Economic effects of sudden introduction of cheap power
Charles R Martin
some junk mail on Enron stock, someone quoting John Galt, and someone
telling me that it already happened and the power companies had him
killed.
So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
five orders of magnitude.
What happens ?
--
I once complained to my father that I didn't seem to be able to do things the
same way other people did. Dad's advice? 'Margo, don't be a sheep. People hate
sheep. They eat sheep.' -- Margo Kaufmann
_______________________________________________________________________________
Charles R (Charlie) Martin Broomfield, CO 40N 105W
pete hardie
>
> I tried this once before, but I don't think much came of it except
> some junk mail on Enron stock, someone quoting John Galt, and someone
> telling me that it already happened and the power companies had him
> killed.
>
> So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
> smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
> appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
> for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
>
> My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> five orders of magnitude.
>
> What happens ?
More hybrid cars, and all-electrics for short commutes
The pendulum swings back to favor electric heat and cooking
Fusion power (assuming the new tech is not fusion) gets another setback;
ditto
solar and other alternatives
--
Better Living Through Circuitry
Paul F. Dietz
> My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> five orders of magnitude.
>
> What happens ?
It becomes economical to do large scale agriculture with
artificial illumination (assuming the light bulbs can be
made cheaply enough.)
Outdoor radiant heating of towns and cities. Ice removal
by resistive heating of roads (which have embedded induction
coils for powering cars.) More generally, thermal pollution
becomes the significant problem that limits the technology;
most of its cost will be due to rationing of the global heat sink.
This will drive expansion into space, where additional heat
can be radiated away.
Seawater can be desalinated on a massive scale. Pumping
the fresh water into continental interiors becomes economical.
Electrometallurgy becomes the prefered means of refining metal,
including iron.
It may become economical to manufacture ozone in the stratosphere
at a rate sufficient to counter its destruction from chlorine.
Paul
Ray
"pete hardie" <har...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:3C8ED3A8...@bellsouth.net...
Hydrogen suddenly becomes a very attractive fuel. It can be created by
splitting water, and eventually piped through existing infrastructure (with
a lot of work to reduce leakage - hydrogen is really sneaky stuff).
California rejoices.
California rejoices again when they build some really cheap desalinization
plants and eliminate the water shortage.
We find better ways to store hydrogen fuel. When it comes to burning
something in air, it's the densest fuel around based on work per unit mass.
It really sucks when you look at the work per unit volume, though - even if
you liquefy the stuff.
Cars powered by hydrogen-air fuel cells will be developed and become
practical.
Ray
Conrad Hodson
> Outdoor radiant heating of towns and cities. Ice removal
> by resistive heating of roads (which have embedded induction
> coils for powering cars.)
I used to live in a town (Klamath Falls, Oregon) that heats the roads for
snow and ice removal. They were using locally abundant geothermal
water/steam.
One thing that wasn't mentioned was thermal efficiency of this new
technology. In other words, how much heat vs. how much electricity comes
out of each plant? Makes a difference to several of these questions. The
original post specified large-scale plants only; if they produce a lot of
heat as a by-product, it might make a lot more sense to warm the roads,
etc. with piped cooling water, and save all the electricity for other use.
More generally, thermal pollution
> becomes the significant problem that limits the technology;
> most of its cost will be due to rationing of the global heat sink.
> This will drive expansion into space, where additional heat
> can be radiated away.
>
Thermal efficiency is a key issue, again. Also, in many ways, it's
cheaper and easier to get rid of heat on Earth than in space, especially
since the heat exchangers don't have to be lifted. If this technology
outcompetes gas/oil/coal fired thermal plants, our atmosphere should
retain its rather high ability to convect heat to the stratosphere and
radiate it into space from the cloud tops. "Heat pollution" only tends to
be an issue when large amounts of water are being heated in place or
consumed in evaporative cooling towers, anyway. If you just build big
liquid-to-air radiators, they'd work as well as anything you could use in
the vacuum of space (better, probably, given convective cooling), you
wouldn't have to lift them, and the main environmental effect would be a
mondo thermal enjoyed by hawks and sailplanes. Even a large number of
these shouldn't affect climate much at all.
> Electrometallurgy becomes the prefered means of refining metal,
> including iron.
You certainly get cheaper magnesium and aluminum. Also a lot of
refractories and the like. Iron I'm not so sure--what percentage of the
(already very low) cost of a tonne of iron is for energy?
>
Also consider that right now, huge masses of bauxite and other raw
materials are shipped to areas of cheap electrical power--from Jamaica to
Norway and the Columbia River, for example. With these power sources, it
might be possible to move the refineries to the ores, and greatly reduce
material handling costs, which is the _other_ biggie in aluminum
production.
> It may become economical to manufacture ozone in the stratosphere
> at a rate sufficient to counter its destruction from chlorine.
>
Gonna have to build an awful lot of these generators to equal the ozone
output of one good squall line...check the energy figures sometime.
Conrad Hodson
George William Herbert
excess posts. Until such power sources are available, each electron
we save is precious!
Charles Martin wrote:
>So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
>technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
>lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
>smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
>appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
>for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
>
>My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
>per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
>five orders of magnitude.
At 10% IRR, that's a $100k return annually plus $80k worth of interest
on the plant itself and probably $20k worth of principal payment,
for a payback of $200k or soon the initial investment. The key
here will be how many people it takes to operate it and maintain
it annually... a loaded tech or operator salary is probably $100k/yr,
so two each shift with 5 shifts (coverage rotating for weekends
and holidays and such is reasonable) is another $1m/yr. Figure $1.2M
grand total.
10 GW is roughly 88 TwH/yr. That's 73 MwH/$, assuming $1.2M/yr to
operate the plant and give a good return.
>What happens ?
Magic. People's power bills are now (rough order of $100/mo).
(It's really a few times that, but we're order of magnituding).
Let us assume that 10% of that is billing overhead and 35% is
the distribution network, that gives us $45/mo or so worth of
fixed costs in the grid.
If we reduce overall power costs by a factor of two, that's
350 MwH/month per family, $5 worth of electrical production.
That's about 416 Kw average power usage. I can certainly think
of things to do with that sort of power.
Industrially, where overhead and distribution are lower
on the average, you'll pay a small multiplier of the
total cost, or say 50 MwH/$. Or, 180,000 MJ/$.
That lets you redo the entire industrial economy to use
significantly more power for processes. For example,
it takes no more than 100 MJ to ionize and electrically separate
a kilogram of rock. If we use basalt, the rock is 1% titanium
and 8.5% iron, roughly. We can produce 85 kg of Iron and
10 kg of Titanium from a ton of basalt for ROM five cents.
The industrial and societal impact of being able to afford
a cubic meter of iron for a typical US minimum wage hour's work
would be significant...
Thinking about space access for one application,
electrical power on the ground is painful to turn into
space launch capability. You might end up doing large
railguns to fire mass into space, something like that.
Replies to replies:
pete hardie <har...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>More hybrid cars, and all-electrics for short commutes
At those prices, you could electrify all the roads and not
charge people at all to use it...
>The pendulum swings back to favor electric heat and cooking
And how...
"Paul F. Dietz" <di...@interaccess.com> writes:
>It becomes economical to do large scale agriculture with
>artificial illumination (assuming the light bulbs can be
>made cheaply enough.)
Arc lighting? ;-)
>Outdoor radiant heating of towns and cities. Ice removal
>by resistive heating of roads (which have embedded induction
>coils for powering cars.) More generally, thermal pollution
>becomes the significant problem that limits the technology;
>most of its cost will be due to rationing of the global heat sink.
>This will drive expansion into space, where additional heat
>can be radiated away.
If we worst case this... say 10 billion people on Earth, each
using 500 Kw of power, that's 5E15W, equal to the normal solar
flux on a square about 1,924 km on a side at this distance
from the Sun. Earth's cross section is 126 million km^2,
this is about 3.7 million, so it's about 3% of the solar flux.
I can easily see limiting that by a factor of 2-5 for general
usage, though I suspect that gross industry would move into
space for some purposes.
>Seawater can be desalinated on a massive scale. Pumping
>the fresh water into continental interiors becomes economical.
If we ignore the environmental consequences, Australia could support
as many people as the US does today, etc.
>Electrometallurgy becomes the prefered means of refining metal,
>including iron.
>
>It may become economical to manufacture ozone in the stratosphere
>at a rate sufficient to counter its destruction from chlorine.
"Ray" <rDrovouil...@comcast.nospam.net> writes:
>Hydrogen suddenly becomes a very attractive fuel. It can be created by
>splitting water, and eventually piped through existing infrastructure (with
>a lot of work to reduce leakage - hydrogen is really sneaky stuff).
>
>California rejoices.
<Gir voice>"Yay!"</Gir voice>
>California rejoices again when they build some really cheap desalinization
>plants and eliminate the water shortage.
<Gir voice>"Yay!"</Gir voice>
>We find better ways to store hydrogen fuel. When it comes to burning
>something in air, it's the densest fuel around based on work per unit mass.
>It really sucks when you look at the work per unit volume, though - even if
>you liquefy the stuff.
Vehicles can often deal with density issues. Passenger vehicles less so.
But worst case... you start manufacturing methane out of H2 and carbon
dioxide... the Sabatier reaction is great that way. Methane has much
higher energy density...
Conrad Hodson <con...@efn.org> writes:
>Paul F. Dietz wrote:
>> Outdoor radiant heating of towns and cities. Ice removal
>> by resistive heating of roads (which have embedded induction
>> coils for powering cars.)
>
>I used to live in a town (Klamath Falls, Oregon) that heats the roads for
>snow and ice removal. They were using locally abundant geothermal
>water/steam.
>
>One thing that wasn't mentioned was thermal efficiency of this new
>technology. In other words, how much heat vs. how much electricity comes
>out of each plant? Makes a difference to several of these questions. The
>original post specified large-scale plants only; if they produce a lot of
>heat as a by-product, it might make a lot more sense to warm the roads,
>etc. with piped cooling water, and save all the electricity for other use.
At 50 MwH/$? ;-)
>> Electrometallurgy becomes the prefered means of refining metal,
>> including iron.
>
>You certainly get cheaper magnesium and aluminum. Also a lot of
>refractories and the like. Iron I'm not so sure--what percentage of the
>(already very low) cost of a tonne of iron is for energy?
A lot for refining it the low-energy, high-equipment-requirements
current way. If you electrorefine it, it's a lot cheaper.
>Also consider that right now, huge masses of bauxite and other raw
>materials are shipped to areas of cheap electrical power--from Jamaica to
>Norway and the Columbia River, for example. With these power sources, it
>might be possible to move the refineries to the ores, and greatly reduce
>material handling costs, which is the _other_ biggie in aluminum
>production.
Plus, with enough power, the method used shifts significantly.
If it's cheaper to ionize and magnetically separate stuff
than to do electrochemical refining... why put a factory
in a hard to maintain place when you can just use dirt and bedrock
as your input stream?
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Simon Morden
> I tried this once before, but I don't think much came of it except
> some junk mail on Enron stock, someone quoting John Galt, and someone
> telling me that it already happened and the power companies had him
> killed.
>
> So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
> smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
> appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
> for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
>
> My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> five orders of magnitude.
>
> What happens ?
>
As you guys keep on saying to me, it depends :)
Firstly, if anyone can slap down their million and have a power plant, then the
price of electricity will essentially fall to zero - it may even become
uneconomical to produce electricity, and governments have to do it as part of the
infrastructure. If on the other hand, the tech is patented, then electricity will
be priced slightly below other generated forms of electricity and turn a massive
profit.
Secondly, are there any undesirable by-products (like CO2) which will make for
carbon taxes and such?
Simon Morden
--
________________________________________________________
Visit the Book of Morden at http://www.bookofmorden.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
*Thy Kingdom Come - a brief history of Armageddon* coming May 2002 from Lone Wolf
*Heart* coming September 2002 from Razorblade Press
Paul F. Dietz
> Plus, with enough power, the method used shifts significantly.
> If it's cheaper to ionize and magnetically separate stuff
> than to do electrochemical refining... why put a factory
> in a hard to maintain place when you can just use dirt and bedrock
> as your input stream?
I don't think magnetic separation would be economical
even with free energy -- the throughput is too low. It
would be easier to make acid (for example, by arc discharge
in air to make NOx, followed by reaction with water to make
nitric acid), dissolve the rock in the acid, then extract
the dissolved metals electrolytically.
Olivine is the obvious source for iron, btw. It dissolves
readily in warm acid.
Paul
Nyrath the nearly wise
> So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> lower cost.
ObSFRef: SKYLARK THREE by E.E."Doc" Smith,
"The Space Beyond" by John Campbell
In the Campbell story, the hero says that the power company
could have a mob of shyster lawyers for a board of directors
and a group of embezzlers for accountants, and it still
would make money. The government would have to cut
taxes.
