Heat pumps and spin

I've deleted a few out of date posts. I'll stick to energy policy, software and analysis tips from now on; my specialties. Let the specialists in other fields be as self-reflective of their own profession as I am of mine. We outsiders will always remain skeptical of everyone, all the time in our quest for the unspun truth.


One comment I noticed on a recent telegraph story on green energy. I won't link to it because it's full of vitriol, bad conclusions and misinformation. However there is one interesting comment for me from person called rastech below. Interesting because i am looking for a new boiler and I want to be green and save money too - don't we all!
:
"Just found another blatant 'alternative energy' scam - expensive heatpumps.

Landlord at the local is doing up a house. Been offered a 11.9kw heatpump at 'quite a saving' of £1,199.99. Plus fitting.

This was going to be his main heat source for the house!

Was told it would work to -15 deg C!

Wasn't told about the progressive loss of heat output as the temperature fell, to the point he'd be burning more energy to get less heat out, and when he 'really needed it' wasn't aware that he wouldn't be getting any heat out of it at all!

So he's binned that idea, I've found him a 12kw multifuel stove for £299 (the same one dads got), and a 12,000 btu air conditioning unit that gives him a 4.5kw heatpump (should be enough to keep the place warm enough to the point losses really start), as well as cooling in the Summer (the heatpump didn't), a dehumidifier function (the heatpump didn't), and an outstanding air filtration system (the heatpump didn't), for £299 also (plus fitting he can do himself), all for a consumption of 1.25kw.

I told him how to do a cheap air mixing system to build in, using cheap rainwater downpipes and cheap computer fans too. How many suckers are being sold a lemon with these heatpumps, like this poor bloke nearly ended up with? I bet it's more than a few. What is this Country now? Scammers 'R Us?"


He then adds:
"Why the licenced housing efficiency and certification inspector imposed on us by the retard politicians in GOVERNMENT, of course! eta: this house is more than half way up a ruddy mountain too, and it's bleedin parky there for 10 months of the year pretty much. Whoever recommended that heat pump 'solution' should be done for deliberate and life threatening cruelty as well as dereliction of duty!"


Last things first. The pusher of these air source heat pumps is/was Dr. David McKay, the Oxford don who was put in charge of UK energy policy and who has written the book "...without the hot air". I won't link to that either because it's not as useful as it pretends. His main thesis however is that gas shouldn't be burnt in the home, we should make electricity from it, then use that electricity to extract heat from the air. There are flaws in that argument which I shouldn't even need to point out. Suffice to say, he seems to be letting a beautiful theory over-ride the reality. But it comes down to costs. If you believe the numbers from the manufacturer then - as it turns out by my calculations - the actual cost of the fuel to the consumer is around the same, so it's really only the installation cost that makes the difference. I''ll admit that there are a few people who appeared on TV in France who seemed to say they made a big cost saving - except they had installed geothermal pumps and the capital outlay was quite enormous. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul..


Well I'm not sure that 1200k is really that expensive - seems relatively cheap to me - but I had these salesmen in my house too and i showed them the door. I'm sure the geothermal heat pumps are a great idea but they are pretty difficult to install on old properties with small gardens. Reckon on 20k at least. For these cheaper air pumps, well we need proper trials rather than sales brochure spin, and McKay does point out that newer designs are better than older. However like rastech I remain extremely dubious that they are of any use whatsoever in a normally cold Winter. Of course if you had believed the Met office then cold Winters were supposed to be a thing of the past. Ha, ha indeed...the perils of prediction based on hubris. Of course last Winter was a one-off....except for the 2007 one-off. 


I  was stupidly tacitly subsuming that "milder winter then usual" Met office prediction when I drove to Disneyland in Winter on a sunny day in a car totally unsuited for snow. On the return trip a blizzard surprised us and I spun at an uncleared service station exit into a lorry that was inconveniently parked there: Otherwise the spin would have ended with entropy rather than collision. Happily the family was alright and even Bert the car has now recovered; his partly-repaired big rear end bash notwithstanding. Ok i could have stayed at the service station - if only it wasn't in the middle of bleeding nowhere, the exits from the motorway were even more dangerous than staying on it, and my wife hadn't been urging me not to think so negatively about the possibility of crashing. In any event my tolerance for unbridled hubris is even thinner nowadays. I resolve to continue to try to totally ignore all advice that sets off my BS detector.

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Green angst

Thanks to spam I'm reposting this and deleting the older one. Not because I want to write about climate issues any more - it's an issue full of single issue fanatics and poisonous pens on both sides. I'll stick to wanting  green technology for it's own sake not because I think you can extrapolate a 0.6K rise from one century into 6K the next based on models with no real validation.

The best discussion of the current green angst that has yet been produced is here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2010/01/the_problem_with_hidden_agendas.html

Everyone is remarkably honest and candid and huge praise to them for that. Finally greens are acknowledging that climate change is a hook to hang on their other societal concerns. And I have a great deal of sympathy for some of them. However we need to separate them out from carbon dioxide production if we are to judge them sensibly. I don't believe that greens are anti-humanist or anti-industrialist or statist in the least. Some of them clearly are but it's a tiny minority.

