale, require so much water during its production cycle that energy companies in Colorado have stealthily acquired rights to develop hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water, even before they've invented a viable technology to turn that rock into oil. An acre foot of water is 325,851 gallons, or enough to cover an acre of flat farmland with water a foot deep.

That's enough water to escalate the state's already intense water disputes into open warfare. "If oil shale energy does become commercially viable, it will be a huge new water drain," says Dan Luecke, a Colorado-based hydrologist and Western water consultant.


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19 comments // Power hungry: the surprising link between energy and water

  • Wetdog
    • 0
      Wetdog  

    • Methane(natural gas) is clean, abundant and cheap. Methane is also both a fossil fuel, and a biofuel. We can make methane cheaply and easily. Methane is produced whenever we make compost or treat sewage. Methane can be used for anything we need energy for.

      Solar thermal energy(heat) is cheap and easy to collect and store. It is 100% efficient. It is low tech, easy to manufacture, install and maintain.

      Solar thermal heating is ideally suited to make hot water. It takes a LOT of energy to heat water. A large percentage of natural gas use is to heat water. If you install solar thermal heat to heat your water before it enters the water heater---your water heater works just as it always has, coming on and off according to the thermostat settings, but it comes on far less often(if at all) and runs far less time when it does. Since water heaters run 24/7 and you only drive your car intermittently, most people use FAR more energy heating water than they do driving their car.

      If you have a car that can run on CNG(compressed natural gas)---and most CNG vehicles are bi-fuel, they can use either gasoline or CNG at the flip of a switch, you can use methane to drive your car.

      If you install a solar thermal heater along with your water heater, you will displace the use of all or most of the natural gas you were using to heat water.

      If you put the natural gas in your vehicle that you did not use in your water heater(or $$$ if you have an electric heater)----you are driving your car on free solar power.

      You have hot water, AND you are driving your car on free fuel---not even counting the fact that the same amount of energy as natural gas costs about 1/4th as much as that amount of energy would if you bought it as petroleum.

      You'd have to pay to get the conversions done, but depending on how much hot water and driving you do, it could pay for itself very quickly.

      How is that for a deal?

      No batteries required.

    • 10 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Wetdog:

      You could be VASTLY understating the case for methane & gases. Petroleum chews through a lot of energy having to do the collection & distillation... plus if vehicles were running on Swamp Gas there would be a new market for more "swamps" (commercial processing of organic wastes => saving landfills).

      If someone was to run the actual numbers your ideas may hit Jupiter. I just wouldn't know how much $$$-value to put on saved landfill space though. It must be astronomical... because if all the organics was pulled from landfill destinations those landfills would be much easier to recover metals & glass & aluminum.

      Your change could initiate many other changes, all positives. Hmm. I forgot cattle and hog runoff. They would have a market also... instead of being sloughed into the oceans and some into groundwater tables (drinking water).

      No, Wait. Nope. Your ideas are too good. You just joined my engines.

    • 10 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Wetdog:

      If perhaps someone resurrected the old BSA motorcycle opposed-cylinder engine, except they made the cylinders car-size, you could have the equivalent Sales Volume of the Volkswagen Bug. Let's see. Methane wouldn't require as much compression by the returning pistons, right? If that is so then there ya go. The engine would gain all that horsepower formerly used by gasoiline & diesel engines added to the extra HP of the methane.

      Yep. I like it more & more.

      And since most neighborhoods already have the pipes and propane delivery people all in place already THERE YA GO AGAIN => your distribution system's already in place.

    • 10 months ago
  • Wetdog
    • 0
      Wetdog  
    • Gravity_Man:

      -------" Petroleum chews through a lot of energy having to do the collection & distillation..."---

      Methane(both fossil and bio) needs no refining(distillation which uses large amounts of energy). It is scrubbed---impurities removed by a water spray. The water is captive so the toxic components are easy to remove before it is used and the toxins can get into the atmosphere---unlike coal and petroleum which are not gases.

      -------" If someone was to run the actual numbers your ideas may hit Jupiter. I just wouldn't know how much $$$-value to put on saved landfill space though. It must be astronomical... because if all the organics was pulled from landfill destinations those landfills would be much easier to recover metals & glass & aluminum."-------

      Other way around, remove the metals and glass before it goes into the landfill. They can be recycled. What is left over is mostly organic. And we have plastics that can be made biodegradable now too. The methane is removed just the same as drilling into a geologic formation----but you don't have to drill nearly as far by a long shot, and there is no fracking required. The methane is already contained in a central vault formed by the landfill.

