Ah, I got double-whammied: 1) It was Beaudette that said "100,000 watts per cm^3" (that string is outside of the quotation marks meant to designated Preparata's words.
2) Lynn said "gram" rather than "cm^3" so his correction on comma vs period didn't register with me. Thanks for clearing that up. Perhaps Beaudette corrected that in his 2002 edition. I was reading from the 2000 edition. In any event, the high *reproducibility* of Preparata's work has not yet been equaled has it? On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: > > ([1E9 * ounce_troy] * [{12.02 * gramm} / {(centi*meter)^3}]^-1) * ([100 * >> {kilo watt}] / [{centi*meter}^3]) ? watt >> >> = 2.5876415E14 W >> >> over 200 terawatts. >> > > Unfortunately, I think Preparata meant "100" not 100,000. The comma is a > decimal point. I do not understand why he added 3 digits of precision to a > rough approximation. Anyway, that comes to 0.2 TW, which is about 1/100 of > world energy production. Fleischmann once estimated that Pd can supply > about 1/3 of total energy. I confirmed it is in that ballpark, ~30% to ~50%. > > Here is my estimation. > > I assume that power density and temperature with palladium can be > increased to the limits of the material. That is to say up to the highest > temperatures in which thin-film palladium can survive. Or nanoparticles in > aerogel, or what-have-you. The limiting factor is how thinly you can spread > the palladium and have it remain on the substrate and in contact with the > medium, which will probably be D2 gas. > > About half of palladium nowadays is used in catalytic converters. Hot gas > from internal combustion engines flows over the palladium surface and is > catalyzed. I assume this technology is pushed to the limit. They use the > smallest amount palladium they can, spreading it as thinly as they can with > maximum exposure to the moving gas. A palladium based cold fusion cell > would have palladium spread roughly as thin as this, producing temperatures > roughly as high as this. If they could make in any thinner, they would. > This technology has been around for a while and it is probably mature. > > Nearly all of the energy from an automobile is wasted as hot gas. In other > words, the hot gas that passes over the palladium surface is roughly equal > to the total amount of energy produced by gasoline in the transportation > sector. To put it another way, if the heat was being produced by the > palladium inside the catalytic converter, instead of coming from the engine > to the converter, you would get nearly as much energy as you get from > gasoline now. > > To simplify a great deal, assuming that cold fusion can achieve the same > temperatures as palladium experiences in a catalytic converter, half of our > palladium could produce roughly as much energy as the entire automotive > transportation sector does now: 27 out of 99 quads. All of our palladium > could therefore produce roughly 50 out of 99 quads. > > Actually the number is higher for various reasons: > > * The palladium is not used up as quickly in a cold fusion device as it is > in a catalytic converter. > > * The palladium is more easily and completely recovered from a used cold > fusion cell, assuming it is not transmuted. > > * Palladium production will be increased as demand increases. > > This is a crude estimate but I believe it does show that there is not > enough palladium to produce all the energy we need. If it turns out > palladium is the only suitable metal, we would have large centralized > generators producing most of our energy, supplying it as electricity for > use in electric cars and so on. We would not actually put the palladium in > automobiles, and probably not in houses either. > > - Jed > >
