If thermal conductivity is all that important, is anyone commercially producing isotopically purified silicon wafers? This stuff has better thermal conductivity (phonons tend to scatter off mass irregularities).
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20312.html
"His next step: to combine isotopically purified silicon 28 with isotopically purified carbon to form ultra-hard silicon carbide."
The iAPX 432 was a complete and utter failure; by comparison, ia64 has been a success. Ia64 *is* seeing design wins, and does have market niches where it's a good choice. The iAPX 432 was just a dog.
Actually, a somewhat different crisis will end this.
A profit of $1 on a DVD player indicates serious trouble in China. That is not an adequate return on investment. This tells me China is heading toward a crisis that terminates all booms -- bad investment builds up, and eventually has to be liquidated in a contraction. Their system appears to have some features that encourage bad investments, just like the Japanese did (and their hangover lasted for a decade.)
That list shows the usual mode of operation of spinoff claims. NASA produced one example of something, therefore all examples of that thing are spinoffs and are due to NASA.
NASA produced cordless tools for Apollo, for example. They were completely unsuitable for use on Earth (using nonrechargable batteries containing large amounts of silver). Computer simulations existed long before NASA did. And imaging software has more to do with spy satellites than NASA.
Making the reactor core even hotter would boost efficiency, but you still have that medium grade waste heat at the end to dispose of, so an organic bottoming cycle like this could increase the efficiency still more. It would also be nice to get higher efficiency without having to operate the core at a temperature that could reduce safety margins or pose materials problems.
Your point (1) ignores the fact that the efficiencies of steam cycles used today are well below the theoretical Carnot limit for the given steam initial temperature and cooling water temperature. This invention is purporting to offer a way to avoid some of the inefficiencies.
I see. You run the flue gases through an alkali spray, and the vapors are still acidic? Sure.
In any case, at 55 C there are plenty of materials available that are extremely resistant to corrosion, even in strong acids or bases. Teflon, for example (although that's probably overkill.)
As I understand it, the first stage does not expand the propane to saturation (and neither does the second stage). They've presumably optimized the design and determined it was counterproductive to do that.
If you read the article, you see that they want stuff to condense out. The NOx and SOx, for example, get reacted with alkali solutions, with hydrogen peroxide added to oxidize them to nitrate/sulfate. These reactions go better at the lower temperature of the cooled flue gases than they would in the current hot flue gases.
Even better, the cold gas will cause mercury, lead, cadmium and other metal oxides to condense. Mercury pollution from coal burning is a major environmental issue right now.
Nuclear reactors are currently even less efficient than coal-burning powerplants, and produce even more medium grade waste heat. This technology should be especially useful there. It should help fusion power even more, since the cost of a fusion core (per thermal MW) is projected to be many times that of a fission core, so getting the most power out of it will be very important.
With renewables you do have to mine. What do you think the equipment is made of, fairy dust?
Not having to pay for initial investment and maintenance is damning with faint praise. For most renewable technologies, the investment cost makes them noncompetitive for most applications.
Waste: some forms of renewable energy have a great deal of waste. Geothermal, OTEC, biomass. And all the equipment eventually has to be disposed of as it wears out.
'Recent breakthroughs' usually don't pan out ('Popular Science Syndrome'), and even if they do they take much longer than we'd like to be reduced to workable products.
Yes, I am sure he knows how much energy goes into mining uranium. Here's a free clue: it's a very small fraction of the energy yielded when that uranium is fissioned (even in a once-through fuel cycle without reprocessing.)
No, this has to do with anything (currently) in Linux, not just what IBM added. IBM has been distributing Linux, internally and to customers, so anything in Linux that SCO had hooks on would make IBM a copyright violator. IBM is asking for declaratory judgment that *all* of Linux is free of violation.
No, most energy in fission is released in the kinetic energy of the fission fragments. There is some prompt gamma emission from the fragments, and some delayed gamma emission from the decay of unstable fragments, but this is a relatively small fraction of the total energy yield.
In DT fusion, 80% of the energy comes out in the neutron, and 20% in the helium nucleus. Gamma emission from the fusion reaction is negligible.
This is a bit like Lysenkoism, but not because the government is suppressing this (supposed) discovery, but because political pull has been used to give additional funding to something that had been disconfirmed.
Right now, it makes more sense to be very skeptical than to be intrigued or excited. There is almost certainly nothing here.
Scrap iron is, what, ten cents a pound? Iron cannot be mined economically in space with anything resembling current technology, by many orders of magnitude. Ditto for nickel. The platinum group elements in asteroids are not nearly as ludicrous, but are still out of reach.
BTW, we'd mine metallic NEOs (near earth objects) before going to the asteroid belt. Easier to get to and much easier to return mass from. Still not economical, though.
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If thermal conductivity is all that important, is anyone commercially producing isotopically purified silicon wafers? This stuff has better thermal conductivity (phonons tend to scatter off mass irregularities).
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20312.html
"His next step: to combine isotopically purified silicon 28 with isotopically purified carbon to form ultra-hard silicon carbide."
The iAPX 432 was a complete and utter failure; by comparison, ia64 has been a success. Ia64 *is* seeing design wins, and does have market niches where it's a good choice. The iAPX 432 was just a dog.
