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New Material Could Up Efficiency of Concentrated Solar Power (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares new work that could allow us to generate electricity using supercritical carbon dioxide. Ars Technica reports: The researchers involved in the new work, a large U.S.-based collaboration, focus on a composite material: tungsten and zirconium carbide. These have extremely high melting points: 3,700K for both materials. Both of them conduct heat extremely well, and neither of them expands or softens much under these conditions, meaning they would hold up better to the mechanical stresses. While the stats are impressive, the amazing part of this is how the material is fabricated. The researchers started with tungsten carbide, a ceramic that can be formed into a porous material simply by pouring it as a powder into a mold and heating it. At this point, the ceramic can be further machined to produce a final shape. Once in its final form, the ceramic was placed in a bath of a molten mixture of copper and zirconium. The molten mixture filled the pores, and the zirconium reacted with the tungsten carbide, replacing the tungsten. The copper in the molten material formed a thin film on the surface of the solid.
The tungsten then filled the pores in the resulting material, allowing it to retain the same shape and size despite the chemical changes. The zircon carbide ends up providing the material with a stiffness even at high temperatures, while the tungsten is flexible enough to keep the whole thing from being brittle. And the whole thing conducted heat better than the metals currently in use. The remaining issue is that, at the conditions involved in solar thermal plants, the copper on the material would react with the carbon dioxide, forming a copper oxide and releasing carbon monoxide. But the researchers determined that adding a small amount of carbon monoxide to the supercritical CO2 would suppress this reaction, something that they confirmed experimentally. Because the material holds up to these conditions so much better than the metals currently in use, it's possible to use much less of it to build a heat exchanger. This is great economically (since you need fewer raw materials), and the small size increases the power density and efficiency of the heat exchanger.
The tungsten then filled the pores in the resulting material, allowing it to retain the same shape and size despite the chemical changes. The zircon carbide ends up providing the material with a stiffness even at high temperatures, while the tungsten is flexible enough to keep the whole thing from being brittle. And the whole thing conducted heat better than the metals currently in use. The remaining issue is that, at the conditions involved in solar thermal plants, the copper on the material would react with the carbon dioxide, forming a copper oxide and releasing carbon monoxide. But the researchers determined that adding a small amount of carbon monoxide to the supercritical CO2 would suppress this reaction, something that they confirmed experimentally. Because the material holds up to these conditions so much better than the metals currently in use, it's possible to use much less of it to build a heat exchanger. This is great economically (since you need fewer raw materials), and the small size increases the power density and efficiency of the heat exchanger.
With this stuff you could make a really hot solar oven.
But what are you going to cook in it?
This has much more applications than simply solar: Jet turbine blades, valves, piston and cylinder head coating for internal combustion engines. If this has the same tensile strength as Inconel at 3 times the temperature we can have 64% efficient engines.
Yet another miracle "breakthrough" that won't amount to anything practical.
So what? At some point, researchers somewhere are going to hit the jackpot and we'll wind up with solar power so cheap to generate and store that energy markets will finally move away from oil & gas.
One problem here is that both natural gas and nuclear plants also rely on heat exchangers, and there's no reason this material can't be used to boost their efficiency, too.
I don't see a problem here.
In fact such materials with such varied uses should be seen as a very good thing. Right now solar is the new pink... or something. Solar is fashionable. Solar power is getting a lot of backing right now from government funding, private funding, and just general popularity. With that there is leverage to divert some of that funding to this materials research. If they can get the people in natural gas and nuclear convinced it will help them too then they can secure more funding.
Solar power is expensive, they admit this in the article. Solar power is intermittent, again they admit this in the article. Solar power takes a lot of land and other resources. Solar also requires a favorable geography and climate to compete. These do not apply to nuclear and natural gas. I thought the goal was to find viable alternatives to coal power to improve air quality, provide reliable energy, and reduce CO2. The goal should not be making solar power viable, since there are other means to replace coal.
They've taken their eyes off the prize. This should not be about making solar power the winner, it should be about making coal the loser. The fashion might be solar right now but I'm guessing that the future of solar won't be so bright as technology advances. This is one example of a technology that might actually kill solar competitiveness. Should this technology prove workable then it will be applied everywhere it can, and that might not help solar power in the long run.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You could be right. IIRC Tungsten is relatively expensive and quite difficult to work (though they aren't dealing with metallic Tungsten).
But you could also be quite wrong.
