turn heat into electricity

[Transmute]

AaronB,

Well all right, murderess urges fading, hugging urges returning. All I ask for is a simple explanation on how the x-ray converter will work, it does not need to be detailed: its already outside of my field. I doubt anyone is going to read your vague explanation and slam a patent before yours get through. Now here a thing I don’t get: if 98% of your input energy comes out as a ion beam and another 57% input energy comes out as x-rays (100% in, 155% out right?) why is it debatable what energy conversion technique you’ll need to be energy positive: neither will do alone, your going to need to extract useful amounts of energy out of both the x-rays (be it directly or indirectly) and the ion beam, to make net energy positive production when all the inefficiencies are cut out.

texaslabrat,

I love you to, is that enough sunshine and sprinkles for you? If you want some positive points: I don’t think there a scam: I’m pretty sure they believe what there doing and the lack of good private investing tells me that they are nerdy scientist that lack the marketing and confidence building skills of a con artist. To top it off they have been so very open: good for academia types, but a no-no for scamer types… except on how the x-ray converter thing works that got me worried.

[texaslabrat]

Heh..more than enough…I feel all tingly inside now :p But seriously…you have some valid concerns and I wonder about the same things. I think we’ll all feel a lot better once the patent info goes public and we can “peek under the hood” to see what the master plan is all about.

[pktanz]

wow, very interesting thread!

[Brian H]

Two points:
1) there is comparatively little waste heat; it is mostly retained to power the plasma itself. This is NOT a heat engine.

2) the X-rays are not especially “hard”; their energy range has been taken into account in the shielding/conversion design, such that they generate electricity themselves as they transit the layers of containment.

So all this discussion has been essentially about nothing important. Old news.

[Transmute]

Well all those x-rays will turn to heat if they are not converted. This thread is a little old has I have now seen basic diagrams which show a vacuumed shell arrangement of metal foil which gives me a basic idea of how it works (electrons get knocked off, absorbed by a positive plate, circuit between the negative plate and positive plate) but I would still like a explanation at detail of how 80% efficiency is expected.

[Brian H]

Transmute wrote: Well all those x-rays will turn to heat if they are not converted. This thread is a little old has I have now seen basic diagrams which show a vacuumed shell arrangement of metal foil which gives me a basic idea of how it works (electrons get knocked off, absorbed by a positive plate, circuit between the negative plate and positive plate) but I would still like a explanation at detail of how 80% efficiency is expected.

Lotsa appropriately chosen foils. Thousands! More if needed! Lay it on! 😉

Heat being the bottom of the energy rung, you can only extract electricity if you’ve got enough of a thermodynamic “slope” (temperature gradient that you can exploit). Heat wants to flow and average out everywhere. Identify a hot spot and a cold spot and make the heat do work trying to get from A to B. I don’t see any particular residual hotspots in the reactor that could be exploited, but maybe they could be engineered in, if it was worth it.

[Rematog]

Heat is a GOOD thing.

Actually, I can see valuable uses for the heat energy of the X-rays

[Rematog]

I’ve thought a little more about the use of a Focus Fusion Power Block as a process steam boiler.

If the X-ray energy converter could be designed to have a partial electrical conversion, just enough to make the unit self generate the electrical power needed for it’s own operation, then from my previous post, the 8,010 net (95% conversion) of the X-ray portion of the output would need to have 1,745 kw of electrical output before the “boiler” portion.

This would leave 6,265 kw of useful thermal energy(at 95% of total X-ray energy captured). This is 21.4 MBtu/hr, (roughtly 21k lb/hr of steam, depending on feedwater and steam conditions) which if provided by coal at 90% boiler eff. would require burning 1 ton of good coal per hour (12,000 Btu/lb, a good grade of bituminous, more is western coal (PRB) is burned), or about 25k scf of natural gas per hour.

This is not large by industrial standards. I think that the total CURRENT (at today’s energy prices) US demand for Focus Fusion power blocks would easily be double, likely triple, the 200,000 units previously mentioned to meet current electric demand. This is before added increase demand due to lower prices and the increase due to new uses (desalination, etc).

So I would be un-surprised to see a demand of almost 1 million Focus fusion units (if 5MW size) within 10 year (in the US alone!!!). This makes me wonder if labor to operate and maintain these units is available. This would certainly be a growth industry, lol.

