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Yes, exactly! There are two problems here: 1. What's the most efficient way to boil water? 2. How do we generate electricity on a population scale without hav
by lake_vincent 4y ago
Yes, exactly! There are two problems here:
1. What's the most efficient way to boil water?
2. How do we generate electricity on a population scale without having to boil water?
Question 1 is, apparently, much more tractable. We are still pretty much building the world's most sophisticated tea kettle.
- mrec 4y agoAs a Brit, I wholeheartedly approve.
- Mvandenbergh 4y agoIronically all but one of our UK reactors are carbon dioxide cooled although to be fair that carbon dioxide is then used to boil water.
- cameronh90 4y agoThe power grid is just a way to remotely boil a kettle.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago>1. What's the most efficient way to boil water? Doesn't need to be the most efficient. Just more efficient per energy transferred to the water than all the other options.
- robbomacrae 4y agoI don't follow. What you said seems to me the definition of the most efficient. Or at least.. it is what I assumed they meant.
- heavyset_go 4y agoMost efficient can mean theoretically optimal efficiency or more efficient than other options. I think the OP was using the first definition.
- dbetteridge 4y agoLocal maximum vs global maximum Most efficient conpared to what we have already, but there may still be more efficient ways
- throwaway0a5e 4y agoDoesn't matter if you waste half the energy if it's still a cheaper way to boil water than the next best thing.
- sien 4y agoThere are fusion companies that are trying to make aneutronic fusion work. This form of fusion doesn't involve boiling water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion Helion Energy is the best known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy HB11 is another one https://hb11.energy/ https://hb11.energy/
- ncmncm 4y agoHelion might conceivably make something useful someday. The others will just spend investors' money until it dries up. Helion too, most likely.
- cbozeman 4y agoWell if I'm going to throw money at a pointless endeavour, I could think of quite a few worse than this.
- ncmncm 4y agoPointlessness is. If you want to maximize pointlessness, Energy Vault is right there. But defrauding investors doesn't seem like a great choice to enable. Maybe it would be better to do what might help avert global civilization collapse, thermonuclear war, and mass starvation? Investing in practical energy-storage tech factory build-out, solar farms co-sited on reservoirs and pastures, cost-effective hydrogen and ammonia synthesis tech are all overwhelmingly better uses, and can all be equally as cool.
- pfdietz 4y agoHB11 strikes me a nonstarter. Their proposed direct conversion mechanism is obvious nonsense, and the putative "avalanche" mechanism they want to use to make the nuclear reactions go has been savagely critiqued in the literature.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoI think there is a zeroth problem here, which is how to get the heat from the plasma to the water. You have a fusion reactor making hot plasma that also needs to have water circulating in the right way. From what I gleaned from some fusion presentations the solution to this is itself an engineering challenge.
- pfdietz 4y agoIndeed. As I mentioned upthread, the limits on power/area at the first wall of the reactor lead to DT fusion reactors having horrible volumetric power density. Their "figure of demerit" vs. fission is roughly (radius of plasma)/(radius of a fuel rod).
- Symmetry 4y agoFusion plants also need to absorb the neutrons coming out of the reactor and secure themselves a supply of tritium for their reaction. The most common solution is to do all three with a blanket of molten lithium that can absorb neutrons and heat from the reaction, transmute into tritium, and go through a heat exchanger with water to heat it up.
- willis936 4y agoLithium fission also releases a nice bit of energy.
- robocat 4y agoLithium fission would be into Hydrogen and Helium - definitely not releasing energy. Do you mean that Lithium fusion with a proton or neutron releases energy?
- willis936 4y agoNo I do mean fission. Li-6 fission releases 4.8 MeV. Li-7 fission consumes 2.466 MeV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium#Production There's a lot of lithium being mined for batteries. Just centrifuge out Li-6 or isolate it with some other clever means. Not much is needed for fusion fuel compared to industrial scale consumers of lithium and it's a healthy boost to heat output.