Starter Homes At Cockfosters
This would seem to be the final failure of a 1960s office development at Cockfosters.
It must have been about 1962, when I remember my mother telling me about the topping-out ceremony of these blocks by Cockfosters station.
They probably will satisfy a need, but it wouldn’t be my place to choose to live.
- You may have the Piccadilly Line to Central London, but it is a long way. It takes 43 minutes to Leicester Square.
- Cockfosters shopping centre hasn’t improved much since the 1960s.
- I doubt that the development will have lots of parking.
But then on top of the hill with all the wind blowing from the East in the winter, it will be a bitterly cold place to live!
There are perhaps two good points.
- The development is close to Trent Park for walking.
- The buildings do seem to be structurally fairly sound.
But they’ll need to be, with all that cold wind!
Bang Goes My Holiday!
There are various things I want to visit in Germany and I felt that the best thing to do would be go for a few days,
But the BBC are reporting these facts about travel to Germany.
- From Sunday, people travelling from the UK will not be allowed to enter Germany
- The decision is down to a rise in cases of the Indian variant in the UK
- German citizens and residents, plus people with an exceptional reason, can still enter – but face a two-week quarantine
So bang goes my holiday!
I particularly wanted to go to Hamburg to take a few pictures of the Siemens Gamesa ETES trial installation in the city.
However I’ve been able to locate the installation on Google Maps.
Note.
- The wind-turbine towards the South-West corner of the map.
- Siemens Gamesa ETES trial installation is the prominent odd shaped building towards the South-East corner of the map, just below the shadow of the turbine.
- The installation seems to have lots of pipes connected to it.
This second map shows the installation from an angle.
This document on the Siemens Gamesa web site describes the installation.
- The nominal power is 30 MW.
- The capacity is 130 MWh.
- 80 % of the technology is off the shelf.
The picture on the front says “Welcome To The New Stone Age”.
If anybody should find themselves in Hamburg with some time to waste, I’d be very grateful for a copyright-free image.
The installation appears to be just off the VollHöfner Weiden.
New Hydrogen Engine Design Unveiled To Overcome Reliance On Fuel Cells
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Hydrogen Fuel News.
The article describes an innovative hydrogen-powered engine developed by an Israeli company called Aquarius Engines.
This is the sub-heading, that gives a little bit more information.
Aquarius Engines has developed a small 10kg emission-free unit operating entirely on H2.
It appears to be based on the company’s patented single-piston-linear-engine.
This page on the Aquarius web site describes the combustion technology in a short video.
Wikipedia also has an entry on the free-piston engine.
The power output of the Aquarius engine is not given.
Conclusion
I have a hunch, that Aquarius Engines might be on to something!
Light weight is so important in many applications.
An Elegant Way To Cope With Roof Leaks
I took these pictures at St. Pancras station.
Note.
- The full wording is “I catch rain, not rubbish”
- The green grass is something like Astroturf.
- There were three of them!
- They appear to be fitted with castors.
I’m surprised, I’ve not seen this idea used before.
BECCS Beats Hydrogen For Decarbonizing Steel In Europe: ArcelorMittal
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on S & P Global Platts.
This is the first paragraph.
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) offers a more cost-effective, readily available solution for decarbonizing the steel industry in Europe than clean hydrogen, steel producer ArcelorMittal’s head of strategy David Clarke said May 17.
So what do they mean by bioenergy?
To make iron from iron ore, you need a reducing agent like carbon or hydrogen.
Iron ore is rich in oxides of iron.
The carbon is usually some form of coal, which produces large amounts of carbon dioxide with the oxygen from the iron oxides.
Hydrogen produces lots of water with the oxygen.
David Clarke of ArcelorMittal explains the process in the article.
“We know biomass worked as a replacement for coal,” he said. “We’ve been using it in our operations in Brazil and other places for many, many years. We have a project in Belgium that we’ll be starting up next year using waste wood, using that to make bio-coal,” with a project to take the emissions from the bio-coal to produce bioethanol.
Is this a case of Back-To-The-Future? If I remember my history, didn’t Iron Age men use charcoal to smelt iron and other metal ores?
If those scientists from Velocys can make Sustainable Aviation Fuel and biodiesel from household waste and used disposable nappies, can they apply their magic to make bio-coal?
I see great cost advantages with this process, as surely it would enable existing blast furnaces to be used, provided they were fitted with carbon capture and storage.
Skills And Post-16 Education Bill
On this page of The Times, there is an outline of the bills that the government will bring forward.
The title of this post is the name of one of the proposed bills.
This is said about the proposed contents of the bill.
A right to government-funded training for all adults lacking A-levels or the equivalent. The bill will also extend the student loan system to those who want to study at local further education colleges. All adults will be entitled to four years’ worth of loans for training or education that can be taken at any point in their life.
I know one person, who will be overjoyed, if he is still alive; John Eardley, who was my Personnel Officer at ICI Runcorn around 1970.
I can remember a story he told.
After a meeting with several union representatives, one of them asked if he could have a personal chat with John. The guy was a foreman in their vehicle maintenance department for ICI’s specialist chemical transport.
