http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/19/nyregion/19FUEL.html
The New York Times is withholding the addresses of the buildings at the
request of city officials, who cited their importance to international
telecommunications and their potential as terrorist targets.
While almost everyone on this list knows which building is the subject
of the article, we can discuss the issue without discussing the particular
building.
On-site fuel storage is one of those double-edge swords. Without on-site
fuel there are several "ordinary" disasters which would be worsened if
the telecommunications infrastructure went dark. For example, during ice
stores, hurricanes, etc we want telecom facilities to stay up for one, two
or three days, depending on how long you believe it will take for the
roads to be passible for fuel trucks or the power to be restored.
On the other hand, storing 72-hours of fuel in a building is a lot of
fuel. NORAD has a million of gallons of fuel to run for at least 30 days
inside the mountain. Hospitals, police stations, etc have a similar
problem. Natural gas, fuel cells, more batteries each have their own
issues.
Less fuel, more risk of a community's 9-1-1 service being interrupted.
More fuel, more risk of a catastrophic building fire.
While almost everyone on this list knows which building is the subject
of the article, we can discuss the issue without discussing the
particular building.
On-site fuel storage is one of those double-edge swords.
The article is comparing the relatively 'inert' diesel fuel to
the aircraft fuel that caused the devastation at the WTC.
Did the authors of this article ever hear about heating oil tanks?
Not sure what they would gain by converting to fuel cells as the article
suggests. They probably would still require onsite storage for their
hydrogen source in order to insure uniterupted supply, either hydrogen,
lng, natural gas or propane. what's better in a fire, a heating oil tank
or a propane tank?
Not sure what they would gain by converting to fuel cells as the article
suggests. They probably would still require onsite storage for their
hydrogen source in order to insure uniterupted supply, either hydrogen,
lng, natural gas or propane. what's better in a fire, a heating oil tank
or a propane tank?
How about using water power for backup? Store a big tank of water on the
top floor and use a water turbine to generate power in an emergency...
Wonder how much water it would take... but for sure this would do well
in case of fire.
> Not sure what they would gain by converting to fuel cells as the article
> suggests. They probably would still require onsite storage for their
> hydrogen source in order to insure uniterupted supply, either hydrogen,
> lng, natural gas or propane. what's better in a fire, a heating oil tank
> or a propane tank?
How about using water power for backup? Store a big tank of water on the
top floor and use a water turbine to generate power in an emergency...
Brilliant. Lets go back to school and study a little bit of physics that one
successfully slept through. The formulas that you would like to review come
from E1 = E2, E = mgh, W = K1 - K2.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/19/nyregion/19FUEL.html
...
> While almost everyone on this list knows which building is the subject
> of the article, we can discuss the issue without discussing the
> particular building.
>
> On-site fuel storage is one of those double-edge swords.
The article is comparing the relatively 'inert' diesel fuel to
the aircraft fuel that caused the devastation at the WTC.
Did the authors of this article ever hear about heating oil tanks?
Jet fuel ak.a kerosene is essentially the same thing as diesel. The only reason
it's 'inert' is that it's too dense to explode like gasoline. You have to mix
in oxidizers (e.g. fertilizer) or atomize it mechanically (e.g. BLU-82) before
ignition if you want a big boom.
The problem with the WTC was actually the lack of a big boom -- the slow-burning
fire lasted long enough to weaken the structure. If there had been a couple
tons of fertilizer on those planes, you would have seen a massive fireball but
the buildings would have stayed up, just like in 1993.
Not sure how this is relevant to NANOG, but I find it interesting.
Have you done the math? Let's say it's a 100 meter high building. A
kilogram of water 100 meters off the ground has:
1kg * 100m * 9.8m/s^2 = 9800 J of energy.
Let's say we want to be able to run for one day without power. So
9800J is enough to provide 9800J/(24*3600)s = 0.113W for a day.
So, roughly speaking, you need 10 kilograms of water for every watt.
One milliliter of water weighs one gram. So that 10 kilograms is
10000ml, or 10000cm^3, or .01m^3. One cubic meter, then weighs 1000kg,
and, thus, can provide about 100W (for a day).
Now, figure out how many kw you need to run a telecom hotel, and you'll
know just how large your tank needs to be (and how much weight the
building structure is going to have to support). Even if you assume
100% efficiency, the tank is still going to me, um, rather largish.
