Technology based on dense fluid said to open up 'massive opportunities' in mountain-light English countryside and around the world
  • echo64@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    1 year ago

    I’m not gonna jump on board with this one immediately, there’s a few things about it that aren’t wowwing me.

    1. R-19 is their magical ‘denser than water’ fluid. They don’t have to be so secretive and if they are going to be secretive then I’m gonna assume it’s not good for us.
    2. it’s only really so that you can get the same amount of power from half the height. they aren’t selling it as “store twice as much energy”, but rather “use in locations that have half as much height”. The thing is that the UK has used this kind of power for decades, there are old coal mines and natural cave formations that have large water flows. the water is pumped to the top when you have an excess, and dropped to power during demand. This system seems far better in general, even without the mysterious R-19 fluid. We don’t /not/ have height differences in the UK, we have lots.
    • Bernie Ecclestoned@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago
      1. It’s Intellectual Property. Investors like IP so it can be licensed for royalties and bumps up the balance sheet. From their website

      "RheEnergise said it invented the new high-density fluid, known as R-19. Chief executive Stephen Crosher told Professional Engineering that the liquid is a fine-milled suspended solid in water, with low viscosity and low abrasion characteristics. The base material is used in oral medication applications, in a similar way that chalk is used as a bulking agent for pills and tablets. He said the raw materials are common and available, including in the UK, and the fluid could either be manufactured on-site or at a depot. "

      1. Hydro is very geographically restricted, halving the height makes it less so.

      I like the idea of using old coal mines, there’s been pilot projects in Germany and Australia but I’ve never seen them amount to anything

      • roguetrick@kbin.social
        9·
        1 year ago

        The base material is used in oral medication applications

        Calcium carbonate. The density for a calcium carbonate suspension in water is right on the money for what they’ve stated. They’re being so evasive because they haven’t patened it and likely can’t. They’re treating it like a trade secret because they can’t make it into IP.

        Edit: yep, they use it in oil drilling, so they can’t patent it https://glossary.slb.com/en/terms/c/calcium_carbonate

  • Overzeetop@kbin.social
    201·
    1 year ago

    This is logically efficient from a technical standpoint, but from a practical perspective is a terrible idea. You’re only getting 2-2.5x th energy storage out of the process, but in return you’re effectively requiring that the entire fluid system be isolated from the environment. Toxicity aside, you can’t do anything with the fluid outside of the system. It’s probably not something you want local fauna drinking, nor do you want even the slightest chance of this leaking into the local aquifers. I presume that, if it’s not fully isolated, the fluid mix balance would have to be adjusted to offset evaporation of the water. And if the plant turns out not to be as great at you hoped hat do you do with the fluid?

    Some numbers - a quick google says “According to Ofgem, the typical household in Britain uses approximately 2,900 kWh of electricity annually.” I’m going to round that up to 8kWh/day. For a small village of, say, 1250 homes and a three day storage capacity, that’s 30MWh. 1MJ (MWs) is 1000kg (one metric ton) stored at 100m - the upper end of this project. Since 3600 seconds per hour x 1MWs = 1 MWh, and we want 30, that’s 1MT x 3600 x 30 = 108,000 Metric Tons of this high density liquid needed for a small project to put a 3 power day buffer in place for a town of 1250 houses. WTF are you going to do with 108,000 metric tons of high-density fluid if you decide is isn’t working? Your reservoir would only need to be 25% bigger (wider, longer, and deeper/taller) to just do the whole thing with water and you wouldn’t need to figure out how to get 3500 full size tanker trucks to transport it all away somewhere for a different project for for de-slurry processing.

    • roguetrick@kbin.social
      7·
      1 year ago

      If the fluid is what I’m thinking it is (calcium carbonate in water with a stabilizer), fluid loss would just be water loss and they wouldn’t go to great pains to isolate it. They’d just add more water, since most of the weight they’re pumping is the calcium carbonate.

    • InvertedParallax@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I mean, we actually could use that damn water, for things, it’s a perfect reservoir for drinking and/or irrigation.

      Who in their right mind looked at this and said “You know, mercury has a higher specific gravity than water, it might even work better!!”

      • JoBo@feddit.ukEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        It’s 2.5x heavier than water so can produce 2.5x the power for any given volume.

        We have a lot of hydroelectric. But we don’t have the mountains to build much of it.

        • InvertedParallax@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Again, we can use the water for things, and water is something we can get more of one way or another.

          A 2.5x multiplier doesn’t seem as worth it to me, especially when we can do stuff like add hydrothermal storage to that number easily, among other things.

          • JoBo@feddit.ukEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            We can get plenty of water. We can’t get plenty of suitable sites.

            • InvertedParallax@lemm.eeEnglish
              21·
              1 year ago

              If the water leaks we can shrug our shoulders.

              If the calcium carbonate slurry leaks we will feel more awkward.

  • calabast@lemm.eeEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Very cool. Do we know what the fluid is? Does it pose any health risks if it somehow leaks into the groundwater?

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    This is very neat. I wonder what the energy loss is, between what’s required to lift the water and what’s gained by releasing it. Regardless, eco-friendly high density “batteries” are a great concept.

    • Qualanqui@lemmy.nzEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      If you have the system always running most of the cartage back to the top could be handled by the siphoning effect, like draining a washing machine or siphoning patrol.

      You’d need energy to get it started but after that it should keep siphoning as long as there’s liquid to siphon.

      • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I don’t understand how that would work in this case; if this is true, I think I’d need to see a diagram.

        My understanding is that they use energy to pump the liquid up during times of excess, and release it to generate energy when there’s more demand.