Brain Boost: Lockdown Puzzles
The title of this post, is the same as that of a little section in the online copy of The Times, which says this.
Every day, Monday to Thursday, a printable page of extra puzzles to keep your brain trained during the lockdown
It’s funny, but the extra puzzles I got in the on-line copy were ones that I commonly do.
Does the Times server, look at the puzzles I do and give me ones I like as extras?
If they do, it is surely good marketing.
I think they’ll be giving out extra puzzles for a long time.
I Only Ran Out Of Deoderant
For about three years, I’ve not bought deodorant or toothpaste in the normal manner, in say a shop in the High Street or locally.
What I’ve tended to do, is just pack my toothbrush and a few other things in my travel bag and buy new travel ones, once I’ve gone through Customs.
Consequently, I’ve only bought small travel roll-on deodorants. I’ve used roll-on ones for many years, as I didn’t like to use aerosols with all their noxious gases.
On Friday my last one ran-out and I needed a new one. The only one I could buy in a local shop, was an aerosol powered by butane. In other words it’s a flame-thrower in all but name! Search the Internet and you’ll find lots of pictures.
I find this very sad, as I funded a development of a totally-safe aerosol, that used compressed nitrogen as the propellant! The development was sold to a US company and I got a return on my money! Obviously, the product wasn’t cheap and nasty enough! But it was good enough though to be discussed at the Montreal Climate Change talks in 2005.
I actually found the butane-powered flame-thrower impossible to use, due to the damage to my left hand.
- Was it the break to my humerus caused by the school bully?
- Was it the stroke?
- Was it the recent damage caused by my fall?
I just needed to find a roll-on deodorant. But had they been discontinued?
This morning, thankfully, I found one at the Angel.
So I will smell better tomorrow!
I won’t leave this post before telling this tale.
I used to work for ICI Mond Division, who used to make the hydro-fluoro-carbon gases, that used to power aerosols in the 1960s and 1970s.
One of the guys in a nearby lab, where I worked at Runcorn Heath, used to formulate the propellants for possible products.
His standard joke was that he’d get baked beans into an aerosol, even if they had to come out one by one.
Every so often, he’d bring round samples that he’d made for various companies and one day I obtained an aerosol hand cream.
What make it was, no-one had a clue, but C always swore, it was the best hand cream, she’d ever used.
Thoughts On Powering Electrification Islands
In The Concept Of Electrification Islands, I didn’t say anything about how electrification islands would be powered. Although, I did link to this post.
The Need For A Substantial Electrical Supply
Electrification can use a lot of electricity.
This was illustrated by the electrification of the Midland Main Line, where a high-capacity feed from the National Grid had to be provided at Market Harborough.
But then the Government cancelled electrification North of Kettering leaving a twelve mile gap to be filled. I wrote about the problem in MML Wires Could Reach Market Harborough. In the end the sensible decision was taken and the electrification will now reach to Market Harborough station.
So places like Cambridge, Darlington, Doncaster, Leeds Norwich and York. which are fully electrified and on a main route probably have enough electrical power to charge passing or terminating battery-electric trains on secondary routes.
In Thoughts On The Actual Battery Size In Class 756 Trains And Class 398 Tram-Trains, I quoted the reply to a Freedom of Information Request sent to Transport for Wales, which said.
A four-car Class 756 train will have a battery capacity of 600 kWh.
A Class 756 train is similar to a Greater Anglia Class 755 train, which in Battery Power Lined Up For ‘755s’, I estimated weighs about 135 tonnes when full of passengers.
Weights for the Hitachi trains are difficult to find with a figure of 41 tonnes per car given for a Class 801 train on Wikipedia. In Kinetic Energy Of A Five-Car Class 801 Train, I estimated a full weight of a five-car Class 801 train at 233.35 tonnes.
Based on the Stadler figure, I would estimate that every train passing an electrification island will need to pick up as much as somewhere between 600-1000 kWh.
An Electrification Island At Sleaford
In The Concept Of Electrification Islands, I proposed an electrification island at Sleaford station.
- Sleaford is a market town of around 18,000 people.
