CLEAN ENERGY
-BY
ABSTRACT:
Geothermal energy is energy derived from
the natural heat of the earth. The earth’s
temperature varies widely, and geothermal
energy is usable for a wide range of
temperatures from room temperature to
well over 300°C. Geothermal energy can be
used for both electricity generation and
direct uses depending on the temperature
and chemistry of the resources. High to
medium resources are used for electricity
generation while medium to low resources
are is mainly used for direct application. For
efficient utilization of resources, geothermal
energy is being utilized for combined heat
and power. Since geothermal energy is
renewable, indigenous and environmentally
benign, and can be used as base load, its
will be the future source of energy in Kenya
and most of the Eastern African countries
especially those that are located within the
east Africa Rift. This will reduce uses of
fossil fuels and hence address global
warming
In a context of coming energy crisis, due to
the declining of oil era, water problems are
expected to substantially worsen. And vice
versa, due to the close relationship
between water and energy issues, water
problems are also expected to contribute to
increase the energy problems. In addition
B.V.SREERAM SARMA
to all this, environmental considerations
such as global warming, will surely add
significant pressure in all these matters. In
this scenario renewable energies are rapidly
increasing their contribution to the global
mix, being clearly solar energy the one with
higher potential. Therefore, if solar energy
has the highest potential among all the
renewable and there is also the
coincidence, all over the world, that where
water stress and/or scarcity exists, also
there are good levels of solar radiation, the
conclusion seems also clear: it is needed to
develop suitable technologies which would
permit to use solar energy to,
simultaneously, help to solve the energy
and water problems. Main solar energy
applications to water processes, presented
at this paper are: i) Solar Desalination; ii)
Solar Detoxification and; iii) Solar
Disinfection.
GEO THERMAL ENERGY:
1. INTRODUCTION
The word geothermal was developed from
two Greek words, “geo”, meaning earth,
and “thermos”, meaning heat since it is
power extracted from heat stored in the
earth. This geothermal energy originates
from radioactive decay of minerals, and
from solar energy absorbed at the surface.
Geothermal heat, is estimated to be about
5,500oC at the Earth’s core – about as hot
as the surface of the sun. This energy been from the geothermal reservoir as it comes
used for bathing since paleolithic times and from wells and route it directly through
for space heating since ancient roman turbine/generator units to produce
times. Nowadays, it is used commercially electricity (Figure 2). An example of a dry
for both generating electricity and direct steam generation operation is at the
uses. Worldwide, geothermal plants have Geysers in northern California
the capacity to generate about 10 GW of
electricity as of 2007, and in practice supply
0.3% of global electricity demand. An
additional 28 GW of direct geothermal
heating capacity is installed for district
heating, space heating, hot spas, industrial
processes, desalination and agricultural
applications (Fridleifsson et. al, 2008).
Because of the near limitless ability of the
earth to produce magma, and the
continuous transfer of heat between
subsurface rock and water, geothermal
energy is considered a renewable resource.
It is also cost effective, reliable, sustainable,
and environmentally friendly, but has Flash Steam Power Plant:
historically been limited to areas near
Flash steam power plants (Figure 3) are the
tectonic plate boundaries. Recent
most common type of geothermal power
technological advances have dramatically
plant. The steam, once it has been
expanded the range and size of viable
separated from the water, is piped to the
resources, especially for applications such
powerhouse where it is used to drive the
as home heating, opening a potential for
steam turbine. The steam is condensed
widespread exploitation. Geothermal
after leaving the turbine, creating a partial
power has the potential to help mitigate
vacuum and thereby maximizing the power
global warming if widely deployed in place
generated by the turbine-generator. The
of fossil fuels.
steam is usually condensed either in a
Dry steam power plants : direct contact condenser, or a heat
exchanger type condenser. In a direct
Power plants using dry steam systems were contact condenser the cooling water from
the first type of geothermal power he cooling tower is sprayed onto and mixes
generation plants built. They use steam
with the steam. The condensed steam then
forms part of the cooling water circuit, and
a substantial portion is subsequently
evaporated and is dispersed into the
atmosphere through the cooling tower.
Excess cooling water called blow down is
often disposed of in shallow injection wells.
As an alternative to direct contact
condensers shell and tube type condensers
are sometimes used, as is shown in the
schematic below. In this type of plant, the
condensed steam does not come into
contact with the cooling water, and is
disposed of in injection wells.
Typically, flash condensing geothermal
power plants vary in size from 5 MW to
over 100 MW. Depending on the steam
characteristics, gas content, pressures, and
power plant design, between 6000 kg and
9000 kg of steam each hour is required to
produce each MW of electrical power. Small
power plants (less than 10 MW) are often
called well head units as they only require
the steam of one well and are located
adjacent to the well on the drilling pad in
order to reduce pipeline costs. Often such
well head units do not have a condenser,
and are called backpressure units. They are
very cheap and simple to install, but are
inefficient (typically 10-20 tonne per hour of
steam for every MW of electricity) and can
have higher environmental impacts.