Dr John Stockton
news:rec.arts.sf.science, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> wrote at
Tue, 12 Mar 2002 20:26:59 :-
>I tried this once before, but I don't think much came of it except
>some junk mail on Enron stock, someone quoting John Galt, and someone
>telling me that it already happened and the power companies had him
>killed.
>
>So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
>technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
>lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
>smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
>appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
>for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
>
>My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
>per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
>five orders of magnitude.
>
>What happens ?
Not a lot, assuming that the power plant is fixed rather than portable;
AIUI, the cost of distribution of electricity is a non-negligible
fraction of the present end-user cost, so the end-user cost will fall
only by a relatively small factor.
You do not say whether it is the smallest feasible peak capacity or the
smallest feasible generation rate that is 10 GW; a plant that could run
at only 0 or 10 GW would present interesting problems.
In major cities, I doubt whether $1M would be sufficient to pay for the
works, including land, needed to take 10 GW away from your magic box and
into the general distribution system.
If in the right physical size and mass range, such a generator could do
wonders for shipping without being of any use to airlines.
If end-user energy did fall in price by 4-5 orders world-wide, with
convenient delivery, and if consumers maintained their spending and
increased their consumption by that factor, it would be disastrous.
World-wide insolation is about 20 MW per capita, neglecting reflection.
UK (not US) consumption is at present something like 1 kW per capita; an
increase of 4-5 orders on UK levels, world-wide, would boil, if not fry,
us.
See <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/astro.htm#Air>
--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. j...@merlyn.demon.co.uk / JR.St...@physics.org ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Correct <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line precisely "-- " (SoRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SoRFC1036)
pete hardie
> Replies to replies:
>
> pete hardie <har...@bellsouth.net> writes:
> >More hybrid cars, and all-electrics for short commutes
>
> At those prices, you could electrify all the roads and not
> charge people at all to use it...
I was assuming that the time/labor costs for this would make it a
long-term
option as opposed to a short-term one. I know *I* hate roadwork on my
route.
Charles R Martin
> Charles R Martin wrote:
> >
> > I tried this once before, but I don't think much came of it except
> > some junk mail on Enron stock, someone quoting John Galt, and someone
> > telling me that it already happened and the power companies had him
> > killed.
> >
> > So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> > technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> > lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
> > smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
> > appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
> > for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
> >
> > My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> > per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> > five orders of magnitude.
> >
> > What happens ?
>
> More hybrid cars, and all-electrics for short commutes
Yeah. I think I might argue that hybrids are more likely, since this
wouldn't improve battery technology.
>
> The pendulum swings back to favor electric heat and cooking
I've thought about that, but I've wondered if it's true. It turns out
that about half the per-kW-h delivered price of electricity is the
cost of the distribution grid. It seems like given near zero cost for
the original power, hydrogen and fuel cells might win. (Especially
since home fuel cells are relatively near break even at current
rates.)
Charles R Martin
> Charles R Martin wrote:
>
> > My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> > per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> > five orders of magnitude.
> >
> > What happens ?
>
> It becomes economical to do large scale agriculture with
> artificial illumination (assuming the light bulbs can be
> made cheaply enough.)
Okay, good. Wouldn't much matter on Earth, I think -- except for
fresh tomatoes in Moscow in the winter, that sort of thing -- but sure
applies to space habitation.
>
> Outdoor radiant heating of towns and cities. Ice removal
> by resistive heating of roads (which have embedded induction
> coils for powering cars.)
Oooh, I like that last.
> More generally, thermal pollution becomes the significant problem
> that limits the technology; most of its cost will be due to
> rationing of the global heat sink.
I didn't say anything about it, but my assumption is based on a fusion
scheme, ergo no greenhouse gasses released. It seems like it would
take a _lot_ of power before it makes a significant addition to
existing insolation. You got any idea for figures?
> This will drive expansion into space, where additional heat
> can be radiated away.
>
> Seawater can be desalinated on a massive scale. Pumping
> the fresh water into continental interiors becomes economical.
... but desalination/distillation of on site water might be more
economical.
>
> Electrometallurgy becomes the prefered means of refining metal,
> including iron.
Not to mention some other interesting schemes, like massive
mass-spectrometers.
>
> It may become economical to manufacture ozone in the stratosphere
> at a rate sufficient to counter its destruction from chlorine.
--
Charles R Martin
> On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Paul F. Dietz wrote:
> > Outdoor radiant heating of towns and cities. Ice removal
> > by resistive heating of roads (which have embedded induction
> > coils for powering cars.)
>
> I used to live in a town (Klamath Falls, Oregon) that heats the roads for
> snow and ice removal. They were using locally abundant geothermal
> water/steam.
>
> One thing that wasn't mentioned was thermal efficiency of this new
> technology. In other words, how much heat vs. how much electricity comes
> out of each plant? Makes a difference to several of these questions. The
> original post specified large-scale plants only; if they produce a lot of
> heat as a by-product, it might make a lot more sense to warm the roads,
> etc. with piped cooling water, and save all the electricity for other use.
Ooooh, nice question. My underlying notion is _some_ tabletop fusion
scheme -- Bussard's stuff, the sonoluminescent stuff turns out,
something like that. Each one has different characteristics.
>
> More generally, thermal pollution
> > becomes the significant problem that limits the technology;
> > most of its cost will be due to rationing of the global heat sink.
> > This will drive expansion into space, where additional heat
> > can be radiated away.
> >
> Thermal efficiency is a key issue, again. Also, in many ways, it's
> cheaper and easier to get rid of heat on Earth than in space, especially
> since the heat exchangers don't have to be lifted. If this technology
> outcompetes gas/oil/coal fired thermal plants, our atmosphere should
> retain its rather high ability to convect heat to the stratosphere and
> radiate it into space from the cloud tops. "Heat pollution" only tends to
> be an issue when large amounts of water are being heated in place or
> consumed in evaporative cooling towers, anyway. If you just build big
> liquid-to-air radiators, they'd work as well as anything you could use in
> the vacuum of space (better, probably, given convective cooling), you
> wouldn't have to lift them, and the main environmental effect would be a
> mondo thermal enjoyed by hawks and sailplanes. Even a large number of
> these shouldn't affect climate much at all.
>
>
> > Electrometallurgy becomes the prefered means of refining metal,
> > including iron.
>
> You certainly get cheaper magnesium and aluminum. Also a lot of
> refractories and the like. Iron I'm not so sure--what percentage of the
> (already very low) cost of a tonne of iron is for energy?
Actually, I think you're missing a bet here: one of the reasons
there's been the tariff fuss about the older standard-process iron &
still manufacturing is that it's _already_ cheaper to re-refine scrap
into new metal products using electricity. (This is partly a
side-effect of emission standards, but that wouldn't go away, so it's
not a parameter in this question.) They do get some input of fresh pig
from overseas, but apparently (from the news coverage) not much.
>
> >
> Also consider that right now, huge masses of bauxite and other raw
> materials are shipped to areas of cheap electrical power--from Jamaica to
> Norway and the Columbia River, for example. With these power sources, it
> might be possible to move the refineries to the ores, and greatly reduce
> material handling costs, which is the _other_ biggie in aluminum
> production.
Absolutely.
>
> > It may become economical to manufacture ozone in the stratosphere
> > at a rate sufficient to counter its destruction from chlorine.
> >
> Gonna have to build an awful lot of these generators to equal the ozone
> output of one good squall line...check the energy figures sometime.
How much ozone from a t-storm actually makes it to the upper
atmosphere? I was under the impression it more or less all broke
down, and it was solar UV that caused the ozone layer in the
atmosphere.
Charles R Martin
Would it make any sense to synthesize CH4 for piping it, if the power
is cheap? How much efficiency does a methane-air fuel cell lose over
hydrogen-air?
Charles R Martin
> I am multi-replying to several posts in the thread at once to save
> excess posts. Until such power sources are available, each electron
> we save is precious!
>
> Charles Martin wrote:
> >So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> >technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> >lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
> >smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
> >appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
> >for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
> >
> >My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> >per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> >five orders of magnitude.
>
> At 10% IRR, that's a $100k return annually plus $80k worth of interest
> on the plant itself and probably $20k worth of principal payment,
> for a payback of $200k or soon the initial investment. The key
> here will be how many people it takes to operate it and maintain
> it annually... a loaded tech or operator salary is probably $100k/yr,
> so two each shift with 5 shifts (coverage rotating for weekends
> and holidays and such is reasonable) is another $1m/yr. Figure $1.2M
> grand total.
>
> 10 GW is roughly 88 TwH/yr. That's 73 MwH/$, assuming $1.2M/yr to
> operate the plant and give a good return.
That's within 10 percent of what I got, so I'm proud of myself. And
73 mWh/$ is 1.4 cents per mWh.
>
> >What happens ?
>
> Magic. People's power bills are now (rough order of $100/mo).
> (It's really a few times that, but we're order of magnituding).
> Let us assume that 10% of that is billing overhead and 35% is
> the distribution network, that gives us $45/mo or so worth of
> fixed costs in the grid.
That fits, I've seen about 50 percent for both billing and
transmission.
> >
> If we reduce overall power costs by a factor of two, that's
> 350 MwH/month per family, $5 worth of electrical production.
>
> That's about 416 Kw average power usage. I can certainly think
> of things to do with that sort of power.
>
> Industrially, where overhead and distribution are lower
> on the average, you'll pay a small multiplier of the
> total cost, or say 50 MwH/$. Or, 180,000 MJ/$.
What's more, as Ray (I think) pointed out, power-intensive industies
could cluter around such a plant, reducing costs even more.
>
> That lets you redo the entire industrial economy to use
> significantly more power for processes. For example,
> it takes no more than 100 MJ to ionize and electrically separate
> a kilogram of rock. If we use basalt, the rock is 1% titanium
> and 8.5% iron, roughly. We can produce 85 kg of Iron and
> 10 kg of Titanium from a ton of basalt for ROM five cents.
Cool, I'd thought about that but hadn't done the numbers.
>
> The industrial and societal impact of being able to afford
> a cubic meter of iron for a typical US minimum wage hour's work
> would be significant...
Yes. On the other hand, it might turn out that steel wasn't
particularly economical vs, say Ti. --- Also, ultrapure crystalline
iron is supposed to have the properties of good stainless still (per
John S Lewis's _Mining the Sky_, which I'm re-reading this week.)
Industrial scale eelctric separation seems to make that, and a bunch
of funny alloys formed by electrical deposition, feasible.
>
> Thinking about space access for one application,
> electrical power on the ground is painful to turn into
> space launch capability. You might end up doing large
> railguns to fire mass into space, something like that.
Yeah. Currently, my underlying idea is Farnsworth fusors in some
magical incarnation, so I imagine electric rockets. But I can easily
imagine first-stage catapults.
(In fact, for purposes of fiction, I'm kind of planning a Pikes Peak
catapult, as a little homage to Heinlein. Other side of the mountain,
though, catapult head near Westcliff.)
>
> Replies to replies:
>
> pete hardie <har...@bellsouth.net> writes:
> >More hybrid cars, and all-electrics for short commutes
>
> At those prices, you could electrify all the roads and not
> charge people at all to use it...
>
> >The pendulum swings back to favor electric heat and cooking
>
> And how...
>
>
> "Paul F. Dietz" <di...@interaccess.com> writes:
> >It becomes economical to do large scale agriculture with
> >artificial illumination (assuming the light bulbs can be
> >made cheaply enough.)
>
> Arc lighting? ;-)
That may solve his ozone question, too.
>
> >Outdoor radiant heating of towns and cities. Ice removal
> >by resistive heating of roads (which have embedded induction
> >coils for powering cars.) More generally, thermal pollution
> >becomes the significant problem that limits the technology;
> >most of its cost will be due to rationing of the global heat sink.
> >This will drive expansion into space, where additional heat
> >can be radiated away.
>
> If we worst case this... say 10 billion people on Earth, each
> using 500 Kw of power, that's 5E15W, equal to the normal solar
> flux on a square about 1,924 km on a side at this distance
> from the Sun. Earth's cross section is 126 million km^2,
> this is about 3.7 million, so it's about 3% of the solar flux.
Good, that fits my intuition earlier.
>
> I can easily see limiting that by a factor of 2-5 for general
> usage, though I suspect that gross industry would move into
> space for some purposes.
>
> >Seawater can be desalinated on a massive scale. Pumping
> >the fresh water into continental interiors becomes economical.
>
> If we ignore the environmental consequences, Australia could support
> as many people as the US does today, etc.
I like it.
In fact, as I think about it, seagoing artificial cities/ arcologies
become feasiable, too.
>
> >Electrometallurgy becomes the prefered means of refining metal,
> >including iron.