- I doubt the power in the town has much surplus capacity.
- This station is served by four trains per hour (tph), one to each to Lincoln, Nottingham, Peterborough and Skegness.
- So it looks like a feed of three to four MW will be needed to charge passing trains.
Can the electricity supply in a town like Sleaford provide that sort of power for perhaps eighteen hours a day?
The only ways to provide that sort of power is to build a new power station or provide energy storage capable of boosting the supply.
Could Highview Power Provide The Solution?
I have been following Highview Power and their CRYOBatteries for some time.
They have already built a 5 MW pilot plant in Manchester and are currently aiming to build a plant with 250 MWh of energy storage, that can supply up to 50 MW. The company and this plant is discussed in this article on The Chemical Engineer.
One of these CRYOBatteries, would surely be ideal to power an electrification island, like the one at Sleaford.
- It could be scaled to the electricity needs of the town and the railway.
- It would be charged using renewable or excess energy.
- There is a lot of wind power in Lincolnshire and just off the coast, which needs energy storage.
- Similar systems could also be installed at other electrification islands at Cleethorpes, Lincoln, Skegness and other places, where the grid needs strengthening.
I have used Highview Power in this example, but there are other systems, that would probably boost the electricity just as well.
De Beauvoir Square
This is my local square, which is about fifteen minutes walk.
Note.
- C and I tried to buy one of the Dutch style houses in the square from the screenwriter; Alun Owen in about 1971.
- It would have cost just £7,500. Now a hundred times that, wouldn’t buy it!
- There was a gardener at work.
De Beauvoir Town is not what you’d expect in Hackney.
Queuing For Marks And Spencer In Dalston
I took this picture of the orderly queue waiting to get into Marks and Spencer in Dalston.
It does appear that everybody was obeying the rules and I only took twenty minutes to enter the store.
- The store was well-stocked, although there were very few ready meals with long Best Before dates.
- Gluten-free bread, biscuits and cereals were at near normal levels.
- There were about a dozen bottles of Adnams low-alcohol beer on the shelves, which I reduced by a couple.
- There were no gluten-free cakes. Not that I buy them often.
- Some lines like gluten-free sandwiches seem to have been dropped. Not that I wanted any, as I won’t be travelling.
- The staff were being very professional.
I was able to get enough food in my bag to get me through to the middle of next week.
Hydrogen Islands
I found this concept on the ITM Power web site.
This was the sub-title.
Islands tend to have abundant renewable resources yet they rely heavily upon importing fossil fuels, often at relatively high cost.
And this was the body of the page.
The integration of renewables into an island’s power grid soon creates substantial balancing and curtailment problems. These can be overcome by deploying controllable rapid response electrolysers to produce green hydrogen for the island’s transport, heat and power sectors. Projects such as BigHit are demonstrating how this may be achieved.
It would create a zero-carbon island for an Internet tycoon or a Bond villain.
I’m certain that the concept would work for somewhere like a farm or even a small village, which is effectively a landlocked island, with perhaps wind turbines or solar panels.
ITM Power and Ørsted: Wind Turbine Electrolyser Integration
The title of this post is the same as that of this press release from ITM Power.
This is the introductory paragraph.
ITM Power (AIM: ITM), the energy storage and clean fuel company, is pleased to share details of a short project sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), in late 2019, entitled ‘Hydrogen supply competition’, ITM Power and Ørsted proposed the following: an electrolyser placed at the wind turbine e.g. in the tower or very near it, directly electrically connected to the DC link in the wind turbine, with appropriate power flow control and water supplied to it. This may represent a better design concept for bulk hydrogen production as opposed to, for instance, remotely located electrolysers at a terminal or platform, away from the wind turbine generator, due to reduced costs and energy losses.
Some points from the remainder of the press release.
- Costs can be saved as hydrogen pipes are more affordable than underwater power cables.
- The proposed design reduces the need for AC rectification.
After reading the press release, it sounds like the two companies are performing a serious re-think on how wind turbines and their links to get energy on-shore are designed.
Will they be using redundant gas pipes to bring the hydrogen ashore?
I think, that they could go further than that!
