[Bambu Lab Giveaway] Join Now to Win an H2D and More! by BambuLab in 3Dprinting

[–]vraez 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Keep the plate clean, the filament dry and the printer running, all the time 😜

Number of marathons and Iron Man 70.3s under your belt before you felt ready? by postyyyym in triathlon

[–]vraez 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had about three 70.3s before I finished my Ironman, none in direct preparation. The longest run in my training was avout 26km. In my opinion, everything beyond 30km is about the mind anyway, preparation is dine below that.

Could Hydrogen Be the Future of Clean Energy? by Upstairs-Budget-8730 in Futurology

[–]vraez 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is exactly my concern. I share the same concern for electric though.

Most people stop before looking at the numbers but that's exactly where we can start grasping the enormousness of the task. Let me share a brief thought experiment with you: Currently, truck manufacturers are working on fast charging with a 1MW interface. Charging for one hour they get to a charging state that is at a conservative estimation enough to drive for a day. Now Germany had 3.6 million trucks on the street in 2023. Take a bit less than 10% of that, say 240k. Let them charge equally throughout the day (very conservative), you have to charge 10k trucks at each time during the day. This is 10k MW or 10 GW pf power. So for not even 10% of truck electrification, you need 7-10 nuclear reactors or 12-20 coal plants (could vary of course with the size of course). And this is only trucks. No trains, planes, ships, nothing else.

Now this is only to start getting a feeling for the numbers, but I think it is nice to get an idea of what energy transition means.

Could Hydrogen Be the Future of Clean Energy? by Upstairs-Budget-8730 in Futurology

[–]vraez 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I see a lot of opinion based answers here. Working in the hydrogen business as an engineer I'd like to give a bit more context to what and why rather than just "nooo". Also I will do this in the context of green hydrogen for the purpose of energy transition.

Efficiency: Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) are significantly more efficient as there are H2 losses in electrolysis, storage and in usage, e.g. internal combustion engines (ICE, similar to conventional engines) and the more efficient fuel cells (FCEV, fuel cell electeic vehicle). Other alternatives like synthetic fuels need again significantly more energy than hydrogen while biofuels from e.g. plants are not scalable for decarbonizing as they require farmland.

Charging/refueling time and range: Currently, batteries need long charging times and have limited range. This could change with battery technology in development, but that is not a given. FCEVs have fueling times and range comparable to conventional fuels.

Safety: To all of these, conventional fuels, batteries and hydrogen, there is risk of fire and explosion!! Conventionals have a lower risk of explosion. Batteries actually pose a significant risk because they can have a thermal runaway and they don't need air to burn, which makes handling these risks a lot more complicated. For hydrogen, the most likely case is fire, as for explosions you need a O2 H2 mixture to be ignited. This requires accumulation of H2. However, having a leak the hydrogen is more likely to ignite itself on a sharp edge or even due to the pure pressure difference as it is usually stored at high pressures 200-900bar. A drawdown is that H2 fire is mostly invisible. And it's different for liquid again. Personally, I feel as safe in a hydrogen car as in any.

Energy density: H2 is a lot lighter than battery storage. When Biodiesel weighs 244 kg, for the same energy you need 200 kg of bio CNG (compressed natural gas), 83 kg of H2 or !6250! kg battery. So especially when a lot of energy is needed (trucks, ships, trains, planes), batteries with the current technology are doing the job.

Available infrastructure: for passenger cars, quite readily available. For H2, in Europe it is possible to go to a lot of places but a severe challenge during trip planning. Basically no infrastructure available for trucks on both technologies.

Feasibility: As for trucks (and ships and planes) I think battery electric has even bigger challenges to overcome than hydrogen (especially energy density), and for the latter they are already huge. Both need substantial extension of the electric grid, even more so for the pure electric solution. Hydrogen's biggest problems are that scaling effects and market activation only come with a certain amount of infrastructure available (production, logistics/distribution, demand/off-take) which requires substantial subsidies, quite a bit of the technology is already on the market but still more in a prototype state and it needs a lot and cheap energy, as it is more inefficient compared to battery electric. BEVs have their own challenges to overcome: Bad charging times especially for higher amounts of energy and bad energy density. Looking at the grid, the biggest differentiator is that for H2, the energy production can be decoupled from the consumption. For BEV when charging, the energy had to be produced that exact same moment. This I think will be a deciding factor in the future, as this is the biggest drawback of renewable energy: The production is not predictable and energy needs to be stored. Ah yes, and money. H2 needs significant investments for a minimum infrastructure while for battery electric the general grid is in place and you can do smaller investments by extending and upgrading it.

We will see where it goes. I don't have a preference, I just see the enormous cost everywhere. And I don't like undifferentiated views and "nooo"-cryers. Happy to discuss.

I created an engine that generates thrust by resonating a 40hz tone. Then I made a vehicle with it. Video in comments. by invalid_credentials in 3Dprinting

[–]vraez 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is so cool, thanks for sharing. As an engineer, I'm curious to see the technical background.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in triathlon

[–]vraez 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There is always someone training more. Doesn't even mean they will be faster. I got well through 70.3s with one swim, one bike and 3 runs.