      ------" Your change could initiate many other changes, all positives. Hmm. I forgot cattle and hog runoff. They would have a market also... instead of being sloughed into the oceans and some into groundwater tables (drinking water)."--------

      The city of Lunen, Germany last year initiated use of a dedicated biogas system that provides most of their heating and all of their electrical needs, and a significant portion of their vehicle fuel need using methane generated by anaerobic digestion of sewage from livestock farms in the vicinity. The by products remaining after the digestion and methane recovery are clean water and compost that is sold back to the farms for fertilizer. 100% organic soil----you can't get better fertilizer than compost, and it can't run off into streams, lakes and rivers. The water goes into the municipal reservoir.

    • 10 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
  • Gravity_Man
  • Gravity_Man
  • Wetdog
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Wetdog:

      That's good to know but bumping up the compression represents a negative force that has to be overcome. I prefer free-wheeling with no compression therefore no negative => ONLY POSITIVE.

    • 10 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Wetdog:

      THE QUESTION IS where to get the monies to retrofit America with those German Wunderbar Methane Energy Reclamation Systems as you say they have?

      Well, I'm no financial genius here, and certainly never have been, but the Dow Jones & S & P just plunged to the bottom while the Banker's pockets are BULGING WITH BAILOUT & TARP MONIES ... so duh, aren't the bankers positioned to use all their MONEY TO BUY STOCKS WHILE THEY'RE AT THEIR LOWEST?

      I SMELL A MAGIC WAND ABOUT TO BE WAVED.

    • 10 months ago
  • Wetdog
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Wetdog:

      During discovery perhaps it would be found a sweet spot somewhere below the highest compression, and perhaps not, but with using turbochargers they would be raising compression from an outside source instead of dragging on the engine, allowing more positive force vs less negative.

    • 10 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
  • Wetdog
  • Wetdog
    • 0
      Wetdog  
    • Gravity_Man:

      turbochargers draw the energy they use from the force of the exhaust gases passing through the exhaust system. the energy used by the turbocharger would simply be wasted if it were not used to run the turboboost.

      the intake boost can be adjusted using a turbocharger by adjusting the the dump valve, this gives you a variable compression ratio.

    • 10 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Wetdog:

      Well, I was thinking 2-cycles were dirty from partially-burnt gasoline hydrocarbons, so Methane would not be doing that. Methane burns cleaner than gasoline.

      Perhaps someone can resolve the oil burning then. If they could come up with a new lubricant other than motor oil, something slick of course, but something healthy. YES!!! If they could invent a healthy oil that would be exhausted out into our air we would really HAVE SOMETHING THEN.

      Engine heat is the culprit. You need to have methane burn without superheating the engine. Admittedly a tough task... unless you pair up the methane to be powering this new system from M.I.T. => http://current.com/technology/93381758_sunless-solar-cells-could-make-energy-fro... ... because if you lower the amount of methane being burned **PLUS** then also lower the amount of heat then the engine lubricating oil doesn't need to be from Crude Oil [since viscosity isn't being affected nearly as much].

      ALL OF WHICH MEANS:

      #1. THE ENGINE LUBRICATED WITH VEGETABLE OIL.
      #2. SOME VEGETABLE OILS ARE VERY HEALTHY FOR US.

    • 10 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Wetdog:

      My last engine idea from this past May doesn't require any piston lubrication at all, plus has a lot more Power than yours, so strictly speaking I look at your engine as a Lesser Engine. However, yours is using a greenhouse gas we need to be burning off and that gives yours much value.

      If I had my druthers yours would be used for locomotion and mine would power every Home on Planet Earth as it has no exhausted pollutants or heat (worth mentioning). A small one like I have would quite easily drive a Home Generator and the people living there would not be having to mess with any fuel at all.

      It uses water. It's a steamer. But no fuel & no exhaust. No mess. Power for homes doesn't come any cleaner except from solar, and just a week or so ago I nailed a new type of solar, so as it stands right now I have 3 easy ways to power homes, every one on the planet, without any combustion fuels whatsoever.

      You can have the cars man.

    • 10 months ago
  • Wetdog
    • 0
      Wetdog  
    • Gravity_Man:

      We've been running engines on methane for over 90 years. Most European car manufacturers make several models of cars and trucks that use either gasoline or methane at the flip of a switch. Caterpillar makes diesel engines that range of 50 to 1250 hp. that run on several grades of methane from field gas to grid standard and has for almost 60 years.

      Vegetable oil = biodiesel, that is what it is made from.

    • 10 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Wetdog:

      The US blockade against advanced foreign engine technologies has been a very successful campaign. Making an engine that produces healthy-to-humans by-products is a far too advanced idea for the world at this present time. I should have resisted the urge to even type it out.

    • 10 months ago
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