[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”.

[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]

Brian,

You’re right that the need to stay competitive will require the US and Europe to adopt FF when it is commercially available. And that will put pressure on the regulatory agencies and reduce (not eliminate) the requirements they place on siteing FF modules.

The case you mentioned, remote areas, high cost is due to two factors. First, most of these type of small power systems are using a diesel engine as prime mover. So fuel and engine maintenance costs, per Kw, are high. Second, the economy of scale factor. A small power company, like a “mom and pop” store, would have a large labor cost compared to it’s sales, resulting in higher prices.

FF would, for larger remote areas, would be possible. For the smaller ones, the cost of the FF generator ($1 million or so installed) would be large compared to the cost of say a 500 hp diesel gen-set. And the service needs would be difficult to supply to a remote area. So, I’d guess these small remote places wouldn’t be in the first round of adapters. But small cities would be. Another example would be islands. In both cases, you still have to keep an electrical distribution system working as well.

I’ve always agreed that FF, if it becomes commercial, would be quickly adapted. The difference is that I’ve maintained two things:

1). The rapid deployment of FF is not contingent on it being used in a highly distributed manner (individual buildings, shopping mall, neighborhoods, etc). This is counter indicated by both the economic and regulatory real world. I’ve posted my reasons for this before, but to summarize briefly:

Economics: The capital cost would be less, per module, to install many on the same site. Existing power plants would offer additional savings by re-using some of the existing faculties (site, cooling, buildings etc). The maintenance costs, per module would be greatly less on a large site, as no travel time and costs (trucks, fuel etc) would be involved. I’m assuming all pay their people the same wages.

Regulatory: The modules, being a nuclear reactor which generates X-rays, will require licenses, and in my judgment, for the first 10-20 years, this license would require security and on-site supervision. Also, the NIMBY factor will prevent them from being placed in urban (or suburban) locations.

2) The definition of quickly is not 2-3 years, but 10-20 years. Yes, first generation (pun intended) FF modules will begin rolling out of factories 6-9 months after licenses are granted. Production rates will increase rapidly and be at high levels in 2-3 years.

But, lets look at how many will be needed. In the US alone, based on DOE figures for 2007, Coal, Oil, Gas and Nuclear (fission) plants totaling 956,250 MW were installed, out of a total installed capacity of 1,087,791 MW (hydro, wind, solar, biomass being the other types). If capacity growth of just 2% on average is calculated then the additional generation for 20 years from say, 2010 to 2029 is 527,330 MW (remember to start in 2007, then look at 2010 to 2029). By dividing by 5 MW per module, this yields a total demand for FF modules, for electric power alone, of 296,716 modules. This means production, installation and commissioning of 15,000 modules per year. If you project 4% growth (remember, power is getting cheaper, so demand goes up), and replace all power generation with FF, then this goes up to 515,595 modules, or over 25,000 per year.

On second though, 10 years after full scale production for complete replacement of existing generation might be achievable. That would still only require a total investment of around $50 billion per year (at $1M / module), a doable number.

So Eric, when can I buy a license?

[Rematog]

Red Tape – Danger Barricade – Do Not Cross
Yellow Tape – Caution – Check for hazards
Black Tape – Electrical Tape – Keeps the smoke in the wires…
Grey Tape – Duck Tape – Holds it all together……

[Rematog]

Of course, you will need a license from the NRC and State regulator’s to operate a nuclear fusion reactor. As a powerful source of X-rays, it would be dangerous in the wrong hands or improperly built and operated. And I’d guess that the ion beam would be of some concern.

Maybe Eric or someone else with the physic’s knowledge could address that.

Either way, I’m sure some licensing would be required. We have to get a license to hold any radioactive source or a commerical x-ray analyzer.

Rematog

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

The reason I started the post was to point out, with the cooling system as an example, that a FF power module would need significant “external” or site costs, even (or especially) in a distributed application. There seemed, to me, to be a tendency on the board to assume that you would be able to buy a 5 MW Module for the claimed $500k and that would be the full cost of the installation. My point was that the full cost would be greatly more when you included land, foundations, roads, security, controls, power in/out, cooling, freight, etc.

