Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:19:49 -0400: Hi, [snip] mix...@bigpond.com wrote: Efficiency does matter for two reasons. 1) Nickel availability. 2) Global warming. Nope. 1. Even at very low efficiency this would only require a tiny fraction of the available nickel in the world. That is assuming it does not rapidly transmit the nickel into other elements. That would be another story. I don't think we can assume at this point that the Ni is not transmuted. 2. Global warming is not caused by -- or affected by -- heat releases from combustion or nuclear power. Heat generated at the Earth's surface leaves the atmosphere at about 30 min. This is why deserts soon grow cold at night. Massive local heat releases do cause some problems, such as urban heat islands. This is currently true, however as energy becomes cheaper (much) more will be used, and those heat islands will grow. (However this will at least initially be offset by the reduction in CO2 etc.) 3. No matter how inefficient cold fusion devices may be, the overall efficiency of the system is likely to be better than our present system. Not necessarily so. However it does have the potential through direct conversion to electric power (rather than through heat) to become extremely efficient. Let's hope that happens before the buffer period created by the reduction in CO2 expires. Our present system needs 15 to 20% of fuel for energy overhead, that is, energy required to extract and process fuel. It wastes 62% of what is left with inefficient machinery and transmission losses. See the last page here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/NRELenergyover.pdf This shows 57.8 quads of rejected energy (waste), 34.3 quads of useful energy. This does not include energy overhead used to run oil wells, mine coal, transport fuel and so on. It does not include the energy overhead needed to convert corn into ethanol, which exceeds the amount of energy you get from the ethanol by a large margin, wasting several hundred million barrels of oil per year (a gift from the U.S. taxpayers to OPEC). No matter how bad cold fusion systems turn out to be, it is unimaginable that they would be as wasteful and inefficient as our present energy system. Most of the waste in the present system is due to use of heat as an intermediary, and materials that can only operate at restricted temperatures. CF as it stands at the moment would also use heat as an intermediary, and consequently also be stuck with the same inefficiencies (fission power demonstrates this point quite well). (BTW since fission produces fast charged particles, it also has the potential for direct conversion.) [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
RE: [Vo]:Steam engines
-Original Message- From: ecat builder [mailto:ecatbuil...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 8:36 PM A few quick comments: Hoyt: Are you sure the electric company will want unsynchronized AC? That might make the meter run backwards, but it seems counter-intuitive. Also, $200K/year might be today's price, but that number should quickly approach zero. Once a small fraction of their users have negative bills, the electricity company is going to be in serious fiscal trouble. How will the governments keep the electric companies in business? The beauty of an induction motor/generator is that is is self synchronizing and symmetrical around synchronous speed. You just run it as a motor then spin the shaft a little faster. The $200k/year would eventually go away, but getting that for a couple of years seems like a pretty good investment. This is very disruptive so we'll just see what happens, I guess. The power company tariffs are quasi-politically set by public utility commisions or corporation commissions so they'd be slow to change as they have meetings, time for public input pro and con, dealing with state legislatures etc. so they're bound to be rather slowly responding. If the power company in Phoenix wants a rate increase it seems they come only every few years, but I haven't really kept records, just an impression.
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Supercritical CO2 is very interesting in MW sizes, but it doesn't scale down well to 50kW machines due to high fluid density that makes the compressors and turbines unfeasably tiny, and very high pressures that make the bearing, seal and heat exchanger very difficult or impossible to do cheaply. On 20 October 2011 16:40, Axil Axil janap...@gmail.com wrote: In terms of micro turbines, a good fit for the Rossi reactor would be the supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) Brayton-cycle micro turbines. The supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle provides the same efficiency as helium Brayton systems but at a considerably lower temperature (250-300 C). The S-CO2 equipment is also more compact than that of the helium cycle, which in turn is more compact than the conventional steam cycle. The size of such a micro turbine operating at 65% efficiency might be comparable to that that of an auto water pump matching the power production of a Rossi reactor in the megawatt range. On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 2:47 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: Robert Lynn robert.gulliver.l...@gmail.com wrote: -Micro-turbines (capstone et al) have low efficiency compressor and turbines and under 100kW probably won't work at all until the temperatures are 600°C, and then only with very low efficiency (15%). I have heard that a Rossi reactor can go to 600°C. It works well at that temperature. Most cold fusion reactions work better at higher temperatures. Proton conductor-types do not work at all at lower temperatures. They do not conduct protons (load). Anyway, efficiency does not matter much with cold fusion because the heat costs nothing. The only reason you need a modicum of efficiency is to keep the waste heat down to a reasonable level. You would not want a 30 kW home generator that produces 300 kW of waste heat. It would make the air around the house too hot. If it was compact, it would be dangerously hot, and might burn someone or start a fire, and if it was not compact it would take up a lot of space. -Micro steam turbines are very inefficient, (steam's high specific heat requires multi-stage due to blade speed limits) and with small sizes are far more prone to water erosion damage. As I said, efficiency does not matter, but longevity and the lifetime cost of the equipment does matter. See chapter 14 of my book. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:36 PM, ecat builder ecatbuil...@gmail.comwrote: Hoyt: Are you sure the electric company will want unsynchronized AC? I predict that home generators will produce direct current, not AC. DC is safer because it is less prone to cause electrocution. Electric power companies will not purchase this power for two reasons: 1. They will all go out of business. 2. Electric power will be worthless. Selling it would be like trying to rent out 10 MB of hard disk space. This is not an imaginary example. In the 1970s time-share companies rented out hard disk space in increments as small as this. Nowadays, 10 MB of hard disk space can be purchased for about one-tenth of a penny, I think. Unless I dropped one or two orders of magnitude. How will the governments keep the electric companies in business? Why would governments do this? This would be like trying to keep the vacuum tube computer industry in business. I expect there will be some initial attempts to keep power companies, and perhaps even oil companies, in business, but everyone will soon see that this is a futile waste of money. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
