<p>Hey, I was wondering if you could spare a moment to give me some advice on an engineering essay I've got to write.</p>
<p>The title I've been given is 'How can mechanical engineers help solve the energy crisis?'. It needs to be around 1000 words.</p>
<p>I've wrote a bit for it but I'm not convinced I'm going down the right path. How would you approach it? What would you try to cover and in how much depth. </p>
<p>I'd really appreciate it if you could help.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>What are your opening thoughts so far? </p>
<p>Are you going to focus on increasing the use of alternative energy sources or creating more effecient engines, motors, or lighter building materials, etc. </p>
<p>If your plan is to focus on sources such as wind, biodiesel, and solar, realize that they comprise a very small portion of our energy consumption (less than 1% combined) and are quite ineffecient and expensive.</p>
<p>Also are you writing about electricity production, or energy in general (much of which incudes transportation)? </p>
<p>Just fill us in with some more of your initial ideas and I’m sure most of us would be glad to help.</p>
<p>The problem is there is no energy crisis.</p>
<p>I recommend looking into geothermal energy. It is probably the best renewable energy source we have. This is because you get way more energy out then it costs to actually set up the geothermal plant. Most other alternative enegy sources arn’t as efficient. For example the largest windmill farms in the US don’t even create a fraction of energy that a small sized coal plant creates. On the other hand geothermal plants are much more competitive with coal plants. Geothermal energy is also a proven technology. One excellent example is Iceland where most of the energy comes from geothermal
plants. In the US we have a huge potential for geothermal energy to power our economy. This is because Alaska and California are riddled with geothermal potential. Also the principles needed for realizing geothermal are similar to petroleum. In the end it
will be the oil companies who will have the power to switch to geothermal energy and you can take my word they will. Just give it 40 years and oil companies will realize oil only has a couple more decades left until it becomes
more expensive to produce oil then the profit they make from it.</p>
<p>Geothermal energy is one of the best clean energy sources and within 100 hundred years will begin the take the place of the fossil fuels industry. Oil companies will be the leaders of the green revolution. I am sure
of it.</p>
<p>Spoken like a true petroleum engineer. Just because you plan to make money off of oulsoesnt mean that it is the ideal solution for energy in the future. It isn’t.</p>
<p>That weird word meant to be “oil” and “doesn’t” but got screwed up by the iPhone keyboard.</p>
<p>Biodiesel and solar may be inefficient right now, but currently wind power is the fastest growing energy production method.</p>
<p>you make the mechanical engineers help work in a nuclear plant!</p>
<p>The biggest counter point is the start up cost for building plants- big pain in the ass but otherwise nuclear is just as clean as other “green energies” but easily scalable to the nations demand… unlike wind. </p>
<p>Geeze I hate it when companies/political people push for wind. Yeah we’re going to need enegery from every avialble spot but come on now. They make it seem like it’ll save us. It won’t. It’ll scratch the energy crisis but thats it.<br>
sry for the rant :)</p>
<p>Traditional energy will not go away in the next five decades.
I think alternative energy is cool, but it is still very inefficient. We need to be able to invent mechanism that will convert solar power faster than what we have now, and able to store more, and when we consume it, we also need electrical mechanism that will is energy efficient. </p>
<p>To be able to supply, and store large quantity of solar power should be done by everyone, which I think will happen in the future. In other words, everyone will become part of the energy source chain. </p>
<p>But CoEd still has to make money. So the majority should come from ConEd, how ever they do it. Probably dump a huge solar plant somewhere in the middle of the desert. LOL</p>
<p>Energy crisis is not so bad at this point. I think water is a problem. It is said that at least 40% of the world’s population are having water shortage. If anyone will come up with a good small invention that will convert any water (liquid) into clean water, you can get a Nobel Prize in Peace, Physics and Chemistry.</p>
<p>Another crisis is society. This actually brings out hunger, water shortage, land shortages, corruptions, inflations, and many other sad crisis that human have to deal one day.</p>
<p>With this growing population, there will be more people not getting feed well. In fact, when technology is becoming more important, and that there are more people becoming blue collars, and demand for lands, fewer farms and farmers are available. </p>
<p>In Asia, countries like China is battling against between making profit and land preservation. Fewer people want to stay in villages, and make living as farmers. They would rather to work in factories. People sold farm lands to estates and big buck bosses. Chinese are actually facing food shortage. Water shortage also occurs in most part of China. </p>
<p>Do you see what happen now? Everything will turn against the human.</p>
<p>In the future, energy will come from many sources.</p>
<p>In the past, energy came from many sources…</p>
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<p>Biofuels is about the worst idea out of all of the renewable sources to be honest. It is not sustainable, not that efficient, and artificially inflates prices for whatever commodity it happens to be bade of (corn to ethanol programs, for example). Ultimately, the silver bullet is nuclear fusion. Whether that will ever be a feasible source of power remains to be seen, however. It sure would solve a ton of problems, though.</p>
<p>^Hey! MBAs are working very, very hard to market biofuels to the sheeple. Besides, the future will be all about personal nuclear reactors. At only $40k is a bargain!</p>
<p>[Man</a> Builds Nuclear Reactor in Brooklyn Warehouse](<a href=“http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/local_news/brooklyn/man-builds-nuclear-reactor-in-brooklyn-warehouse-20100623]Man”>FOX 5 New York)</p>
<p>If only I could find an available source of enriched uranium… If only…</p>
<p>I thought the key part was, how can ME’s help…
Wind and solar are fine, but when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine, no power… except when it is stored somehow. Unfortunately, battery technology is insufficient, but that’s one for EEs. For MEs, mechanical means of storing energy and releasing it later (like a battery) such as lifting water uphill when you have power, releasing it to fall down when you need it. Or compressing air underground, etc. by mechanical means. Or flywheel technology. Or harnessing tides. ME’s can have an impact. So don’t leave energy just to the EEs, PEs, or NEs.</p>
<p>
I agree. Nuclear energy is the currently our best way to go, however due to enormous cost of building them, it is not feasible as an immediate choice. However, if we had stocked up on a bunch of nuclear power plants a few decades back when the cost wasn’t as big of an issue (as France did), we would be sittin’ easy right about now (as France is).</p>
<p>ME does almost everything in product design.
You need ME to design the damn solar plant - like screwing IKEA furniture together.
I am not suggesting that ME design the actual solar plant. But the product itself.
Just look at your phone. If I to have name four disciplines, ME and material science, EE, CS/CpE, and ChemE.
So the EE and CpE can work together on the board, while ME, MSE and ChemE are working together to find the right material, the right % of whatever it should contains, and ME will go through stress test, falling from 1000000 meter lol</p>
<p>Converting mechanical energy is also something that ME does.</p>
<p>Also notice that ME should have learn thermal and combustion.
Civil engineering too, how heat is exchange in a building. LOL that’s another big problem coming down to design new building standard.</p>
<p>Wait… why does it take people from 3 different fields to figure out what material to use in a phone?</p>
<p>I built a perpetual motion machine in my basement. We can try to make a giant version of it. It just needs an outlet.</p>