You are right, that a FF unit could provide usable heat. In fact I’ve posted that one use of FF would be a specially designed FF “Boiler” with no X-ray to electric power conversion. The X-ray’s could be captured by a heat sink that would convert the X-ray’s energy into higher temperature heat, for uses such as process steam for use in an industrial plant. If I understand the energy balance, the ion beam would provide almost breakeven power. Note that I not talking about FF in a commerical/residential heating role, but in that of providing heat in an industrial setting that would not be near population centers. I steadfastly maintain that distrubuted applications will be further down the road (20+ years to my mind) then is commonly thought by this board.

[Rematog]

From the above projection, just to replace the predicted coal fired electric power generation world wide would require 476,800 Focus Fusion Modules of 5 MW capacity. Add to this nuclear fission, oil and gas fire generation, plus additional load growth due to falling energy prices (I’d assume electric power is a somewhat “elastic” comodity, with demand increasing with decreases in price), and you can see that in the first 10 years of Focus Fusion, the world market would easly absorb 1 Million Focus Fusion Modules.

At $1 Million per module, installed cost, that is a $ 1 Trillion dollar market. I’d call this a growth industry.

[Rematog]

FOR THE BOARDS CONSIDERATION

Power Engineer – Focus On Coal

Coal-fired power plants capacity to grow by 35 per cent in next 10 years
World coal-fired power plant capacity will grow from 1,759,000 MW in 2010 to 2,384,000 MW in 2020. Some 80,000 MW will be replaced. So there will be 705,000 MW of new coal-fired boilers built. The annual new boiler sales will average 70,000 MW. The annual investment will be $140 billion.

These are the most recent forecasts in Coal-fired Boilers: World Analysis and Forecast published by the McIlvaine Company.

Coal-fired power in Asia will rise to 1,464,000 MW in 2020 up from 918,000 MW this year. This will account for an increase in CO2 of 2.6 billion tons.

So even if the US and Europe were to cut CO2 emissions by far more than the targeted 20 percent, the total CO2 increase from Asia will offset it by a wide margin.

Coal-fired power in India will rise from 95,000 MW to 294,000 MW over the next 11 years. This accounts for the largest percentage rise (300) plus the biggest quantitative rise (199,000 MW). So India alone will increase CO2 by 955 million tons per year

The US presently operates coal-fired power plants at a much lower efficiency than those in Europe. Many of the new Chinese power plants are highly efficient. A number of small old power plants have been replaced. However within the last decade China has increased capacity from less than 50 per cent to more than 200 percent of the US capacity. Its CO2 emissions far exceed those from US power plants. Since coal is also still burned in residential and commercial boilers, Chinese total coal burning CO2 emissons far exceed the US.

China and India have coal resources. Other Asian countries have access to supplies from Australia and other nearby sources. The cost of coal-fired power is low compared to the alternatives in the near-term. Since planning of new coal-fired power plants occurs as much as a decade in advance, there is not likely to be a major change in the forecast through 2020. Any impact of renewable energy in Asia is only likely to happen after 2020.

McIlvaine Company tracks every coal-fired power project in World Power Generation Projects.

For more information, visit http://www.mcilvainecompany.com

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

Your essentially right that you don’t really understand what your talking about.

Our boilers are one big box, that generates steam for a 615 MW Gross, 575 MW net unit (3 units on our site). Each unit shuts down completely for major work. Yes, we condense the steam in the condenser, and yes, we have feedwater heaters (7 stages in fact) to increase the cycle effiency.

No FF will not be used to power motors, etc on the coal fired steam plant. A unit would complete replaced by (in our case) a colletion of 115 FF modules that would reuse the site, the switchyard (step-up transformers, etc for placing the power on the grid), cooling towers, buidings, etc. The rest would be torn down and sold as scrap metal. Then we would start on replacing the next unit.

It would be complete impractical, economically as well as politically, to keep burning millions of tons of coal a year, once FF modules are commerically available.

The internal combustion engine replaced the horse as power for vehicles. FF would just as completely, and likely more quickly, replace steam power plants, both coal and nuclear fission fueled. It could, I guess, be made smaller for transportation use, but I would think that shielding it would be difficult for anything smaller then a locomotive.