[JimmyT]

Exposure to electromagnetic radiation does not make things radioactive. Only exposure to particulate radiation (mostly neutrons) will do that. Otherwise when we “nuke” popcorn in the microwave oven we would have real problems.
Seriously though, this is true regardless of the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation, from radio-waves all the way up to gamma rays. (Yeah, I know about Hafnium. There is always an exception isn’t there?)

Concerning waste heat: Don’t forget the conversion efficiency of the input pulse to the plasmoid. I think Uber Lerner is using an efficiency for this step of 50%. This is a figure he has garnered from other research groups which have achieved this comparatively high efficiency; and not merely a number he pulled out of his, er.. I mean …. the air. Thus far though LPP has only achieved 0.01% efficiency in this step, (this in his Texas experiment). Lets hope for conversion efficiencys of 70% plus in this step as well; once our complete bag of tricks is applied.

[Rematog]

Jimmy,

I assume this input efficiency was taken into account when the ion beam output of .98*input energy and X-ray output of 0.57*input energy numbers were calculated. Otherwise the reaction is not even close be break-even.

If it was taken into account, them my numbers add-up as well.

If not, we might as well be arguing Star Wars vs Star Trek…….

PS: Can anyone direct me to any “Official” statements regarding power block size and cost estimates. One factor that is critical is what is included in the “cost”. Is it the cost of a Power Block leaving a factory where it is made (FOB Factory) or is the the cost of a Power Block installed at a site with all the “fix-ens”.

PPS: I reran my calcs for a 20MW power block requiring the exact same maintenance labor, and an all in installed cost of only $500k. This brought the busbar cost of power down to $1.77/MW-hr. Note, this gives a cost of about 25% that as I got when using 5 MW (1/4 the power) for $1,000k (twice the capital cost). In other words, Operations and Maintenance expense would still be significant. For the 20MW case, my estimate showed O&M being 78% of the cost of power. So any serious cost estimate needs to have a much better breakdown of maintenance needs than what I’ve found from my readings of this forum and listening of Mr. Lerner’s Google talk.

Please, do not take this to mean that I am casting dispersions on Focus Fusion, Mr. Lerner or how important a break though Focus Fusion, or any similar low cost energy tech. would be. I’m just saying accurate power costs will require much more data than I’ve seen. And these costs need to include all the costs of actually building and operating the equipment.

Rematog

[Brian H]

Rematog wrote: Jimmy,

…

PS: Can anyone direct me to any “Official” statements regarding power block size and cost estimates. One factor that is critical is what is included in the “cost”. Is it the cost of a Power Block leaving a factory where it is made (FOB Factory) or is the the cost of a Power Block installed at a site with all the “fix-ens”.

PPS: I reran my calcs for a 20MW power block requiring the exact same maintenance labor, and an all in installed cost of only $500k. This brought the busbar cost of power down to $1.77/MW-hr. Note, this gives a cost of about 25% that as I got when using 5 MW (1/4 the power) for $1,000k (twice the capital cost). …
And these costs need to include all the costs of actually building and operating the equipment.

Rematog

From the LPP site,
“More powerful units can be designed by accelerating the pulse repetition rate, although there are limitations due to the amount of waste heat that can be removed from such a small device. It is likely that units larger than 20MW will be formed by simply stacking smaller units together, with approximately the same cost per kW of generated power.”

The material and construction differences are comparatively miniscule; the $300, 000 estimate given by EL is all-in, Power Block, housing, etc. So your $500,000 estimate is quite conservative. As far as I can tell, only the cooling cycle would need to be ramped up much.

The bottom line invariance you observed is because the capital cost of the units up front is a trivial proportion of the cost stream, in the end. So is fuel. Maintenance and labor is the great bulk of the total, and this is not significantly different for 5MW or 20MW units: thus your

[Brian H]

P.S.
You notice that the “cooling cycle” is treated as a straight heat-dump operation. If you wanted to tack on some kind of conventional or high-techy power-extraction device at the exterior part of that coolant loop, it might cut net costs further. But I doubt it; the economics of conventional power generation are so poor by comparison that it would be putting gumboots on a duck.

As texaslabrat noted way back when, “However, before going too far down that road, we have to remember that one of the great advantages of focus fusion is the simplicity factor and lack of maintenance requirements and capital cost that traditional power plants require. Adding mechanical heat-engine cogeneration based on traditional cycles sort of defeats the purpose in my view. It

[Rematog]

Brian H. You state that $300K has been given as an “all in figure”. I’ve seen miss-understandings regarding what was included or was not included in prices.