Is this rampant consumerism they worry about sensible? I don't believe it is but then you can't deny that it's worked out ok so far. Or has it?

Is the never-ending growth model of economics sensible? Well famed economist, Joe Stiglitz recently asked the same question and concluded it wasn't - but then he's a lefty :)

What are the aims of greens?
a) Let's avoid fouling our own nests.
b) Don't screw with nature. Nature usually knows best.
c) Recycle stuff.
d) Renewable energy.
e) Cradle to cradle technology.
f) Poverty reduction.

Now what's wrong with that? Let's not criticize them for the lying done by others and let's not paint our own prejudices over their faces please.

I'd like to think I was green too. For 5 years in Spain I didn't have a car. I used a taxi, bus or walked. The shopping was delivered to my door. When I needed a car I hired one. It worked ok. Now my electricity is from hydro, my heating is from sustainable forest wood - with a small bit of Diesel that i want to eliminate and my car is an efficient Diesel too - though I don't drive much. Hence my actual carbon footprint is low. I'm also getting a geothermal system installed this year if all goes well. Oh don't I sound self-righteous...well truth be told I'm hoping to save money too.

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Buyers's perceptions of FEA Software:

This was lifted from the forums of eng-tips. Seems people are looking for inexpensive FEA but there is only expensive or free. Their suspicion of any inexpensive software will largely be similar to these 3 points, most of which apply to free software, rather than inexpensive software. However it's all about perception in this game. I like to imagine a budget FEA market similar to the desktop publishers or CAD market. Might be possible!
///
"The main cost of a modern FEA package is split into three factors:
1) robustness of the algorithms. Everybody is able to self-program a valid FE code for solving 1-D elements in the linear domain. It's probably one of the easiest "things" to program in engineering. But when you begin to deal with non-linears, contact interactions, composite materials, multi-layer elements, birth-and-death, adaptive meshes, etc etc etc, and in addition all this "thing" must be optimized in order not to take millenia to solve, you can imagine the effort of the development people.
2) support. Have a problem with Ansys you can't get out of? No problem: apart from the fact that being one of the most known programs you can find a very huge users' comunity to help you, in "extreme" cases you have two levels of support: your reseller, and the main Company itself. You pay for it, but that makes a lot of difference wrt a "free" software (most of which is univ-born, so would you write e-mails directly to the teachers, researchers and students? Sometimes it may work, but usually...)
3) user interface. OK, this may not be a problem any more nowadays 'cause there are several pre- and post- already programmed and compiled by the "free comunity" which do a good (or at least acceptable) job.

Anyway, just because of the first two points you can not simply take a good free solver and claim that it would save the world instead of commercial packages such as Abaqus, Ansys and some others... It would save YOUR world and money UNTIL you run into one of their weaknesses (every program has some bug). Should this happen, good luck: it would be you and the program..." (plagiarised from cbrn on Eng-tips)
///
I disagree with some of that but it is the public perception that counts. Someone else on the same thread said you always get what you pay for. That's utter bilge of course. You get what you set out to get, or are persuaded to get, or what your neighbour has, and much of the time you end up with an expensive pig while if you look around you can manage to find a cheap jewel*. It's the 80/20 rule again though. Only 20% of the buying public know how to buy effectively. Meantime we sellers have to deal with the other 80% by using psychology,much as i described in a previous thread, and bearing in mind the 3 points above.


*On re-reading this I find it ironic that in our world a pig, which is useful, is worth less than a jewel, which isn't. Illogical! as Spock would say. Does our monetary system revolve around the adornments we hang on our body rather than what feeds us, clothes us or heats us? Well it used to. Nowadays it revolves around oil, which does do all of that! Food for thought.

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Watts up

Help I want to name my electric car but the Tesla, the Faraday, the Ohm, the Amp and the Volt have all been taken. Watt is the only SI unit left. The Edison maybe? He never did get a unit named after him did he?

Maybe it's time to go funky and call it the Juice!

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Mist stack CO2 scrubber designed already!

Further to my description of a stack CO2 capture device I discovered a mist trap for smoke stacks has actually been patented. Being in 1972 the patent is no longer active and it was mainly meant for other types of pollution - particularly particulates. However it would catch CO2 as well. I find it highly ironic that we care most about controlling the most benign item coming out of a smoke stack but never mind.

Anyway, it's pretty much the design I had in mind. I suppose none were ever actually built. Instead of simple mist it creates high density fog, presumably because of the temperature of the flue gas. You are helped of course by the fact that the flue gas contains a lot of water vapour too. All you have to do is supersaturate and drain the liquid. Shouldn't cost very much should it? It might even cost less than a traditional tall stack. All this fuss about a simple engineering problem!

11-Pollution-sensor; 12-Elbow; 13-Roof; 14-Building; 15-Legs; 16-Conical body; 17-Pollution sensor; 18-High pressure water line; 19-Multiple nozzles; 20-Catch basin; 21-Drain; 22-Short stack; 23-Pollution sensor; 24-Baffles

Looks nice!