Your worry about trying to use the heat rejected by the cooling system is misplaced. I believe the media and the general public would be so overjoyed with the cost savings and the lack of exhaust gases or highly radioactive waste that waste heat utilization wouldn’t be considered. Think about it. How many people worry about the heat rejected by the radiator in their car?

Yes, FF would cause some big companies to fail, and others to prosper. I feel that overall, FF would lead to a new golden age, as power became much less expensive and limited only by our desire to make it. Focus Fusion would have no limiting resource, we could build as many modules as needed to power whatever mega project we wished to try, such as greening the Sahara, etc.

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

This one plant (that I work at) burns $2M in coal in about 3 days during the summer (4-5 days in off peak season). We can unload a 2500 ton barge load in about 25 minute, transport the coal about 3/10 mile and pile it up. All in a days (or nights, or weekends) work. You really have to think big to get what the power industry is and does. We consider a 150 HP, 480V 3 phase motor as medium sized, the big stuff is 6,900V and 1000 HP and up. The Furnace is about 300′ tall. The foundation is a 12′ thick concrete mat with hundreds of piles under it. WE BIG….

If your building larger facilities, you’d put in a big cooling tower, and use the circulating water from it to cool the He gas that cools the FF modules. Again, I’m only assuming He gas for vagely understood (by me) physics reasons. If plain jane H20 can be used directly, much better, and cheaper.

Again, I was pointing out the cost of a dry (air cooled) heat exchanger to make a point about site costs for distributed FF modules.

I absolutely agree, the initial and second phases of FF modules deployment will be to multi unit sites. My plant would require 345 modules of 5 MW net to replace what it generates. The small plant down the road would need another 44. And this is only to replace existing plants. Load growth would require another new site be developed, somewhere where the TRANMISSION (I’m not talking about distribution guys) grid could take the additional load.

Rematog.

[Rematog]

Whoo, liquid carbon-hydrogen? Remember, this is not a physics lab, it’s a power plant. And, it’s supposed to be mass produced by the 10’s of thousands and run by people who have a high school degree. And be cheap to make.

The reason I used helium in my analysis is 1) the low Z thing (about at the edge of my understanding of nuc physics). 2)the gas is commonly available on a commerical scale, and non-hazardous and non-corrosive.

The reason for the air cooler, as opposed to a wet cooling tower is that I was pointing out “installation” costs for FF modules designed for “distributed” locations. A wet tower does not scale down this small, esp for unattended ops. The dry type (gas to air) is better for this kind of thing. The temps were in the 500F hot out of the FF module and 200F cool back into the FF module. I picked the high (500F) temp so that the delta T to the ambient air would be very high and 200F back so the approach (cool gas to cool air delta T) would be high, this keeps the heat exchanger small and relatively cheap.

There is no way you can make something use cyrogenic gases and be cheap to make. I don’t know if there is any reason the physics of a FF module would require it (Eric?), but if not, avoid it and apply the KISS principle. (Keep it Simple & Stupid). That is how you control costs. You don’t optimize engineering performance, you optimize economic return.

[Rematog]

I think Eric will confirm that the FF modules cooling needs (the controlling factor) will require that the exit temperature from the FF module be way below any practical power generation input temp for a a steam cycle.

And, as mentioned before, the cost of the steam cycle equipment is projected, by this board, to be lower then the cost per unit of capacity (normally given in terms of $/kw capacity) of a steam generator/turbine/feedwater system. So why do it? Note, power companies don’t tend to spend 10’s or 100’s of millions of dollars just be be “Politically Correct” with regards to equipment selection. And that IS what a large steam turbine system costs to install.

Gas turbines are used for quick start and peaking applications (peaking is the high load experience for short durations, such as a hot summer afternoon). An exteral air heater is technically possible. But again, no suitable high temp energy source is available, and an this would again, based on my industry experience, be more expensive, in $/kw installed, than the boards estimate of FF modules.