I am afraid household electricity is just not going to get much cheaper - maybe 20-30% drop, but it probably will drop far more for industry. The cost of ownership and maintainence of in-house LENR based electrical power generation will still make it marginal as to whether it is worth doing. Problem being the extreme spikiness of loads with average of 500-1000 watts and peaks of 5-10kW. Having a household system that can deliver such peak power while also not being excessively wasteful for normal use is expensive. Batteries cost at least $0.05/kWh for electricity (due to high up front cost and limited cycle life) - which is about what a power company charges to deliver power anyway. Also small heat engines and LENR are high maintenance and expensive (probably 1-2 times a year needed) - and any maintenance callout will be a large fraction of a house's yearly electricity bill. So it is very hard to pick whether it will be: 1/ Current Utilities 2/ Smaller neighbourhood schemes that are possibly best as they can smooth loads out over say 20-30 houses while saving the cost of most grid infrastructure and reducing overall maintenance costs 3/ A more capital expensive home system with some future cheaper battery storage and a very long-life reliable and cheap heat engine. I think probably neighbourhood 100kW-1MW will win, but there will still be niches for all three options. I also agree that DC is the ultimate solution. New inverters/converters (particularly using SiC JFETS) have efficiency that equals transformers, and if you look around a house there are not many appliances that really need AC - most could utilise DC quite happily at no extra cost, DC also simplifies battery backup. On 21 October 2011 15:17, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:36 PM, ecat builder ecatbuil...@gmail.comwrote: Hoyt: Are you sure the electric company will want unsynchronized AC? I predict that home generators will produce direct current, not AC. DC is safer because it is less prone to cause electrocution. Electric power companies will not purchase this power for two reasons: 1. They will all go out of business. 2. Electric power will be worthless. Selling it would be like trying to rent out 10 MB of hard disk space. This is not an imaginary example. In the 1970s time-share companies rented out hard disk space in increments as small as this. Nowadays, 10 MB of hard disk space can be purchased for about one-tenth of a penny, I think. Unless I dropped one or two orders of magnitude. How will the governments keep the electric companies in business? Why would governments do this? This would be like trying to keep the vacuum tube computer industry in business. I expect there will be some initial attempts to keep power companies, and perhaps even oil companies, in business, but everyone will soon see that this is a futile waste of money. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Most DC appliances use from 5 to 48VDC. Going from one DC voltage to another is difficult. A friend of mine has a pure solar/battery house wired for 12VDC, 24VDC, and 120VAC. It is complex and a little daunting for the average visitor. A simple low-voltage 48VDC source (like POE 802.3af) would be a nice standard, but for really powering bigger things, you need 380VDC (not much safer than 120VAC). This report shows only 5-7% efficiencies are achieved by going to DC in a data center: http://hightech.lbl.gov/documents/data_centers/DCDemoFinalReport.pdf - Brad
RE: [Vo]:Steam engines
All devices will be self contained with E-ORBO's, M-ORBO's, HephaHeat heaters or as yet uninvented devices-- no connection to any external power sources will be needed at all. They'll be AA batteries that last forever etc. Induction generators are for the near term -- a couple of years, helping to pay for the initial equipment. They'll quicken the phase out the dirty coal plants. All generators (Alternators) are inherently AC which must be rectified unless you want carbon brushes ( you don't ). DC is good for many things, but it has its problems with metal and ion migration, polarization etc. Induction motors don't run on it and they're the cheapest motors.The new Phoenix rapid transit system uses DC but they put in special corrosion mitigation systems. Power companies will fade away and all those ugly high-tension lines will dissappear :-) . Hoyt Stearns Scottsdale, Arizona -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 7:18 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Steam engines On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:36 PM, ecat builder ecatbuil...@gmail.com wrote: Hoyt: Are you sure the electric company will want unsynchronized AC? I predict that home generators will produce direct current, not AC. DC is safer because it is less prone to cause electrocution. Electric power companies will not purchase this power for two reasons: 1. They will all go out of business. 2. Electric power will be worthless. Selling it would be like trying to rent out 10 MB of hard disk space. This is not an imaginary example. In the 1970s time-share companies rented out hard disk space in increments as small as this. Nowadays, 10 MB of hard disk space can be purchased for about one-tenth of a penny, I think. Unless I dropped one or two orders of magnitude. How will the governments keep the electric companies in business? Why would governments do this? This would be like trying to keep the vacuum tube computer industry in business. I expect there will be some initial attempts to keep power companies, and perhaps even oil companies, in business, but everyone will soon see that this is a futile waste of money. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Nearly 1/3 of energy consumption is spent in transporting energy itself. It just doesn't make any sense to keep spending money on expensive infrastructure when it is cheaper to generate your own energy. For many energy-intensive industries adopting the new technology will be mandatory. Energy is the largest cost in production for many industries. If they do not adopt it as soon as possible, they'll be out of business in no time. The big question is: what will happen next? Old-technology energy prices will drop sharply. Oil and coal (60% of world's energy) will become very cheap. It may take a long time before it is both affordable and cost-saving to have your own e-cat at home, less-intensive industries and offices, because most of the time you won't use it's full power and the power grid will offer cheaper energy. It is very unlikely that those countries with large surplus in oil and/or coal production would just abandon these energies sources in a short time. It'll be both available and cheaper. Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Canada, Norway, Australia, China, Iran, Iraq and Russia come to mind. Power grids will still be around for a long time. 2011/10/21 Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. hoyt.stea...@gmail.com ** Power companies will fade away and all those ugly high-tension lines will dissappear :-) . Hoyt Stearns Scottsdale, Arizona
RE: [Vo]:Steam engines
My PV system uses a 5kW grid tie DC-AC inverter that is all solid state, no moving parts (not even a fan), and is 96% efficient. It has been working beautifully for the last 3 years. Note that unless you make a provision to throttle the E-cat, you will have to at least provide a sacrificial load into which you can dump the excess electricity when the house demand is not as much as the E-cat is producing. This would be the benefit of having the community or large scale grid system - the grid can become your sacrificial load. That's what my PV system does today. I produce far more power during the day than I am using and the excess is pumped into the grid, for which I receive credit. I then can take it back from the grid at night (or any time - when a cloud comes) at the same price as I was credited for putting it in (this is called net metering and is required by the Florida Public Service Commission), resulting in 100% perfect storage in the grid (from my perspective) with no batteries required. Overall, the distributed generation system is more robust against failure and more efficient even if the wires are present because the current in the wires is reduced by your local generation. But if you use even a community system, you still have to deal with the distribution wire problem, cost, and undesirable appearance. The cool new product category is the concept of CHP - cogeneration of heat and power. There is already an industry forming around this for producing power from concentrated solar or some other high grade heat, producing electricity for the home, and then using the waste heat to heat the home. Bob Higgins From: Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. [mailto:hoyt.stea...