Nuplex.

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  • November 14, 2006 at 1:30 am #398
    Torulf
    Participant

    Here are some links describing an abandon project from the golden age of nuclear power.
    Desalination with fission for makes the desert green. The Nuplex concept become to expensive but with focus fusion it may be bring to life again.

    http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v36_1_03/article_09.shtml
    http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/chapter5.shtml
    .

    November 18, 2006 at 2:22 pm #1999
    Jolly Roger
    Participant

    Torulf wrote: Desalination with fission for [making] the desert green. The Nuplex concept [became too] expensive but with focus fusion it may be [brought] to life again.

    Nuplex uses waste heat to boil salt water, and the vapor is condensed into fresh water. Focus Fusion creates electricity almost directly. Electricity is notoriously inefficient for heating. Perhaps a better method would be to pass electricity through the salt water and dissociate it into hydrogen and oxygen (electrolysis). The hydrogen could be used for vehicle fuel, or recombined with the oxygen to make fresh water. The heat from that reaction could boil additional salt water to fresh.

    In addition, the hydrogen and oxygen can be created in the form of Brown’s Gas, which is reported to have some rather amazing properties.

    http://www.brownsgas.com/brownsgashome.html

    November 23, 2006 at 9:11 pm #2016
    Rezwan
    Participant

    Using desalinization technology will be very helpful to reversing desertification, but more important is how we use land. In fact, even without major power plants, we may be able to reverse desertification. Animal impact plays a key (and highly misunderstood) role in the growth of grass and in maintaining ground cover: http://managingwholes.com/animal-impact.htm

    The grass is very important to the water cycle. Here is a great flash slideshow on the water cycle which explains how ground cover affects the lands ability to capture water and build aquifers. So, even if you have all these fusion powered desal plants, but the ground cover isn’t there, the water is just going right back into the atmosphere: http://managingwholes.com/flash/wcSlideshow.htm As the show says:

    In the next few minutes, you’ll learn about basic processes that cause most of the world’s floods and droughts. These processes are widely ignored or misunderstood.

    Dams, irrigation, and deeper wells cannot solve the real problem: wasted rainfall

    Other stats:

    Many landscapes lose over 90% of rainfall from a combination of evaporation and runoff.

    Healthy grasslands can absorb 75% of rainfall. That’s 7 1/2 times more rain to grow plants and recharge rivers!

    Now we just need a flash slideshow about animal impact. Seeing is understanding.

    And finally, a great book: Gardener’s of Eden – http://www.oaec.org/node/125?PHPSESSID=9962160c3ad7cfe38019d92666f9f9b0

    I got turned on to this stuff by the holistic management folks. http://www.holisticmanagement.org

    December 4, 2006 at 8:45 pm #2053
    Glenn Millam
    Participant

    Jolly Roger wrote: Nuplex uses waste heat to boil salt water, and the vapor is condensed into fresh water. Focus Fusion creates electricity almost directly. Electricity is notoriously inefficient for heating. Perhaps a better method would be to pass electricity through the salt water and dissociate it into hydrogen and oxygen (electrolysis). The hydrogen could be used for vehicle fuel, or recombined with the oxygen to make fresh water. The heat from that reaction could boil additional salt water to fresh.

    So is electrolysis. The key thing is that FF itself is so cheap and efficient that it lends its economics to things that would otherwise be too expensive. Desalinization is going to be one of the key changes in a fusion-based world. Saudi Arabia will go from pumping sludge to eat to growing its own food, maybe exporting it. Sounds crazy now, but it can happen.

    December 29, 2006 at 10:15 am #2107
    Transmute
    Participant

    Well the waste heat from a DPF fusion reactor could be used, and I disagree about the efficiency of turning electricity into heat, all you need is a long metal wire as a resistor, also in flash distillation requires electricty to power the pumps to keep the pressure low. Also a desalination plant would produce salts, minerals, and even organics such as carbon dioxide and plankton (latent in the sea water) which could be extracted and turned into petroleum. I figure that the water produced could go into making farm land out of desert, won

    December 29, 2006 at 10:48 am #2108
    Jolly Roger
    Participant

    Irrigation with desalinated water would not only turn desert into arable land, but could also restore over-irrigated land that has become too salty to yield a full crop.

    Adding water does not guarantee turning desert into cropland. We might end up with just wet sand. Nitrogen-fixing plants will need to be tilled under for a few seasons to build up soil that other plants can use.

    While we are extracting the salts from seawater, let’s not forget to harvest the boron for more p-B fusion.

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