Wow. Can’t keep the two threads separated… $20 million to the winner ? Nice incentive.
It might be fun to merge this thread into the X-Prize thread, with the aim of framing a system which would look a little like Sheehan’s and a little like Cravens’, with Arata and Ahern thrown in for good measure. We can call it the vorteX entry. Unlike any of the above devices, we would strive to supersize it from the beginning – with the expectation that a minimum size will become part of the Rules. If we are talking about a gain of a watt per 10 grams – this means that kilogram levels of two active metals are needed. (guessing that there will be a minimum level requirement of at least 100 watts). Sheehan chose tungsten and rhenium. Re sits just to the left of palladium in the Periodic Table. The Arata-type of powder (supported by zirconia) could be a significant improvement for one or both of the two competing surfaces, due to surface chemistry - but is there an intrinsic advantage to W and Re? Did Sheehan try other hydrogen active elements? He says this is open source, so perhaps this is known. If one is going to start with a system which uses perhaps several kg of active competing metals, then one would prefer far lower cost than rhenium, which is among the most expensive of metals- approximately $5000 per kg. This assumes that Re is not specifically required. Tungsten is affordable, and actually scavengable (light bulb filaments). I have a mental image of a stack of filter plates imbedded with nanopowder – alternating layers of the competing metals and with only one torr of hydrogen which recirculates to give up the excess heat, looking somewhat like this. http://img.directindustry.com/images_di/photo-g/fuel-cell-stacks-119739-5501391.jpg From: H Veeder If epicatalysis systems exist which can produce a higher temperature from just ambient temperature without any additional input power then COP in terms of heat output is infinity which is meaningless. By analogy applying the COP measure to a naturally occurring waterfall gives infinity...except with epicatalysis the water is falling up instead of down. JB – we should step back and relook at the Cravens NI-Week demo in the context of Epicatalysis, and as an example of something similar but more robust than Sheehan. Cravens was getting much higher COP, at modest temps. There is no apparent reason to drop all the way back to ambient…. The gain could be due to hydrogen bond asymmetry only – meaning that there is an asymmetry in hydrogen catalysis using some metal combinations which is actually gainful. That would be in the sense of allowing the chemical bond to be split with slightly less energy than it gives up on re-bonding. This could define Craven’s system as well, no?