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 12:32 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: RE: [Vo]:Steam engines All devices will be self contained with E-ORBO's, M-ORBO's, HephaHeat heaters or as yet uninvented devices-- no connection to any external power sources will be needed at all. They'll be AA batteries that last forever etc. Induction generators are for the near term -- a couple of years, helping to pay for the initial equipment. They'll quicken the phase out the dirty coal plants. All generators (Alternators) are inherently AC which must be rectified unless you want carbon brushes ( you don't ). DC is good for many things, but it has its problems with metal and ion migration, polarization etc. Induction motors don't run on it and they're the cheapest motors.The new Phoenix rapid transit system uses DC but they put in special corrosion mitigation systems. Power companies will fade away and all those ugly high-tension lines will dissappear :-) . Hoyt Stearns Scottsdale, Arizona -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 7:18 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Steam engines On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:36 PM, ecat builder ecatbuil...@gmail.com wrote: Hoyt: Are you sure the electric company will want unsynchronized AC? I predict that home generators will produce direct current, not AC. DC is safer because it is less prone to cause electrocution. Electric power companies will not purchase this power for two reasons: 1. They will all go out of business. 2. Electric power will be worthless. Selling it would be like trying to rent out 10 MB of hard disk space. This is not an imaginary example. In the 1970s time-share companies rented out hard disk space in increments as small as this. Nowadays, 10 MB of hard disk space can be purchased for about one-tenth of a penny, I think. Unless I dropped one or two orders of magnitude. How will the governments keep the electric companies in business? Why would governments do this? This would be like trying to keep the vacuum tube computer industry in business. I expect there will be some initial attempts to keep power companies, and perhaps even oil companies, in business, but everyone will soon see that this is a futile waste of money. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Am 21.10.2011 18:32, schrieb Hoyt A. Stearns Jr.: All devices will be self contained with E-ORBO's, M-ORBO's, HephaHeat heaters or as yet uninvented devices-- no connection to any external power sources will be needed at all. They'll be AA batteries that last forever etc. Dont forget the Brilloun boiler. It is announced for early 2009. SCNR Power companies will fade away and all those ugly high-tension lines will dissappear :-) . The cables will anyway disappear. An sub-earth 10 kV superconductive cable is cheaper and more efficient than a 100 kV HV line in air. Superconductive cables are ready for use now and industrial plants to produce them are currently built. I have read this in an industrial professional electronics magazine 1/2 year ago. This makes also more efficient wind generators possible without permanent magnets and ultra high current limiters without explosive destruction mechanisms. Peter
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Bruno Santos besantos1...@gmail.com wrote: Nearly 1/3 of energy consumption is spent in transporting energy itself. That figure is a little high. Legacy Transmission and Distribution systems have a loss factor of about 15%. Today's modernized systems suffer half that loss. http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/handouts/Electric%20Transmission%20and%20Distribution%20Efficiency_Ranade92710.pdf http://goo.gl/XVNU2 T
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Good for the eye and for the health: http://goo.gl/L56Hg mic Power companies will fade away and all those ugly high-tension lines will dissappear :-) . Hoyt Stearns Scottsdale, Arizona -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 7:18 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Steam engines On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:36 PM, ecat builder ecatbuil...@gmail.com wrote: Hoyt: Are you sure the electric company will want unsynchronized AC? I predict that home generators will produce direct current, not AC. DC is safer because it is less prone to cause electrocution. Electric power companies will not purchase this power for two reasons: 1. They will all go out of business. 2. Electric power will be worthless. Selling it would be like trying to rent out 10 MB of hard disk space. This is not an imaginary example. In the 1970s time-share companies rented out hard disk space in increments as small as this. Nowadays, 10 MB of hard disk space can be purchased for about one-tenth of a penny, I think. Unless I dropped one or two orders of magnitude. How will the governments keep the electric companies in business? Why would governments do this? This would be like trying to keep the vacuum tube computer industry in business. I expect there will be some initial attempts to keep power companies, and perhaps even oil companies, in business, but everyone will soon see that this is a futile waste of money. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Robert Lynn robert.gulliver.l...@gmail.com wrote: I am afraid household electricity is just not going to get much cheaper - maybe 20-30% drop, but it probably will drop far more for industry. I disagree. As I described in my book cost will drop by 60% at first and later by more than 100%. That is to say, the overall cost of equipment will be less than we now pay. Cold fusion generators will also serve as cogenerators, replacing heating and air-conditioning equipment. When the technology matures, the total cost of a cold fusion generator will be less than the heating and air-conditioning equipment it replaces. This is not a free lunch; it is a lunch you are paid to eat. This will also eliminate the cost of natural gas. Furthermore, as I show in chapter 15, many applications that now call for electricity will use cold fusion heat directly instead, so overall demand for electricity will be reduced by roughly 8% in the home and much more in industry. The cost of ownership and maintainence of in-house LENR based electrical power generation will still make it marginal as to whether it is worth doing. It will cost less to maintain the equipment than it costs to maintain our present HVAC equipment. This is inevitable, as I show in chapter 14. When the core technology cost component falls, the others must follow. For example, when cheap microprocessors are developed, it is inevitable that cheap hard disks and printers will follow. When Henry Ford lowers the cost of automobiles, it is inevitable that tire manufacturers will find ways to make much cheaper tires. Problem being the extreme spikiness of loads with average of 500-1000 watts and peaks of 5-10kW. In chapter 15 I show why the spikiness will be reduced. Most of the heavy duty demand for power will be eliminated by the use of heat instead of electricity. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Sorry, I couldn't make myself clear enough. 1/3 accounts for all energy transportation, not only electric power. One must transport coal from mines to thermoelectric generators, and then electricity to houses and industries. How much energy does it take to transport all that coal? Oil? And energy burnt in oil refineries? Energy to pump natural gas and oil for thousands of miles? Supertankers can burn a LOT of diesel oil. Even nuclear power... there is a lot of energy input before you can harvest that energy. 2011/10/21 Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Bruno Santos besantos1...@gmail.com wrote: Nearly 1/3 of energy consumption is spent in transporting energy itself. That figure is a little high. Legacy Transmission and Distribution systems have a loss factor of about 15%. Today's modernized systems suffer half that loss. T
RE: [Vo]:Steam engines
At 10:04 AM 10/21/2011, Higgins Bob-CBH003 wrote: The cool new product category is the concept of CHP cogeneration of heat and power. There is already an industry forming around this for producing power from concentrated solar or some other high grade heat, producing electricity for the home, and then using the waste heat to heat the home. Heat-to-cooling is also fairly efficient (I grew up with kerosine-fired refrigerators). And I think you can get more efficient electrical generation from the cold side : see http://www.ammonia21.com/files/papers/ammonia-combined-power-refrigeration-cycle.pdf and/or google Goswami I don't know if it would be more efficient to distribute power/heat/cold from a central neighborhood facility, or deliver power/heat and do the cold in-home.
