In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:19:49 -0400: Hi, [snip] >[email protected] 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