> >
> >It may become economical to manufacture ozone in the stratosphere
> >at a rate sufficient to counter its destruction from chlorine.
>
> "Ray" <rDrovouil...@comcast.nospam.net> writes:
>
> Conrad Hodson <con...@efn.org> writes:
> >Paul F. Dietz wrote:
> >> Outdoor radiant heating of towns and cities. Ice removal
> >> by resistive heating of roads (which have embedded induction
> >> coils for powering cars.)
> >
> >I used to live in a town (Klamath Falls, Oregon) that heats the roads for
> >snow and ice removal. They were using locally abundant geothermal
> >water/steam.
> >
> >One thing that wasn't mentioned was thermal efficiency of this new
> >technology. In other words, how much heat vs. how much electricity comes
> >out of each plant? Makes a difference to several of these questions. The
> >original post specified large-scale plants only; if they produce a lot of
> >heat as a by-product, it might make a lot more sense to warm the roads,
> >etc. with piped cooling water, and save all the electricity for other use.
>
> At 50 MwH/$? ;-)
MIght make more sense to use the hot water for something else, but it
*is* a waste product.
>
> >> Electrometallurgy becomes the prefered means of refining metal,
> >> including iron.
> >
> >You certainly get cheaper magnesium and aluminum. Also a lot of
> >refractories and the like. Iron I'm not so sure--what percentage of the
> >(already very low) cost of a tonne of iron is for energy?
>
> A lot for refining it the low-energy, high-equipment-requirements
> current way. If you electrorefine it, it's a lot cheaper.
>
> >Also consider that right now, huge masses of bauxite and other raw
> >materials are shipped to areas of cheap electrical power--from Jamaica to
> >Norway and the Columbia River, for example. With these power sources, it
> >might be possible to move the refineries to the ores, and greatly reduce
> >material handling costs, which is the _other_ biggie in aluminum
> >production.
>
> Plus, with enough power, the method used shifts significantly.
> If it's cheaper to ionize and magnetically separate stuff
> than to do electrochemical refining... why put a factory
> in a hard to maintain place when you can just use dirt and bedrock
> as your input stream?
Oh, nice point.
But that also means that upstate Washington and Jamaica are hit hard
(initially) as their main hard-money industry loses its economic
advantage.
Charles R Martin
> Charles R Martin wrote:
>
> > I tried this once before, but I don't think much came of it except
> > some junk mail on Enron stock, someone quoting John Galt, and someone
> > telling me that it already happened and the power companies had him
> > killed.
> >
> > So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> > technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> > lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
> > smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
> > appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
> > for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
> >
> > My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> > per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> > five orders of magnitude.
> >
> > What happens ?
> >
>
> As you guys keep on saying to me, it depends :)
Yeah -- I was hoping for more things on which it depends than I could
think of myself.
>
> Firstly, if anyone can slap down their million and have a power plant, then the
> price of electricity will essentially fall to zero - it may even become
> uneconomical to produce electricity, and governments have to do it as part of the
> infrastructure.
I'm not sure. If the minimum feasible size is 10 gW, well, 10 gW is a
*lot* of juice, and you have to do something with the rest.
> If on the other hand, the tech is patented, then electricity will be
> priced slightly below other generated forms of electricity and turn
> a massive profit.
That wouldn't last for long, though.
>
> Secondly, are there any undesirable by-products (like CO2) which will make for
> carbon taxes and such?
Sorry, I really should have made that clearer -- it's cheap fusion
I've got in mind.
Charles R Martin
> JRS: In article <m3vgc14...@localhost.localdomain>, seen in
> news:rec.arts.sf.science, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> wrote at
> Tue, 12 Mar 2002 20:26:59 :-
> >I tried this once before, but I don't think much came of it except
> >some junk mail on Enron stock, someone quoting John Galt, and someone
> >telling me that it already happened and the power companies had him
> >killed.
> >
> >So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> >technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> >lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
> >smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
> >appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
> >for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
> >
> >My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> >per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> >five orders of magnitude.
> >
> >What happens ?
>
> Not a lot, assuming that the power plant is fixed rather than portable;
> AIUI, the cost of distribution of electricity is a non-negligible
> fraction of the present end-user cost, so the end-user cost will fall
> only by a relatively small factor.
See George's note -- it's a factor of two at minimum, and
considerably better for big industrial processes.
>
> You do not say whether it is the smallest feasible peak capacity or the
> smallest feasible generation rate that is 10 GW; a plant that could run
> at only 0 or 10 GW would present interesting problems.
That was my intention: it's either on, producing 10gW or more, or it's
off.
> In major cities, I doubt whether $1M would be sufficient to pay for the
> works, including land, needed to take 10 GW away from your magic box and
> into the general distribution system.
Well, so what? We've got a couple of _big_ coal fired plants out here
that pump current into the grid for just that reason.
>
> If in the right physical size and mass range, such a generator could do
> wonders for shipping without being of any use to airlines.
>
> If end-user energy did fall in price by 4-5 orders world-wide, with
> convenient delivery, and if consumers maintained their spending and
> increased their consumption by that factor, it would be disastrous.
> World-wide insolation is about 20 MW per capita, neglecting reflection.
> UK (not US) consumption is at present something like 1 kW per capita; an
> increase of 4-5 orders on UK levels, world-wide, would boil, if not fry,
> us.
>
> See <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/astro.htm#Air>
>
Is it reasonable to assume that would happen, though? 1 kW per capita
per year is close to 9 mWh/yr ... this would be 9 to 90 gWh/yr.
Leszek Karlik
disseminated foul capitalist propaganda:
[...]
> So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> lower cost.
[...]
> My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> five orders of magnitude.
>
> What happens ?
Saudi Arabia is no longer your friend. OPEC and Russia are hit
economically because the market for petrol drops drastically.
Who owns the patent on the Cheap Power Device, anyway? He gets rich.
Government pumps tons of federal money into subsidies for the petrol
companies who find themselves losing rapidly to cheap electric power.
Economical upheaval in US, as lots of people lose their jobs to the
CPD - mining, petrol and gas industry, and so on. Hell, economical
upheaval pretty much everywhere.
> Charles R (Charlie) Martin Broomfield, CO 40N 105W
Leslie
--
Leszek 'Leslie' Karlik; ailurophile by trade; SNAFU TANJ TANSTAAFL; /^\ lk
Do you want to join the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria? / (*) \
Put $ 3,125.00 in a cigar box and bury it in your backyard. / \
One of our *Underground* Agents will contact you shortly. /_____________\
Charles R Martin
> On 12 Mar 2002 20:26:59 -0700, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com>
> disseminated foul capitalist propaganda:
>
> [...]
> > So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> > technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> > lower cost.
> [...]
> > My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> > per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> > five orders of magnitude.
> >
> > What happens ?
>
> Saudi Arabia is no longer your friend. OPEC and Russia are hit
> economically because the market for petrol drops drastically.
OPEC I believe, but I think it might actually be economically good for
Russia overall: a lot of their infrastructure is suddenly much cheaper
to run, and areas in Siberia and the steppes suddenly could be okay
places to live.
>
> Who owns the patent on the Cheap Power Device, anyway? He gets rich.
Damn straight.
>
> Government pumps tons of federal money into subsidies for the petrol
> companies who find themselves losing rapidly to cheap electric power.
I think the petroleum companies actually are okay for a while -- it
takes a good while to get from a gasoline to H2 economy.
>
> Economical upheaval in US, as lots of people lose their jobs to the
> CPD - mining, petrol and gas industry, and so on. Hell, economical
> upheaval pretty much everywhere.
This is the part that I have trouble figuring: I see the potential for
economic upheaval, but when I try to see *where* and *how* I get
confused.
--
I once complained to my father that I didn't seem to be able to do things the
same way other people did. Dad's advice? 'Margo, don't be a sheep. People hate
sheep. They eat sheep.' -- Margo Kaufmann
_______________________________________________________________________________
Ray
"Charles R Martin" <crma...@indra.com> wrote in message
news:m3n0xc1...@localhost.localdomain...
The trouble with hydrocarbons is that they produce CO2. A hydrogen fuel
cell uses NaOH or KOH as an electrolyte. A CO2-generating fuel cell needs
to use an acid electrolyte because CO2 will slowly neutralize an alkali
electrolyte.
I think that there are CO2-generating fuel cells out there, but I don't know
much about them.
As a matter of fact, I think that they are just about to become commercially
available (they use methanol).
Ray
Geoff McCaughan
>
> "Charles R Martin" <crma...@indra.com> wrote in message
> >
> > is cheap? How much efficiency does a methane-air fuel cell lose over
> > hydrogen-air?
>
> The trouble with hydrocarbons is that they produce CO2.
It depends where you get your C from though, if you extract it from
the atmosphere in the 1st place, the process is CO2 neutral.
Charles R Martin
> > Would it make any sense to synthesize CH4 for piping it, if the power
> > is cheap? How much efficiency does a methane-air fuel cell lose over
> > hydrogen-air?
>
> The trouble with hydrocarbons is that they produce CO2. A hydrogen fuel
> cell uses NaOH or KOH as an electrolyte. A CO2-generating fuel cell needs
> to use an acid electrolyte because CO2 will slowly neutralize an alkali
> electrolyte.
>
> I think that there are CO2-generating fuel cells out there, but I don't know
> much about them.
>
> As a matter of fact, I think that they are just about to become commercially
> available (they use methanol).
>
Sure, but if you're doing
CO2 + 2H2 => CH4 + O2,
and
CH4 + 3O2 => H2O + CO2 (jeez, I think that balances ... )
then the net CO2 is zero. (Add in the 2H2O <bzap> 2H2 + O2 step and
it's all so beautiful....)
Ray
> Leszek Karlik <les...@zwieracz.krap.pl> writes:
>
> > On 12 Mar 2002 20:26:59 -0700, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com>
> > disseminated foul capitalist propaganda:
> >
> > [...]
> > > So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
> > > technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
> > > lower cost.
> > [...]
> > > My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
> > > per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
> > > five orders of magnitude.
> > >
> > > What happens ?
> >
> > Saudi Arabia is no longer your friend. OPEC and Russia are hit
> > economically because the market for petrol drops drastically.
>
> OPEC I believe, but I think it might actually be economically good for
> Russia overall: a lot of their infrastructure is suddenly much cheaper
> to run, and areas in Siberia and the steppes suddenly could be okay
> places to live.
I think that lots of people will dance on OPEC's grave.
>
> >
> > Who owns the patent on the Cheap Power Device, anyway? He gets rich.
>
> Damn straight.
>
> >
> > Government pumps tons of federal money into subsidies for the petrol
> > companies who find themselves losing rapidly to cheap electric power.
>
> I think the petroleum companies actually are okay for a while -- it
> takes a good while to get from a gasoline to H2 economy.
In the mean time, they can cut back on production for the time when we will
need oil only to make vasoline, lubricate machinery, make plastics, make
fertilizer, etc.
Of course, some processes will go electric. Nitrogen fixing, for instance,
may well be done with an arc.
>
> >
> > Economical upheaval in US, as lots of people lose their jobs to the
> > CPD - mining, petrol and gas industry, and so on. Hell, economical
> > upheaval pretty much everywhere.
>
> This is the part that I have trouble figuring: I see the potential for
> economic upheaval, but when I try to see *where* and *how* I get
> confused.
There will be some upheaval, but I doubt if it will be any worse than the
dawn of the industrial revolution or the information age.
There will be lots of opportunities. Engineers will be needed to figure out
new ways of taking advantage of the cheap power.
Ray
Ray
""Geoff McCaughan"" <geo...@spam.hormel.com> wrote in message
news:rkTj8.4058$S84.2...@news.xtra.co.nz...
I'm not talking about greenhouse gases. I'm saying that CO2 will poison an
alkali electrolyte.
Ray
John Savard
wrote, in part:
>Leszek Karlik <les...@zwieracz.krap.pl> writes:
>> Economical upheaval in US, as lots of people lose their jobs to the
>> CPD - mining, petrol and gas industry, and so on. Hell, economical
>> upheaval pretty much everywhere.
>This is the part that I have trouble figuring: I see the potential for
>economic upheaval, but when I try to see *where* and *how* I get
>confused.
Well, it's true that such a device will make _some_ jobs obsolete.
But it's a net *gain* in resources.
The discovery of America didn't create unemployment. It created new
opportunities.
Land is one of the inputs people need to turn their labor into wealth.
Energy is another such input. Having cheap energy available,
therefore, means more people have the opportunity to guide and control
the energy into doing something useful for them.
