[Duke Leto]

Transmute wrote: I hope your already aware of the power of methane as a greenhouse gas?)

Quite. My concern about methane trapped in permafrosted swamps threatened by global warming are one of the things impelling me to argue that cutting emissions to zero or negative ASAP is a very good thing.

Transmute wrote: Simple equilibria: CO2 (air) CO2 (water) H2CO3 (water).

I naturally realized that the CO2 equilibrium between air and water was in play, my point was that an imbalance between atmospheric CO2 and sea CO2 would not resolve itself instantaneously, and that removing emissions from the air directly cut out the middle man as it were.

It may be a moot point.

Like I said, let’s take this over to your thread.

[Duke Leto]

Despite my criticism in the other thread we were going at it in, I have to admit, I’m fascinated by the idea.

If you could output Fusion Oil at or about the equivalent of $1.00 per barrel and ~ 25 cents per Fusion Gas gallon, you’d create an enormous amount of wealth out of thin air in the developed West and put a stake through the heart of Big Oil, the House of Saud and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

My only concern is that the mass of discarded hydrocarbons per year must be equal to the consumed Fusion Oil or we don’t have an emissions null scenario.

Anyone have any estimates on the raw molarity of hydrogen and carbon that gets discarded as opposed to the molarity of burned hydrogen and carbon in octane fuel. (That would probably be quadrillions of mols, but rough numbers are fine.)

Based on the efficiency of the conversions we’re talking about, and the need for SOME Nitrate output from the sewage system for fertilizer, if we have a molarity equilibrium, preferably an ongoing credit in favor of plastics production, then your system is golden.

[Duke Leto]

I apologize for not seeing your linked thread, as it does address a lot of the issues I mentioned. I’ll continue the discussion there.

[Duke Leto]

I apologize for my naivete, I’m a philosopher-programmer and not a chemical or environmental engineer. My concerns with reconverting biomass are twofold:

Firstly, I’m not sure there’s enough material in the domesticated biomass to be used as fuel in the emissions null scenario you describe. I understand Ethanol is quite land intensive, and even if we converted all the hydrogen and carbon in all our agricultural, industrial and residential waste, we might not have enough to fuel our present transport needs, and would cut off a source of fertilizer, I think. (Fertilizer is mostly nitrogen and phosphorus by weight, I think.)

Second, in that case, I’m worried that the mass in the existing landfills would need to be cannibalized, which would mean that carbon outside the ecosystem would re-enter it and therefore the atmosphere.

To my understanding, for what it’s worth, pulling carbon from the ocean would only somewhat accelerate the uptake of atmospheric carbon by the ocean, so the lime scenario is less efficient then I’d like to see.

[Duke Leto]

Like I said, if you can synthesize fuel from atmospheric CO2 and water, then you’re not digging up trash fuelizing it and re-releasing it into the atmosphere. The optimal thing would be to make extra oil and pour it back down the wells, trapping the carbon back in the geosphere where it originally came from.

[Duke Leto]

You may well be right Transmute, but I’d much prefer to pull some CO2 out of the atmosphere for a certain period after the emissions stop to put the breaks on warming.

[Duke Leto]

Or better still, just atmospheric CO2 and water?

[Duke Leto]

Duke Leto wrote: You raise an interesting question though, how much WOULD it cost to synthesize Oil and Gasoline with a DPF running the energy conversion?

And could it be done using only carbon taken from the existing biological cycle?

[Duke Leto]

You raise an interesting question though, how much WOULD it cost to synthesize Oil and Gasoline with a DPF running the energy conversion?

[Duke Leto]

Transmute wrote: Why not just make oil out of waste using fusion power to provide heat and hydrogen and run conventional aircraft off of it with no infrastructure change?

Emissions is my worry.

[Duke Leto]

1) I’m not sure that the Helium stream would provide thrust with anything close to the efficiency that it provides deceleration electricity, since ion drives provde minimal constant acceleration over long distances.

