With a COP of 10 - if (IF!) that lofty goal is really possible on a continuous level, this is perhaps the first time that it makes sense to look at the potential end markets which can return the most, the soonest; and thereafter to plan ahead with a form factor in mind that suits that particular market – possibly in the range of a few kilowatts of electric power.
The first products will be the ones highest in commercial need for portable source of electricity, not heat. I doubt that mining cryptocurrency will be high enough in value as a niche market for any advanced energy generator. They only need cheap - nothing else overrides cheap for most markets. Deuterium and palladium will never be cheap. Palladium being extremely rare (.015 ppm in earth crust) could skyrocket in price with even small increase in demand - so even if deuterium went down, capital cost due to palladium could be an issue. As of now Pd is $1.40 per milligram but demand could push that up by a factor of 100 or more. Diamonds can cost up to $200 per mg (small ones about $5/mg) and yet are ~100 times more plentiful in nature than palladium. Perhaps the highest value applications - and I suspect the first to be commercialized – will be in aerospace. Drone power is a perfect market. Imagine a communication drone which stays aloft for months at a time. The smallest might require a few kilowatts electric and have a solar contribution. If the Mizuno “hearth” unit can be engineered to produce 3 kw continuous heat, and a Stirling or ORC converter can get 33% conversion into electric, then the 1 kw of output would be reduced by the 300 watts input for 700 useful output. The optimal drone for communications use would probably need 2-3 times as much, some of which can come from solar panels on the wings. It is possible that the Mizuno device could engineered rapidly for aerospace drone use with a return on investment which is far greater than any kind of heater. If a continuous high output required 200 mg of palladium per unit, then even a huge price jump in the metal would be tolerable given the value to the market and our insatiable demand for information transfer. With the continued growth in solar and wind in most of the World – having one of these to heat the home just ain’t gonna happen anytime soon - except for maybe Gates and Bezos.