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Bruno Santos besantos1...@gmail.com wrote: It is very unlikely that those countries with large surplus in oil and/or coal production would just abandon these energies sources in a short time. It'll be both available and cheaper. Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Canada, Norway, Australia, China, Iran, Iraq and Russia come to mind. Why would they continue using energy that costs far more than cold fusion? This is like suggesting that a nation that happens to have a lot of silicon to make glass will go on using vacuum tube computers long after transistors are invented. Or that a nation that has lots of grass will go on using horses rather than automobiles. Eventually, cold fusion will be 100 times cheaper, and later 100,000 times cheaper than fossil fuel, hydro, or wind power. The US cost of fuel for energy works out to be roughly $2000 per person per annum. That includes energy expended by industry, the military and so on. With deuterium-based cold fusion I estimated this would be reduced to a few dollars per year. If hydrogen cold fusion works, this cost will be a fraction of one penny. That is the cost of the fuel. The cost of equipment will be considerably less than our present day equipment, for reasons I described in the book. Power grids will still be around for a long time. Let me quote the keynote speaker in the 1908 annual meeting of the National Association of Carriage Builders: Eighty-five percent of the horse-drawn vehicle industry of the country is untouched by the automobile. In proof of the foregoing permit me to say that in 1906 - 7, and coincident with an enormous demand for automobiles, the demand for buggies reached the highest tide of its history. The man who predicts the downfall of the automobile is a fool; the man who denies its great necessity and general adoption for many uses is a bigger fool; and the man who predicts the general annihilation of the horse and his vehicle is the greatest fool of all. When a new technology is far cheaper and more convenient for everyone, the old technology vanishes within a generation. Power grids will be no exception. The power companies will have no customers and no revenues. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Alan J Fletcher a...@well.com wrote: Heat-to-cooling is also fairly efficient (I grew up with kerosine-fired refrigerators). Ah, but it would not matter if it was terribly inefficient, because the heat will cost nothing. As long as your refrigerator does not make the rest of the house uncomfortably hot, you will not care how much heat it takes to keep the thing going. You pay nothing either way. In fact, gas-fired thermal refrigerators produce little more waste heat than electric ones. I don't know if it would be more efficient to distribute power/heat/cold from a central neighborhood facility, or deliver power/heat and do the cold in-home. This is like asking whether it makes more sense to put individual water heaters in houses, or whether we should have a large water heater on each city block. The answer is, it is cheaper and more practical to have individual heaters because the cost of running pipes between a neighborhood water heater and the home would defeat any economics of pooling equipment. Also as I said, the heat costs nothing so there are no savings in fuel, which is the main advantage of large boilers. Hotels have large central boilers because this reduces fuel costs. If the fuel costs nothing then they would install individual on demand heaters under every sink and bathtub. This would probably be cheaper in the long run. Also, most people are not inclined to share equipment with their neighbors. We do not share lawnmowers even though lawnmowers usually sit idle 99% of the time. We do not share automobiles, also services such as Zip car are becoming popular. Some cities in Russia use district heating which is large-scale distribution of steam for space heating from a central steam generation plant. This is also done in New York City and at Cornell University. It makes sense where there is high population density was present day technology. It would make no sense at all with cold fusion. The cost of maintaining the infrastructure of pipes under New York City is considerable, and the pipes sometimes explode. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
At 10:54 AM 10/21/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote: This is like suggesting that a nation that happens to have a lot of silicon to make glass will go on using vacuum tube computers long after transistors are invented. Bad analogy : excepting Galium Arsenide, most chips are made up of Silicon, Oxygen and Aluminum ... the three most abundant elements in the earth's crust: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust I was unpacking an old trunk recently, and came across a slide presentation I made called The future of sand -- pointing out that chips and optical cables are made from refined sand. (Must have been about 1975).
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Alan J Fletcher wrote: This is like suggesting that a nation that happens to have a lot of silicon to make glass will go on using vacuum tube computers long after transistors are invented. Bad analogy : excepting Galium Arsenide, most chips are made up of Silicon, Oxygen and Aluminum ... It was a pretend analogy. No one would think of using discrete vacuum tubes instead of integrated circuits. That would be economical lunacy. Imagine trying make a Pentium Dual Core CPU with 167 million discrete components. Using a source of energy that costs your nation billions of dollars a year, when you can 10 times more energy, or 100 times more, for zero dollars per year would also be economic lunacy. No one would do that. This is not even taking into account the fact that conventional energy causes tremendous damage. The use of coal in the United States kills roughly 20,000 people per year. And that is not even taking into account global warming. Imagine a containership company trying to run oil-fired ships competing cold fusion powered ones. The oil fired ship costs about $100,000 per day for fuel. The cold fusion ship fuel cost is zero dollars to five significant decimal places over the entire life of the ship. the cold fusion powered engines themselves are much cheaper than the oil powered ones, because they are simpler and do not require pollution controls, and they do not require optimization for efficiency, because it does not matter how much heat you waste. If you have a fleet of 20 ships you pay $2 million a day more than the competition, plus your ships cost about millions more to construct and maintain. You think any business could compete on that basis? Here is a containership engine: http://www.emma-maersk.com/engine/Wartsila_Sulzer_RTA96-C.htm My second analogy is somewhat more realistic. In fact, poor nations with lots of open grassland, bad roads, and low population still do use horses. You see this in South America and Mongolia for example. They use automobiles too, of course. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