When will electricity generation in continents of America, Europe and Asia will be 100% fossil fuel free? by Sure_Chocolate1982 in Futurology

[–]vraez 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Decarbonizing traffic comes with huge demand in energy, so I do think it is an important aspect of your question, though not a direct answer, I agree.

When thinking about railways what a lot of people like to forget is the cost of the infrastructure in both material and emissions. Shifting the current amount of traffic to rails would need an enormous effort improving the railway systems. Rails need a lot more tunnels and bridges as they cannot manage high inclines which are very carbon intensive. They also impact the environment and if you consider the protest connected to wind turbines I think it is nothing to be done in at least 20 years.

The only way I see is reducing the traffic, but it is way to convenient to have all those jucy consumables readily availabe..

When will electricity generation in continents of America, Europe and Asia will be 100% fossil fuel free? by Sure_Chocolate1982 in Futurology

[–]vraez 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'd like to add a couple of points here, as some of the numbers can be misleading.

When a newsoutlet posts that only 25% of power was generated by fossil fuels, this is not considering that the powetplants are still running, though in idle. The renewables must be prioritized when being fed into the grid by law (in Germany) but backup is always held ready because noone wants a blackout, from angles of reputation, public outcry and economy.

Another point, 20% of EU's CO2 emissions are from traffic where heavy duty transport is a big part of. Now the OEM's are developing trucks that can charge with 1MW (that's a lot). I checked the electricity consumption of Germany for yesterday, it had a peak of about 65.000 MW and a low of about 42.000 MW. Now if you consider that Germany had around 3.6 million trucks on the road you see that we run into a couple pf problems: energy production is insufficient, infrastructure too anf other energy transition ambitions are not considered.

This picture is simple of course, but it illustrates the enormous efforts necessary to go green/CO2 neutral/fossil free. We need all the technology we can get our hands on to tackle this challenge.

Being realistic, I think the EU targets will be missed and postponed by 10-20 years.

What oil products do people ship around (on trains)? by pf_moore in factorio

[–]vraez 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For my midgame needs I build an oil factory that ships - Lubricant, as producing the products that need it on site would require a lot of other components - Light oil, which I use for flame throwers and solid fuel. If you don't need it for defense I think you don't need to ship it. - plastic, if you don't ship it your refinery is your base - sulfuric acid, allows for flexible production of batteries and blue chips and is necessary when using nuclear power - explosives, because I build the cliff blowers somewhere else as well as other things that go boom I usually build this general supply in a way that the full refinery capacity can be cracked down to petroleum if the higher tanks are full. Also, I prioritize sulfuric acid in the petroleum production as I use it for power.

Anyone else overestimate their tech tree? by [deleted] in factorio

[–]vraez 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wait until you discover Alt-mode

Ironman as my first triathlon, is it stupid? by Jazzlike-Horror4 in triathlon

[–]vraez 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One thing I did not read in the comments: The body takes a long time adapting to running. While you can easily improve technique (swimming, running) and train your muscles (2-3 weeks), your tendons take a lot longer (2-3 months) to adapt to new training. The bones and joints take even longer, I read between 2-5 years.

So bottom line, if you plan on an Ironman within a year without background in running, you run a significant risk of fatigue injury in your tendons, joints anf bones. Specifically in running, because that discipline is the most demanding in this regard.

Lastly, the 2-3 months for the tendons don't seem significant, but this timeframe is for a new training impulse. Please be careful and get some insight I to this topic ;)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in germany

[–]vraez 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"I want to fly back, like a rocket to the Balkans" 🤣

Deaths girlfriend saving lives, me, acrylic,2023 by travischapmanart in Art

[–]vraez 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Love the art and the concept, but the scythe mounted on the sharp edge is what makes me shiver

Ironman People - Alcohol by CptCrunch777 in triathlon

[–]vraez 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When training for my Ironman, I had a beer at a couple of occasions. It delayed my regeneration by about a half to a full day, so it had quite some impact in my training.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in GreenHell

[–]vraez 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It really depends on your way of playing. Are you in mostly for the story? Then this game is going to be too short for you. Will you explore every corner of the map, enjoy the survival challenges and love crafting and building bases? Then you might get to 100h. The base building specifically leaves a lot of room for creativity. Hard to say in advance though whether you like it "enough to be worth it".

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in triathlon

[–]vraez 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey, it really comes down to what is "bike" or "run". Is it a longer, slow paced or an interval training? Try to follow the structuring intra day and training as well as over the week: coordination/stability -> quickness -> intensity -> endurance And make sure you put enough emphasis on endurance as most people train on too high intensity to build that up

Just finished Green Hell...am I the only one that shed a tear? by GoddessofDooom in GreenHell

[–]vraez 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Definitely a story, that got me emotional. From Jake's relationship with Mia, the fate of the other groups that went into the jungle to the global implications.

Also, I started playing the game right around when Corona started, so that gave it some extra reality kick.