Questions for NOAA and NPS Death Valley that have gone unanswered related to the 100 year celebration of the 'hottest ever temperature'

Those sort of temperatures might make this a viable power generation scheme.
http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums/b550/RichardLH/SolarHeatenginePowergenerator_zps48abb7a3.png

Actually I might like to fit a diffusor at the top of that. A hot jet of air like that replacing natural chaotic processes may have unexpected consequences!

Martin C says:
July 5, 2013 at 8:24 am
Richard LH at 8:13 am:
that idea is apparently in work. See Dr. Spencer’s website and this article:
Yes I was really just cross posting from there anyway.
Now I am to trying to use this to get to sapce :-).

Anthony Watts says:
July 5, 2013 at 8:30 am
For the record: I resent the email again this morning,…

They resent it this morning again too!

Hummmm, upon reading the interesting email,,, a song popped into my head 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI0fk_gCdzE

“Jim” is yet another pseudonymous troll, perhaps one of the nest of paid vipers whose misbehavior on this site, patiently indulged by Anthony and his moderators, provides such a valuable insight into the intellectual and financial corruption that now infects the scientific, academic, media, enviro, and political communities on the “global warming” question.
With characteristically gratuitous offensiveness, this creep writes: “The answers to some of these question are freely available on the web, if Anthony Watts chose to actually do some research. The Furnace Creek and Greenland Ranch sites are VERY closely located. I found the latitude and longitude of both online within about 5 minutes of searching for them, they only differed by 1′ of latitude (same longitude) and 2 m of elevation. Watts is complaining because someone else is too slow or too busy to do research that Watts is too lazy to do.”
Anthony cannot by any stretch of the most over-funded troll’s bought-and-paid-for “imagination” be described as “lazy”.
I had a look on the web and found the following:
Greenland Ranch, Colorado
Weatherbase.com gives the following data for Furnace Creek weather station:
Elevation: –190 feet.
Latitude: 36.27 N. (not clear whether this is 27/100 or 27/60).
Longitude: 116.52 W. (not clear whether this is 52/100 or 52/60).
http://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weather.php3?s=306340
Weatherbase.com does not show Greenland Ranch as a weather station, but lists Greenland Ranch, CO, as a location that has no weather station. However, the ten Weatherbase-reported stations nearest to Greenland Ranch (5-14 miles distant) are listed. None is Furnace Creek.
Furnace Creek, California
The Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean at the College of the Environment, Washington State University, gives the following location data for Greenland Ranch weather station, CA:
Station ident 043603 (note that these digits were reversed to 306340 in the Weatherbase.com unique resource locator for Furnace Creek).
Elevation -51 meters (multiplied by 3.28 feet gives –167 ft 3 in).
Latitude 36 degrees 27 minutes North.
Longitude 116 degrees 52 minutes West.
http://www.jisao.washington.edu/greg/southwest/states/CA/043603.html
JISAO does not list a “Furnace Creek” weather station at all.
The following uncertainties are evident:
1. On the basis of the station idents having the same six digits, one a palindrome of the other, one might infer that the two stations may be identical.
2. However, the two stations appear to be in different states, suggesting that they may not be identical.
3. If one assumes that “.27” and “.54” are sixtieths and not hundredths, the latitude and longitude of the two stations are identical to two places of decimals, from which one might infer that the two stations may be identical.
4. However, the two stations are separated by some 23 feet in altitude, suggesting that they may not be identical.
5. The troll says the two stations are separated by some 2 feet in altitude, suggesting that one or other or both of the two stations whose details I found may not be the same stations as the troll found.
6. The troll also says the two stations are separated by 1 minute of latitude, whereas the two stations as I found them have latitudes identical to the nearest minute.
Given these uncertainties, which seem typical of the general sloppiness in temperature recording in the U.S. (one trembles to think how much worse it is likely to be just about everywhere else in the world), Anthony was surely justified in asking, in a polite and straightforward way, for the locations of the two stations.