On 11-10-21 02:37 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Here is a containership engine: http://www.emma-maersk.com/engine/Wartsila_Sulzer_RTA96-C.htm Very cool! It appears to be an internal combustion engine, which seems bizarre. I thought super high scale power was all generated with external combustion, and some variant on a steam engine (turbine or piston) to convert the heat to torque. OTOH getting 50% efficiency out of any kind of heat engine is pretty darn good. The name sounds vaguely Polish to me, but the lettering on the wall in what I guess is the factory looks Korean. Any idea where the beast is actually made? My second analogy is somewhat more realistic. In fact, poor nations with lots of open grassland, bad roads, and low population still do use horses. You see this in South America and Mongolia for example. They use automobiles too, of course. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Well, my scenario was thought from a perspective of e-cat technology, not deuterium-based cold fusion. And I do agree with almost everything you say about costs. The point is: how long does it take? Not every family, company nor country is wealth enough to just give it up on old technology and adopt new ones, even if the new one is way much cheaper to mantain. There is a sunk cost that needs to be recovered. That's why companies who have a large amount of it's costs related to energy much more likely to adopt the technology first. Then old-fashioned technology prices will drop, making it less urgent for other energy consumers to rush into the new technology. Real cost of oil to Saudi Arabia is not US$ 100 per barrel. It's way, way cheaper. It's just that they make more money selling it to USA, Europe or China than burning it on their backyards. Opportunity cost is what makes oil expensive to saudis and russians, not real cost of obtaining oil. Eventually, when the technology goes mature, we'll see e-cats used in large scale in Saudi Arabia. As to the keynote speaker on the National Association of Carriage Builders, he was not wrong. Cars were very expensive those days. What made his speech stupid was not the car itself, but the astonishing productivity of Ford's assembly line. Of course, cars were much more efficient than carriage. *Carriages were doomed anyway*, but what made their market disappear so fast was Henry Ford, not Ford Model T. Best regards, Bruno 2011/10/21 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com Why would they continue using energy that costs far more than cold fusion? This is like suggesting that a nation that happens to have a lot of silicon to make glass will go on using vacuum tube computers long after transistors are invented. Or that a nation that has lots of grass will go on using horses rather than automobiles. (...) When a new technology is far cheaper and more convenient for everyone, the old technology vanishes within a generation. Power grids will be no exception. The power companies will have no customers and no revenues. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: Any idea where the beast is actually made? Would you believe Finland? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4 T
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
Bruno Santos besantos1...@gmail.com wrote: And I do agree with almost everything you say about costs. The point is: how long does it take? That's easy to estimate. It takes 10 years for automobiles, and 20 years for heating and cooling equipment (HVAC -- heating ventilation and air conditioning). That is how long the equipment lasts. It wear out. You have to replace it anyway after that time. Cold fusion equipment will soon be cheaper than old-fashioned gas-fired equipment, so when it comes time to replace equipment, everyone will select cold fusion version. Not every family, company nor country is wealth enough to just give it up on old technology and adopt new ones . . . As I said, every family company and country has to replace all equipment anyway, every 20 years. , even if the new one is way much cheaper to mantain. There is a sunk cost that needs to be recovered. Consumers never recover sunk costs. When your car wears out you buy a new one. That's all there is to it. The power company needs to recover its sunk costs if it is going to make a profit. But consumers do not care whether the power company makes a profit. We couldn't care less if it goes out of business. If the power company is left with $1 trillion worth of useless obsolete infrastructure and rusting equipment . . . Why would I care? I'm not a stockholder. I am not going to pay the power company and gas companies $150 a month for something I can get for free. That would be like paying for punchcard equipment when I can buy a 2 TB hard disk for $100. The people manufacturing vacuum tubes had sunk costs in their glassblowing and fabrication machinery. The customers went ahead and bought transistors instead of vacuum tubes, because customers did not care at all that vacuum tube manufacturers were losing money and going out of business. We don't care whether the power company goes bankrupt or not. As for OPEC, BP, Exxon and the other oil companies, I think many people would be pleased to see them go bankrupt. We would pay extra for cold fusion just to help make that happen. Real cost of oil to Saudi Arabia is not US$ 100 per barrel. It's way, way cheaper. It's just that they make more money selling it to USA, Europe or China than burning it on their backyards. Hydrogen in cold fusion produces millions times more energy than oil and it costs nothing. There will not even be a market for oil used as raw material in plastics. It will be cheaper and safer to manufacture hydrocarbons from hydrogen and carbon locally. That takes more energy than you get from burning the stuff, but no one will care because the energy will cost nothing. I discuss all of this in my book, by the way. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: Any idea where the beast is actually made? Would you believe Finland? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4 Designed in Finland; but, actually constructed in Japan: http://www.aksturgeon.com/2009/04/20/wartsila-sulzer-rta96-c-diesel-engine/ T
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
On 11-10-21 03:39 PM, Terry Blanton wrote: On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Stephen A. Lawrencesa...@pobox.com wrote: Any idea where the beast is actually made? Would you believe Finland? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4 No way! That's a surprise, all right! And the shipper on the page appeared to be Danish. So what's that stuff written on the wall in this shot? http://www.emma-maersk.com/gallery/photo/engine_10.jpg Doesn't look like Norse runes to me!
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
On 11-10-21 03:45 PM, Terry Blanton wrote: On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Terry Blantonhohlr...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Stephen A. Lawrencesa...@pobox.com wrote: Any idea where the beast is actually made? Would you believe Finland? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4 Designed in Finland; but, actually constructed in Japan: http://www.aksturgeon.com/2009/04/20/wartsila-sulzer-rta96-c-diesel-engine/ Ain't Japanese, neither, I don't think. (But if Jed disagrees and says it is, then I concede, of course...) Looks to me like yet another Japanese manufacturer which has farmed manufacturing out to someplace overseas.