Found here http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3668841.html. 

Well done Howard R. Nunn of Napa California. You beat me by 40 years! I wonder if he's still alive? In homage I'm going to call it the "Nunn Foggy Scrubber".

Now I'll just get this into a 3d model when I have the time!

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Selling a new product

This is a short distillation of stuff I'm trying to ensure I do as I launch a new product.

How to Sell (adapted):
1. Know your customer. Understand his personal (secondary) buying motive. ie what he really seeks from the product or service. Ask questions and listen to the answers.
2. Sell the features, advantages and benefits that relate to what the customer wants.
3. Be aware of the psychological steps that buyers go through and how to deal with them.
4. You need a) Empathy, so that you can understand customer needs. b) Confidence, so that your can bring customers to the point of buying, and c) Resilience, so that you can use rejection and temporary setbacks as spurs that constantly move you forward
5. Be honest and available. Sales are about relationships and relationships are about trust.
6. Plan for the possible objections.
7. Make it easy to buy.


Some of this doesn't relate to me but perhaps more to the website or the product. I am a stickler for simplicity. When it's simple it's usable and has less trouble. For usability it needs to be lightweight, with few options all of which are labelled clearly. To some extent this is a carry over from designing tools offshore. I listened to the complaints about existing tools, agreed they were indeed correct, noticed where they could be designed a lot better and made sure my own products did not have the same defects. It's most gratifying when the users of the tools say something like "this tool is a heck of a lot better than the last one we had".


I'm aware of course that others like complications but I'm thinking they are the kind of people who will buy the big name products, where you might know what you want but you can't a) find it in the interface, b) use it after you found it because you didn't do 3 or 4 previous steps correctly. If you don't know what I'm talking about then you clearly haven't used Ansys Workbench!


Now the reason some buyers/users value complexity is presumably the assumption that they are getting more bang for their buck. So if the buck is less maybe that would overcome that difficulty.


Then of course you get into the canard of "you get what you pay for". Well there is no way around that other than to target your audience. People may criticize Alibre for price reductions, just like they criticize Ryanair for cheap flights but if the sales are there then clearly it's just snobs or vested interests who are worried about buying something cheaper. Most of us here in France just love Ryanair because they provide a service that is convenient, unique, quick and fair. Their separations of the charges are a pain but clearly they are used to bring customers in the door. I think that's what I'm aiming for. The pricing issue is a problem that will sort itself out only by testing, in the way that Alibre just did. Having added 10,000 users at 100 dollars a piece it was an interesting million dollar gain as well as an experiment.

It should also be robust. Two things I made sure of with FEMdesigner after bad experience with other FE software were a) Keep a readable text file because binaries get corrupted easily, and b) if it ever crashes make sure these files are not affected. Potential crashes can be found by beta testing. What I'm discovering - the biggest headache - is that these crashes come almost exclusively from 3rd party issues so I'm trying to keep it simple regarding using the graphics card, threading and the like. Anything too new or controversial will fail. Currently I'm sorting out a deadlocking problem because I need a worker thread to overlay my plots on the host viewport but if the user or the operating system causes a refresh message on the other thread then everything freezes. It took me a while to discover that one and I've still only half-fixed it.


Update - fixed it: Confucius he says "Use too many threads and deadlock is your downfall".

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CO2 capture device

Now I was just musing about the SO2 scrubbers that were used to prevent acid rain. We retrofitted them to power station stacks and now the problem is no more. Actually whether it was a problem in the first place is debatable - according to Bjorn Lomberg's book "the skeptical environmentalist" it wasn't - but let's gloss over that. Are we presuming that a similar thing can't be done with CO2? Because if we are then it doesn't make much sense to me. When air capture is mentioned at all then they always assume it should be in the form of artificial trees. See here for the most promising one of these:

http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/articles/view/2523

Now Lackner got his idea first from a fishtank scrubber and then from a leaf. However he forgot the most efficient natural scrubber of the lot - rainwater. Yes CO2 indeed easily dissolves in rainwater to form carbonic acid. In fact though Lackners idea uses this mechanism to collect the CO2 from the ion-exchange mechanism. Why did he use an ion-exchange mechanism? - because he is simulating a tree. Why is he simulating a tree? - because he is capturing CO2 from the air. Why is he capturing CO2 from the air rather than from chimney stacks? - lord alone knows, it seems dumb to me!

So in summary - and if anyone wants to fund me in this planet saving mission my email is jg@femdesigner.com

a) skip the dumb tree idea and go straight to the power station stacks exactly as with the SO2 scrubbers,
b) put in a 90 degree bend and add a fine mist spray in the corner, like the type that sprays mist on lettuces in my local supermarket,
c) drain off the carbonic acid and the wet soot from the bend corner,
d) pipe the liquid to an algae farm or a greenhouse. Be sure to use gravity rather than a pump.

Now how much would that cost? Peanuts? A working prototype is worth 25 million from Richard Branson. Alas the idea is now officially out in the public domain (ie here) so you can't patent it! Ha ha!

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