Engine efficiency & the Environment
Fascinating discussion going on down in the post about cellulosistic ethanol by Carrick, and one of the most relevant questions is “what can we really do with efficiency?”.
It seems to me that most people are really concentrating on “top down” solutions like this; having government control your thermostat.
However, this is not only counter to freedom, but also counter to physics. Let me explain.
The efficiency of your home furnace, air conditioner, automobile, motorcycle, and even power generating stations comes around, more or less, to the Carnot cycle of thermodynamics. It’s a function of the ratio of temperatures, and is limited by the physics of combustion, metallurgy, and even ambient temperature.
Most engines are limited to about 30-35% efficiency in this regard, and the utilities are pretty close to this. Cars and trucks are not, but…are you willing to pay $1m for your engine to make it as efficient as a power plant?
I didn’t think so.
You get around this limitation by finding a way to use waste heat in a process called “cogeneration.” Many universities use this process to heat and even cool dorms while providing electricity, and the end result is a Carnot efficiency of up to 60%.
The limit of this—and the invitation to greater federalism—is of course that you cannot pipe steam for 200 miles. The cogeneration plant must be local.
The sad irony here is that we’ve been following the siren song of “efficiencies of scale” to place massive power plants in remote places, while we find that physics knows no such thing.
Instead of patching things up by controlling thermostats and such, maybe it’d be a good idea to reconsider our utility regulations and see what incentives can be changed to bring power generation more in line with physics.