I’ve spent over 25 years working with industrial equipment, including power supplies. Electrical and control equipment is expensive. Motor control centers, transformers, conduit, cables, etc rated from 480V to 13Kv cost serious money. I am certain output power from a 5 to 20 MW power block would be at no less then 4160V, more likely 13Kv, just to keep the cost of copper cables or bus bars down (>V = <A).

I worked up an admittedly very rough calculation of what I’d estimate (technical term is SWAG: Silly Wild Ass Guess) the cost to be for various component parts. Things like reactor vessel and X-ray power converter area really guess. Other items are likely low end, based on my experience.

I came up, to my surprise, at just over $300k for materials and labor to factory fabricate a power block. But, that is with zero cost for Overhead and Profit. Anyone making something has overhead costs (factory building, insurance, management, design) and will certainly need to make a profit. Allowing $100k for O&P takes the FOB Factory price to about $400K.

If 100 modules (assumed to be 20MW) are placed on an existing site (Brown Field development) then I estimated the site installation costs to be $170k per module. This includes things like shipping, field labor, project design, a new control room, etc.

Finally, if the project is a new development (Green Field) then I’d allow anther $250K per module for things like land, civil (grading and roads) and the big ticket item, the transmission substation (to raise the entire facilities output to transmission voltage, provide power conditioning, control and metering).

So, I came up with $575k per module for Brown Field and $825K for Green Field. My judgement is that all of these are low end estimates, i.e., the cost will be this much or more. I would guess more, likely double.

Do not think for a second that this means that I don’t realize that even at ten times my estimate, this would still be very cheap power. I know, from recent professional experience,what a new coal fire plant would cost, roughly $1,500 per kw capital cost, then you have to buy coal. Roughly 1 lb of coal for every KW-hr. If you do the math, to generate the power that a hundred 20MW modules would, you’d need to burn roughly 10 barge loads, or three trains of 73 cars each, EVERY DAY. This cost a lot more that the numbers we are tossing around in this forum.

[Rematog]

My estimate. I am very sorry about the readability. I’ve yet to find a way to get this forum to format tables or allow posting files.

Rematog

Power Block Fabrication
Controls $10,000 PLC with local screen
Building $20,000 Prefab building, skid mounted
Cables, conduit, etc $20,000 power and control
MCC, Low voltage xformer $20,000 power distribution, 480V aux power
Solid State Power Controls $50,000 specialized high speed switching (to pulse reactor)
Capacitors, power supply $50,000 SWAG
HV xformer, disconnects $20,000 Output step up, required isolation devices.
Reactor Vessel $5,000 SWAG
Discharge Electrodes $5,000 SWAG
Vacuum pump $5,000 SWAG
Fuel system $5,000 SWAG
Ion beam power converter $10,000 SWAG
X-ray power converter $20,000 SWAG
Shielding $20,000 SWAG
Radiation detectors, other sensors $10,000 SWAG
Fabrication Labor $36,000 1200 $30.00 30 man-weeks @ 40 hr/wk
Overhead and Profit $100,000 Very arguable number
–
$406,000
Site Work, Installation
Foundation $20,000 excavation, fill, forms, rebar and mud, incs labor
Site Work (civil, fences, roads) $5,000 $500,000 Additions and changes
Control Room, etc $50,000 $5,000,000 Oversight for all system, DCS and Datalogging
Installation Labor $50,000 1000 $50.00 20 man-weeks @ 50 hr/wk (typ field work)
Shipping $5,000 for Power Block
Interconnection Cables $20,000 Power to transmission transformer yard
Engineering, supervision $10,000 $1,000,000
Rental Equipment $10,000
–
$170,000

Site Cost, New Development
Land $5,000 1/2 acre @ $10k/acre
Site Work (civil, fences, roads) $20,000 $2,000,000
Other Site Buildings $25,000 $2,500,000 Offices, maint, warehouse
Transformer Yard $200,000 $20,000,000
–
$250,000

Brown Field Cost $576,000
Green Field Cost $826,000

[Transmute]

If the reactors can pump out waste heat as 120C steam/hot water it could be sold as cogen heat for heating (and cooling through absorption heat pumps) local buildings. Imagine a large city block that gets its electrical power and its hot water from one reactor.

[Author]

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