Hybrid Power Plants
Earth is not equal. People in Kenya does not have water resources as any Europe countries. Even people does have water resources, it needs to be tested for pathogens and harmful bacterias.
Remember the old mantra: “We do not want it so throw away.”
Power plants works by producing electricity with steam turbines. Steam turbines works on steam. Steam needs heat. Heat comes from the lignite, coal or nuclear. This is the basis or power plants. This must be changed due to global warming. We should not release carbon dioxide to atmosphere anymore. Because of this, hybrid power plants are investigated. Hybrid power plants are plants that uses renewable energy along with unrenewables. This can be serve as a transformation to %100 renewable.
Orçun Başlak and Onur Güneş made a research about hybrid power plant. Hybrid power plant is power plant that uses renewable energy source as secondary source. They made their investigation on a 270 MW power plant on Bolu / Turkey. They added solar panels to lignite sourced power plant. They used 450000 meters squared solar panels for secondary energy source. They calculated that solar panels would gave %1.561 of the total energy. Although this seems less, less fuel may be burned and fuel lifespan can be increased. With solar panels improvements, the percentage can be increased.
In chemical facilities, excess heating or cooling water always released to environment. Although, excess water mostly not harming, radioactive water pollutes the environment. Water quality and regulation must be carefully examined and changed within years. More than that, there are different usages for excess water.
For example, tertiary alcohol 2-Methyl-2-propanol, hydrogen chloride reaction to form 2-Chloro-2-methylpropane with water. Water produced from this reaction discarded mostly. Wanted product is 2-Chloro-2-methylpropane, others are side products which is discarded. Although this is the case mostly, excess water can be used for heating, cooling purposes. With proper filtration and equipments, water can be circulated within the system.
We need to think holistic on these subjects. Using renewables with non-renewables is nothing compared to other power plants but this is a step. This is a step that we must take now.
