Wet Clothes

[Chetlaham]

Energy Consumption

Such ideas are being built everyday in China for better or for worse, and soon or later, nuclear energy will take over making electrical consumption a none issue.

There is also the fact you fail to take other threads into consideration where I'm actually trying to save water on a high efficiency design where there is little carry over water in the sump and pre-washing only where needed. Further I have a thread on a catalyst type machine that concentrates detergent complemented with an impeller like wash action.

Concepts and ideas worth trying.

 

[Chetlaham]

Here is a washer going into spin without its shipping bolts removed:

 

[DADoES]

 
Those folks of the video are too stupid to allow for continued breathing.

 

[combo52]

Nuclear Power Is Over

There will likely never be a new NPP planned and built in the US in my lifetime.

 

NP is the most EXPENSIVE way to generate power ever conceived that has been used on a significant scale.

 

To even still suggest NP as solution to global climate change shows a great lack of current knowledge of energy related matters.

 

John L.

 

[Chetlaham]

Nuclear

Most industry looking into the horizon experts disagree with you. Natural gas isn't going to be around forever, it still emits CO2, and relies on a few major pipelines. Wind and solar are not only intermittent but rarely match demand curves- but thats not even the real problem- they severally lower the critical clearing time of the bulk power system so much so that spinning base-load turbines are needed so a 5 cycle fault on a transmission line doesn't plunge the US or another country into darkness.

Coal is dirty and also pollutes. Scrubbers help but add cost. Hydro is limited.

There is nothing that comes even close to which produces more power per square foot. Zero carbon, safe, reliable, and has the lowest fatality rates of even green energy.

Don't take my word for it:



Batteries- even the largest battery farms in world can only stores enough power to light a city for a minutes at most. At most. There is no way batteries or even ultra capacitors can store enough energy for a 24 hour period to compensate for a lack of sun or wind. This guy explains it better than I can:



Whats left as the only viable solution is nuclear. Yes nuclear. I'm well aware gas, solar and wind are all the rage right now being cheap as dirt compared to running a 60s-70s nuclear reactor let alone building one today. Thats true. But a decade or two from now advancements in nuclear tech will bring cost down while the short falls of gas and renewables will cause cost spikes such that these forms of generation will not longer be practical.

To the doubters I say look at France which is happily generating most of its electricity though nuclear.

BTW, I left out all the oil, coal and gas needed to make solar panels and wind turbines. Hint, its not eco friendly on any level.

 

[Chetlaham]

*Industry experts

 

[combo52]

NP

Is too expensive and far too dangerous and if we keep building better better homes and more efficient appliances there is just no need to go down that road.

 

You should read up on the videos you post and you can see the biased views of the people on them and their connection to the NP industry.

 

If NP made any sense there would be a move to built it, hopefully next to your house, LOL

 

Do note that your homeowners insurance does not cover any damages from a NP accident.

 

John L.

 

[gizmo]

There is no way batteries or even ultra capacitors can...

"There is no way batteries or even ultra capacitors can store enough energy for a 24 hour period to compensate for a lack of sun or wind."

Funny, I've been doing exactly that for about 20 years. My home runs from solar panels which charge a bank of batteries.

 

 

 

 

[this post was last edited: 10/25/2020-02:28]

 

[Chetlaham]

It doesn't matter how efficient homes get. Coal, gas and oil won't be around forever and still emit CO2. There is no way around that. Wind and solar have over a dozen limitations some of which I covered above. Solar and wind will never provide all the energy needed or be 100% sustainable in the long run.

Many of those so called "biased views" come from people who are career experts with degrees (and work experience) in testing, engineering, construction and physics. I'd like to see you build a working nuclear reactor and its associated controls driving a steam turbine John. Lets see it.

I'd gladly live next to a nuclear generating plant if it were designed to survive a total station blackout indefinitely. You assume I'm afraid of nuclear, but I'm not.

It doesn't matter that HI insurance doesn't cover nuclear accidents, because with modern thorium reactors there are simply no accidents whatsoever.

Its clear you've drunken the so called kool-aid. Do you even know anything about your three boogy men Chernobyl, 3 mile Island and Fukushima?

