From: ChemE Stewart
Don't you know the difference between a parabolic trough with Dow thermal oil and a 400' tower with a with an obsolete water boiler sitting on top that you can't get to in order to do maintenance on? It's not "either/or". The point is that neither is obsolete and both are preferable to fossil fuels in many ways. The low cost of natural gas will be no more than a fond memory in 5-10 years. Nothing wrong with boiling water with solar - and you can put another mirror on the tower if you want the boiler on the ground - but admittedly there are more elegant ways. It should noted for the record that LENR could work with added synergy with this exact kind of moderate heat storage device (molten salt from concentrated solar). at least if we believe Andrea Rossi. Rossi has said many times that he could substitute natural gas or any heat input for the electrical input which is needed to provide a "thermal floor" or threshold - for his process. Thus, molten salt from a solar trough would work for that in a hybrid system. As for distributed power, rooftop solar troughs for an office building, factory, apartment building, large store, mall, or school etc. would work either with LENR or without - and provide cogeneration as well. This would likely be too complicated for the single home, but not for some kind of localized distributed system in the 100 kW range. That makes more sense than going for individual distribution. Jones