2) I also gather from your description that the alpha stream would be going through the fan system, that would mean that the reactor must be located in the center. I think this would mean that:

a) It would be much more difficult to maintain the needed pressure of the Hydrogen-Boron fuel.
b) You would be pouring unspent fuel into the atmosphere or whereever at an alarming rate, and thus wasting Boron.
c) You’d be shooting fully energized ionizing alpha particles into the environment, which I believe is nastier then Gamma.

I’ll defer to your judgement on these points, since I don’t have a Nuclear background.

Keep in mind I’m looking to have engines that fit into existing vehicles without too much fuss, not next generation machines.

Man this looks terrible without list tags.

[Duke Leto]

Jolly Roger wrote:
Does this mean that if a reactor/engine system had an efficiency higher than ~6% a Focus-Fusion-powered 747 could fly? If not, why not?

Oh that’s easy. Just use the electricity to run high voltage/high temperature electrolysis of a saline solution at or close to the point near the jet engines that are going to burn the Hydrogen/Oxygen mix. About the same overall weight, a little more thrust and the fuel isn’t explosive outside the engines.

[Duke Leto]

Also, we’re ranging OT, anyone have any thoughts on the feasibility of the subterranean aquaculture/horticulture system I outlined?

Anyone know anything about the magnitude of available volume of mining space?

More on average proportions of tunnels, and the danger of structiral weaknesses? Remember that ideally most of the work would be done by surface stations, and that the workforce would enter the tunnels only at seedtime and harvest or for routine maintenance, a catastrophic collapse would most likely just take out some crops or fishies.

If heavy metals and residual contaminants are a risk how hard would it be to purge them from the desired regions and create a environmental sealant on the tunnel walls?

What high profit crops suitable to the appropriate spaces? Annuals that can be squeezed into three artificial growing seasons would be best, alternately, crops where the delivery cost is an important component of the end-consumer cost and closer proximity to the final market would make a big difference.

If one were particularly amoral and/or libertarian, narcotic crops in a post-Drug War world would be an obvious choice.

Salmon you could probably trick into their spawning pattern by getting them to swim up from growing tunnels at the bottom to spawning tunnels near the apex, feeding into lights and currents for the purposes of their insticts, maybe with continually decreasing water levels to assist.

I think Tuna have been domesticated and Cod would be good, but you’d have to do some sleight of habd with currents and light levels to replicate their normal life cycles.

MOST important, is there a process to convert excess biological waste to an organically inert carbonized form and toss it back into the deepest shafts?

Thoughts? Scoffs? Flames?

Kudos are the least useful.

[Duke Leto]

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/91/

That was more or less the consensus opinion in my thread on DPF miniturization.

I’m more worried about radiation shielding then scaling the decelerator or the capacitor bank for several reasons:

1) Anyone in close contact with the things will be a bit more worried about radiation then anything else.

2) I don’t think much work has been done on capacitor miniturization as compared to transistor miniturization because there hasn’t been a need to do it. There’s probably a lot of potential approaches to mega-capacitor scaling that simply haven’t had the research money thrown at them.

3) It seems to me there are 2 ways around the decelerator problem in a standard motor vehicle:
a) Lay it out parallel to the transmission where the exaust no longer needs to be.
b) Increase the intensity of the magnetic field proportional to the needed decrease in length.

My primary concern about the need for DPFs retrofitted in existing motor vehicles is cultural. Our existing motor vehicles have a far greater range then the present electric vehicles. People are going to resist the loss of the road trip.

Much more importantly is the existing infrastructure. We can probably slap a DPF on existing Diesel Electric freight locomotives without any problem, it’s the trucks that worry me. Large scale construction equipment can probably be powered from medium range cables onsite, but self contained plants would add a lot of mobility.

[Duke Leto]

Oh, I haven’t forgotten Peak Oil. That’s why my other thread was on the feasibility of a scaled down version of the device to serve as the power plant of an electric car. Preferably one where both the device and electric motor could fit neatly into the volume where the combustion engine used to be in an existing car.

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