scaleablity of a reactor?

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote:

With regard to the scalability question:
It would probably be farsighted to try to fit one of these power units into a containerized cargo unit right at the beginning of the design phase. They might need outriggers to contain shielding water (mainly for neutrons.) I’ve seen many references in the forums to these units being “about the size of semi trailers”. Well, maybe we should endevor to make them exactly the size of those modular trailers. They would sure be easy to transport that way.

That standardized form factor would be a huge plus for shipping FF around the world. But a meter of water in all directions is a lot of mass, volume, and steel that isn’t absolutely required, as thinner, lighter shielding materials might give us a torpedo-like form factor.

This in turn could possibly fit 4 or more reactors into the container, along with the control room.
There is no intention of shipping the reactor with the water! :bug: 😆

It is unnecessary until the unit is “switched on”, in any case. Nothing in the FF generator is inherently radioactive. It would only be necessary for transport situations if it was being used as the power source.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

With regard to the scalability question:
It would probably be farsighted to try to fit one of these power units into a containerized cargo unit right at the beginning of the design phase. They might need outriggers to contain shielding water (mainly for neutrons.) I’ve seen many references in the forums to these units being “about the size of semi trailers”. Well, maybe we should endevor to make them exactly the size of those modular trailers. They would sure be easy to transport that way.

That standardized form factor would be a huge plus for shipping FF around the world. But a meter of water in all directions is a lot of mass, volume, and steel that isn’t absolutely required, as thinner, lighter shielding materials might give us a torpedo-like form factor.

This in turn could possibly fit 4 or more reactors into the container, along with the control room.
There is no intention of shipping the reactor with the water! :bug: 😆

It is unnecessary until the unit is “switched on”, in any case. Nothing in the FF generator is inherently radioactive. It would only be necessary for transport situations if it was being used as the power source.

Brian, you’re absolutely right- as long as you restrict the choice of primary shielding material to water. I don’t. Assuming a 1 foot FF core diameter, a meter of water shielding in all directions requires a diameter of just under 8 feet, which does not leave much clearance in a semi trailer. It may very likely be overweight, too, except for specially licensed oilfield trailers that can carry 40 tons. Sooooo, once you ship it halfway across the Sahara, how do you plan to fill it? :bug: 😆

But you just keep thinking inside the box, my friend, and my Delta-Vee conscious designs will eat your lunch by every metric.

[JimmyT]

Aeronaut wrote:

With regard to the scalability question:
It would probably be farsighted to try to fit one of these power units into a containerized cargo unit right at the beginning of the design phase. They might need outriggers to contain shielding water (mainly for neutrons.) I’ve seen many references in the forums to these units being “about the size of semi trailers”. Well, maybe we should endevor to make them exactly the size of those modular trailers. They would sure be easy to transport that way.

That standardized form factor would be a huge plus for shipping FF around the world. But a meter of water in all directions is a lot of mass, volume, and steel that isn’t absolutely required, as thinner, lighter shielding materials might give us a torpedo-like form factor.

This in turn could possibly fit 4 or more reactors into the container, along with the control room.
There is no intention of shipping the reactor with the water! :bug: 😆

It is unnecessary until the unit is “switched on”, in any case. Nothing in the FF generator is inherently radioactive. It would only be necessary for transport situations if it was being used as the power source.

Brian, you’re absolutely right- as long as you restrict the choice of primary shielding material to water. I don’t. Assuming a 1 foot FF core diameter, a meter of water shielding in all directions requires a diameter of just under 8 feet, which does not leave much clearance in a semi trailer. It may very likely be overweight, too, except for specially licensed oilfield trailers that can carry 40 tons. Sooooo, once you ship it halfway across the Sahara, how do you plan to fill it? :bug: 😆

But you just keep thinking inside the box, my friend, and my Delta-Vee conscious designs will eat your lunch by every metric.

Yeah Brian,

The very idea that you could come up with lots of water in a desert envroment, much less than you would need to… say put out an oil well fire. Oh, wait a minute. We did that right?