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On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: Looks to me like yet another Japanese manufacturer which has farmed manufacturing out to someplace overseas. Good eye, Stephen. The History Channel says that the engine was manufactured in Korea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXHvY-zY9hA Global Economy, doncha love it? T
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
I wrote: And I do agree with almost everything you say about costs. The point is: how long does it take? That's easy to estimate. It takes 10 years for automobiles, and 20 years for heating and cooling equipment (HVAC -- heating ventilation and air conditioning). Naturally, some cars last longer than 10 years. I have one that is 17 years old. I think the half-life for automobiles is around six years. There are a few antique ones that are 40, 50 or even 100 years old. These are collector's items rather than practical machines. If you look around you will find some buildings with HVAC equipment older than 20 years. However, running such equipment is not cost effective. It is cheaper to replace it with modern equipment. In countries such as China you sometimes see old, obsolete factory equipment and coal fired furnaces. A few years ago they were still using coal-fired locomotives. This is a terrific waste of money. They cannot afford to replace the equipment with more modern machinery. that is why Chinese energy efficiency with was much lower than the US or Europe decades ago. I believe it is catching up now. It is a horrible thing that Chinese and Third World energy efficiency is so low. They end up paying more for goods and services than we do, in some cases. The worst thing by far is the cost of illumination (lighting). In the Third World, many people use kerosene lamps. These are horrible for the environment, for the people. They are dangerous. The cost per lumen for the light is astronomically more than electric lighting, even Edison-style incandescent lights. They use kerosene lamps because they have no electric power service, obviously. Fortunately, nowadays LED lighting and solar battery systems are beginning to replace kerosene. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
I am afraid household electricity is just not going to get much cheaper - maybe 20-30% drop, but it probably will drop far more for industry. I disagree. As I described in my book cost will drop by 60% at first and later by more than 100%. That is to say, the overall cost of equipment will be less than we now pay. Cold fusion generators will also serve as cogenerators, replacing heating and air-conditioning equipment. When the technology matures, the total cost of a cold fusion generator will be less than the heating and air-conditioning equipment it replaces. - Jed We'll I've worked and researched in the utility electricity, and micro CHP (combined heat and power) industry off and on over the last 20 years, so if you want to argue the point you are going to need to justify your disagreement a whole lot better than by an appeal to (your own) authority :) Grid Supply: For current European prices check: http://www.energy.eu/#Industrial-Gas Of the european median small consumer price of electricity $0.24/kWh only about 30% of it is actual fuel cost ($0.08/kWh assuming 60% generation efficiency with $0.05/kWh gas price) - meaning about 70% of the home electricity cost is in generation and distribution. That won't change if the utility is still doing the production, after all the grid and generation is expensive to maintain, so even if the heat is free it still wouldn't drop the price by more than 30%. Domestic Supply: Currently MicroCHP (eg Whispergen or Microgen stirling) costs $10k+ for a house and requires at least annual maintenance, costing $1000/year in capital depreciation and maintenance costs. Economics dictate that Micro CHP is sized and run according to heating load, with electricity a useful by product. However even with household gas prices ~30% of electricity prices ($0.075kWh vs $0.24kWh median) micro CHP it is not economic without large subsidies (I did an industry survey and report for my job last year). Yearly costs are similar to current electricity bill, hence poor uptake, and they still needing to pay for a grid connection as well to handle peaks. There is absolutely no way that you can make a domestic cold fusion device that can supply the 1kW average 10kW peak electrical power you need for less than the $700 per year (capital and maintenance cost) that your 60% price drop would require, even a conventional gas boiler costs not much less than that. On top of that you will need the grid or an expensive, limited life battery pack (required for emergencies and startup anyway if not grid connected), neither of which options is going to cost you less than $200/year. Capital costs for a mass produced LENR CHP system might halve from the $10k+ of current gas powered stirling engine CHPs, but you are still looking at replacing the heat source twice a year, and controlling a finicky and dangerous pressurised hydrogen system, so don't imagine you are going to drop price much if you go for in-house CHP LENR generation. Also if you think 5% efficient thermoelectric converters might be a cheaper option than heat engines then check the price of 5% efficient Bismuth Telluride thermoelectrics ($10k/kW) and imagine what a massive demand increase for very rare Tellurium would do for their economics. Nowhere in these numbers does there exist the margins required to drop consumer electricity prices by 60% even if the heat were free.
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Robert Lynn robert.gulliver.l...@gmail.com wrote: We'll I've worked and researched in the utility electricity, and micro CHP (combined heat and power) industry off and on over the last 20 years, so if you want to argue the point you are going to need to justify your disagreement a whole lot better than by an appeal to (your own) authority :) Hey, I did not make this stuff up. I do not know enough about electricity to do that. I got these ideas from people at EPRI and in various books. Your experience is with present day technology which is expensive because it is optimized for high fuel efficiency. Cold fusion technology will be as different as the automobile is to the railroad locomotive. The goal will not be to optimize equipment to produce the greatest fuel efficiency, but rather to produce the lowest lifetime equipment cost. Of the european median small consumer price of electricity $0.24/kWh only about 30% of it is actual fuel cost . . . Yes, that is what I said in chapter 14. but cold fusion devices would save much more than merely the cost of fuel. That's just the start. ($0.08/kWh assuming 60% generation efficiency with $0.05/kWh gas price) - meaning about 70% of the home electricity cost is in generation and distribution. Distribution costs with cold fusion will cogenerators would be zero. They are right there, in your house. That won't change if the utility is still doing the production, after all the grid and generation is expensive to maintain, so even if the heat is free it still wouldn't drop the price by more than 30%. Why would the utility still be doing production? However even with household gas prices ~30% of electricity prices ($0.075kWh vs $0.24kWh median) micro CHP it is not economic without large subsidies (I did an industry survey and report for my job last year). This is CHP technology optimized to work with high-cost fuels. Technology designed from the ground up with the goal of making the equipment itself cheap would have entirely different characteristics. There is no reason why a first-generation device should cost more than today's standby gas generators, which costs $6,000 for a unit with way more power than my house would ever need. These devices are not intended to run full-time but they could be improved. The actual machines are the size of an air conditioner. See the photo on p. 116. Later it will cost ~$2000 and it will replace the furnace as well as the power company. Yearly costs are similar to current electricity bill, hence poor uptake, and they still needing to pay for a grid connection as well to handle peaks. No, there is no need for this. See chapter 15. There will not long be a grid to connect to, in any case. There is absolutely no way that you can make a domestic cold fusion device that can supply the 1kW average 10kW peak electrical power you need for less than the $700 per year (capital and maintenance cost) . . . There may not be now but there soon will be. This is a lot like saying in 1979 that there is no way you could make a 12 MB hard disk for less than $3000. That was true back then. A few years later it was not. It is like saying in 1908 at automobile tires will never cost less than $50 each (equivalent to about $1000 today). Once the core technology drops in price, incentive is created and people will soon find ways to make cheap peripheral technology to go along with the core technology. A market for billions of small generators will open, and someone will find a way to meet it. Once you get zero cost energy, people will find ways to make small cheap generators and cheap thermal refrigerators and other equipment. It will be as cheap as today's automobile engines per unit of power. That is to say, about 4 times cheaper than power company equipment. (Cheaper but far less efficient and with a shorter lifespan.) that your 60% price drop would require, even a conventional gas boiler costs not much less than that. That is because conventional gas boilers have to be efficient and they have to have pollution control. Also if you think 5% efficient thermoelectric converters might be a cheaper option than heat engines then check the price of 5% efficient Bismuth Telluride thermoelectrics ($10k/kW) . . . What do you think it would cost to build a 2 TB hard disk in 1979? It couldn't be done but if someone did it would cost tens of millions of dollars. Now it costs $100. Bismuth costs $13 a pound. The cost of this and all other materials will plummet when cold fusion mining and extraction techniques become common. If thermoelectric converters are expensive now that is because the technology has not been developed or mass-produced yet. When the market for billions of thermoelectric devices worldwide opens up, the cost will fall. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