Charles R Martin
I don't disagree with you on the macro-scale, John. But for purposes
of fiction, it's the transients that I'm concerned about. Time-scale
on those is tens of years, too: cf, the collapse of basic steel
production in the US, or the increasing automation and globalization
of manufacturing. With this, well, we could expect the slow collapse
of the economies of the OPEC states ... which certtainly has its
risks, think about what happened in Russia. But what else?
Charles R Martin
Oh. I don't know about that, although I've seen several things on
methane or methanol fuel cells. What *is* the state of the art on
that?
Paul F. Dietz
> I didn't say anything about it, but my assumption is based on a fusion
> scheme, ergo no greenhouse gasses released. It seems like it would
> take a _lot_ of power before it makes a significant addition to
> existing insolation. You got any idea for figures?
Existing insolation is something like 100,000 TW; current
primary energy consumption is <~ 10 TW (iirc). Drop the
cost by a factor of 1000, increase the usage by a similar
amount, and global thermal pollution may become noticeable.
Paul
Ray
> "Ray" <rDrovouil...@comcast.nospam.net> writes:
>
> > ""Geoff McCaughan"" <geo...@spam.hormel.com> wrote in message
> > news:rkTj8.4058$S84.2...@news.xtra.co.nz...
> > > Ray (rDrovouil...@comcast.nospam.net) wrote:
> > > >
> > > > "Charles R Martin" <crma...@indra.com> wrote in message
> > > > >
> > > > > Would it make any sense to synthesize CH4 for piping it, if the
power
> > > > > is cheap? How much efficiency does a methane-air fuel cell lose
over
> > > > > hydrogen-air?
> > > >
> > > > The trouble with hydrocarbons is that they produce CO2.
> > >
> > > It depends where you get your C from though, if you extract it from
> > > the atmosphere in the 1st place, the process is CO2 neutral.
> >
> > I'm not talking about greenhouse gases. I'm saying that CO2 will poison
an
> > alkali electrolyte.
> >
>
> Oh. I don't know about that, although I've seen several things on
> methane or methanol fuel cells. What *is* the state of the art on
> that?
They're planning on shipping in a few months, I think (I saw an article on
slashdot).
<doing the google thing>
Here's one:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,49717,00.html
I read that they will be selling tamper-proof fuel cartridges that store an
ounce or two of methanol for maybe $20.00. Apparently, they seek to get
rich the same way the ink jet printer makers are doing it - by selling a few
cents worth of liquid for twenty bucks.
Tamper proof? We'll just see about that! <wg>
Ray Drouillard
(who says that "tamper proof" is a challenge)
Paul F. Dietz
> > > I'm not talking about greenhouse gases. I'm saying that CO2 will poison
> an
> > > alkali electrolyte.
> > >
> >
> > Oh. I don't know about that, although I've seen several things on
> > methane or methanol fuel cells. What *is* the state of the art on
> > that?
>
> They're planning on shipping in a few months, I think (I saw an article on
> slashdot).
Methanol fuel cells have (solid) acid electrolytes.
In this hypothetical energy-rich future, what's wrong with making
hydrocarbons by Fisher-Tropsch from hydrogen and CO2, and burning
in IC engines?
Paul
Ray
"Paul F. Dietz" <di...@interaccess.com> wrote in message
news:3C9016D5...@interaccess.com...
If the thing came out next year, it would be a great solution. If CO2 that
is already in the environment is used, people can stop griping about global
warming.
Of course, it won't help the smog situation much - until we start migrating
to propane and methane (both fuels burn cleaner).
We seem to be heading towards fuel cells and hybrid vehicles, anyhow. If
fuel becomes cheap, that might slow down the process by removing some of the
incentive.
Hydrogen would make a great IC engine fuel. The flame front is so fast that
spark is set at TDC. I believe that the octane rating is even higher than
methane.
A tank full of liquid hydrogen is kind of scary, though. OTOH, if it leaks,
it'll quickly go away and not be a fire hazard. You just don't want to be
around when that much refrigerated liquid is evaporating.
Ray Drouillard
Erik Max Francis
> Existing insolation is something like 100,000 TW; current
> primary energy consumption is <~ 10 TW (iirc). Drop the
> cost by a factor of 1000, increase the usage by a similar
> amount, and global thermal pollution may become noticeable.
Average power consumption worldwide in 1993 was 11.6 TW, by the way.
Total insolation over the entire surface is 170 PW.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Laws are silent in time of war.
\__/ Cicero
Esperanto reference / http://www.alcyone.com/max/lang/esperanto/
An Esperanto reference for English speakers.
Hop David
>
I'll try adding a parallel thread:
What would be the effects of a cheap, high temperature super conductor?
For one thing, solar energy would be more attractive -- energy could be sent from
sunny to dark areas on the globe.
Karl M. Syring
<snip>
> We seem to be heading towards fuel cells and hybrid vehicles, anyhow. If
> fuel becomes cheap, that might slow down the process by removing some of
the
> incentive.
>
> Hydrogen would make a great IC engine fuel. The flame front is so fast
that
> spark is set at TDC. I believe that the octane rating is even higher than
> methane.
>
> A tank full of liquid hydrogen is kind of scary, though. OTOH, if it
leaks,
> it'll quickly go away and not be a fire hazard. You just don't want to be
> around when that much refrigerated liquid is evaporating.
Aren't you way off the current state of the art? I think, there are safe
storage methods, at least as safe a gasoline tank.
Karl M. Syring
Paul F. Dietz
> Total insolation over the entire surface is 170 PW.
For the purpose of this discussion you should exclude
the fraction that is reflected back into space without
being thermalized.
Paul
Paul F. Dietz
> What would be the effects of a cheap, high temperature super conductor?
Wrap coils around lines of latitude and increase/decrease the Earth's
magnetic field (the stored magnetic energy of the Earth's external
magnetic field is about 200 megatons, IIRC, so the energy required
is not utterly prohibitive.) Nulling the field would let us
clear out the Van Allen belts.
Paul
Conrad Hodson
On 13 Mar 2002, Charles R Martin wrote:
> >
> > > It may become economical to manufacture ozone in the stratosphere
> > > at a rate sufficient to counter its destruction from chlorine.
> > >
> > Gonna have to build an awful lot of these generators to equal the ozone
> > output of one good squall line...check the energy figures sometime.
>
> How much ozone from a t-storm actually makes it to the upper
> atmosphere? I was under the impression it more or less all broke
> down, and it was solar UV that caused the ozone layer in the
> atmosphere.
Sure, but thunderstorms at least go up to the tropopause. The Earth's
surface doesn't. If thunderstorm updrafts don't deliver ozone to the
stratosphere effectively, just how are people supposed to do so? Van de
Graaf generators ten miles tall? Implausibly large balloons trailing
implausibly light power cords?
Simply reducing our misuse of a few chemicals sounds easier to
me--especially since we _know_ we can have refrigerators and plastics and
all that without them. I'm not sure there's any equivalent certainty of
our ability to deliver ozone to the stratosphere--and those chlorine
compounds are _catalysts_ for the destruction of ozone. Trying to
overwhelm them with more ozone would be like one of those Russian generals
who used to clear minefields by sending skirmish lines across
them--incredibly wasteful, and alternatives were known.
Conrad Hodson
Conrad Hodson
On 13 Mar 2002, Charles R Martin wrote:
> > >technology. In other words, how much heat vs. how much electricity comes
> > >out of each plant? Makes a difference to several of these questions. The
> > >original post specified large-scale plants only; if they produce a lot of
> > >heat as a by-product, it might make a lot more sense to warm the roads,
> > >etc. with piped cooling water, and save all the electricity for other use.
> >
> > At 50 MwH/$? ;-)
>
> MIght make more sense to use the hot water for something else, but it
> *is* a waste product.
If you get electric costs down low enough, the hot water might be _more_
valuable. Disposing of that heat might become your largest cost; why not
get some good out of it? If you live in a cold climate, and the power
plant needs a radiator for its heat, why not have a district heating
system? Also, water is in short supply in many areas, and even if you
have cheap power for pumping water, the pumping cost is only the
beginning--what about all the pipelines and canals to build? Those won't
come cheap.
My guess would be that the price of desalinated water might become
reasonable--right on or next to a desert coastline. Further inland, pumps
and pipelines start costing sums that makes the difference between today's
cheap power and this scenario's cheaper power unimportant. Remember,
you're going to need a power plant or big powerline for each pumping
station, too.
>
> > >
>
> But that also means that upstate Washington and Jamaica are hit hard
> (initially) as their main hard-money industry loses its economic
> advantage.
>
Except don't forget (as people so often do) the capital costs. Existing
aluminum plants on the Columbia, frex, probably remain useful for quite a
while, just because of the cost of building new ones. What I'd expect are
new construction moving close to the bauxite sources.
Also, why would Jamaica be hit hard? That's where the highest grade ore
is--they'd be getting a new plant, instead of just extractive
work. Eventually, certainly the first time an old plant somewhere needed
replacement, if not sooner.
And while cheap power would allow the reduction of lower grade ore (plain
rock and dirt, in many places) as a technical demo, if the world has cheap
transport then the most important costs will be the capital costs--and
materials handling. Refining concentrated ores reduces the materials
handling problems by megatons and megabucks.
Conrad Hodson
Conrad Hodson
> >
> > economically because the market for petrol drops drastically.
>
> takes a good while to get from a gasoline to H2 economy.
Cutting electricity cost may not be enough to make H2 a practical vehicle
fuel. Unless people develop some real improvements in hydrogen storage,
hydrogen generation, and fuel cell technology, just cutting electrical
power cost isn't going to make much difference. And while you're
handwaving all those, why not just handwave a better storage battery? Or
a higher molecular weight for hydrogen?
>
> >
> > Economical upheaval in US, as lots of people lose their jobs to the
> > CPD - mining, petrol and gas industry, and so on. Hell, economical
> > upheaval pretty much everywhere.
>
> This is the part that I have trouble figuring: I see the potential for
> economic upheaval, but when I try to see *where* and *how* I get
> confused.
> >
I suspect that the impact would range from large to nonexistent, from
sector to sector of the economy. Large-scale users of power would see the
most benefit, because they simply start generating their own, and don't
need a big grid to distribute it. Power companies use it, but as several
people have pointed out, the actual generation of power is only a portion
of their costs. Ordinary people probably wouldn't see that much
difference in their bills, unless they have a power co-op like we do here.
If you want to see _real_ differences, make a cheap and safe unit that
generates a hundred kW and is the size of a suitcase, and can be built for
less than a thousand bucks. That's where you get upheavals, legal
shenanigans, inventors assassinated, major bankruptcies--and a vast amount
of good for ordinary people and businesses if it doesn't get quashed.
I wouldn't expect to see much impact on petroleum industries in any case,
because most petroleum isn't used for electrical generation anyway. Until
some kind of major advance in electrically-made synfuels engineering, or
storage batteries or equivalent, _free_ power wouldn't compete with
gasoline and diesel fuel. Unless the generator is small enough to ride
aboard each vehicle, of course!
Conrad Hodson
Charles R Martin
Sure, but as I said yesterday, how plausible is it to think about
increasing per capita consumption into the megawatt range? (what was
it, something like 9 000 kWh/yr now? so go up to 9 to 90 MWh/yr per
person per year... what would we _do_ with all the current?)
Charles R Martin
> On 13 Mar 2002, Charles R Martin wrote:
> > >
> > > Saudi Arabia is no longer your friend. OPEC and Russia are hit
> > > economically because the market for petrol drops drastically.
> >
> > I think the petroleum companies actually are okay for a while -- it
> > takes a good while to get from a gasoline to H2 economy.
>
> Cutting electricity cost may not be enough to make H2 a practical vehicle
> fuel. Unless people develop some real improvements in hydrogen storage,
> hydrogen generation, and fuel cell technology, just cutting electrical
> power cost isn't going to make much difference. And while you're
> handwaving all those, why not just handwave a better storage battery? Or
> a higher molecular weight for hydrogen?
Maybe H2 wouldn't be practical, but methane is pretty practical even
today -- we have plenty of "natural gas powered" vehicles on the
streets right now. It's just that these (and propane powered) aren't
particularly economically advantageous, especially if you consider the
costs of building up infrastructure (one doesn't, for example, take a
long road trip in a NG vehicle without _lots_ of preparation.) But if
the CH4 can be synthesized from air and water at a sufficiently low
cost, that might change.
>
> >
> > >
> > > Economical upheaval in US, as lots of people lose their jobs to the
> > > CPD - mining, petrol and gas industry, and so on. Hell, economical
> > > upheaval pretty much everywhere.
> >
> > This is the part that I have trouble figuring: I see the potential for
> > economic upheaval, but when I try to see *where* and *how* I get
> > confused.
> > >
[...]
> If you want to see _real_ differences, make a cheap and safe unit that
> generates a hundred kW and is the size of a suitcase, and can be built for
> less than a thousand bucks. That's where you get upheavals, legal
> shenanigans, inventors assassinated, major bankruptcies--and a vast amount
> of good for ordinary people and businesses if it doesn't get quashed.