[Aeronaut]

Jimmy, if you’re thinking about Red Adair, he huffed, and he puffed, and he blew it out with a bunch of high explosives.

I went through Eric’s video again over the last 4 hours, then copied & pasted the entire energy harvesting system into Photoshop 6 and started taking “measurements” by the clues that Eric gave along with the assumption that the drawing was more about clarity than scale. So I pulled some numbers out of thin air:

X-ray collector diameter, ~3′ or more. (original “scaling” suggested 13′, which I consider unacceptable for an aerospace market.
Baseplate diameter (electrode mounting plate) ~9 inches;
Electrode lengths ~7″;
Electrode to drift tube ~7″;
Drift Tube/Solenoid, guess 4′ (May be twice as long as needed to reach 90% eff.)
Missing Gyrotron to couple particle beam to solenoid, ~2′ (resembles a length of wave guide)

Length overall, ~7 or 8 feet
Minimum diameter, ~1 foot, using hydrogenated plastic shielding (again, it’s a guess- figure 2 to 3 feet more realistic)
Min diameter to approach max theoretical efficiency, ~6 feet.
Shielded weight, (another guess), under 250 pounds, without capacitors.

This will fit easily in a high bypass turbofan powered airliner engine nacelle.

Biggest challenge, passing X-rays for recovery while blocking neutrons.

[Aeronaut]

Hmm… Learned some neat terms like HVT and TVT this afternoon. After pretty much dismissing pure hydrogen, it looks like I’m stuck with the mass, although lead will give a smaller package than water or concrete.

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

Your leaving out the high voltage/high current capacitors and power control/conditioning equipment (heavy stuff). While it would not have to be in the “engine nacelle”, it would need to be aboard…..

Regarding the prior discussion of heat pumps, so what if they are efficent. If FF is even close to as inexpensive as this board assumes, the cost of power will be so cheap that the cost of the heat pump will never be paid back vs very cheap resistance heating. Energy efficency is not a religion, it is an engineering/economic trade-off.

A Prius will never save me enough in gas vs my Corolla to make it worth paying the difference. And a Volkswagen turbo diesel is just as green, more so if you burn bio-diesel fuel. About the same price, and more fun to drive too.

Rematog

[Rematog]

And regarding spacecraft…… a high thrust space craft in the wrong hands would be a “weapon of mass distruction”. Google “Project Thor” or “brilliant pebbles”.

[Aeronaut]

Rematog wrote: Aeronaut,

Your leaving out the high voltage/high current capacitors and power control/conditioning equipment (heavy stuff). While it would not have to be in the “engine nacelle”, it would need to be aboard…..

Regarding the prior discussion of heat pumps, so what if they are efficent. If FF is even close to as inexpensive as this board assumes, the cost of power will be so cheap that the cost of the heat pump will never be paid back vs very cheap resistance heating. Energy efficency is not a religion, it is an engineering/economic trade-off.

A Prius will never save me enough in gas vs my Corolla to make it worth paying the difference. And a Volkswagen turbo diesel is just as green, more so if you burn bio-diesel fuel. About the same price, and more fun to drive too.

Rematog

Hopefully the caps really can be used to power multiple reactors. Since nobody’s gone into any detail about the power conditioning black boxes, I can only hope they can become “communal property” for at least 50 FF power blocks. In a matrix like that, a few more power conditioning modules could even be attractive from a structural standpoint. Btw- how tall are your ceilings?

Boilers are one of those maybe markets that is already geared to making and selling expensive water heaters to an energy-conscious (cost of steam) market. In that particular type of application, I believe FF would be a natural, with or without net electric output.

I hear you about the cars’ payoff. Since I can squeeze 30+ mpg out of my paid off ’00 Focus, why even think about a new car’s payments, including going back to full coverage insurance? The whole MPG “issue” is a non-starter with me.

