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Isn't heat pollution a lost energy opportunity, where the heat could be reclaimed to generate electricity as well?
by ineedasername 6y ago
Isn't heat pollution a lost energy opportunity, where the heat could be reclaimed to generate electricity as well?
- elihu 6y agoAt some point it gets cool enough that it's hard to extract useful energy from it. Extracting energy from hot water is easier, but as a byproduct you end up with an enormous amount of lukewarm water that isn't useful for power generation.
- hinkley 6y agoHeat engines work with a large temperature gradient. In the same way heat pumps can’t drive a larger temperature gradient past a point (see AC in the Arizona summer). The 35 or 60% efficiency of the first phase can’t simply be stacked. If you don’t have an industry that uses heat directly, on site (cogeneration), that’s simply the cost of extraction.
- fy20 6y agoYes. This is one thing the USSR did well, they captured heat from almost all power stations to provide heat to the local city (that was probably built to house employees of the plant).
- FabHK 6y agoWe have that in Germany as well, "Fernwärme" (="remote heat"). Apparently it's ubiquitous in Denmark and Sweden as well. Apparently they started building this based on nuclear power plants as well in Russia (Woronesch, Nischni Nowgorod), but gave it up. That would've been a bit creepy, to have a pipe straight from the local reactor to your home...