Reply To: Nuplex.

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

Using FF for process heat in industry, yes. District heat, very likely. In individual buildings….not anytime soon. I’ve posted many times my opinion about public and regulatory barriers to this.

AND…Why do it?

Your discussing energy effiency, but with FF, that effiency is no longer a pressing issue. Energy will no longer be a limited resource, or high cost. If FF is as inexpensive to build and operate as this board is assuming, and even I agree it will be much cheaper then current power plants, then…..

Just put in inexpensive resistance heating….the power is cheap enough.

By the way I don’t think I grossly underestimated mass production, as I had begun with the assumption the mass produced cost of the heat exchanger would be about 30% of the custom built cost, and agreed that Eric’s figure of 10% was not out of the question. This is couldn’t be too much of an underestimate then.

You have to keep the scale difference in mind. The scale differerence between the two items, the 17 million BTU industrial heat exchanger vs the Auto AC unit is like that between a 5,000 HP locomotive diesel and a 1.5 HP Briggs and Stration lawn mower engine. The FF heat exchanger would do on the order of 3,000 times the heat transfer, and last from 25 to 75 times the hours of operation. So, if you scale the $33,000 we are discussing for a FF module heat exchanger, $33,000/3000/25 = $0.44 for the cost of a 10,000 BTU exchager with 3,300 hrs life.