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote:

Aeronaut,

Your leaving out the high voltage/high current capacitors and power control/conditioning equipment (heavy stuff). While it would not have to be in the “engine nacelle”, it would need to be aboard…..

Regarding the prior discussion of heat pumps, so what if they are efficent. If FF is even close to as inexpensive as this board assumes, the cost of power will be so cheap that the cost of the heat pump will never be paid back vs very cheap resistance heating. Energy efficency is not a religion, it is an engineering/economic trade-off.

A Prius will never save me enough in gas vs my Corolla to make it worth paying the difference. And a Volkswagen turbo diesel is just as green, more so if you burn bio-diesel fuel. About the same price, and more fun to drive too.

Rematog

Hopefully the caps really can be used to power multiple reactors. Since nobody’s gone into any detail about the power conditioning black boxes, I can only hope they can become “communal property” for at least 50 FF power blocks. In a matrix like that, a few more power conditioning modules could even be attractive from a structural standpoint. Btw- how tall are your ceilings?

Boilers are one of those maybe markets that is already geared to making and selling expensive water heaters to an energy-conscious (cost of steam) market. In that particular type of application, I believe FF would be a natural, with or without net electric output.

I hear you about the cars’ payoff. Since I can squeeze 30+ mpg out of my paid off ’00 Focus, why even think about a new car’s payments, including going back to full coverage insurance? The whole MPG “issue” is a non-starter with me.

It’s probably not possible to recover and use waste heat as cheaply as simply running a few more resistance heaters with FF electric output, as Rematog says. The hardware cost is just prohibitive.

As for the MPG thing, it all depends on the scale. E.g.: the TeslaMotors Roadster (current) and 5+2 passenger Model S sport sedan (2011) are pure BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles) which, based on a rough cost-conversion equation, get about 200-250 MPG equivalent. That (plus the absence of maintenance costs for the vastly simplified power train and motor), makes a $50,000 Model S lease+running cost equivalent to a $30,000 ICE vehicle lease+running cost – while providing a MUCH better ride and product.

So the numbers matter.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

Aeronaut,

Your leaving out the high voltage/high current capacitors and power control/conditioning equipment (heavy stuff). While it would not have to be in the “engine nacelle”, it would need to be aboard…..

Regarding the prior discussion of heat pumps, so what if they are efficent. If FF is even close to as inexpensive as this board assumes, the cost of power will be so cheap that the cost of the heat pump will never be paid back vs very cheap resistance heating. Energy efficency is not a religion, it is an engineering/economic trade-off.

A Prius will never save me enough in gas vs my Corolla to make it worth paying the difference. And a Volkswagen turbo diesel is just as green, more so if you burn bio-diesel fuel. About the same price, and more fun to drive too.

Rematog

Hopefully the caps really can be used to power multiple reactors. Since nobody’s gone into any detail about the power conditioning black boxes, I can only hope they can become “communal property” for at least 50 FF power blocks. In a matrix like that, a few more power conditioning modules could even be attractive from a structural standpoint. Btw- how tall are your ceilings?

Boilers are one of those maybe markets that is already geared to making and selling expensive water heaters to an energy-conscious (cost of steam) market. In that particular type of application, I believe FF would be a natural, with or without net electric output.

I hear you about the cars’ payoff. Since I can squeeze 30+ mpg out of my paid off ’00 Focus, why even think about a new car’s payments, including going back to full coverage insurance? The whole MPG “issue” is a non-starter with me.

It’s probably not possible to recover and use waste heat as cheaply as simply running a few more resistance heaters with FF electric output, as Rematog says. The hardware cost is just prohibitive.

As for the MPG thing, it all depends on the scale. E.g.: the TeslaMotors Roadster (current) and 5+2 passenger Model S sport sedan (2011) are pure BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles) which, based on a rough cost-conversion equation, get about 200-250 MPG equivalent. That (plus the absence of maintenance costs for the vastly simplified power train and motor), makes a $50,000 Model S lease+running cost equivalent to a $30,000 ICE vehicle lease+running cost – while providing a MUCH better ride and product.