Binary cycle power plants :
In reservoirs where temperatures are
typically less than 220C. but greater than
100 C binary cycle plants are often utilised.
The illustration (Figure 4) shows the
principal elements of this type of plant. The
reservoir fluid (either steam or water or
both) is passed through a heat exchanger
which heats a secondary working fluid
(organic) which has a boiling point lower
than 100o C. This is typically an organic fluid
such as Isopentane, which is vaporised and
is used to drive the turbine. The organic
fluid is then condensed in a similar manner
to the steam in the flash power plant
described above, except that a shell and
tube type condenser rather than direct
contact is used. The fluid in a binary plant is
recycled back to the heat exchanger and
forms a closed loop. The cooled reservoir
fluid is again re-injected back into the
reservoir.
Binary cycle type plants are usually
between 7 and 12 % efficient, depending on
the temperature of the primary
(geothermal) fluid. Binary Cycle plant
typically vary in size from 500 kW to 10
MW.
Direct uses of geothermal energy :
Low to medium temperature geothermal
resources are utilized for direct uses or
binary power plants. The oldest and
probably best known direct application of
geothermal energy is in baths and spas,
used during Roman times. Other more
coordinated and commercial uses include
district heating systems, like those found in
Iceland which are the largest geothermal
district heating system in the world, tourist
centres thermal baths in Hungary and
China; geothermally heated fish farms and
food processing and de-hydration in Greece
and the USA. Furthermore the possibility to
utilize ground source (geothermal) heat
pumps to either heat homes directly or
through energy efficiency programs,
allowing savings in energy costs, has vast
possibilities for individual or industrial use.
All those "direct use" applications utilize
geothermal energy produced from lower
temperature water of less than 150 degrees
centigrade that is being derived from wells
of 100-3,000 m deep wells. Today, around
73 nations utilize geothermal energy
directly, with an overall energy output of
75.9 TWh thermal per year. The number of
nations using geothermal heat is growing
constantly. Approximately 70 countries
made direct use of a total of 270 PJ of
geothermal heating in 2004. More than half
of this energy is being used for space
heating, and another third for heated pools.
The remainder supported industrial and
agricultural applications. The global
installed capacity was 28 GW, but capacity
factors tend to be low (30% on average)
since heat is mostly needed in the winter.
The above figures are dominated by 88 PJ of
space heating extracted by an estimated 1.3
million geothermal heat pumps with a total
capacity of 15 GW. Heat pumps for are the
fastest-growing means of exploiting
geothermal energy, with a global annual
growth rate of 30% in energy production.
Most of these new heat pumps are being
installed for home heating. Direct heating in
all its forms is far more efficient than
electricity generation and places less
demanding temperature requirements on
the heat resource. Heat may come from co-
generation with a geothermal electrical
plant or from smaller wells or heat Solar energy:
exchangers buried in shallow ground. As a
result, geothermal heating is economical Introduction :
over a much greater geographical range
In 1953, an article in a magazine with a title
than geothermal electricity. Where natural
“Why Don’t We Have ..Sun Power” with a
hot springs are available, the heated water
statement “ Every hour, it floods the earth
can be piped directly into radiators. If the
with a deluge of thermal energy equal to 21
ground is hot but dry, earth tubes or
billion tons of coal”. In fact according to
downhole heat exchangers can collect the
latest figures published, the surface of the
heat. But even in areas where the ground is
earth receives about 124 exa (1018) Watts
colder than room temperature, heat can
or 3,850 zetta (1024) Joules per year of
still be extracted with a geothermal heat
solar power [1]. The spectrum of the solar
pump more cost-effectively and cleanly
light coming from sun covers from about
than it can be produced by conventional
250 nm to about 2500 nm in wavelength, as
furnaces (Lund, 2006). These devices draw
can be seen in the figure (1). By the way
on much shallower and colder resources
visible light of human beings covers from
than traditional geothermal techniques, and
400 to 700 nm, at which band the light is
they frequently combine a variety of other
very dense, about 1.5 W/m2/nm at 400 nm,
functions, including air conditioning,
going up to about 1.75 W/m2/nm at about
seasonal energy storage, solar energy
550 nm and then comes back to 1.5
collection, and electric heating. Geothermal
W/m2/nm at 700 nm as can be deduced
heat pumps can be used for space heating
from the figure. Solar thermal heating is the
essentially anywhere in the world.
result of the hole solar spectrum, for this
Geothermal heat supports many
reason, even white painted cars, get hot,
applications. In Iceland, Reykjavík and
because though most of the visible light is
Akureyri pipe hot water from eothermal
reflected, but the other parts of the
plants below pavement to melt snow.