lectorconstans says:
July 7, 2013 at 5:10 pm
Indeed, this is a three stage engine based on that old gardening principle.
It gains in efficiency because it can reach higher air temperatures. Just what is required in a good heat engine.
Energy storage at low speeds/high mass are at the other end to high speed ones.
Try stopping a loaded barge in the same canal with your finger. It will work but does take some time! And for a frictionless surface, a half circle floating in a sensibly larger canal and at low speed/high mass makes for a very low friction setup. If you really, really need to do so, then teflon coat the huill surface and go lower.

If you want it this way, this is Trevithick (old gardening setup), through Watt (super-heating) to Whittle (jet turbine) in an air engine rather than steam.
Just reaplying history to today.

Ok . so final workable design – I hope. Sorry for the Tigger bouncing up and down – Olw is back now.
—
Firstly let us describe what we are seeking (or so I believe). We are dealing with a low grade energy source (solar) which we need to collect as much of and use what we collect as well as possible. The less energy interfaces there are (such as moving to water/steam etc.) with their consequent potential losses the better. Also it must be cheap and easy to construct, locally if possible.
So the ideal engine is one that operates on air and solar input only. It should have a multi-stage layout with rising temperatures imparted to the air as we go through each stage towards the power takeoff point and have a low temperature exhaust. The pressure will remain unchanged throughout the engine. Only temperature/velocity changes as we move through it.
If you want a simple mental picture of how all this works, think “little lemon pip of air being slowly pressed between two slippery plates and getting faster all the time”.
Single Solar Air Jet Pipe.
Heat Stage 1.
Long thin box open at one end to the outside air, roofed with a black, heat absorbing/conducting panel towards the sun. Bottom and sides of insulating and heat resistent materials and sealed air tight except at the entry point.
Angled to the equinox noon sun for year round working and running West – East.
Air entering (through an air filter as required?) through the open end of the box starts heating up. It wants to expand. Because of the sealed, constant cross section of the box, it does so by moving faster on down the tube. Towards the exhaust.
Heat Stage 2.
Another long thin box constructed as above but this time with an insulating ‘glass’ roof to achieve higher temperatures in the air. Same angles to the sun. Same heating/velocity effects on the air. This is now a mechanical thermal diode series pumping power into the air as both heat and hence velocity. The pressure is still constant. Well the ‘pressure/temperature/velocity = constant’ triple point is anyway. Higher air temperatures will mean higher velocities and because this point is higher up the temperature gradient, gives a self starting capability to the engine.
On we go.
Heat stage 3.
Final box section, this time ‘on edge’ and now fully heat conductive. Cylindrical ‘mirrors’ concentrate the required power on each side. Highest air temperatures/velocity and a good top end to the input thermal gradient to get all this going fast in the morning.
Cylindrical ‘mirrors’, and hence box rather than tube, rather than parabolic for cost reasons. Can also use a very large ‘flat plane’ mirror array in extreme setups.
Now we are cooking. The air is now very hot and, because it is actually ‘pushing’ against the new outside ‘cold’ air now comming in to replace it at the entry point, it is now moving quite quickly.
Stage 1 = Trevethic. Old steam.
Stage 2 = Watt. Super-heat steam.
Stage 3 = Whittle. Jet engine.
Concentrator venturi/expander (similar to the compressor stages in the Whittle engine).
Takes the now fast, hot air from the prior ‘heat’ stages and then converts some of it’s intertial energy as required to get to an even higher local velocity in the air stream and then reverse itagain and slow it down again to get to the air temps as required by the fan/turbine input. This is probably the high point, thermally, for the engine. Downhill from here. Classic turbine entry throat.
Turbine/fan power extraction.
We now have very hot fast air, still at the ‘pressure/temperature/velocity = constant’ triple point, at the face of a turbine which is also has its exhaust at the base of a hydro-statically balanced exhaust chimney. Air flow up the chimney is driven by the temperature difference to the outside air from the turbine/fan output face up to the top of the chimney only, in the ideal case.
