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Flowing Water at 22 Degrees Fahrenheit

Flowing Water at 22 Degrees Fahrenheit

By Energy Rant No Comments
As undergraduate mechanical engineering students, we took materials science courses and studied phase diagrams like the one below from “Metallurgy for Dummies.” Does that appear to be dummy-grade to you? It gave me a chuckle. A phase diagram for water (below) is decidedly simpler. The above diagram shows only liquid and solid phases of carbon steel, while the water diagram shows its three phases, solid (ice), liquid, and vapor (steam). The author writes, “Freezing Point: At a temperature of 0 °C and a pressure of 1.00 atm, this is the point at which water (liquid) freezes into ice (a solid).”…
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Decarb Warriors

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I read a statement from a retail energy provider. It said, “100% green rates, always.” It doesn’t work that way. An aggregation of power sources, including renewable, nuclear, coal, and natural gas, are supplying the grid at any given time. The little electrons aren’t tagged by source and routed to any given customer(s). Second, even if that were impossible, er, I mean, possible, it’s shoving more hydrocarbon electricity onto someone else. In this way, it’s the same as the net zero con. Cheap but Unreliable Generating renewable power is easy and inexpensive, but as described in the net-zero…
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