Actually that's exactly _why_ I'm making it so big -- I want to make
space lift cheap, but doing so with fusion power has economic
consequences on the ground that I need to consider. But I'm not
currently interested fictionally in the story of John Galt's power
station and the effect it has.
Charles R Martin
Right, just got there myself a couople of minutes ago. It'd even
reduce the greenhouse impact to zero, since you'd draw CO2 out of the
air as fast as you release it.
NOx and ozone might still be a problem, but change to a natural gas
fueled _steam_ engine and you're covered.
Charles R Martin
>
> A tank full of liquid hydrogen is kind of scary, though. OTOH, if it leaks,
> it'll quickly go away and not be a fire hazard. You just don't want to be
> around when that much refrigerated liquid is evaporating.
>
Why? Admittedly LH2 is colder, but we cope with propane spills all
the time.
Dr John Stockton
news:rec.arts.sf.science, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> wrote at
Wed, 13 Mar 2002 14:52:36 :-
>Dr John Stockton <sp...@merlyn.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>> JRS: In article <m3vgc14...@localhost.localdomain>, seen in
>> news:rec.arts.sf.science, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> wrote at
>> Tue, 12 Mar 2002 20:26:59 :-
>> >So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
>> >technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
>> >smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
>> >appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
>> >for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
>> >
>> >per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
>> >five orders of magnitude.
>> >
>> >What happens ?
>>
>> AIUI, the cost of distribution of electricity is a non-negligible
>> fraction of the present end-user cost, so the end-user cost will fall
>> only by a relatively small factor.
>
>See George's note -- it's a factor of two at minimum, and
>considerably better for big industrial processes.
But still relatively small by the scale you introduced, which is of 5
orders of magnitude.
>> You do not say whether it is the smallest feasible peak capacity or the
>> smallest feasible generation rate that is 10 GW; a plant that could run
>> at only 0 or 10 GW would present interesting problems.
>
>That was my intention: it's either on, producing 10gW or more, or it's
>off.
>
>> In major cities, I doubt whether $1M would be sufficient to pay for the
>> works, including land, needed to take 10 GW away from your magic box and
>> into the general distribution system.
>
>Well, so what? We've got a couple of _big_ coal fired plants out here
>that pump current into the grid for just that reason.
Do you believe that the works, not part of the power generation side but
used only by the power station, for getting 10 GW of power into the
existing Grid cost appreciably less than $1M? I find it hard to do so,
especially if one has to allow for the on/off nature of the process.
>> If end-user energy did fall in price by 4-5 orders world-wide, with
>> convenient delivery, and if consumers maintained their spending and
>> increased their consumption by that factor, it would be disastrous.
>> World-wide insolation is about 20 MW per capita, neglecting reflection.
>> UK (not US) consumption is at present something like 1 kW per capita; an
>> increase of 4-5 orders on UK levels, world-wide, would boil, if not fry,
>> us.
>>
>> See <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/astro.htm#Air>
>
>Is it reasonable to assume that would happen, though? 1 kW per capita
>per year is close to 9 mWh/yr ... this would be 9 to 90 gWh/yr.
It would certainly be unwise not to think about it. With insolation at
20 MW/c less reflection, additional energy generation of 1% of that <=
200 kW/c would certainly have a substantial effect. That's only 20
times what I believe present US levels to be.
You must of course expect consumption in the rest of the world to rise
to more or less match that of North America, if you want political
stability; otherwise you must expect further holes in America. Of
course, Alberta may need more than the world average domestic heating in
winter; but India will want its air conditioning energised.
Given present policies, though, discovering CO2-less generation would be
considerably helpful.
--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. j...@merlyn.demon.co.uk / JR.St...@physics.org ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Correct <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line precisely "-- " (SoRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SoRFC1036)
Ray
"Karl M. Syring" <syr...@email.com> wrote in message
news:a6ps2r$g9ig6$1...@ID-7529.news.dfncis.de...
I have seen three hydrogen storage methods proposed: compressed gas, liquid,
and metal hydrides.
Metal hydrides would be safe. How much can you actually store, though?
Ray
Karl M. Syring
news:rS6k8.81694$hO6.6...@bin4.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com...
Sigh, must I do the googling myself:
http://www.csa.com/hottopics/hydrogen/overview.html
Turns out, the density is higher than in the liquid state.
my 0.02 €
Karl M. Syring
Erik Max Francis
True. Earth's Bond albedo is 0.306, so that it would make the total
budget closer to 120 PW.
Ash Wyllie
>I tried this once before, but I don't think much came of it except
>some junk mail on Enron stock, someone quoting John Galt, and someone
>telling me that it already happened and the power companies had him
>killed.
>So, serious question: assume for fictional purposes that some new
>technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
>lower cost. For definiteness, assume it's a situation where the
>smallest feasible power plant is 10 gigawatts, 20 year lifetime, no
>appreciable salvage costs or salvage value, and the installed price
>for the power plant is $1 million 2002 US.
>My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
>per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
>five orders of magnitude.
The greens go ballistic.
-ash
for assistance dial MYCROFTXXX
Ray
"Ash Wyllie" <as...@lr.net> wrote in message
news:937.838T9...@lr.net...
I was going to mention something like that.
Those who have a decent amount of scientific acuity, and do a little
research, and are sincere in their "green" beliefs, will rejoice.
Some will be really suspicious of anything with the dreaded word, "nuclear".
Those who use a green stance as part of their political power base will
scramble to look for something more sturdy, and may well spread a bunch of
disinformation.
Ray Drouillard
George William Herbert
>> >technology is introduced that provides electric power at dramatically
>>
>> The greens go ballistic.
>
>I was going to mention something like that.
>
>Those who have a decent amount of scientific acuity, and do a little
>research, and are sincere in their "green" beliefs, will rejoice.
>
>Some will be really suspicious of anything with the dreaded word, "nuclear".
>
>Those who use a green stance as part of their political power base will
>scramble to look for something more sturdy, and may well spread a bunch of
>disinformation.
To be honest, it's not a problem.
This is the sort of world-changing event on the order of the
Industrial Revolution that you can't supress. Unless there are
legitimate safety concerns about the Magic Power Source (tm),
it *will* be widely if not universally adopted, and the standard
of living and productivity in terms of material goods of the
societies that use it will skyrocket. Populations which refuse
to due to mystic anti-technology philosophy will self-marginalize
and fade away very rapidly.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Charles R Martin
Well, two things: (1) I wasn't saying is wasn't relatively small
(cutting the cost by half in this context is indeed relatively small)
and (2) I was pointing out that George had actually done the numbers.
>
>
> >> You do not say whether it is the smallest feasible peak capacity or the
> >> smallest feasible generation rate that is 10 GW; a plant that could run
> >> at only 0 or 10 GW would present interesting problems.
> >
> >That was my intention: it's either on, producing 10gW or more, or it's
> >off.
> >
> >> In major cities, I doubt whether $1M would be sufficient to pay for the
> >> works, including land, needed to take 10 GW away from your magic box and
> >> into the general distribution system.
> >
> >Well, so what? We've got a couple of _big_ coal fired plants out here
> >that pump current into the grid for just that reason.
>
> Do you believe that the works, not part of the power generation side but
> used only by the power station, for getting 10 GW of power into the
> existing Grid cost appreciably less than $1M? I find it hard to do so,
> especially if one has to allow for the on/off nature of the process.
I may have misunderstood your intention. You said "in major
cities...", and I agree with you. On the other hand, I wouldn't site
them in major cities unless there was a really good reason to do so,
for just that reason. As far as the other plant etc, I figured that
was part of that other 50 percent of the cost accounted for by the
transmission system costs.
Wouldn't you expect that fairly rapidly the fluidized-bed coal
reactors of these big power stations would just be replaced in situ,
though?
>
>
> >> If end-user energy did fall in price by 4-5 orders world-wide, with
> >> convenient delivery, and if consumers maintained their spending and
> >> increased their consumption by that factor, it would be disastrous.
> >> World-wide insolation is about 20 MW per capita, neglecting reflection.
> >> UK (not US) consumption is at present something like 1 kW per capita; an
> >> increase of 4-5 orders on UK levels, world-wide, would boil, if not fry,
> >> us.
> >>
> >> See <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/astro.htm#Air>
> >
> >Is it reasonable to assume that would happen, though? 1 kW per capita
> >per year is close to 9 mWh/yr ... this would be 9 to 90 gWh/yr.
>
>
> It would certainly be unwise not to think about it. With insolation at
> 20 MW/c less reflection, additional energy generation of 1% of that <=
> 200 kW/c would certainly have a substantial effect. That's only 20
> times what I believe present US levels to be.
This really seems to conflict with the other numbers I've seen posted
by Max. I haven't had a chance to explore them myself, so can you
guys start a little side argument and sort if out? ;-)
>
> You must of course expect consumption in the rest of the world to rise
> to more or less match that of North America, if you want political
> stability; otherwise you must expect further holes in America. Of
> course, Alberta may need more than the world average domestic heating in
> winter; but India will want its air conditioning energised.
Yes, absolutely.
>
> Given present policies, though, discovering CO2-less generation would be
> considerably helpful.
>
> --
> © John Stockton, Surrey, UK. j...@merlyn.demon.co.uk / JR.St...@physics.org ©
> Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
> Correct <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line precisely "-- " (SoRFC1036)
> Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SoRFC1036)
--
pervect
"Charles R Martin" <crma...@indra.com> wrote in message
news:m3adtc1...@localhost.localdomain...
> That was my intention: it's either on, producing 10gW or more, or it's
> off.
If you can't throttle it back, you've got more issues to consider, as to how
your device interfaces with the power grid. Let's start with assuming we
keep our current power grid.
If you assume that the interface is all electronic, the issue would be a
difficulty in keeping the power line voltage within specifications. All the
power generated would have to go somewhere. Unless you incorporate some
sort of very high wattage "dummy load", the power will have to go to the
grid, and this will occur by the grid voltage rising to whatever value is
needed to dissipate that much power.
If you assume that your device is hooked up to the grid through a
motor-generator (converting DC to AC), the difficulty would show up in a
more classic manner as a difficulty maintaining a 60hz ** frequency on your
power grid. This would be bad for many applications if the deviance were
significant - all synchronus motors would turn at the wrong rate, for
instance if the frequency were wrong.
** Or 50 hz for non-US citizens - basically, whatever the designed frequency
of your grid is.
It might make sense to change to a high voltage DC grid if the power usage
goes up dramatically. (Or possibly a hybrid system). I don't think
megavolts of DC would make a lot of sense for home power wiring, so I think
some sort of hybrid system is much more likely than a pure DC high voltage
system.
Actually I find it hard to imagine a device that puts out a constant amount
of power no matter what the load is. If you break the circuit, the device
would have to generate a voltage that would rise without limit, for
instance. A device that did act this way could be made safe with a reliable
auto-cutoff circuit of some sort- but I find it hard to imagine that an
actual physical device would behave this way in the first place.
Charles R Martin
> "Charles R Martin" <crma...@indra.com> wrote in message
> news:m3adtc1...@localhost.localdomain...
>
> > That was my intention: it's either on, producing 10gW or more, or it's
> > off.
>
> If you can't throttle it back, you've got more issues to consider, as to how
> your device interfaces with the power grid. Let's start with assuming we
> keep our current power grid.
>
> If you assume that the interface is all electronic, the issue would be a
> difficulty in keeping the power line voltage within specifications. All the
> power generated would have to go somewhere. Unless you incorporate some
> sort of very high wattage "dummy load", the power will have to go to the
> grid, and this will occur by the grid voltage rising to whatever value is
> needed to dissipate that much power.
It gets even more amusing than that, if we're talking about Bussard's
notion of a Farnsworth fusor: that power from the reactor might well
be DC, at a megavolt or more. (p-11B would bve something like 1.5 MV,
and thus 6800 amps. Eeeee-hah!)
> If you assume that your device is hooked up to the grid through a
> motor-generator (converting DC to AC), the difficulty would show up in a
> more classic manner as a difficulty maintaining a 60hz ** frequency on your
> power grid. This would be bad for many applications if the deviance were
> significant - all synchronus motors would turn at the wrong rate, for
> instance if the frequency were wrong.
I've actually wondered if you might not be best off with a great
honking DC motor, a big flywheel, and an alternator, but that's your
point.
>
> ** Or 50 hz for non-US citizens - basically, whatever the designed frequency
> of your grid is.
>
> It might make sense to change to a high voltage DC grid if the power usage
> goes up dramatically. (Or possibly a hybrid system). I don't think
> megavolts of DC would make a lot of sense for home power wiring, so I think
> some sort of hybrid system is much more likely than a pure DC high voltage
> system.