He told John how his last daughter had got married at the weekend and he perhaps needed to do something more challenging.
John found him an interesting position. He became a volunteer for Voluntary Services Overseas.
His job was part of a small team, who went to Zambia to sort out the elderly buses in Lusaka.
John was an excellent Personnel Officer and his guidance on personnel matters certainly stuck with this twenty year-old graduate, as I then was.
The Skills And Post-16 Education Bill appears to be what John really needed in the 1970s for the many employees he developed.
I can certainly see members of my own family, who would have been empowered by such a Bill since the Second World War! These include my father, mother and sister for a start.
It should be noted, that I am the first of my family to go to University.
Conclusion
I am totally in favour of this proposed Bill.
H2 And NH3 – The Perfect Marriage In A Carbon-Free Society
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Chemical Engineer.
It is an article, which explains in detail, how we can use hydrogen and ammonia in the future.
Green Hydrogen Searches For Industrial Outlets
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on E & T Magazine.
It is a detailed look at the uses for green hydrogen.
A few points from the article.
- Like fossil fuel hydrogen can store energy for months.
- Less that 10 % of green hydrogen will be used for energy storage.
- Hydrogen has a poor round trip efficiency, if you create it with an electrolyser and then convert it back to electricity using appropriate technology.
- Heavy transport may account for 25 % of the use of hydrogen.
- Industrial and home heating applications could account for the use of another third.
- One of the biggest uses today of hydrogen is in oil-refining to make low sulphur fuels.
- Steelmaking could be a big user, but there are many different methods and some have problems.
- Cement making could be a good use of green hydrogen.
The article is a must-read and it makes you think.
The Edmonton Incinerator
Although it is officially known these days as the Edmonton EcoPark, as a North Londoner, I will always know it as the Edmonton Incinerator.
I took these pictures with my drone.
These are a few facts from Wikipedia about the waste-to-energy plant.
- It was commissioned by the Greater London Council in 1971.
- It burns waste from the seven North-East London boroughs.
- It generates 55 MW of electricity.
It certainly dominates the landscape alongside the North Circular Road.
But.
It is probably not amongst the greenest of incinerators.
It is probably very much a design of the 1960s.
It is approaching fifty years old.
But it appears that things could be improving.
- There is a large composting and recycling facility being built on the site on the site.
- Plans exist to bring in the rubbish by barge.
This Google Map shows the site.
Note.
- The North Circular Road runs across the bottom of the map.
- All of the roads obliterated the famous Cooks Ferry Inn, where I saw the Animals play in the 1960s.
- The River Lee Navigation runs past the incinerator.
- Pymme’s Brook runs on the other side.
It looks from the map, that another reservoir is being built to the East of the canal.
The Guy Who Built The Edmonton Incinerator
I used to work with the guy, who was one of those in charge of the building of the incinerator, who when I met him, was head of the Greater London Council’s Construction Branch, who were using my project management software.
I can’t remember Mr. Samuels first name, even if I ever knew it.
- He was an Austrian Jew, who had trained as an engineer, who arrived in the UK sometime in the 1930s.
- He taught himself English in six weeks and got a job at Lucas.
- At the start of World War II, he volunteered and joined the Royal Engineers.
- He spent the whole war in bomb disposal.
- After the war he became an observer at the Nuremberg Trials.
After all he’d been through, he told me, the worst time of his life, was those years in the early seventies when I knew him, as his wife was dying of cancer.
But he taught me a lot about project management and the real horror of war.
He never told me, how many of his relatives survived the Nazis.
What Will Happen To The Edmonton Incinerator?
This year it will be fifty years since the Edmonton Incinerator was commissioned. It must be coming to the end of its life.
I can’t find any plans, but endless groups, who want it closed rather than rebuilt.
This article in the Hackney Gazette, which is entitled Campaigners Urge North London Incinerator Bidders To Pull Out, is typical.
I am very pro recycling, but then others aren’t as these pictures show.
So if some won’t recycle properly, it will all have to go to landfill.
An Odd Tale About Recycling
I applied to be a member of the Independent Monitoring Board of a prison near, where I used to live.
I had a very interesting tour of the prison, where I met several of the inmates.
One thing surprised me.
The prison had a very comprehensive internal recycling system, whereby everything was fully sorted.
One course of training, that was offered to prisoners was how to sort and process all of the rubbish. According to the guy running the course, it was one of the most popular in the prison.
Possibly, because I was told, it prepared prisoners for a job, where there were lots of vacancies.
I wonder if the new £100million recycling centre at Edmonton will use labour trained in the Prison Service?
The Day I Shook Hands With The Duke Of Edinburgh
I only met the Duke of Edinburgh once and all we did was shake hands.
The meeting is described in this post called The Day I Met the Queen.
At least I didn’t embarrass myself as I did in another meeting with the Queen, I wrote about in The Day I Stood on the Queen.
I also found this post about the Queen’s relationship with her husband, which I wrote about in The Queen on Industrial Language.
The Duke of Edinburgh, is a man who will be missed and remembered by many.
He certainly did what we all should do! – By his best efforts, he left the world a better place!
May he rest in peace.
The Anonymous Widower 