In reply to Bob Higgins's message of Tue, 29 Nov 2016 10:41:32 -0700:
Hi,
[snip]
>I know how industrial diamond and DLC are made and the rates that are
>reasonable. I don't know where the 4mW/g electrical came from for 14C
>(perhaps that is the energy output of the 14C),
Yes, that's one reason I said "maximum". It would also slowly decrease over the
lifetime of the C14, but that's not really a problem for any practical
application.
>but I believe you would be
>doing well to achieve about 40 microwatts per gram.
I think that would depend on the exact construction, and since I have no idea
how this is supposed to work, I shouldn't really comment, but an efficiency of
only 1% intuitively seems a bit conservative. ;)
E.g. I could envision using doped diamond to reduce the resistance, and many
very thin junctions in series, to make use of remaining energy of fast electrons
as they pass through multiple junctions. (Assuming they even use junctions.)
>Keep in mind that a
>gram of diamond is 5 carats of diamond. It is not practical to produce
>diamond from 14C from high temperature - high pressure methods because of
>the leaked non-diamond 14C and because the result would not be
>encapsulated. If this were being produced in gas phase (RF plasma), you
>would contaminate the whole vacuum system with C14, and you would have to
>capture everything when you pumped the chamber down (could not be vented to
>atmosphere). Vacuum pump would be contaminated, the vacuum oil would be
>contaminated.
I agree, lot's of potential problems.
>
>Zinc-air hearing aid batteries produce more than 1mW and the newer digital
>hearing aids need more than 10mW peaks. Zinc-air hearing aid batteries are
>cheap, so this is a non-application. Pacemaker is an appropriate
>application, but the problem is not enough power from the 14C beta
>battery. Spacecraft clock core is a good application, but would not be
>worth the development for such a small market.
I have often wondered why pacemakers can't have a built in transformer secondary
and rectifier so that all one has to do a be adjacent to the primary for a while
in order to recharge the internal battery ("air" core transformer). Perhaps they
could even be powered by the stray AC fields in your average dwelling?
[snip]
Regards,
Robin van Spaandonk
http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
