Pitch
Nuclear, natural gas-- 33% eff. Combined heat and power (CHP) increases that efficiency to closer to 66% ZoomHydro increases reach of CHP.
Description
Summary
Our technology is hyperefficient transportation vehicles and supporting infrastructure. We can take power plant waste heat now dumped into cooling lakes and transport that heat energy to homes and businesses a hundred miles away in ZoomHydro vehicles going roughly 80 mph on elevated guideway. Our wind tunnel tested shape measured a Cd of .07 and combined with our patented shape we have minmial frontal area per volume of hot water. In the winter waste heat is sent to homes where a standard heating unit for large buildings is use to extract the heat to the home. This part is easy to follow and normal. What is possibly new to the public is the ability to take waste heat in the summer and through a purchased system called Adsorption Chiller we take this massive amount of waste heat and convert it to chilled water which is then moved via ZoomHydro a long distance to homes for cooling. This is an economically self paying system because each trip is worth about $2.00 and each household or business on the system uses about 4 of these per average day. Being fully automatic the cost of operation is low and the infrastructure is paid for in a few months of operation through energy sales at the equivalent price of electricity replaced by thermal delivery. Power plants work hard to extract the last available BTU from the turbines and they use vacuum to get more energy out of the steam flow but in the end they leave hot water that without some pretreatment would kill the fish in the cooling lake. This heat has value if you extract the heat directly from it as it exits the power plant process. It is roughly 115 degrees F but there is a massive amount of water exiting the power plant. Harvesting this waste in a close proximity is called combined heat and power. It is common for a cement factory or high energy content industry to set up shop next to a power plant to use this waste energy. Some communities have hot water loops but ZoomHydro makes the loop many miles.
Category of the action
Adaptation
Who will take these actions?
Government has to ask the power plant to give up its waste heat for free. The power company has to be compensated for creating a competitor for energy to the community. Government has to grant existing public right of way to the project for guideway to be built. Homes need to convert from damaging Freon units to water loop only units or dual units. Government may need to require as a condition of issuing a license that the waste heat be used and not just dumped to contribute to the heat island effect. We did an analysis of Greater Houston where cars and light trucks were substituted with the people transport cousin of ZoomHydro the TriTrack and the energy saved calculates to 1 degree C heat island reduction for Houston. ZoomHydro would be in addition to this 1 degree improvement for all of the Houston surrounding communities.
What are other key benefits?
Once is it demonstrated that moving hot water makes economic sense and building the infrastructure (guideway) is complete it will be obvious and self advertising that we can move people safely high up above traffic below. Additionally we are able to move water long distances at very low power levels so it is now feasible to move excess water from the Mississippi River to LA economically. The details of WaterBeads is being considered at the US senate level through Tex Sen John Cornyn's office. The ability to move things, people, hot water, chilled water, clean water if exploited will really help reduce the heat island effect if all these are efficient enough that it is powered by PV solar panels just under the guideway. Imagine a world where we burn zero oil, we need no nukes and we can go where we want to go when we wnat to go there. Water being moved around can also be of various qualities for the power plant treated water, gray water or sewer water w/one guideway.
What are the proposal’s costs?
The cost of heating and cooling delivered to your home is the same as you pay now. The cost of the infrastructure is paid off in a couple years of opeation out of a 40 year life. The government get more taxes from what was waste. The public gets AC units that no longer require expensive licensed Freon handling technicians. The environment no longer has to absorb the Freon leaks over the life of a Freon based AC unit.
The visual intrusion of an elevated system will insult some people's artisitc sensitivities. We will try to mitigate the visual insult as much as possible and compensate the community with cooler air through a lower heat island differential. By making the power plant roughly twice as effective we will effectively drop the ground level ozone net effect of that plant letting the children with Asthma have a break. It is the weakest amoung us that suffer from the pollution power plants emit and the waste BTUs they dump into the atmosphere. For WaterBeads we move 5000 pounds of water every second and each tank car with its returning empty tank takes 3 hp to operate. That 3 hp is supplied by the solar farm just under the guideway so this is totally off-grid and supplies peak power from the massive amount of battery storage of the WaterBeads system.
Time line
This is a quick fix once taken seriosuly. We do have the power to fix heat island. We won't get to a solution till we spend money. It is that simple. The patents have been around for several years yet progress has been limited to just one investor's resources. There has been considerable volunteer work done but you can only push free work for so long and it has to show an upside for the workers involved besides just a future cleaner cooler world. 2 years is a reasonable expectation from serious start. Prototypes are mostly built and wind tunnel tests are complete. International patents are in place so it is time to get moving on implementation.
Related proposals
TriTrack was submitted earlier.
References
TriTrack.net has the photo gallery and wind tunnel research paper. The most important tool on the web site is the Calculator tab where you can study the "How much horsepower do I need" tab. The math presented in easy form is the vehicle equation and you can design your own car or analyze why your production car gets crappy mileage. It is not the spoiler or air dam. It is the form of the sedan which I refer to as a brick with a gash. Energy produces heat island effect directly. Color of pavement also is a big contributor. Doing both makes the most sense. Leave asphalt gray when it turns naturally gray instead of rushing out to paint it utra black all the time. Gudieway would be used to add travel capacity so over time more guideway and far less asphalt will also cool off our cities and mega-regions. Youtube has several videos illustrating the water pickup from the Mississippi River to feed the great Southwest desert region. The battery swap patent is also illustrated which allows all the guideway vehicles to be battery powered and still be charged in a cost-effective way. Fast charge shortens the life of that very expensive long term investment. Slow charge is afforded by battery swap where vehicles are separated from the battery mule and both assets can be optimized separately.
Texas has a TriTrack law on the books HB2702 78R describing TriTrack by name that it interacts with highways and rail but is neither rail nor road.