Reply To: A Big Prick in the Balloon of the Big Bang

[Brian H]

zapkitty wrote:

Unless FF is over unity, it is using more energy than it produces, and is just a complicated resistance heater. Who needs it? If it is over unity, see above. The cost of installing and operating any added heat recovery gear must work out to be equal to or less than using power from another FF to generate the heat. No such technology exists, which is why FF is such an economic breakthrough.

I’d assumed overunity… else what’s the point? 🙂

You’re assuming that the onion works and is more efficient than any current thermoelectric options, right?

And Aeronaut’s meme, last I checked, was that an overunity FF has potential as an industrial heat source even without direct or thermoelectric conversion…

… as to what you two are going on about now I’m not exactly sure but it seems rather circular in outline 🙂

edit: i was responding to Brian 🙂
OK, once more: this ‘industrial heat source’ application isn’t free; it must collect and convert or utilize the heat output at source (the FF generator) and/or distribute it from there. This requires more equipment than simply dispersing the heat (e.g., dumping it into the atmosphere). The cost of that equipment and of utilizing the heat will necessarily be greater than taking electrical output from another FF generator and creating the heat exactly where needed. Necessarily, because by an order of magnitude FF electrical power is the cheapest method of energy generation and capture ever developed (yes, assuming the rig as designed works; the onion is significant only insofar as it contributes to the over-unity power generation.) If it were possible to recover and utilize heat more cheaply, such equipment would be in place and in use everywhere waste heat is created. It doesn’t exist.