Chernobyl was USSR reactor that 1) had the ability to carry a run away nuclear reaction 2) had no containment dome. Both of which have always been illegal in the United States. So that scenario isn't legit for any US power plant let alone should a modern reactor be built in the US.

3 mile Island and Fukushima- these are old style reactors requiring running electric pumps to keep the core cool. Lose the pumps and the concrete around the reactor core melts.

That issue has been well known for years and years hence why modern reactors are being designed and pro-type tested around surviving a total loss of cooling without melting down. As such all the dooms day scenarios played out in movies like the China Syndrome will be none existent.


So with that said yes I'll gladly live next to, even work in a nuclear generating facility. I know the truth, you do not.

 

[Chetlaham]

@gizmo: In your haste to paint me as a clown, you deliberately took my statement out of context by leaving this out of your quote: "Batteries- even the largest battery farms in world can only stores enough power to light a city for a minutes at most..."

The power needs of an individual home can not compare to entire towns, cities or states. A home isn't running millions of square feet of server racks, smelting aluminum, cooling auditoriums with 10,000 people inside them, pushing subway cars, treating hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day, running tens of thousands of 150+ HP motors, mining minerals, building consumer goods, hydroponically growing food, running farms, flash freezing, charging thousands (one day millions) of electric cars... just to name a few.

Batteries at most could power NYC for a minutes, maybe an hour or two if we put resources we don't have into massive battery farms. You need at least 24 hours, realistically 96 hours of batteries to ride through the lack of wind and sun.

Now try doing the same with all 3 interconnection in the US. Its just not physically possible. So yes, going beyond single family homes and some businesses it is indeed your imagination.

 

[warmsecondrinse]

To be fair, neither nuclear power nor sun or wind are anywhere near their full potential.

Nuclear: What I've read suggests that nobody is seriously bringing back the the power plants of the 70's. IIRC what's suggested are small plants that new technology allows to be much less dependent on meticulous maintenance. IIRC most of the problems with nuclear power plants were caused by or at least abetted by human error.

Wind: As much as it appeals to me me, there're limited locations where it can be used. Expanding out of the usual locations incurs increased costs that may affect its economic viability. That said, there's still plenty of room for more windmills.

Solar: The efficiency of photo electric cells has been has been creeping up while costs have been slowly falling. Places where solar cells weren't economically viable 20 years ago are now. Given the state of battery technology, I suspect there'll be slowly growing % of homes with solar panels that sell excess back to the power plant when the sun's out and drawing from the grid when domestic demand is greater than supply. I've not come across any reason to think this slow expansion will stop.

Batteries: Cost, speed of recharge, energy density, and longevity seem to be at the corners of a figurative square. If you move toward one, you move away from at least one of the others. But here's another place where technology seems to be slowly improving. As for vehicles, people's 'range anxiety' is founded upon external realities. Focusing on the people fails to address the issue. Plug-in hybrids will be more and more common. OK, off cars.... I'm drifting off topic.....

However, dependency on fossil fuels is slowly becoming a less viable option due to pesky things like climate change, pollution, and.... oh yeah, depletion. The result is that we have to do SOMEthing whether we want to or not.

Of course, alcohol would be a more viable option were we to try getting it from something other than corn, which I've read is one of the least efficient plants to grow if your crop is alcohol. I know there're problems with using it as a fuel, but Brazil seems to do rather well with it.

I don't see any of these as a magic bullet that will replace fossil fuels overnight. What I DO see is coal, oil, & natural gas (in that order) comprising a slowly shrinking % of total energy production and the sources mentioned above grow correspondingly slowly.

 

[gizmo]

Chetlaham: I did NOT deliberately take your sentence out of context to paint you as a clown. I did not intend to make you look bad, I just intended a funny response.  I have removed the sarcastic bits from the offending post.

I strongly disagree with your point. I have lived with solar a long time, in a place that isn't a particularly good solar site. I know it works. In fact it is fantastic.

A smelter doesn't know or care if its megawatts come from coal, wind or solar. If you have enough solar panels and enough battery capacity, you can run a smelter from solar.

 

I have read several analyses by industry specialists that say that solar, wind and hydro, including pumped hydro and batteries for storage, could meet Australia's electricity needs using existing technology, not even allowing for improvements that will come along as the implementation continues.