OTOH, do note that the proposed application is heat exchangers. These aren't only used in solar power plants, and aren't used at all in photo-voltaic systems. So the title is misleading, and the application is as likely to be nuclear plants as solar plants.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Have gnu, will travel.
Come on, "allow us to generate electricity using supercritical carbon dioxide"? That's the most ridiculous clickbait I've seen recently. Makes it sound like some kind of free energy scam. The CO2 is just part of the process of making an advanced alloy that might be useful in a heat exchanger. Come on slashdot, this is way over the top.
Wrong. TFA says that the higher operating temperature enables them to use supercritical CO2 instead of steam as the working gas for power generation.
Solar thermal it works in the DARK! (Efficiency isn't always about $.)
baseline power.
I don't think battery + PV costs + land have costs have caught up. I would think thermal gets more power for the land area. Why can't they generate power during overcast days? Concentrating thermal towers should still have some output...not parabolic troughs. I would think that improvements on IR light are still possible since a lot of that goes thru clouds.
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http://www.x-mol.com/paper/857...
I'm sure someone already thought of this but (3700K 273.15) × 9/5 + 32 = 6200.33F --> maybe this stuff could be used on hypersonic aircraft or spacecraft heat shields.
"I now inform you that you are too far from reality."
Fun fact: if you look at the last 10 years of slashdot stories about miracle efficiency improvements, they're now around 570% efficient.
Sounds like a replacement for Freon.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
They’ve upped the ante; deal with it.
the application is as likely to be nuclear plants as solar plants.
You would have to account for what neutron bombardment in nuclear plants would do to this material before it could be used there.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
No. The heat exchangers aren't usually near the core of the reactor, so only get relatively low levels of radiation.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No. The heat exchangers aren't usually near the core of the reactor, so only get relatively low levels of radiation.
Indeed. I was considering it from the perspective of the cladding around the fuel rods. I'm uncertain if it would have much of an impact between the primary and secondary cooling loops in a PWR as you have mentioned.
As for a molten salt reactor, the salt would carry the isotope around so in that situation the heat exchanger would be exposed. I should have mentioned those scenarios when I posted - thanks for the opportunity to clear that up.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
How about we drop all the funding for shills, stop all the government subsidies, and let the open market pick a winner?
As Nuclear power is the only thing benefiting from this, it sounds like a great idea. Solar and Wind will continue to improve and investments in Nuclear power will seem like the insanity that they are.
Humanity made a big mistake choosing Uranium over Thorium and now we can't go back because of the spent fuel we have lying around.
Future investments in Nuclear will come in the form of solar and wind powered accelerators that destroy the spent fuel. It's a shame all of the nuclear advocates here couldn't get over their collective ideology and see through the inherent problems nuclear power has so that they could be fixed.
They were too busy blaming all of the people opposing coal and oil while the coal and oil lobby turned nuclear power into on gigantic tax break for their utility companies.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Here we've got this new composite material that's a superb thermal conductor at high temperatures. No, we can't be bothered to tell you what the thermal conductivity is.
Read the Nature article and the best they can do is say it's 2 to 3 times better than existing materials, iron and nickel. That means its thermal conductivity is somewhere near 220 (metric units). Copper is about 400, so we're not going to be using this stuff in computer heat sinks.
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https://articles.thmsr.nl/the-flibe-energy-lftr49-the-triple-ace-in-nuclear-gen-iv-design-ea9bffcd71dd
I've read this before. You don't have all the facts and refuse any given to you. Therefore your statements don't have any credibility.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Yep, PROBLEM SOLVED! Therefore I should never have to hear of global warming ever again. We solved all our global warming problems with natural gas and solar power.
PROBLEM SOLVED!
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Most of the 3d printed "metals" these days are a matrix that requires further processing. Something like this could enable _real_ 3D metal printing.
Correction: prices TODAY are higher during the day. With increased solar driving down daytime demand those prices will drop and with enough solar the sunny daytime prices will become the lowest price; while the night and overcast days will raise prices. DEMAND is not the only factor setting rates and nothing says in the future it has to be as much of a factor or at all. Think ahead.
Massive energy storage is horrible for electricity. For heat, is very efficient. They don't store heat as steam, duh!! Heat transfer and conversion is simple and efficient; heat to electricity conversion is best done using steam.
Mirrors can't concentrate AS MUCH light when it's diffused; they do not turn black when it's overcast. A tower concentrator has enough mirrors why can't they still have enough to boil a little steam? A low temperature mode. When I asked, I was hoping for somebody with more knowledge than I speak up.
IR DOES go through clouds.
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