Boron availability

[Viking Coder]

The following figures are based on Lerner’s statement of a 5 MW plant requiring 5 kg of [decaborane] per year.

Decaborane (B10H14) has a molar mass of 122.221 g/mol.

1 kg decaborane / MW / year ~= 8 moles decaborane / MW / year

8 moles of decaborane = 80 moles of boron => 240 moles of helium

The US had a rated electric generator capacity of 1,075,677 MW in 2006.
Existing Capacity by Energy Source

In 2004, the US generated 4.7 trillion KWh of electricity, while the entire globe generated 16.7 trillion KWh.
International Electricity Generation

16.7 is ~3.5x 4.7, so let’s use 3.5 TW as the global electric generator capacity.

Gases are measured in terms of standard cubic feet (scf), where 1 scf ~= 1.2 gram moles.

3.5 million MW * 240 moles of helium/MW/year = 840 million moles helium/year = 700 million scf of helium / year

wikipedia: Helium

In 2005, approximately one hundred and sixty million cubic meters of helium were extracted from natural gas or withdrawn from helium reserves

160 million cubic meters = 5.65 billion cubic feet

700 million / 5.65 billion ~= 12%

Replacing all of the world's electric generators with FF would produce ~12% of current helium extraction.

[Transmute]

Well all right! now imagine a world in which FF replaces 70% of Oil energy usage and 95% of non-electric natural gas usage, oh and powers massive amounts of desalination, lets say that 4 times todays levels of desalination (48 billion gallons a day) calculate that please.

[Viking Coder]

These figures will be based off of the EIA projections for consumption in 2030.

petroleum: 239 quadrillion Btu (70 trillion kWh equiv.) – 5% used for electrical power generation
natural gas: 163 trillion cubic feet (50 trillion kWh equiv.) – 35% used for electrical power generation

International Energy Outlook 2007
Energy Calculator

non-electrical consumption
—
petroleum: 66 trillion kWh equiv.
natural gas: 31 trillion kWh equiv.

Assume the most electricity-intensive process, vapor compression, is used 100%. A vapor-compression evaporator can make clean water from any water source.

vapor compression: 10-15,000 kWh/AF (1 acre foot = 325,851.4 U.S. gallons)
Seawater Desalination – Energy Use

48 billion gallons ~= 150,000 AF => 2.2 billion kWh / day = 800 billion kWh / year

note: That amount of water would account for 0.03% of the projected global non-irrigation water usage in 2025.
Water consumption, non-irrigation

0.7 * 66 trillion + 0.95 * 31 tillion + 800 billion ~= 80 trillion kWh / year

80 trillion kWh / year ~= 9 TW

Compare this to the previous figure of 3.5 TW for 2006 global electric generator capacity producing ~12% of current helium extraction.

This usage projection would produce ~30% of current helium extraction, for a total of ~42%.

[Transmute]

I love you, your like a odds calculator. 30% is not bad as helium conservation is no hard (how much helium goes into balloons?) But the desalination projections need to go up several fold as world demand for fresh water is not going to go down, and much of asia is already strained, how bad will it be in 2025?

[Viking Coder]

Helium can also be cryogenically extracted out of the atmosphere, especially when 0.1 cent/kWh electricity is available.

Multiply that desalination estimate by 1000, such that the energy usage is an order of magnitude larger than any other energy figure (electricity, petroleum or natural gas), and FF boron consumption is still only a fraction of its current rate.

30% of the world’s estimated non-irrigation water usage, 48 trillion gallons, would come from desalination. That would put usage of other water sources at approximately current levels.

Based on the prior calculations, it would require 800 trillion kWh/year; 90 TW of generator capacity. That is almost 3 times as much electricity generated by the whole of humanity from 1980-2004 or almost 50x the global electricity production of 2004.

Roskill Metals & Minerals Reports: Boron

Boron consumption rose by 4.7&#xpa; between 2001 and 2005, when it reached 1.8Mt.
…
World borate demand in detergents is expected to continue declining from 95,000t in 2005 to 85,000t in 2010.

Boron oxide molar mass: 69.6182 g/mol
Wikipedia: Boron oxide

1.8 million tonnes boron oxide ~= 26 billion moles boron oxide

52 billion moles of boron * 10.811g/mole = 560,000 tonnes of boron

Helium production from desalination alone is now 3x the current extraction rate. However, boron usage is only at 90,000 thousand tonnes / year. That is less than the amount used in detergents in 2005. It is only 16% of global boron consumption in 2005.

The boron consumption from a FF powered electricty production of 50x the global 2004 rate would be equivalent to the boron used for detergents in 2005.

[Brian H]

😉 So, why not buy commercial detergents and Borax and save all that work? 😆

[Brian H]

Oops, my bad. Above I said the exhaust was He3; it’s He4, of course. :red:

[Brian H]

Viking Coder wrote: The following figures are based on Lerner’s statement of a 5 MW plant requiring 5 kg of [decaborane] per year.
…
In 2005, approximately one hundred and sixty million cubic meters of helium were extracted from natural gas or withdrawn from helium reserves

160 million cubic meters = 5.65 billion cubic feet

700 million / 5.65 billion ~= 12%

Replacing all of the world's electric generators with FF would produce ~12% of current helium extraction.

The added value/impact of the helium produced by the boron fusion/fission is probably less than the trouble to collect and sell it would cost.

[Lerner]

Right, but eventually we want to replace all fossil fuel with FF and expand energy production as well. That means at some point, no natural gas production. FF will replace that for helium with 22 TW of production. It will be well worth collecting-essential in fact.