Sorry, it is still only a single power source and eventually the Sun
is going to burn out. If they want my business I would expect them to
have panels pointing toward multiple stars, so they have redundant
connections ;).
Actually, there are different grades of jet fuel as well as diesel. JP4
is 'common' but JP3 also has the characteristic of extinguishing fires
and requires an accelerant to ignite. It was used in SR-71s among
others.
The flash point is the minimum temperature at which the liquid will give
off sufficient vapor to form an ignitable mixture with air. Gasoline is
very dangerous because of its low flash point of �45�F (- 43C).
Substance Classification* Flash Point Vapor Density**
Gasoline Flammable Liquid -45o F. 3-4
Propane Flammable Liquid -156o F. 1.56 @ 32o F.
Ethanol Flammable Liquid 55o F. 1.6
Methanol Flammable Liquid 52o F. 1.1
Turpentine Flammable Liquid 95o F 4.8
Kerosene Combustible Liquid 100o F. 4.5
Diesel Fuel Combustible Liquid 125o F. >1
Safety Solvent Combustible Liquid 100-140o F. 4.8
Paint Thinner Combustible Liquid 105o F. 4.9
As can be seen here, you basically have to warm diesel to 125F before it
will burn, gasoline will immediately burn/explode at almost any
temperature seen on any habitable part of the earth.
I believe kerosene is aircraft fuel, and as someone said here it's not
that different from diesel.
One last addition to this idiotic water idea.. since the water doesn't get up there to the reservoir on the roof by itself, add your costs of huge pumps, plus the cost of pumping it up there, and a less than 100% efficiency in converting falling water to electricity. Also, add heating it in the winter to keep it liquid instead of solid, decontamination chemicals (cant have any Leigonella bacillus growing in there in the summer) Its all moot, as the weight factor makes this a non-starter.
Next:
You cant store large amounts of propane inside an occupied building, I cant imagine any FD allowing it. We had an example in a nearby city some years ago, a 500 gallon propane tank leaked and exploded inside a brick building, leveled a city block and killed 12 firefighters. Nahh...
Fuel cells, run on natural gas are the best idea I've heard to date, and the safest if you're confined to upper floors, but youre talking BIG $$$ here...whats wrong with batteries, a natural gas genny and a converter system, telco style? If this is all about diesel storage, why not put the tanks/gennys in the basement or lower more secure floors? (Im assuming burial is out of the question in NYC) That way a small day tank would suffice at the upper floors.
at Tuesday, November 19, 2002 6:43 PM, blitz <blitz@macronet.net> was
seen to say:
One last addition to this idiotic water idea.. since the water
doesn't get up there to the reservoir on the roof by itself, add your
costs of huge pumps, plus the cost of pumping it up there, and a less
than 100% efficiency in converting falling water to electricity.
Also, add heating it in the winter to keep it liquid instead of
solid, decontamination chemicals (cant have any Leigonella bacillus
growing in there in the summer) Its all moot, as the weight factor
makes this a non-starter.
Nah, you just have to think about placement; find a convenient
reservoir, dig a big hole in the stone to one side of the dam, and put
your datacenter there.
Fuel cells, run on natural gas are the best idea I've heard to date, and
the safest if you're confined to upper floors, but youre talking BIG $$$
here...whats wrong with batteries, a natural gas genny and a converter
system, telco style? If this is all about diesel storage, why not put the
tanks/gennys in the basement or lower more secure floors? (Im assuming
burial is out of the question in NYC) That way a small day tank would
suffice at the upper floors.
A fuel cell is just a generator: H2 goes in one side, electricity and H2O
come out the other side -- the trick is doing this without internal
combustion. You'll either need pressurized H2 storage tanks or a fuel
reformer to extract H2 from your methane/propane/whatever utility; that's a
bit more complicated than storing diesel or feeding utility gas straight
into a normal generator.
Otherwise, a fuel cell has the exact same design parameters as a diesel
generator for a high-rise application: store the fuel wherever code allows,
feed it into a generator, and carry the power up to your battery plant.
Before we get too, too, smug about this if you view the Manhattan
skyline, particularly downtown (e.g., SOHO/Tribeca) you'll see
house-sized water tanks on many, many buildings, particularly 3-10
story older buildings. I assume due to inadequate water pressure but I
honestly don't know why they're there, but they're all over.
I don't know if they're quite large enough for the proposed use, but
their existence would seem to defy most of the objections asserted
below.