So the numbers matter.

Gentlemen- since all we have at this point is “waste” heat, why not sell that COP directly? If nothing else, we would have the world’s first practical fusion power plant. That distinction could break FF out of the pack. Imagine the headline: Focus Fusion Delivers Useful Energy While Big Science Scratches Head

[Rematog]

Brian,

Did you take into account the cost/lifespan of the battery pack? After what, 3-5 years, you will need a new one. My 2001 S-10 does not need a new gas tank yet, and if it did, it would cost a lot less then the >$10K figure I’ve seen as GM’s cost for the Chevy Volt’s battery pack (and I doubt they’d sell it at cost :-{O

Rematog

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

When you talk about this, I get the idea you are picturing typical power conditioning etc. equipment. Remember, we are talking about a 5MW machine, that’s 5000 KVA…..oh and thats just the Net output. Just a quick thought, if you are getting 42% net (I think I’ve seen this figure used), then:

5000KVA / 42% = 11,900 KVA Gross, So, 6,900 KVA is thus the input power. I don’t know what voltage we’re looking at, but a typical industrial voltage is 480V. So 11,900 KVA gross is abot 24,790 amps at 480 V.

Hmm…. that’s got to be wrong, no way an electrode would survive that amperage. Say you’re using 10,000 Volt (10Kv) power, so thats 11,900 KVA / 10 KV = 1,190 amps. You get the picture.

I’ve seen the cables used for a 2000 HP 3 phase 6,900 V motor. That requires over 200 amps and the three cables are wrist thick (lots of insulation on a 6,900 volt cable). (2000 HP / .75 Hp/kw /6.9Kv / Square root of 3 (3 phase AC) /95% (eff) = 235 amps)

Eric, are my back of the envelope calc. of the net, gross and input powers for a FF module in the ball park?

Rematog

[Aeronaut]

Rematog wrote: Aeronaut,

When you talk about this, I get the idea you are picturing typical power conditioning etc. equipment. Remember, we are talking about a 5MW machine, that’s 5000 KVA…..oh and thats just the Net output. Just a quick thought, if you are getting 42% net (I think I’ve seen this figure used), then:

5000KVA / 42% = 11,900 KVA Gross, So, 6,900 KVA is thus the input power. I don’t know what voltage we’re looking at, but a typical industrial voltage is 480V. So 11,900 KVA gross is abot 25 amps at 480 V.

Eric, is my back of the envelope calc. in the ball park?

Rematog

What I’m hoping for is at least 13.2 kV so we can use off-the-shelf local transmission equipment. The quick circuit sketch would be a bank of “chopper” switches with existing caps and coils for wave shaping. This could also turn the output cap bank’s DC into polyphase AC.

Yes, the video says 42% thermodynamic efficiency. I’m interpreting that as 58% of the energy released is not available for generating electricity. The first places I’d look for it would be radiation and heat.

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

My bad…. you’ve quoted my un-proofed post. I’d divided 11,900 Kva by 480V, instead of the correct 0.48 Kv so that should have read 25,000 amps… I’ve corrected my post now.

At your desired 13.2 Kv, that would be about 900 Amps.

Yes, I am ignoring power factor or AC power correction.

Rematog

[Aeronaut]

Rematog wrote: Aeronaut,

My bad…. you’ve quoted my un-proofed post. I’d divided 11,900 Kva by 480V, instead of the correct 0.48 Kv so that should have read 25,000 amps… I’ve corrected my post now.

At your desired 13.2 Kv, that would be about 900 Amps.

Yes, I am ignoring power factor or AC power correction.

Rematog

Oops- I saw the updated post after I’d posted. Who says we need to send all the current down one line? Especially if we’re distributing 3 phase to part of a large city, say, powering 25 local transformer yards? My intent was to produce electricity directly at a transmission voltage (the higher the better) to make the price of the transmission transformer more palatable.

[Author]

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