Oil Prices Today
More Efficient Solar Panels – Turning Wasted Heat Into Renewable Power
Nov 21st
The photovoltaic cells used in solar panels turn the sun’s light into useful, renewable energy. Most people may not know this but there has always been one major concern about photovoltaic technology–it becomes less efficient when heated up. Photovoltaic cells can only use a certain portion of the light spectrum from the sun, so the rest of the sun’s energy winds up producing excess heat–which until now was wasted.
Now, new technological devices may be able to use the heat that the solar panels produce to create more green electricity. This new technology could possible make solar panels significantly more efficient. Where as photovoltaic technology is less effective at high temperatures, the new heat-conversion process is actually more effective at high temperatures.
While solar systems work effectively for their purposes, they could be a whole lot more effective. Over 50 percent of the solar energy that first hits the photovoltaic cells is lost in the current process due to inherent inefficiencies in the cells and rising temperatures in solar panels as they are being used. “Solar panels get very hot and their efficiency goes down,” said Charles Stafford, associate professor of physics at the University of Arizona. “You could harvest some of that heat and use it to generate additional electricity while simultaneously cooling the panel and making its own photovoltaic process more efficient.”
The semiconducting material silicon is used in the majority of photovoltaic cells. However, silicon solar cells typically cease producing electricity once they have reached about 100 degrees Celsius. New semiconducting materials like gallium nitride have been shown to work at temperatures far higher than this.
In addition to making solar systems more effective, this new technology could also be applied in factories, transportation, power plants, and more–all of which produce large amounts of wasted heat that could be converted into energy.
Crude Oil Is A Magnificent, And Deadly Perfume
Nov 20th
They are saying that the oil leak is “LIGHT-SWEET CRUDE” AND IS LESS HAZARDOUS TO MARINE LIFE.
Our first and second oil wells in Muskogee, OK was also light-sweet crude. It was a beautiful green and slightly transparent. Crude Oil Is A Magnificent Perfume to investors.
I had purchased a fractional interest from the promoters. The crooks had sold more than 100% of the well and could not afford for all partial owners get together and want a share, so they killed it by putting too much fracturing liquid in them and opening them up to salt water.
Our next one, with an honest promoter, in Montgomery County, Kansas produced 70 barrels salt water to one-barrel oil and natural gas. Not commercially viable, gas was too far from a pipeline. I took some samples of the white sand from 1200 feet down. It looked like sugar. It ended up getting spilled into my Betamax. Not good news.
While all this was going on, Dow Chemical wanted large quantities of the salt water from wells for research. They kept drilling wells in West Kansas and all they could get was oil.
I spent many hours in the well logs library of Wichita Kansas. Things uninteresting then would be nice today (5 barrels per day $11.00 per.) I never found anything worth putting together a promotion. Some of these well logs went back as far as the 1800s and would note the type, the thickness, and the depth of geologic zones.
Few things can equal the satisfaction of sitting in the drilling shack, freezing to death, and watching the drill going round and round. The readout would tell you how far down you were in the geologist would tell you how much further you had to go to get to those on desired and believed to contain oil.
Changing the drill bit was a laborious process of pulling up multiple 40 foot lengths of drill pipe, unscrewing the tapered thread joining it to the next pipe and storing it until going back down. Sometimes there would be minor traces of oil on the bit but those zones were too insignificant.
What a thrill it was when he blowing the well with water and having it flush beautiful oil out on to the pits. The odor was the magic. The first thing you have to do after verifying that you have a promising pay zone is set pipe, cement it and then perforate it at the pay zone.
Then water and sand is pumped down the well at high pressure and out into the structure of the earth. This was the cause the rocks to separate and when they came back together with the removal of the pressure, the sand would prevent them closing completely up and give a large collection area for the oil to seep through.
A lot more fun than playing at the casino but usually just about as rewarding. If you’re wondering what kind of girl that takes to go through yours and rocks, it was invaded by Howard Hughes. It resembles three heavy duty boot spurs that punches at the rock as the drill bit rotates.
The odors are not all roses though, some oil wells can produce hydrogen sulfide gas, the rotten eggs smelling gas. The scary part is that you will not smell it if it is strong enough to kill you. One pickup truck, going to the well, rolled to a stop downwind of the well with the driver dead. The interstate going north out of Houston had a dip that had collected some poisonous hydrogen sulfide resulting in several people dying just driving north on the interstate. Scary, no?