Actually, a somewhat different crisis will end this.
A profit of $1 on a DVD player indicates serious trouble in China. That is not an adequate return on investment. This tells me China is heading toward a crisis that terminates all booms -- bad investment builds up, and eventually has to be liquidated in a contraction. Their system appears to have some features that encourage bad investments, just like the Japanese did (and their hangover lasted for a decade.)
They got it to fly under guidance, hover briefly, and land (also under guidance) using its rockets.
This is a hell of a lot more impressive than an unguided model rocket.
No, Columbia could have been launched to the ISS (just not with a full payload.)
That list shows the usual mode of operation of spinoff claims. NASA produced one example of something, therefore all examples of that thing are spinoffs and are due to NASA.
NASA produced cordless tools for Apollo, for example. They were completely unsuitable for use on Earth (using nonrechargable batteries containing large amounts of silver). Computer simulations existed long before NASA did. And imaging software has more to do with spy satellites than NASA.
'X Windows'? Is that anything like the X Window System?
Well, the movement has certainly influenced me. It's influenced me to not spend a dime on anything produced by Bruce Sterling.
Deuterium is actually produced by a chemical exchange process, not by electrolysis (except to polish the almost-pure D2O at the end).
Making the reactor core even hotter would boost efficiency, but you still have that medium grade waste heat at the end to dispose of, so an organic bottoming cycle like this could increase the efficiency still more. It would also be nice to get higher efficiency without having to operate the core at a temperature that could reduce safety margins or pose materials problems.
Your point (1) ignores the fact that the efficiencies of steam cycles used today are well below the theoretical Carnot limit for the given steam initial temperature and cooling water temperature. This invention is purporting to offer a way to avoid some of the inefficiencies.
You mean, 'may require exhaust fan'?
So what? This does not render the idea impractical.
I see. You run the flue gases through an alkali spray, and the vapors are still acidic? Sure.
In any case, at 55 C there are plenty of materials available that are extremely resistant to corrosion, even in strong acids or bases. Teflon, for example (although that's probably overkill.)
Oh, one other thing...
As I understand it, the first stage does not expand the propane to saturation (and neither does the second stage). They've presumably optimized the design and determined it was counterproductive to do that.
See the pressure-enthalpy diagram on page 13 of this set of slides.
If you read the article, you see that they want stuff to condense out. The NOx and SOx, for example, get reacted with alkali solutions, with hydrogen peroxide added to oxidize them to nitrate/sulfate. These reactions go better at the lower temperature of the cooled flue gases than they would in the current hot flue gases.
Even better, the cold gas will cause mercury, lead, cadmium and other metal oxides to condense. Mercury pollution from coal burning is a major environmental issue right now.
Nuclear reactors are currently even less efficient than coal-burning powerplants, and produce even more medium grade waste heat. This technology should be especially useful there. It should help fusion power even more, since the cost of a fusion core (per thermal MW) is projected to be many times that of a fission core, so getting the most power out of it will be very important.
With renewables you do have to mine. What do you think the equipment is made of, fairy dust?
Not having to pay for initial investment and maintenance is damning with faint praise. For most renewable technologies, the investment cost makes them noncompetitive for most applications.
Waste: some forms of renewable energy have a great deal of waste. Geothermal, OTEC, biomass. And all the equipment eventually has to be disposed of as it wears out.
'Recent breakthroughs' usually don't pan out ('Popular Science Syndrome'), and even if they do they take much longer than we'd like to be reduced to workable products.
Yes, I am sure he knows how much energy goes into mining uranium. Here's a free clue: it's a very small fraction of the energy yielded when that uranium is fissioned (even in a once-through fuel cycle without reprocessing.)
No, this has to do with anything (currently) in Linux, not just what IBM added. IBM has been distributing Linux, internally and to customers, so anything in Linux that SCO had hooks on would make IBM a copyright violator. IBM is asking for declaratory judgment that *all* of Linux is free of violation.
More likely, they'll take defective chips in which only one core works and sell them as single core chips.
Robert Park is hated precisely because he tells the truth. Ideologues don't like this, of course.
No, most energy in fission is released in the kinetic energy of the fission fragments. There is some prompt gamma emission from the fragments, and some delayed gamma emission from the decay of unstable fragments, but this is a relatively small fraction of the total energy yield.
In DT fusion, 80% of the energy comes out in the neutron, and 20% in the helium nucleus. Gamma emission from the fusion reaction is negligible.
This is a bit like Lysenkoism, but not because the government is suppressing this (supposed) discovery, but because political pull has been used to give additional funding to something that had been disconfirmed.
Right now, it makes more sense to be very skeptical than to be intrigued or excited. There is almost certainly nothing here.
No, but bogus is certainly the way to bet, especially when the putative result contradicts well-tested theory, as this one apparently does.
Scrap iron is, what, ten cents a pound? Iron cannot be mined economically in space with anything resembling current technology, by many orders of magnitude. Ditto for nickel. The platinum group elements in asteroids are not nearly as ludicrous, but are still out of reach.
BTW, we'd mine metallic NEOs (near earth objects) before going to the asteroid belt. Easier to get to and much easier to return mass from. Still not economical, though.