>
> Actually I find it hard to imagine a device that puts out a constant amount
> of power no matter what the load is. If you break the circuit, the device
> would have to generate a voltage that would rise without limit, for
> instance. A device that did act this way could be made safe with a reliable
> auto-cutoff circuit of some sort- but I find it hard to imagine that an
> actual physical device would behave this way in the first place.
Of course, no one knows how a 10 GW Farnworth/Bussard generator works
anyway, not even Bussard. (If he did, we'd already be finding _out_
what I'm speculating on.) But the impression I get is that because
you need a certain density to get significant fusion at all, you might
be able to throttle _up_ from 10GW, but not down.
Since the fusion is going to be proportional to the number of
collisions of ions, it seems reasonable that the power to density
function would be significantly non-linear (intuitively, it seems like
it'd be a power-law function.) Does this help the control issue any?
(Actually, it'd be more like a yeast-growth curve, wouldn't it? At
low densities, there's little fusion because there's a low probability
of collision; at high densities, the plasma gets so hot from lots of
fusion that it overcomes the electrostatic confinement, and so the
density drops again.)
Ray
[...]
> Of course, no one knows how a 10 GW Farnworth/Bussard generator works
> anyway, not even Bussard. (If he did, we'd already be finding _out_
> what I'm speculating on.) But the impression I get is that because
> you need a certain density to get significant fusion at all, you might
> be able to throttle _up_ from 10GW, but not down.
>
> Since the fusion is going to be proportional to the number of
> collisions of ions, it seems reasonable that the power to density
> function would be significantly non-linear (intuitively, it seems like
> it'd be a power-law function.) Does this help the control issue any?
>
>
> (Actually, it'd be more like a yeast-growth curve, wouldn't it? At
> low densities, there's little fusion because there's a low probability
> of collision; at high densities, the plasma gets so hot from lots of
> fusion that it overcomes the electrostatic confinement, and so the
> density drops again.)
I was imagining something like a pair deuteron guns (built like electron
guns, but shooting deuterium nuclei) pointing at each other. A powerful
vacuum pump removes the helium and any deuterium that didn't fuse. The
fusible stuff is recycled back into the system.
It ought to be throttlable. If nothing else, the beam can be focused. The
region where the beams collide can be adjusted from the size of a pinprick
up to the maximum size that the deuteron gun can handle.
Ray
Paul F. Dietz
> Of course, no one knows how a 10 GW Farnworth/Bussard generator works
> anyway, not even Bussard. (If he did, we'd already be finding _out_
> what I'm speculating on.)
If you believe Todd Rider's thesis it doesn't work at all.
Paul
Charles R Martin
Well, that'd really fuck up the story, wouldn't it? But you mentioned
that previously, which is why I say "I'm thinking of something like"
and not making a big point of mechanism.
Ray
> "Paul F. Dietz" <di...@interaccess.com> writes:
>
> > Charles R Martin wrote:
> >
> > > Of course, no one knows how a 10 GW Farnworth/Bussard generator works
> > > anyway, not even Bussard. (If he did, we'd already be finding _out_
> > > what I'm speculating on.)
> >
> > If you believe Todd Rider's thesis it doesn't work at all.
>
> Well, that'd really fuck up the story, wouldn't it? But you mentioned
> that previously, which is why I say "I'm thinking of something like"
> and not making a big point of mechanism.
I have thought of lots of somewhat plausible schemes, but I decided to leave
most of the details of the fusion reactors in my WIP unspecified - as much
as it pains a hard SF fan like me to do that ;-)
I did spew some mumbo-jumbo about quantum affects for my light hydrogen
fusor. That part is going to need a lot of work before I send it off to the
slush pile.
Ray
Geoff McCaughan
>
> If you can't throttle it back, you've got more issues to consider, as to how
> your device interfaces with the power grid. Let's start with assuming we
> keep our current power grid.
>
> If you assume that the interface is all electronic, the issue would be a
> difficulty in keeping the power line voltage within specifications. All the
> power generated would have to go somewhere. Unless you incorporate some
> sort of very high wattage "dummy load", the power will have to go to the
> grid, and this will occur by the grid voltage rising to whatever value is
> needed to dissipate that much power.
It's not really that much of a problem, as long as you design your
power plants properly. Power plants routinely juggle excess
capacity and transfer load to meet short term fluctuations. For
this sort of plant you'd design it so that you had a storage system
if the output was significantly higher than the expected load.
For example, you build your plant with a large capacity hydro
generation / pumping plant. All your excess capacity can be used to
pump water back up to the storage lake. For smaller demand situations,
run the entire load off the hydro plant and just run the fusion
plant for enough hours in the day to refill the lake.
Conrad Hodson
On 14 Mar 2002, Charles R Martin wrote:
. Unless people develop some real improvements in hydrogen storage,
> > hydrogen generation, and fuel cell technology, just cutting electrical
> > power cost isn't going to make much difference. And while you're
> > handwaving all those, why not just handwave a better storage battery? Or
> > a higher molecular weight for hydrogen?
>
> Maybe H2 wouldn't be practical, but methane is pretty practical even
> today -- we have plenty of "natural gas powered" vehicles on the
> streets right now. It's just that these (and propane powered) aren't
> particularly economically advantageous, especially if you consider the
> costs of building up infrastructure (one doesn't, for example, take a
> long road trip in a NG vehicle without _lots_ of preparation.) But if
> the CH4 can be synthesized from air and water at a sufficiently low
> cost, that might change.
Methane's already very cheap--waste-product free in some cases. There's a
great many places (oil wells, sewage treatment plants) where it's just
burned in a big flare. On a smaller scale, I know a dairyman who built a
good-sized methane digester as a way of turning his manure disposal
problem into fertilizer and gas. While he still uses the gas to run gas
appliances, he gave up on his attempts to use it in a car. Why? Tankage.
Methane is a shitty fuel (even if it's not made from manure!) because of
its very low molecular weight. Look up Avogadro's Law in a chem textbook
sometime--it's the key to the problem with methane and hydrogen
both. (Hydrogen is actually worse than methane, which is
remarkable.) Since a gas's fuel value is essentially proportional to its
molecular weight--allowing of course for how much energy is released in
its oxidation, and deducting for partially oxidized fuel gases such as
carbon monoxide--it means that it takes a lot of tankage to store a fairly
small amount of chemical energy compared to alcohol or gasoline or other
fuels of higher molecular weight.
It gets _much_ worse when the gases in question are cryogens, as both
methane and hydrogen are. You can't just liquefy them under pressure, it
takes contant active refrigeration (or bleedoff, which is both wasteful
and scary) any time they aren't being used. So not only does your vehicle
have a low-capacity "gas tank", the tank has the equivalent of a constant
slow leak that can't be fixed.
Conrad Hodson
Johnny1A
Good point. If you want to revolutionize transport, assume a cheap,
reliable, safe, and super-high-storage-capacity battery is invented,
something like the
'shipstones' in RAH's _Friday_.
Over a century into the electrical age, the problem of compact power
storage remains unsolved.
Shermanlee
Johnny1A
> > >
> > > What happens ?
> >
> > It becomes economical to do large scale agriculture with
> > artificial illumination (assuming the light bulbs can be
> > made cheaply enough.)
>
> Okay, good. Wouldn't much matter on Earth, I think -- except for
> fresh tomatoes in Moscow in the winter, that sort of thing -- but sure
> applies to space habitation.
>
If it's cheap enough, it could be the biggest change in settled life
on Earth in millennia. Assuming it's cheap and efficient enough,
_there is no further need for farming_. If you use factory meat
farming, you can feed them factory-grown plant matter, and elminate
most of the pasture land.
So you could in theory have _enormous_ volumes of land freed up, and
the end of the oldest settled way of life in civilization. Do we get
the situation from Simak's _City_? Do the greens finally get their
massive return of wilderness?
What are the economic effects of the end of farming?
Shermanlee
Johnny1A
>
> In fact, as I think about it, seagoing artificial cities/ arcologies
> become feasiable, too.
>
I hate to be a spoilsport, but what are these arcologies _for_?
What's the economic incentive?
Shermanlee
Ray
""Geoff McCaughan"" <geo...@spam.hormel.com> wrote in message
news:GZdk8.5477$S84.2...@news.xtra.co.nz...
The lake would have a tide :-)
Ray
Ray
Neither H2 or CH4 are nice fuels to store, but they are hard to beat as
internal combustion engine fuels.
I have done some research on methane. Right now, you can get methane
powered vehicles, and you can get a compressor that will fill your gas tank
overnight.
If you do that of the normal natural gas that's pumped into your house,
you'll save quite a bit of money.
If you build the engine specifically to run on methane, you can use high
compression and supercharging. If you make a multifuel engine, it won't be
as powerful on methane as it will on propane or gasoline.
In short, it is very practical as a "get around town" car, but finding
places to fuel up on a road trip can be a challenge.
Ray Drouillard
Leszek Karlik
disseminated foul capitalist propaganda:
[...]
>> Saudi Arabia is no longer your friend. OPEC and Russia are hit
>> economically because the market for petrol drops drastically.
>
> OPEC I believe, but I think it might actually be economically good for
> Russia overall: a lot of their infrastructure is suddenly much cheaper
> to run, and areas in Siberia and the steppes suddenly could be okay
> places to live.
The problem is that the current infrastructure is already in place,
while creating the new, WonderPoweredTM infrastructure requires a lot
of work, investment etc. And in Russia, that does present some
problems.
>> Who owns the patent on the Cheap Power Device, anyway? He gets rich.
> Damn straight.
And how high does he set a price for this thing? India, Russia and
other third world countries may simply not be able to afford the CPDs.
[...]
>> Government pumps tons of federal money into subsidies for the petrol
>> companies who find themselves losing rapidly to cheap electric power.
> I think the petroleum companies actually are okay for a while -- it
> takes a good while to get from a gasoline to H2 economy.
Yes, but they are seen as a dead-end industry. They know they will
have severe downsizing in the future.
OTOH, they might try to get in on the action and move from refining
and distributing petrol to synthesizing and distributing
H2/CH4/whatever.
Leslie
--
Leszek 'Leslie' Karlik; ailurophile by trade; SNAFU TANJ TANSTAAFL; /^\ lk
Do you want to join the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria? / (*) \
Put $ 3,125.00 in a cigar box and bury it in your backyard. / \
One of our *Underground* Agents will contact you shortly. /_____________\
Nyrath the nearly wise
> Since a gas's fuel value is essentially proportional to its
> molecular weight--allowing of course for how much energy is released in
> its oxidation, and deducting for partially oxidized fuel gases such as
> carbon monoxide--it means that it takes a lot of tankage to store a fairly
> small amount of chemical energy compared to alcohol or gasoline or other
> fuels of higher molecular weight.
>
> It gets _much_ worse when the gases in question are cryogens, as both
> methane and hydrogen are. You can't just liquefy them under pressure, it
> takes contant active refrigeration (or bleedoff, which is both wasteful
> and scary) any time they aren't being used. So not only does your vehicle
> have a low-capacity "gas tank", the tank has the equivalent of a constant
> slow leak that can't be fixed.
The low molecular weight flaw cannot be fixed, but I
thought that DaimlerChrysler had found a way around the
cryogen problem. They store the hydrogen in sodium borohydride,
and have a reaction that liberates the hydrogen on demand
leaving a residue of borax soap.
Bertil Jonell
Paul F. Dietz <di...@interaccess.com> wrote:
>Charles R Martin wrote:
>
>> My scribblings suggest this is going to give a price in the pennies
>> per megawatt-hour, or in other words the price will drop by four or
>> five orders of magnitude.
>>
>
>It becomes economical to do large scale agriculture with
>artificial illumination (assuming the light bulbs can be
>made cheaply enough.)
The DEA would have kittens.
-bertil-
--
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."
Timothy C. Eisele
> The low molecular weight flaw cannot be fixed, but I
> thought that DaimlerChrysler had found a way around the
> cryogen problem. They store the hydrogen in sodium borohydride,
> and have a reaction that liberates the hydrogen on demand
> leaving a residue of borax soap.
> http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0131/p13s01-stss.html
This ticked me off when I first read it in the paper version of the
Monitor, and it still irritates me. *Borax is not soap!* Just because
people put it in their laundry, doesn't make it a soap! Soaps are
saponified fats and oils that reduce surface tension, emulsify
hydrophobic soil, and generally act as wetting agents. Borax is
an inorganic compound, and does none of these things.
The general idea seems to be that borax is a water conditioner (softens
water, controls alkalinity, things like that). It boosts the efficiency
of soaps and detergents, but is not a soap or detergent itself.
--
Tim Eisele
tcei...@mtu.edu
Charles R Martin
> Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> wrote in message news:<m3vgc01...@localhost.localdomain>...