As the chimney/exhaust can be of any width as well as height, so final output velocities and hence temperatures can be kept as low as required to get reliable operation.
We can allow the air to expand out (and hence cool it down to the required exhaust temperature) and do work using a full, multi-stage turbine, or get somwhat less energy out by using the simple interia of larger air volumes which are required by an edge driven fan. That should get better results in that setup even though it may give higher exhaust temperatures so higher losses.
Chimney/Exhaust
The height of the chimney now is really governed only by the need to keep sufficient air flow in the exhaust stream, not to extract power as such, so the height required is correspondingly less. Just enough to reliably not choke the turbine output.
This is because we have kept to the ‘constant pressure point throughout’ requirement and kept that pinned right through even in the turbine. Even when we expand it out we are doing so at constant pressure to get the highest efficiences. Volume/temperature/velocity are what changes. Not pressure.
The overall point is that this is cheap. I mean really, really cheap. And so simple to make. If you have the odd sheet of metal and glass around you can build one in your back garden.
Do NOT allow children to get near the hot end!
Now we have a working, individual ‘solar heat air jet pipe’ then all the classical multi chamber engines then follow, in whatever scale required.
Low tech versions (which could just be single collector/concentrator stack) could be built with local materials if an edge driven fan is used instead of a turbine. Think of a lorry axle mounted vertically supporting a large horizontal fan and blades at the top. Generator takoff from where the prop shaft was. Wheel on the ground bolted to the floor.
The fan can be as large as required and made out of local materials if the heat is kept low and larger air volumes used instead. Flywheel capability can still be included (see below) to allow for night time working even at smallest scales I think.
The rest below may sound more exotic, even extreme. But I think still possibly plausible.
Ultra large scale, or storage added, versions would require a circular ‘ring’ filled with ballast, floating in a circular water canal and the ring retained by guide wheels to the bank. The top of the ring carries a set of turbine blades which interact with multiple fixed ‘heat towers’ in a similar fashion to a Whittle turbine laid out flat.
The only difference is that this engine operates at a constant pressure point and the only variables are thus velocity and temperature.
That gives an almost ‘free’ way to stored any unneeded energy that is collected. As rotational energy in a very big, slow flywheel. Big enough, who knows, to get through the Winter?
Cheap enough and efficient enough you think? Even without the storage?
Anyone want to do the maths and work out the best cost/benefit/size ratios? From Kilowatt to Gigawatt. And who builds the first prototype? Race anyone?
Fig 1.
Very basic 1.5 stage engine that started this all off.
http://i1291.photobucket.com/albums/b550/RichardLH/SolarHeatenginePowergenerator2_zps0b858de9.png

and for the full set:
Wave power for the future.
Waves are big things. Lots of mass. Really lots of energy. Difficult things and they can get VERY big.
Look at a cross section of a single wave though. It has a peak and a trough.
If we can take all of the water than is in the peak and drop it into the following trough we will have recovered all of the energy of the wave. All bar turbulence anyway.
So let’s create a mechanical diode circuit that can do just that.
Construct a large flat ‘beach’ and make it float at ‘sea level’. As wide as you can sensibly build. Point at the waves.
Add to ‘beach’, banks, in the form of an flat entry throat towards the turbines at the ‘back’.
Drop the water through the distance of the RMS average height of waves collected, half above, half below, ‘sea level’ in some large horizontal water turbines.
Take the outflow and return it to where the waves are collected as a slow ‘DC’ return to where the waves are breaking across the whole beach.
A mechanical rectifier for waves.
Build as large as required. Moor where needed.
It is also possible to add the same large ‘flywheel slow storage concept’ to this as well to create energy harvestor ships that can collect far distance waves.
Or build comunities in the oceans.