Michel Jullian wrote:
> in the long-term palladium will be cheaper.
Well this doesn't follow, as the demand for CF could be higher than
that for catalytic converters for what we know. But as you said
other metals might work.
If other methods do not work, and we must use palladium, then cold
fusion will only produce a fraction of our energy with 100% of
available palladium. Palladium production is 171 tons per year. There
is no way that would be enough produce all of our energy, even with
thin-films, because the film temperature has to be kept well below
the melting point of Pd (1552 deg C).
If the palladium transmutes into other elements, then cold fusion can
never produce enough energy to supply a significant fraction of our needs.
I covered this in Chapter 2 of my book.
As I recall, Fleischmann estimated that roughly two-third of our
energy could be derived from Pd CF. I came up with approximately the
same number. Here is the basis for my estimate, which is admittedly very crude:
I assum that automobile catalytic converters are already optimized,
with thin film as thin as it can be, and temperatures about as high
as they can go.
With a catalytic converter, 80% of the heat from burning gasoline
goes through the exhaust system and past the Pd thin film, whereas
with a CF generator, 100% of the heat will originate in the Pd thin
film. However, a catalytic converter is a very destructive
environment, with smoke and very high speed moving gas, that erodes
the Pd. The inside of a Pd cell will be comparatively benign. So,
for the purposes of this estimate, let's ignore the 20% difference
and assume that the same amount of heat can be either processed (with
the converter) or generated (with the CF cell) with the same mass of Pd.
I assume there is enough Pd for roughly twice as many devices as
there are catalytic converters today; that is, twice as much surface
area and twice as much heat as today's catalytic converters.
Transportation consumes 27 quads of energy in the U.S., or ~27% of
the total. (See the NREL document I uploaded.) That's raw heat; not
energy. Automobiles are by far the least efficient machine in common
use, so the useful energy is much smaller than that. Anyway, with
twice as much heat from Pd CF, you get 55% of total energy. The
carnot efficiency could easily be improved to higher levels than
today's generators, so it comes roughly two-thirds.
- Jed