[Brian H]

Lerner wrote: Right, but eventually we want to replace all fossil fuel with FF and expand energy production as well. That means at some point, no natural gas production. FF will replace that for helium with 22 TW of production. It will be well worth collecting-essential in fact.

Aha! So it WILL be good for more than filling party balloons. Outstanding! 🙂 :coolsmile:

[Tasmodevil44]

Boron availability ? Shortage ? You kidding ?

Focus fusion should have no problem with that over the next millions of years or so. Not only can it be extracted in virtually unlimited quantity from seawater if the price is high enough and we’re desperate enough, I don’t even think we would even necessarily need to do that. There are vast volcanic deposits created by volcanoes in Chile and many other parts of the world that have a very high boron content to them. And when considering how much energy can be cheaply produced from a single gram of decaborane, I don’t think focus fusion will have any problem. And furthermore, we have not even begun to thoroughly explore all the rich volcanic deposits right here in the Western part of the United States. And if unlimited cheap focus fusion can operate a plasma torch to reduce rocks, dirt, throwaway trash and garbage and everything else to their basic atomic elements for separation……then even the smallest trace amounts of boron could theoretically be extracted economically along with other valuable trace elements. Virtually unlimited energy chasing after more boron ! ! !

[Brian H]

Tasmodevil44 wrote: Boron availability ? Shortage ? You kidding ?

Focus fusion should have no problem with that over the next millions of years or so. Not only can it be extracted in virtually unlimited quantity from seawater if the price is high enough and we’re desperate enough, I don’t even think we would even necessarily need to do that. There are vast volcanic deposits created by volcanoes in Chile and many other parts of the world that have a very high boron content to them. And when considering how much energy can be cheaply produced from a single gram of decaborane, I don’t think focus fusion will have any problem. And furthermore, we have not even begun to thoroughly explore all the rich volcanic deposits right here in the Western part of the United States. And if unlimited cheap focus fusion can operate a plasma torch to reduce rocks, dirt, throwaway trash and garbage and everything else to their basic atomic elements for separation……then even the smallest trace amounts of boron could theoretically be extracted economically along with other valuable trace elements. Virtually unlimited energy chasing after more boron ! ! !

Prezactly! Long before Earthside resources are stretched, we’ll be mining the asteroids and Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud for whatever we need, anyhow.

And advanced and convenient as FF is, I somehow doubt it will remain the energy source of choice for a millennium, much less a megayear!

[Brian H]

Lerner wrote: A 5 MW reactor takes about 5 kg of fuel per year. For an experiment, we purchased decaborane for $5 per gram or $5,000/kg. At that price fuel costs would be $25,000/yr or 0.05 cents/kWh. Electricity now costs about 5 cents/kWh.

Actually, these prices are based on the fact that decaborane is sold in very small quantities. It would be much cheaper with mass production. In the 1950�s the government considered using it as a chemical rocket fuel, which takes many tons. I am sure they did not anticipate paying $5 million per ton for it.

Boron is not in short supply. About 500,000 tons are produce per year for a price of about $700/ton. Since each GW of focus fusion power takes a ton per year of boron, the entire current world production of energy would only consume about 10,000 tons per year. If, in the far future, we ran short, we can get boron from seawater. Total resources would last billions of years at current rates.

Just to get that down to the level of the generator, 1 ton at $700 = $0.70/kg, = $3.50 per generator/year, rather than $25,000. You can be sure that FF owners would become bulk purchasers! So the cost per kwh drops to $0.000007 or 0.0007¢ (about 1/1400 ¢) or 1 cent for every 1400 kWh.

[KeithPickering]

Lerner wrote: A 5 MW reactor takes about 5 kg of fuel per year. For an experiment, we purchased decaborane for $5 per gram or $5,000/kg. At that price fuel costs would be $25,000/yr or 0.05 cents/kWh. Electricity now costs about 5 cents/kWh.

Isn’t this rather optimistic in terms of the efficiency of the energy capture and net energy gain?
The good news is, the current price of borax is $900 per short ton, or $1 per kg. But what’s the real net energy we can get from that?

Here’s my computation: Each pB11 reaction nets 8.7 MeV or 1.4e-12 J
Borax (B2O3) has a gram molecular weight of 69.619, meaning 7.18 mol in 5 kg.
So 5 kg of borax contains 8.65e25 boron atoms, of which 6.92e25 are B11 atoms.
Fusing all of those B11 atoms would release 9.64e7 MJ or 2.68e7 kWh.
Since there are 8760 hours in a year, running at a 5kg per year rate would produce at total of 3.06 MW.

But that’s assuming that 100% of the energy produced is captured, and that the device itself uses no energy.

It seems to me that the key economic question is not, Can we achieve net energy gain?, but rather, How Much net energy gain can we achieve? Because first, the device needs to PRODUCE more energy than it uses; second, the device needs to CAPTURE more energy than it uses; and third, only that excess fraction is actually usable and saleable.

Now I can see how the electrons and ions produced might be captured with nearly 100% efficiency (although this too needs to be demonstrated). But 40% of the energy produced is in the form of x-rays, which are supposed to be captured by the layered foil shell. How efficient is that shell? If it’s only 20% efficient (which is comparable to solar PV cells), the device itself will only capture 68% of produced energy. And that would mean that the effective breakeven point is 47% higher than the theoretical breakeven point.

It may turn out that you can get to theoretical breakeven, but not quite to practical breakeven … or just barely over the line, which would mean that the excess salable energy would be a lot more expensive than assumed.

[Phil’s Dad]

I use Borax to clean my drains. :gulp:

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