This is what I call an engine! Now, how can I get it into my hot rod? Dave -Original Message- From: Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, Oct 21, 2011 3:46 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Steam engines On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: Any idea where the beast is actually made? Would you believe Finland? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4 Designed in Finland; but, actually constructed in Japan: http://www.aksturgeon.com/2009/04/20/wartsila-sulzer-rta96-c-diesel-engine/ T
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
I wrote: What do you think it would cost to build a 2 TB hard disk in 1979? It couldn't be done but if someone did it would cost tens of millions of dollars. Now it costs $100. Correction, it would have cost roughly $400 million, in 1979 dollars. That is based on the cheapest hard disks available at that time which cost $193 per megabyte. 2 TB equals roughly 2 million MB * 193 = 384 million bucks. See: http://ns1758.ca/winch/winchest.html Regarding thermoelectric devices, however difficult it is to manufacture them today, it cannot be more difficult than making semiconductors or NiCad batteries, which are cheap. my point about the cost of bismuth is that material cost is modest. Heck, even if you make them out of gold the material costs will soon be cheaper than they are now. Extraction and recycling costs will fall with cold fusion. People say the amount of gold in the world is limited, but there is plenty of low grade ore, and -- to take the long view -- probably much more elsewhere in the solar system. - Jed
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A car running on 10kW electric from a cold fusion device connected to a 5% efficient heat to electric converter (steam or bismut or whatever) would spit out 200kW of waste heat, that is equivalent to 15 strong patio heaters. Are you really sure, Jed, we don't have to worry? On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: I wrote: What do you think it would cost to build a 2 TB hard disk in 1979? It couldn't be done but if someone did it would cost tens of millions of dollars. Now it costs $100. Correction, it would have cost roughly $400 million, in 1979 dollars. That is based on the cheapest hard disks available at that time which cost $193 per megabyte. 2 TB equals roughly 2 million MB * 193 = 384 million bucks. See: http://ns1758.ca/winch/winchest.html Regarding thermoelectric devices, however difficult it is to manufacture them today, it cannot be more difficult than making semiconductors or NiCad batteries, which are cheap. my point about the cost of bismuth is that material cost is modest. Heck, even if you make them out of gold the material costs will soon be cheaper than they are now. Extraction and recycling costs will fall with cold fusion. People say the amount of gold in the world is limited, but there is plenty of low grade ore, and -- to take the long view -- probably much more elsewhere in the solar system. - Jed
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Bastiaan Bergman bastiaan.berg...@gmail.com wrote: A car running on 10kW electric from a cold fusion device connected to a 5% efficient heat to electric converter (steam or bismut or whatever) would spit out 200kW of waste heat . . . That would be a Rube Goldberg machine! Why would you do it that way? Put the cold fusion reactor in the car and use a heat engine to convert the heat directly to mechanical force. When the technology is first introduced it might be cheaper to make the car a hybrid like a Prius, where the mechanical force is sometimes converted to electric power and stored. Also, even small steam turbines are better than 5% efficient. Thermoelectric devices will not come into widespread use for cold fusion until efficiency is more like 20% I suppose. Present day ones are ~10% efficient at 500°C. See: http://www.electrochem.org/dl/interface/fal/fal08/fal08_p54-56.pdf In the 1960s and 70s, thermoelectric devices were used with plutonium in pacemakers, so they can be scaled down. In a pacemaker, wristwatch battery or earphone battery you need only a tiny trickle of electric power so efficiency does not matter. - Jed
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Why would you do it that way? However you do it, it's hard to beat the 5-10%. The point is that efficiency does matter. On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Bastiaan Bergman bastiaan.berg...@gmail.com wrote: A car running on 10kW electric from a cold fusion device connected to a 5% efficient heat to electric converter (steam or bismut or whatever) would spit out 200kW of waste heat . . . That would be a Rube Goldberg machine! Why would you do it that way? Put the cold fusion reactor in the car and use a heat engine to convert the heat directly to mechanical force. When the technology is first introduced it might be cheaper to make the car a hybrid like a Prius, where the mechanical force is sometimes converted to electric power and stored. Also, even small steam turbines are better than 5% efficient. Thermoelectric devices will not come into widespread use for cold fusion until efficiency is more like 20% I suppose. Present day ones are ~10% efficient at 500°C. See: http://www.electrochem.org/dl/interface/fal/fal08/fal08_p54-56.pdf In the 1960s and 70s, thermoelectric devices were used with plutonium in pacemakers, so they can be scaled down. In a pacemaker, wristwatch battery or earphone battery you need only a tiny trickle of electric power so efficiency does not matter. - Jed
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In terms of micro turbines, a good fit for the Rossi reactor would be the supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) Brayton-cycle micro turbines. The supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle provides the same efficiency as helium Brayton systems but at a considerably lower temperature (250-300 C). The S-CO2 equipment is also more compact than that of the helium cycle, which in turn is more compact than the conventional steam cycle. The size of such a micro turbine operating at 65% efficiency might be comparable to that that of an auto water pump matching the power production of a Rossi reactor in the megawatt range. On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 2:47 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Robert Lynn robert.gulliver.l...@gmail.com wrote: -Micro-turbines (capstone et al) have low efficiency compressor and turbines and under 100kW probably won't work at all until the temperatures are 600°C, and then only with very low efficiency (15%). I have heard that a Rossi reactor can go to 600°C. It works well at that temperature. Most cold fusion reactions work better at higher temperatures. Proton conductor-types do not work at all at lower temperatures. They do not conduct protons (load). Anyway, efficiency does not matter much with cold fusion because the heat costs nothing. The only reason you need a modicum of efficiency is to keep the waste heat down to a reasonable level. You would not want a 30 kW home generator that produces 300 kW of waste heat. It would make the air around the house too hot. If it was compact, it would be dangerously hot, and might burn someone or start a fire, and if it was not compact it would take up a lot of space. -Micro steam turbines are very inefficient, (steam's high specific heat requires multi-stage due to blade speed limits) and with small sizes are far more prone to water erosion damage. As I said, efficiency does not matter, but longevity and the lifetime cost of the equipment does matter. See chapter 14 of my book. - Jed