>
> > > >
> > > > What happens ?
> > >
> > > It becomes economical to do large scale agriculture with
> > > artificial illumination (assuming the light bulbs can be
> > > made cheaply enough.)
> >
> > Okay, good. Wouldn't much matter on Earth, I think -- except for
> > fresh tomatoes in Moscow in the winter, that sort of thing -- but sure
> > applies to space habitation.
> >
>
> If it's cheap enough, it could be the biggest change in settled life
> on Earth in millennia. Assuming it's cheap and efficient enough,
> _there is no further need for farming_. If you use factory meat
> farming, you can feed them factory-grown plant matter, and elminate
> most of the pasture land.
That's already happened, where've you been? At least in the West,
pretty near all meat is grown in "factory farms". In the case of
beef, at least some farmers do it the more or less old-fashioned way,
by rounding up the new calves, castrating the bull-calves, and letting
them grow up a little before they're sent off to feed lots.
> > So you could in theory have _enormous_ volumes of land freed up, and
> the end of the oldest settled way of life in civilization.
I kind of find it hard to imagine that hydroponics would ever be so
cheap that they completely supplant in-the-ground farming, without the
product being some kind of yeast or chlorella which is then made into
food-substitute. But amazing areas of previously-farm land have
_already_ opened up and are continuing; I've seen people seriously
suggesting out here that a _large area in eastern Colorado and western
Kansas be made into a prairie preserve, replanted with native species,
and populated with free-running elk and bison.
> Do we get the situation from Simak's _City_? Do the greens finally
> get their massive return of wilderness? What are the economic
> effects of the end of farming?
It _is_ an interesting notion, though....
Charles R Martin
With sufficiently cheap energy, there are several possibilities:
(1) economic/political freedom: they can be called "ships" and
registered out of some convenient country like Liberia or the
Turks&Caicos. Make it pay for some small country like that and
you can probably get whatever rules you want, within some treaty
limits.
This would then probably be something for the fabulously wealthy,
and would probably be dependent on whether any other countries are
stupid enough to re-institute confiscatory taxation. (Some people
may not realize that when the Beatles sang "one for you nineteen
for me" they were actually UNDERSTATING the marginal tax rate at
the time in the UK.)
(2) Seagoing industries. Which ones? I dunno, fish farming or
something. But its easy to imagine that there could be things a
seagoing city could do that a land-city couldn't.
(3) Habitable housing for places like Tokyo and Osaka, with big
populations and little free land. An arcology might be a lot
cheaper than building new land from landfill, like Osaka did for
its new airport. In this case the arcology would probably be
moored somehow offshore.
Charles R Martin
> On 14 Mar 2002, Charles R Martin wrote:
> . Unless people develop some real improvements in hydrogen storage,
> > > hydrogen generation, and fuel cell technology, just cutting electrical
> > > power cost isn't going to make much difference. And while you're
> > > handwaving all those, why not just handwave a better storage battery? Or
> > > a higher molecular weight for hydrogen?
> >
> > Maybe H2 wouldn't be practical, but methane is pretty practical even
> > today -- we have plenty of "natural gas powered" vehicles on the
> > streets right now. It's just that these (and propane powered) aren't
> > particularly economically advantageous, especially if you consider the
> > costs of building up infrastructure (one doesn't, for example, take a
> > long road trip in a NG vehicle without _lots_ of preparation.) But if
> > the CH4 can be synthesized from air and water at a sufficiently low
> > cost, that might change.
>
> Methane's already very cheap--waste-product free in some cases. There's a
> great many places (oil wells, sewage treatment plants) where it's just
> burned in a big flare. On a smaller scale, I know a dairyman who built a
> good-sized methane digester as a way of turning his manure disposal
> problem into fertilizer and gas. While he still uses the gas to run gas
> appliances, he gave up on his attempts to use it in a car. Why? Tankage.
Yup, and the supply of methane is pretty damn large, too -- if we get
tired of easy sources, there are zillions of tonnes of clathrates in
the deep ocean.
>
> Methane is a shitty fuel (even if it's not made from manure!) because of
> its very low molecular weight. Look up Avogadro's Law in a chem textbook
> sometime--it's the key to the problem with methane and hydrogen
> both. (Hydrogen is actually worse than methane, which is
> remarkable.) Since a gas's fuel value is essentially proportional to its
> molecular weight--allowing of course for how much energy is released in
> its oxidation, and deducting for partially oxidized fuel gases such as
> carbon monoxide--it means that it takes a lot of tankage to store a fairly
> small amount of chemical energy compared to alcohol or gasoline or other
> fuels of higher molecular weight.
>
> It gets _much_ worse when the gases in question are cryogens, as both
> methane and hydrogen are. You can't just liquefy them under pressure, it
> takes contant active refrigeration (or bleedoff, which is both wasteful
> and scary) any time they aren't being used. So not only does your vehicle
> have a low-capacity "gas tank", the tank has the equivalent of a constant
> slow leak that can't be fixed.
--
Charles R Martin
> On 13 Mar 2002 16:09:23 -0700, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com>
> disseminated foul capitalist propaganda:
>
> [...]
> >> Saudi Arabia is no longer your friend. OPEC and Russia are hit
> >> economically because the market for petrol drops drastically.
> >
> > OPEC I believe, but I think it might actually be economically good for
> > Russia overall: a lot of their infrastructure is suddenly much cheaper
> > to run, and areas in Siberia and the steppes suddenly could be okay
> > places to live.
>
> The problem is that the current infrastructure is already in place,
> while creating the new, WonderPoweredTM infrastructure requires a lot
> of work, investment etc. And in Russia, that does present some
> problems.
Yes -- that'd be a longer-term effect, not a transient.
>
> >> Who owns the patent on the Cheap Power Device, anyway? He gets rich.
> > Damn straight.
>
> And how high does he set a price for this thing? India, Russia and
> other third world countries may simply not be able to afford the CPDs.
Nah, that'd be stupid: you make a lot more money on selling to six
billion people at 2 cents a MWh than you make on 500 million.
>
> [...]
> >> Government pumps tons of federal money into subsidies for the petrol
> >> companies who find themselves losing rapidly to cheap electric power.
> > I think the petroleum companies actually are okay for a while -- it
> > takes a good while to get from a gasoline to H2 economy.
>
> Yes, but they are seen as a dead-end industry. They know they will
> have severe downsizing in the future.
>
> OTOH, they might try to get in on the action and move from refining
> and distributing petrol to synthesizing and distributing
> H2/CH4/whatever.
Probably some companies would do both, as with the US steel industry.
Come to think of it, I wonder if that's not a good model?
Charles R Martin
>
> Good point. If you want to revolutionize transport, assume a cheap,
> reliable, safe, and super-high-storage-capacity battery is invented,
> something like the 'shipstones' in RAH's _Friday_.
>
Right, but I kind of like to minimize the magic I assume in a story.
Charles R Martin
This would really significantly affect the price, though ...
Dr John Stockton
It seems that, for domestic use, your generator would reduce the price
by a factor of the order of two or three only, because of overheads.
But it would do much more for the high-energy processing of raw
materials.
< Global heating by direct warming becomes significant at global per-
capita dissipation not so very much greater than those of the affluent
in the most developed countries >
>This really seems to conflict with the other numbers I've seen posted
>by Max. I haven't had a chance to explore them myself, so can you
>guys start a little side argument and sort if out? ;-)
See <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/astro.htm#Air>.
The only way to get reliable figures out of News is to decide which are
the correct arguments for the dominant effects, and then work the
figures out oneself. Twice. Then get the result checked.
--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. j...@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links;
some Astro stuff in astro.htm, gravity.htm; quotes.htm; pascal.htm; &c &c &c.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.
Lee DeRaud
wrote:
>I've seen people seriously
>suggesting out here that a _large area in eastern Colorado and western
>Kansas be made into a prairie preserve, replanted with native species,
>and populated with free-running elk and bison.
Bison, ok. But elk? I thought they were more of a high-altitude scrub
brush (what's the word I'm looking for...taiga?) species rather than a
grassland-plains species. (Something about the different dentition and
stomach enzymes required to eat grasses vs leaves sticks in my head,
but I'm screwed if I can remember where I saw it.)
Lee
Charles R Martin
Elk. Actually, they ranged throughout North America before the white
people came.
The Rocky Mountain Elk FOundation has some cool stuff ....
Knowing the variety of ecosystems in which elk live, you can
imagine the variety of food they eat. Like porcupines, they'll
strip and eat the bark of aspen. They'll browse willows as moose
do. They'll graze on some of the same grasses that white-tailed
deer prefer. Elk will also eat lichens that grow on mature trees.
Charles R Martin
> On 15-Mar-2002, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> wrote:
>
> > I kind of find it hard to imagine that hydroponics would ever be so
> > cheap that they completely supplant in-the-ground farming, without the
> > product being some kind of yeast or chlorella which is then made into
> > food-substitute. But amazing areas of previously-farm land have
> > _already_ opened up and are continuing; I've seen people seriously
> > suggesting out here that a _large area in eastern Colorado and western
> > Kansas be made into a prairie preserve, replanted with native species,
> > and populated with free-running elk and bison.
>
> The way this could be profitable is if it saves significant amount of land.
> Certainly farms can be produced in cities that way (cities already produce
> lots of produce), but I'm not sure people want cattle raised the way
> chickens are.
The only thing is that (1) it's not like we're short on land here in
the US and (2) we're already raising cattle like chickens. Feedlots
are very much like battery chicken farms, down to and including
introducing polythene pellets into the feed to add bulk cheaply,
because the pellets can be washed, sterilized, and reused.
Conrad Hodson
>
> Neither H2 or CH4 are nice fuels to store, but they are hard to beat as
> internal combustion engine fuels.
>
> I have done some research on methane. Right now, you can get methane
> powered vehicles, and you can get a compressor that will fill your gas tank
> overnight.
>
> If you do that of the normal natural gas that's pumped into your house,
> you'll save quite a bit of money.
That's basically what the guy I knew tried with his biogas. He didn't
even have a gas bill (except for the sweat-equity kind of running his
digester, but he'd had to do a bunch of work disposing of manure before,
so he didn't count that as a problem)
The reason he dropped methane as a vehicle fuel was the extremely short
range of the vehicle. He said that to get a truck with the range of a
petroleum-powered one, he'd have to replace almost all the payload space
with methane tankage, and what would be the point? (The methane cars I've
seen have essentially no luggage space and still have less than 100 miles
between refuellings--are the ones you've seen doing better than this?)
>
> If you build the engine specifically to run on methane, you can use high
> compression and supercharging. If you make a multifuel engine, it won't be
> as powerful on methane as it will on propane or gasoline.
True enough. Do remember that this will eliminate the
"pollution-free" claim that methane/hydrogen fans are always
making. Those fuels can indeed be run at very high compression without
knock (high "octane-equivalent") but if you do so, you produce nitrogen
oxides at a horrendous rate. As long as your engine is an air-breather,
its cylinders still process three parts nitrogen for every part of oxygen,
and high pressures favor the oxidation of nitrogen. If your car is not an
air-breather, you've acquired _another_ godawful cryogenic gas tankage
problem!
>
> In short, it is very practical as a "get around town" car, but finding
> places to fuel up on a road trip can be a challenge.
> >
As Rivaz discovered back in 1803, puttering (kabooming, actually) around
Switzerland in the first-ever IC car. It ran on producer gas, and towed
this big parchment balloon around by way of a fuel tank. Gave him a range
of a few miles. He envisioned a network of "gas" stations--probably at
about the spacings of our present ones--where limp balloons could be
traded for full ones.
The same system keeps getting suggested as a way around the short-range
problems of electric and H2/CH4 autos. Some kind of quick swap of fuel
modules, so as to avoid long slow waits for compressors to fill pressure
bottles. The problem is, that even if the modules can be swapped as
quickly as, say, a tire at an Indy pit stop, making a lot of even quick
stops plays hell with average travel speed. Ever tried to travel with
four people whose bladders are all on different schedules? Like that.
Conrad Hodson
Ash Wyllie
>On 13 Mar 2002 16:09:23 -0700, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com>
>disseminated foul capitalist propaganda:
>>> Who owns the patent on the Cheap Power Device, anyway? He gets rich.
>> Damn straight.
>And how high does he set a price for this thing? India, Russia and
>other third world countries may simply not be able to afford the CPDs.
>
The initial price would be just below the cost of conventional power sources.
-ash
for assistance dial MYCROFTXXX
Charles R Martin
>
> That lets you redo the entire industrial economy to use
> significantly more power for processes. For example,
> it takes no more than 100 MJ to ionize and electrically separate
> a kilogram of rock.