spectrum, heats the car. Though mirrors
District heating applications use networks
reflect most of the wide spectrum of sun,
of piped hot water to heat buildings in
but the glass covering the mirror, gets hot.
whole communities. Geothermal
There are two methods for converting solar
desalination has been demonstrated.
power into electricity, thermal which is
based on concentrating solar power by
mirrors or other type of reflectors to
produce high temperature to generate
water vapour or other liquids with high
pressure to rotate turbines to generate
electricity or by making use of photovoltaic
(PV) effect to convert solar power to
electric power directly. A photovoltaic
complete system usually consists of the
followings: Photovoltaic units, batteries,
charging controllers, inverters, load
controllers, circuit breakers and wiring. We
shall explain the principle of solar thermal
technology, but we shall go into detail
about PV system.
II. SOLAR THERMAL ELECTRICITY
GENERATIONS
This method is based on concentrated solar
thermal (CST) technology by using mirrors
to concentrate sunlight. There are several
ways to do that. Some use curved mirrors
which are usually parabolic mirrors that
track the movement of the sun and focus
the sunlight at pipes filled by water or other
liquids. The other type of designs use long
flat rotating mirrors, which are cheaper.
Andasol-1Plant in Gaudix and Astexol-2
Plant in Andalosia of Spain with a capacity
of about 50 MW use the Parabolic Trough
design which consists of long parallel rows
of modular solar collectors, as can be seen
in Figure (2). Tracking the sun from East to
West by rotation on one axis, the high
precision reflector panels concentrate the
solar radiation coming directly from the sun
onto an absorber pipe located along the
focal line of the collector. A heat transfer
medium, a synthetic oil like in car engines,
is circulated through the absorber pipes at
temperatures up to 400°C and generates
live steam to drive the steam turbine
generator of a conventional power block.
The two plants mentioned above are in
operation. Two more similar plants will be
constructed in 2011 in Solana-Spain of 250
MW with six hours of molten salt thermal
energy capability [5][6]. Concentrating solar
power systems are a fast growing source of
sustainable energy. Full-scale parabolic
trough systes consist of many such troughs
laid out in parallel over a large area of land.
Since 1985 a solar thermal system using this
principle has been in full operation in
alifornia in the United States. It is called the
SEGS system. Other CSP designs lack this
kind of long experience and therefore it can
currently be said that the parabolic trough
design is the most thoroughly proven CSP
technology.
III. SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC ELECTRICITY
GENERATION
A. Introduction
There are many types of technologies used
to produce electricity based on solar
photovoltaic principle. Crystalline silicon at
the moment is the main technology sed
commercially, but there are other
technologies under intense research work
to produce more efficient solar cells. ar
Power level during day time at solar cells
with two axis trackers, single axis trackers,
on roof with tracking, on roof with no
tracking and stationary. [3] The efficiency of
silicon solar cells is in the range of 13-18%.
The average of sun light power or solar
power covering all the spectrum is about
1KW/m2 peak, that is in the direction of the
sun and when the sun has reached its peak
power, not early in the morning or late in
the evening as seen in figure (3); the
average solar power with no tracking
between 6 AM to 6 PM is about half the
peak power . For this reason, usually the
day time is considered to start at 8 AM and
ends at 4 PM. As can be seen from this
figure, by using good tracking system, the
average solar power between 8 AM and 4
PM is about more than 90% of the peak. But
that depends on the location of the area,
how far it is from the equator and seasonal
timing. Solar cells made of 1 m2, produce
about 140-170 W peak, for the reason
mentioned above, but the average (with no
tracking facilities) solar power produced
within the 8 hours mentioned above is
about 70-85 W/m2. By the way, the cost of
photovoltaic systems came down especially
during the past ten years. As technology is
advancing, efficiency of most systems is
going up and thereby the cost is coming
down [8]. sillicon cells are manufactured
with two adjacent layers, the first is made
of silicon doped with small amount of
phosphorus which has one more electron in
its outer orbital than silicon. When a
phosphorus atom takes place of a silicon
atom, the extra electron is crystal lattice. As
these electrons with negative charge are
free to move, so this material is known as n-
type silicon. P-type silicon gets its positively
charged particles from tiny amounts of
boron, an element that has no less electron
than silicon in its outer shell. In this case
there are not enough electrons to form all
the covalent bonds required, so the
electrons move around to try to fill this
deficiency, which is called a hole. Holes act
like free, positively charged particles. When
p-type and n-type materials are placed
together, they form a p-n junction .
 capture the suns energy. Collectors are
usually arranged together especially when
electricity is to be produced and used in the
same location.
6. Solar power is used to charge batteries so
that solar powered devices can be used at
night. However, the batteries are large and
heavy and need storage space. They also
need replacing from time to time.

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