- Imagine a very large wind farm built over a cluster of redundant gas-fields that are suitable for the storage of gas.
- The wind farm will produce hydrogen, which could be either sent to an onshore terminal or stored in one of the redundant fields.
- When hydrogen is needed onshore, it can come from the turbine/electrolysers in the wind-farm or from offshore storage.
- The pipeline to the shore would probably also be reversible and used to take carbon dioxide offshore for storage.
- If more electricity is needed onshore, the hydrogen is used as fuel for a gas-fired power station.
It sounds complicated, but hydrogen gives a lot of flexibility, as it is easily converted to and from electricity.
Controlling this network is a classic problem for Control Engineers and sophisticated computers will make sure, there is both enough electricity and gas.
The other application for combined wind turbines and electrolysers is where there is a need for moderate amounts of gas in the middle of nowhere.
Uses could include.
- Large farms all over places like East Anglia, much of North America, Australia and Serbia, where it would be used for motive power and heating.
- Islands like the Orkneys to decarbonise heating and transport and especially aviation and small ships like tugs and ferries.
- Hydrogen filling stations for trucks and other vehicles in places like the Mid West and large parts of Africa and Asia.
- Large transport depots, that switch from diesel to hydrogen might install their own combined wind turbine and electrolyser.
- Ports of all sizes will switch to hydrogen and smaller ports may well use combined wind turbines and electrolysers.
- Will isolated villages and small towns have their own combined wind turbines and electrolyser to bring a much needed gas supply?
I used to own a farm and I would certainly have looked at the technology to see, if it was worth installing.
It is my view, that combined wind turbines and electrolysers are one of those enabling technologies, that will find lots of different applications.
HyDeploy
I could have called this post; What Do You Do With Surplus Electricity?.
Believe it or not, one thing you can do is inject it into the gas main, by converting it into hydrogen first.
The Project
The concept is being tested in a project called HyDeploy at Keele University.
- The project has its own web site, from where I have obtained much of the information on this post.
- Keele University has its own gas network.
- Keele has a campus population similar to a small town.
- Keele University has a reputation for research excellence.
This paragraph outlines the project.
HyDeploy is a pioneering energy demonstration to establish the potential for blending hydrogen, up to 20%, into the normal gas supply so that we can reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
A 10 month live demonstration of blended gas is taking place on part of the Keele gas network and will finish in August 2020.
HyDeploy will help to determine the level of hydrogen which can be used by customers safely and with no changes to their existing domestic appliances.
The HyDeploy project has been split into the following phases.
- Phase One will be live test using the Keele University gas network to learn about injecting hydrogen into a natural gas network.
- Phase Two will move to a larger demonstration on public network in the North East.
- Phase Three will be another large demonstration in the North West.
Once the evidence has been submitted to Government policy makers, we very much expect hydrogen to take its place alongside other forms of zero carbon energy in meeting the needs of the UK population.
The Electrolyser
ITM Power are providing the 0.5 MW electrolyser to turn electricity into hydrogen.
It’s only a small one, but this is about proving the technology.
Walking To Liverpool Street Station
I took these pictures yesterday, as I walked from my home to Liverpool Street station.
I had intended to buy the latest edition of Modern Railways at W H Smith’s in the station, but it was shut.
A Design Crime – The Average Smoke Detector
On Saturday Evening, the smoke detector in my bedroom decided to go off.
I was able to silence it about three times, but it refused to go off permanently.
I then decided to take it down, by standing on the bed.
Unfortunately, I slipped and broke the detector.
It is not the first altercation, I have had with the cheap and nasty smoke detectors in this house, which were probably bought in Istanbul market for a few pence.
- In my view, there is a need for a superior type of smoke detector wired into a building in a better way.
- It should be possible to replace a failed detector, like I had on Saturday in a simple operation without any tools.
- There should also be a master switch in the house, that switches off all the smoke detectors.
- Instructions on how to deal with the smoke detectors in case of failure should be in an obvious place in the house, like on the door of the meter cupboard.
Smoke detectors are too important, to be designed down to the cheapest possible station and most are a true design crime.
The Anonymous Widower 