Hey, George, how'd you come up with these figures? Not that I
disbelieve them, or don't believe them (whatever the hell the
difference is), I'm just curious to know how you did it.
> If we use basalt, the rock is 1% titanium and 8.5% iron, roughly.
> We can produce 85 kg of Iron and 10 kg of Titanium from a ton of
> basalt for ROM five cents.
The dominating cost is going to be scraping up and trucking around the
basalt, no?
George William Herbert
>> That lets you redo the entire industrial economy to use
>> significantly more power for processes. For example,
>> it takes no more than 100 MJ to ionize and electrically separate
>> a kilogram of rock.
>
>Hey, George, how'd you come up with these figures? Not that I
>disbelieve them, or don't believe them (whatever the hell the
>difference is), I'm just curious to know how you did it.
It's the next order of magnitude up from the sum of
energy to vaporize (2-5 Mj/kg) and ionize typical rock
(which I had from some obvious but sensitive calculations
which I will refrain from commenting on), and calutron
throughputs for three passes through (rough separate,
then fine isolate the elements you want ...).
I'm sure a single integrated process could be more efficient
than that, actually, but I wanted to worst case ROM it.
Actually... that was sort of silly. Fractional distillation
of the elements in the rock is easier than electromagnetic
separation, so that should be the preferred high energy
method... assuming that one of the chemical processes isn't
used instead (which I have no idea about relative total
energy / capital input efficiency tradeoffs so I'll refrain
from trying to do a trade study on). That should be doable
withs something more like 10 Mj/kg.
>> If we use basalt, the rock is 1% titanium and 8.5% iron, roughly.
>> We can produce 85 kg of Iron and 10 kg of Titanium from a ton of
>> basalt for ROM five cents.
>
>The dominating cost is going to be scraping up and trucking around the
>basalt, no?
Scrape up? Truck around?
Plant<->hole in the ground
or,
Find an inconvenient mountain range, put plant at the base of the
first steep hill, build large funnel into plant's open, flaming maw,
start blasting the mountain away...
8-)
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Jason Bontrager
>
> Find an inconvenient mountain range, put plant at the base of the
> first steep hill, build large funnel into plant's open, flaming maw,
> start blasting the mountain away...
This could have interesting effects based on the location
of the mountains in question. Say you have a mountain
range that produces a rain-shadow that blocks rainfall
from a large chunk of territory (eg. Australia). Remove
it. Entertaining ecological consequences ensue.
Jason B.
Ray
"George William Herbert" <gher...@gw.retro.com> wrote in message
news:a719f2$lg1$1...@gw.retro.com...
Hmmm... what is the chemical structure of Basalt? What aree you going to
have to get rid of once you extract the metal from it? Hopefully, you can
turn it into something useful.
Ray
Ray
"Jason Bontrager" <jab...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote in message
news:3C950247...@mail.utexas.edu...
By "consequences", I presume you mean "change"?
If I have several thousand square miles of desert, I might be interested in
preserving the diverse web of life in a few hundred square miles of the
above mentioned scrub, but I would be just as interested in causing some of
it to bloom, In fact, I might be able to plant it with the appropriate
trees and stuff and have a rain forest.
More likely, it would become moderately wet, perhaps at the expense of the
rain forest that had received all of the rain that the mountain had
originally blocked.
Hey, change is natural. We shouldn't poison our ecosystem, nor should we
cause species to go extinct (except for maybe the mosquito). We don't need
to be paranoid about changing things, though.
Ray
Paul F. Dietz
> Hmmm... what is the chemical structure of Basalt? What aree you going to
> have to get rid of once you extract the metal from it? Hopefully, you can
> turn it into something useful.
Basalt is mostly silicates. If you extract the metals (as metal)
you end up with metals, silicon dioxide, and oxygen. If you
don't extract all the metals you could end up with some metal
oxides and/or silicates in the waste stream.
Note that olivine (a major component of basalt) is one of the
silicates that is rather soluble in acid, so extraction of
materials from basalt will probably be by acid dissolution
rather than plasma processing. Magnesium hydroxide is
a reasonable byproduct of this; it could be used to absorb
atmospheric CO2. In fact, olivine (or, better, serpentinite)
have been proposed as sources of magnesium ions to convert
CO2 from fossil fuel combustion into solid form ('CO2 sequestration
by mineral carbonation'). This would, in principle, enable
a 'zero emission' coal burning powerplant to be built (no
gaseous emissions except atmospheric nitrogen.)
Paul
George William Herbert
>> Hmmm... what is the chemical structure of Basalt? What aree you going to
>> have to get rid of once you extract the metal from it? Hopefully, you can
>> turn it into something useful.
>
>Basalt is mostly silicates. If you extract the metals (as metal)
>you end up with metals, silicon dioxide, and oxygen. If you
>don't extract all the metals you could end up with some metal
>oxides and/or silicates in the waste stream.
What I have in front of me in my handy dandy Thomas J Glover "Pocket Ref"
second edition for Basalt minor components is:
element (ppm)
Iron 86500
Titanium 12300
Potassium 8300
Phosphorous 2000
Manganese 1550
...and everything else at lower levels. That gives about 8.6 percent
Iron for the bulk material. The rock is a mixture of Olivine and
Pyroxine; Olivine is either Mg2SiO4 or Fe2SiO4, and Pyroxine
is {Mg,Fe,Ca,Al}SiO3, per Press and Siever's "Understanding Earth",
which is about as far as I go in rock chemistry. Basalt is actually
at the low-silicate end of the spectrum; there's a lot of silicon
in there, but it's almost entirely in complexes with other metals.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Paul F. Dietz
> Basalt is actually
> at the low-silicate end of the spectrum; there's a lot of silicon
> in there, but it's almost entirely in complexes with other metals.
That's why is relatively easy to dissolve in acid. Rocks
with more silicon tend to have minerals in which the silicon
atoms are linked in networks. The SiO4 tetrahedra in olivine
are isolated from each other by the metal ions.
Paul
Ray
"Paul F. Dietz" <di...@interaccess.com> wrote in message
news:3C952A51...@interaccess.com...
Hmmm... that's quite interesting. If we figure out that there is REALLY too
much CO2 in the air, we can suck it out with that stuff (though I think that
trees would be more aesthetically pleasing). It would also be really useful
for space ships, submarines, space suits, rebreathing SCUBA-like gear, and
pressure suits designed for folks who want to climb that 42,000 foot
mountain ;-)
Anyhow, if you pull ALL of the metal out of it, you get sand and oxygen, or
maybe sand and water and oxygen (hey, a beach!). I like that idea.
Charlie's Free Power Source (tm) will solve lots of problems :-)
Ray
Johnny1A
> "Paul F. Dietz" <di...@interaccess.com> writes:
>
> > Charles R Martin wrote:
> >
> > > Of course, no one knows how a 10 GW Farnworth/Bussard generator works
> > > anyway, not even Bussard. (If he did, we'd already be finding _out_
> > > what I'm speculating on.)
> >
> > If you believe Todd Rider's thesis it doesn't work at all.
>
> Well, that'd really fuck up the story, wouldn't it? But you mentioned
> that previously, which is why I say "I'm thinking of something like"
> and not making a big point of mechanism.
If we're talking fiction, does it _have_ to be fusion?
Why not borrow something from George O. Smith in _Venus Equilateral_,
and assume an 'active solar' power system? Something that doesn't
just sit there and soak of solar radiation, but actively reaches out
and sucks in power, like the power tubes in _VE_. It solves your fuel
problem, and if you assume it can't be made it small units, just giant
megaplants, (at least at first) it also duplicates the advantages of
your megafusion plant.
OTOH, if you want plentiful cheap Earthside power, you can assume that
the solar tubes can be made much smaller.
Fictional, obviously, but based on the last thirty years, I don't know
if G. O. Smith's solar power tubes are any more fanciful than
controlled fusion power...
Shermanlee
Charles R Martin
I see your point, but notice that with the mystery drivers, then the
martian power transmission tubes, then the solar power tubes ... all
of a sudden we're heading off into Campbellian SuperScience. (Not
that this is a bad thing.) I've got some notion of how to keep fusion
under control, limit it so that it doesn't eat the rest of the story
alive.
I dunno -- I guess what I'm really saying is that cheap fusion seems
like it has "less magic".
Hop David
"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:
> Hop David wrote:
>
> > What would be the effects of a cheap, high temperature super conductor?
>
> Wrap coils around lines of latitude and increase/decrease the Earth's
> magnetic field (the stored magnetic energy of the Earth's external
> magnetic field is about 200 megatons, IIRC, so the energy required
> is not utterly prohibitive.) Nulling the field would let us
> clear out the Van Allen belts.
>
> Paul
Doesn't it protect us from solar wind and cosmic radiation?
Charles R Martin
from the surface getting to the ozone layer. I don't know that this
is offers any insight, but it's cool anyway ....
http://csmonitor.com/2002/0314/p16s01-stss.html
Paul F. Dietz
> > Nulling the field would let us clear out the Van Allen belts.
> Doesn't it protect us from solar wind and cosmic radiation?
Most of the protection is due to absorption in the atmosphere.
Paul
Nyrath the nearly wise
> If we're talking fiction, does it _have_ to be fusion?
>
> Why not borrow something from George O. Smith in _Venus Equilateral_,
> and assume an 'active solar' power system? Something that doesn't
> just sit there and soak of solar radiation, but actively reaches out
> and sucks in power, like the power tubes in _VE_. It solves your fuel
> problem, and if you assume it can't be made it small units, just giant
> megaplants, (at least at first) it also duplicates the advantages of
> your megafusion plant.
This was also used in John Cambell's THE MIGHTIEST MACHINE.
However, don't let any friendly spacecraft fly across
the beam!
Both stories have a problem with explaining how the
beam reacts if the emitting ship moves. Given that
the Sun is about 8 light minutes away, will the returning
power manage to find its way back to the ship if the
ship is maneuvering?
Lee DeRaud
wrote:
>Lee DeRaud <lee.d...@boeing.com> writes:
>
>> On 15 Mar 2002 10:42:30 -0700, Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com>
>> wrote:
>> >I've seen people seriously
>> >suggesting out here that a _large area in eastern Colorado and western
>> >Kansas be made into a prairie preserve, replanted with native species,
>> >and populated with free-running elk and bison.
>>
>> Bison, ok. But elk? I thought they were more of a high-altitude scrub
>> brush (what's the word I'm looking for...taiga?) species rather than a
>> grassland-plains species. (Something about the different dentition and
>> stomach enzymes required to eat grasses vs leaves sticks in my head,
>> but I'm screwed if I can remember where I saw it.)
>
>Elk. Actually, they ranged throughout North America before the white
>people came.
>
>The Rocky Mountain Elk FOundation has some cool stuff ....
>
>http://www.rmef.org
>
> Knowing the variety of ecosystems in which elk live, you can
> imagine the variety of food they eat. Like porcupines, they'll
> strip and eat the bark of aspen. They'll browse willows as moose
> do. They'll graze on some of the same grasses that white-tailed
> deer prefer. Elk will also eat lichens that grow on mature trees.
Live and learn. :-)
Lee
Ash Wyllie
> Shermanlee
Remember though, that the power tubes would only work in space. For some
reason you coouldn't get any power on a planet below the Channing layer.
H. E. Taylor
>
>>> Nulling the field would let us clear out the Van Allen belts.
>
>> Doesn't it protect us from solar wind and cosmic radiation?
>
> Most of the protection is due to absorption in the atmosphere.
>
Do you happen to have a pointer to actual data on that?
I have wondered about this with regard pole reversal.
<l8r>
-het
--
"The Borg are coming!"
How's yer crap detector? http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/detector.html
H.E. Taylor http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/
James Nicoll
Johnny1A <sherm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>If we're talking fiction, does it _have_ to be fusion?
>
>Why not borrow something from George O. Smith in _Venus Equilateral_,
>and assume an 'active solar' power system? Something that doesn't
>just sit there and soak of solar radiation, but actively reaches out
>and sucks in power, like the power tubes in _VE_. It solves your fuel
>problem, and if you assume it can't be made it small units, just giant
>megaplants, (at least at first) it also duplicates the advantages of
>your megafusion plant.
How exactly does it 'suck in power'?
One alternate I've seen in at least one novel and in an
old Rothman essay from the 1970s is something like a wormhole
running from Earth to the Sun. You draw power, either as EMR
or plasma, directly from the Sun, using it to heat a working fluid,
running it through a MHD generator or some other cunning method
of exploitation.
Of course, if you run a modern wormhole one way long enough
it may pinch off. That would be inconvenient.
--
"I think you mean 'Could libertarian slave-owning Confederates, led by
SHWIers, have pulled off a transatlantic invasion of Britain, in revenge
for the War of 1812, if they had nukes acquired from the Sea of Time?'"
Alison Brooks (? - 2002)