Rematog

[Rematog]

We burn coal. In the past, oil and natural gas were burned, but today those fuels are not normally burned in utility sized boilers (too expensive, now only used in gas turbine and combined cycle plants). The furnace operates with a flame temperature of between 2000 and 3000 F at the burner, but this cools rapidly and by the time the gas exits the boiler, it is down to below about 1200 F.

The article on boilers in wikipeda is poorly done. The one titled “Fossil fuel power plants” is much better. There is some information on the B&W;site, babcock.com

If you want a very good guide book, I highly recommend “Steam – It’s generation and use” published by Babcock & Wilcox. This tome is about the size of a phone book and is in it’s 41th edition. It will not be easy to find in a library, you would likely have to request it from an inter-library loan. I just checked, and it is for sale on Amazon, but is expensive (used copies being sold for $140 and up. It is not sold new, but only given away to customers by B&W;.

By the way, I don’t work for B&W;, never did. They are one of the “Big 2” boiler manufacturers in US, and so have put out a lot of info on the subject. Our plant has one B&W;boiler and two Riley boilers. Riley was a smaller company and is now under a different name. The other “Big 2” company was Combustion Engineering. CE is was also sold off, to ABB, and is now a subsiderary of that company.

Enjoy

Rematog

[Rematog]

No, Jimmy, it does not work the same way as electricity. If you reduce the pressue, it gets colder, not hotter. Just think about what happens with compressed air when you drop it’s pressure… it gets cold.

With steam, you really need to look the conditions up in a steam table.

Enthalpy is the measue of the energy in a fluid at a given temperature, pressure and state (liquid, gas or solid). It’s given (in US units) in Btu/lb

Entropy is a measure of the “randomness” of the fluid, or it’s state of “organization”. It’s units are, like the concept itself, confusing, Btu/lb F.

You just need to understand that it is very important at what temperature the thermal energy is. That defines how practical it is to run a heat engine (like a steam power plant), using that heat energy. It’s the “potential” difference between the high temperature and the low temperature (condenser cooling water) your machine runs the heat energy thru that controls it’s effiency and the cost the equipment needed.

[Rematog]

And, there is a vast difference between a what, 25,000 hp machine with 3 stages and a 21 stage, reheat, 750,000 Hp machine. I would assume even these small, relatively low pressure turbines had a main steam temperature of around 800 or 900 F.

One of my points that your last post ignored is that, if this boards estimates are anywhere near correct, then a turbine, with it’s necessary appurtenances such as a condenser, feedwater systems, boiler feed pumps, etc. cost MORE then a FF module to generate the same power. I.E. it is cheaper to buy another FF module(s) to generate the power then to buy the equipment needed to use waster heat to generate the same amount of power.

As to the case of power DISTRIBUTION reliability, that has nothing to do with the TRANSMISSION grid. These are different things. Transmission goes from power plants to sub-stations (transformer yards in your area) DISTRIBUTION is the local lines that get the power from the substation to your home or business. You didn’t mention if those few hours involved a storm or not. If so, during those few hours, people were out in the rain, dark, etc. working to restore downed lines so that that vital power could be restored in only a few hours. So even if FF is highly distributed to the local Substation level, DISTRIBUTION reliability will be the responsibility of the local utility. Unless of course you can afford your own million dollar power plant (I.E. one FF module, installed).

By the way, it takes less Btu/lb to heat steam to any given temperature at a higher pressure (water is weird stuff). I am assuming a constant feedwater inlet temperature. That is because the amount of superheat in the steam is greater at a lower pressure. Just look it up, enthalpy of 1000F, 2400 psig steam is 1460 Btu/lb, but for 1000F, 1200 psig steam, enthalpy is 1499 Btu/lb…..hmmm… I’ll grant, at a more likely steam condition for your ship, say 800F, the 1200 psig steam’s enthalpy is slightly lower, 1378 Btu/lb, but it can also do less work in the turbine.

That is why utility power plants have such high pressures, efficiency. 2400 psi is now the low end. 3000 psig is not uncommon, and 3600 psig and more are being considered for supercritical, once thru boilers. ‘Course, we won’t build any more due to the Global Warming issue. But boy, is China building them faster then we ever did…..hmmm….

[Author]

Posts