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In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:47:32 -0400: Hi, [snip] As I said, efficiency does not matter, but longevity and the lifetime cost of the equipment does matter. See chapter 14 of my book. Efficiency does matter for two reasons. 1) Nickel availability. 2) Global warming. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
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mix...@bigpond.com wrote: Efficiency does matter for two reasons. 1) Nickel availability. 2) Global warming. Nope. 1. Even at very low efficiency this would only require a tiny fraction of the available nickel in the world. That is assuming it does not rapidly transmit the nickel into other elements. That would be another story. 2. Global warming is not caused by -- or affected by -- heat releases from combustion or nuclear power. Heat generated at the Earth's surface leaves the atmosphere at about 30 min. This is why deserts soon grow cold at night. Massive local heat releases do cause some problems, such as urban heat islands. 3. No matter how inefficient cold fusion devices may be, the overall efficiency of the system is likely to be better than our present system. Our present system needs 15 to 20% of fuel for energy overhead, that is, energy required to extract and process fuel. It wastes 62% of what is left with inefficient machinery and transmission losses. See the last page here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/NRELenergyover.pdf This shows 57.8 quads of rejected energy (waste), 34.3 quads of useful energy. This does not include energy overhead used to run oil wells, mine coal, transport fuel and so on. It does not include the energy overhead needed to convert corn into ethanol, which exceeds the amount of energy you get from the ethanol by a large margin, wasting several hundred million barrels of oil per year (a gift from the U.S. taxpayers to OPEC). No matter how bad cold fusion systems turn out to be, it is unimaginable that they would be as wasteful and inefficient as our present energy system. As I said in my book, it would take a perverse genius to come up with something as bad as this. Ordinary incompetence would not suffice. - Jed
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Thanks for the responses everyone. A few quick comments: Hoyt: Are you sure the electric company will want unsynchronized AC? That might make the meter run backwards, but it seems counter-intuitive. Also, $200K/year might be today's price, but that number should quickly approach zero. Once a small fraction of their users have negative bills, the electricity company is going to be in serious fiscal trouble. How will the governments keep the electric companies in business? Axil: I assume S-CO2 engines aren't ready for commercial use? Just saw a few stories about Sandia working on them. Will be interesting to see if producers of big expensive turbines do well or not. Seems like cheap, unmanned, redundant, inefficient generators would be better suited for most environments. Like a water heater.. One or two per house. Jed: Thanks for the clarifications on global warming and heat release. The desert example is brilliant. - Brad
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Thanks for all the interesting links. I hope to research more types such as Stirling engines and more small turbines. Here in the Phoenix Arizona US area I calculated a 1 megawatt electrical generator would yield US$200,000 per year by analyzing the state tariffs ( It'll be fun sending bills to the power company for a change. ). The simplest way to generate power back to the grid is just a simple induction generator ( induction motor running faster than 1800 RPM, probably about 1875 RPM. ) no fancy synchronizing circuitry, just spin your motor fastly. I tried it with a gasoline engine and the meter did indeed spin backwards :-) . Hoyt Stearns Scottsdale, Arizona US -Original Message- From: ecat builder [mailto:ecatbuil...@gmail.com] Here in my area, the power company must buy back any user-generated electricity. So having 2-4kw/h generating 24/7 would be pretty compelling. Also a good way for the electric company to quickly go broke. What other ideas for e-cat are you all thinking about? - Brad
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These links are for piston steam engines. I believe small turbines, or MicroTurbines as they are called, are a better solution. Capstone and others are developing them. - Jed
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I like the induction generator for safety reasons. When the power goes off it revives no vars and shouts down without back feed. I do believe that there my be a way to extract electric energy directly from the LENR process. I have kept this to myself for years. -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Wed, Oct 19, 2011 6:21 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Steam engines These links are for piston steam engines. I believe small turbines, or MicroTurbines as they are called, are a better solution. Capstone and others are developing them. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Steam engines
-Micro-turbines (capstone et al) have low efficiency compressor and turbines and under 100kW probably won't work at all until the temperatures are 600°C, and then only with very low efficiency (15%). MW scale might get up to 20%. -Micro steam turbines are very inefficient, (steam's high specific heat requires multi-stage due to blade speed limits) and with small sizes are far more prone to water erosion damage. They also require huge condensers (radiators) unless running total loss with water. -Reciprocating steam engines are at best 20% efficient, and then only for very intricate and large triple expansion engines, same large condenser problem. -Organic rankine is also very inefficient, but by picking a fluid with lower heat of vaporisaion and greater molecular mass (lower specific heat) can get away with single stage. May be best of a bad lot, but again need large condensers. -Stirling cycle is incredibly expensive ($3000/kW @1kW, $500/kW @30kW) and heavy (10-20kg/kW) due to high prescision + no lubrication. Low piston speeds mean big expensive generators. Also big radiators required. On 19 October 2011 15:21, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: These links are for piston steam engines. I believe small turbines, or MicroTurbines as they are called, are a better solution. Capstone and others are developing them. - Jed
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Robert Lynn robert.gulliver.l...@gmail.com wrote: -Micro-turbines (capstone et al) have low efficiency compressor and turbines and under 100kW probably won't work at all until the temperatures are 600°C, and then only with very low efficiency (15%). I have heard that a Rossi reactor can go to 600°C. It works well at that temperature. Most cold fusion reactions work better at higher temperatures. Proton conductor-types do not work at all at lower temperatures. They do not conduct protons (load). Anyway, efficiency does not matter much with cold fusion because the heat costs nothing. The only reason you need a modicum of efficiency is to keep the waste heat down to a reasonable level. You would not want a 30 kW home generator that produces 300 kW of waste heat. It would make the air around the house too hot. If it was compact, it would be dangerously hot, and might burn someone or start a fire, and if it was not compact it would take up a lot of space. -Micro steam turbines are very inefficient, (steam's high specific heat requires multi-stage due to blade speed limits) and with small sizes are far more prone to water erosion damage. As I said, efficiency does not matter, but longevity and the lifetime cost of the equipment does matter. See chapter 14 of my book. - Jed
[Vo]:Steam engines
I've been collecting a few links to steam engines available on the net so that I'm ready when the e-cat's begin shipping. =) Here is an interesting one-- a very small 10HP model ($2K) http://www.greensteamengine.com/ Plans, full units, and licensing available. A much larger one puts out just 5HP http://www.tinytechindia.com/steamengine.htm Alibaba has a number of steam engines, including one http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/109015831/Screw_rotor_steam_engine.html And this one delivers 3KW/h at 116 psi for $3K http://www.biosteamengine.com/article_read_276.html Steam turbines (vs. engines) operate at a much higher speed, temperature and pressure, and require very dry steam. I tried to find something that could plug into a 1MW Rossi container and found a few used and ready to purchase at: http://powerplantsonline.com/ Here is a cool picture of a 500kW steam turbine generator: http://www.utilitywarehouse.com/info2/500kwstg/500kwstg1.jpg It was listed 12/08/09 for $100K and could power your neighborhood. Its hard to tell, but it looks like about a 2 or 3 inch ID pipe for input. Maybe Rossi's 2 outlet is not unreasonable? Here in my area, the power company must buy back any user-generated electricity. So having 2-4kw/h generating 24/7 would be pretty compelling. Also a good way for the electric company to quickly go broke. What other ideas for e-cat are you all thinking about? - Brad