 

Australia has what was at the time of its installation, the world's largest Tesla battery installation. It probably isn't the biggest any more. It has successfully powered the state of South Australia through two grid failures, I think for over an hour in one case. I am hazy on the causes of the failures, one was failure of the State's interconnectors to the grid of my state, Victoria. Victoria and SA have very different sources of power - SA is mostly wind and solar with some gas, and Victoria is mostly brown coal with some hydro and a rapidly growing solar and wind sector. The two states share power through an interconnector which goes down when under overload (seemingly goes down when it is needed most...)

 

Any way... This discussion started off with your question about the viability of a washing machine that didn't spin, only tumbled. For whatever reason, I have no idea why, it has now morphed into an argument about renewables vs nuclear, and that is NOT appropriate in the deluxe forum. I plead guilty too. This topic should move to Super or ATTT.

[this post was last edited: 10/25/2020-02:37]

 

[neptunebob]

Not only moved...

But it sounds like ALL of you need MORE FIBER in your diets!

 

 

[this post was last edited: 10/25/2020-06:26]

 

[Chetlaham]

You miss the point that a smelter uses on orders of magnitude more power than a house, so much so batteries become impractical. Yes batteries help the grid retain frequency during unexpected events for a short period or through normal peaks and troughs but nothing long term. Batteries will never be able to makeup for 24 hours without solar and wind, so you need spinning reserves which are usually coal, gas and oil in most places where hydro isn't present.

My apologies if I read your comment the wrong way. The issue for me is that there is a member here who is very upset with some of the views I have expressed (toward appliances) and as such I am constantly out into a position where I have to defend my point of view.

Don't worry about going off topic. This is a great discussion and I'm learning new things. Any replies which don't involve making fun of LGBTQI issues or "being off my meds" I consider to be on topic.

With that said I see no issue in a low cost Combo washer that just happens to not spin.

 

[foraloysius]

No matter what energy you use, it all costs money. So energy saving always is always a goal when you design a new machine. The cost of a suspension in a machine is much less than the cost of the energy it costs when a machine doesn't spin and therefor needs way more energy to get the clothes dry. No sensible consumer would invest in a such a machine. And consumer organisations would always give it a low rating for that matter.

 

[Chetlaham]

Maybe, maybe not with all consumers. Remember GE? Filter Flo washers that had all that water in the outer tub and dishwashers that used 12-16 gallons of water due to half a gallon in the sump? Modern BOL GE DWs still hold several cups. Often things are a balance between cost, performance and energy. A strong of one sometimes allows lesser of the other.

But you are correct none the less. A suspension system cost less after just a few months of ownership.

 

[combo52]

The 42 Solar panels on my home are generating almost twice the power I am using with my 5 refrigerators and 5 A/C systems that my home has not to mention about 20 other major appliances.

 

Chelse you need to think ahead, although have you thought about investing in incandescent light bulbs, they make about as much sense as NP does today.

 

John 

 

[Chetlaham]

And in the future a set of 42 solar panels will generate near double what your panels are outputting today. The issue at hand being there is no practical way to store that energy for days when the sun isn't shinning. Yes you can invest in a battery system that will could get you through 3 days without sun however multiply that number for every home, every business, every office, every factory, ect and the cost + materials will be millions of times the cost of 300 new NP in the US. Not to mention batteries have a relatively short life expectancy. Whose going to recycle billions and billions of rechargeable batteries?

Cheap gas is making nuclear very unattractive (along with unsubstantiated fear) so yes you're right NP will be delayed in the foreseeable future. However, soon or latter those plants will have be built absent some quantum leap in energy storage.

 

[neptunebob]

Chetlaham, you know as well as we do that spin drying makes the world a better place.  So try not to think about wet clothes, get more fiber, and start to enjoy life.  

 

[Chetlaham]

Wet clothes are fun to think about, makes for a simpler machine. Less intellectual expenditure on my part. Not much to screw up with a tub solidly connected to the cabinet, single 16 pole motor, 2 pumps, three glowing calrods below the inner basket and a blower. Two channels, one which doubles as a full flume. EM timer. Simple, long lasting, reliable... why not?