Re: [Vo]: Bad News for Steorn
Jed Rothwell wrote: I wrote: There is some debate about how much of these precious metals are available elsewhere in the solar system, but I do not think this matters much. Once you leave the Earth's atmosphere and go to the moon or an asteroid, you can then use raw solar energy to vaporize as much low-grade or as you like . . . I meant "low-grade ore." Regarding the prospects for prospecting the solar system, see this interesting web site: http://www.permanent.com/intro.htm This web site is kind of unorganized. For lunar materials, see: http://www.permanent.com/l-overvw.htm Not many metal ores there, at least on the surface. Maybe asteroids or Mars would be a better choice. - Jed I'm in the National Space Society these guys seem to be reinventing the wheel. We've already got everything worked out in the L5 society and the other derivations. All we need is the key propulsion solutions: that's the Ares heavy lift system. And a way to pay for it: that's the space tourism angle, the space prizes and good off earth ownership laws (blocked by the socialist law of space) Some of their design work on this web site is obsolite. Why don't they call a Stanford torus a Stanford torus? These guys are verging on plagerism for no good reason.
Re: [Vo]: Bad News for Steorn -- USGS site
I wrote: solar system to prospect for precious metals. 300 GW of Ne-powered rockets is . . . Oops. Meant Nd-powered. As in Nd-magnet electric rocket, an Ion or MPD or what-have-you. Regarding the availability of neodymium (Nd), see the USGS page on rare earths: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/ You should see how much the Chinese are mining this stuff! See: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs087-02/ Quote: "The rare earth elements (REE) form the largest chemically coherent group in the periodic table. Though generally unfamiliar, the REE are essential for many hundreds of applications. The versatility and specificity of the REE has given them a level of technological, environmental, and economic importance considerably greater than might be expected from their relative obscurity. The United States once was largely self-sufficient in these critical materials, but over the past decade has become dependent upon imports (fig. 1). In 1999 and 2000, more than 90% of REE required by U.S. industry came from deposits in China." If the U.S. ever goes to war with China, it will be over in a week. They will just stop selling us just about every high-tech product and material we need, and wait for us to fold up. I doubt we could set up factories to make computer screens or cell phones in time to affect the outcome of a modern war, and without such things, you lose. I do not think it is wise to become so dependent on what remains, after all, a communist dictatorship. The USGS is cognizant of this. It says our dependency on China raises "important issues of REE supply for the United States" including: "(2) United States dependence on imports from China comes at a time when REE have become increasingly important in defense applications, including jet fighter engines and other aircraft components, missile guidance systems, electronic countermeasures, underwater mine detection, antimissile defense, range finding, and space-based satellite power and communication systems." Fig. 4 in this paper is an interesting depiction of element abundance in the earth's upper continental crust. The rare earths are not so rare compared to Au, Pt and Pd. Ir seems to be the rarest of all. Of course, just because an element is common that does not necessarily make it cheap or easy to recover. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Bad News for Steorn
As Paul suggests, eventually magnets will be made from synthetic materials, just as we now have fabric (e.g. polyester) made from synthetic materials. We won't have to rely on rare earth elements. Harry Jed Rothwell wrote: > Terry Blanton wrote: > >> But magnets will NOT save the world. Consider this: >> >> There are known recoverable reserves of Rare Earth Elements in the >> entire world of approximately 6 million metric tons. . . . > > There is not much in ocean water, either: 3.3 ng/kg. More than Pd or > Au, but not enough to extract by any practical means. It is about the > same as Ag. See: >
Re: [Vo]: Bad News for Steorn
I wrote: There is some debate about how much of these precious metals are available elsewhere in the solar system, but I do not think this matters much. Once you leave the Earth's atmosphere and go to the moon or an asteroid, you can then use raw solar energy to vaporize as much low-grade or as you like . . . I meant "low-grade ore." Regarding the prospects for prospecting the solar system, see this interesting web site: http://www.permanent.com/intro.htm This web site is kind of unorganized. For lunar materials, see: http://www.permanent.com/l-overvw.htm Not many metal ores there, at least on the surface. Maybe asteroids or Mars would be a better choice. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Bad News for Steorn
On 3/21/07, Jed Rothwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: There is not much in ocean water, either: 3.3 ng/kg. Yes, and the problem is that we are already up against the demand curve with present applications. HEV's use a lot of Nd. Terry
Re: [Vo]: Bad News for Steorn
On 3/21/07, Paul Lowrance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Or possibly some type of new magnet --> http://www.physorg.com/news84643085.html A hydrogen magnet would solve the problem! I think the nanosolar technology will probably dominate. Terry
Re: [Vo]: Bad News for Steorn
Terry Blanton wrote: But magnets will NOT save the world. Consider this: There are known recoverable reserves of Rare Earth Elements in the entire world of approximately 6 million metric tons. . . . There is not much in ocean water, either: 3.3 ng/kg. More than Pd or Au, but not enough to extract by any practical means. It is about the same as Ag. See: http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/97025e-table.html Martin Fleischmann made the same point about Pd many years ago. As I recall the estimated that roughly one third of our energy could be produced from it is a cold fusion. I did a back-of-the-envelope estimate and came up with roughly the same number. This does not depend on how much cold fusion energy one might extract theoretically -- which is not known, in any case. It is clear that you can get quite a lot of energy from a small amount of thin-film palladium, but the limiting factor is how much heat that thin-film Pd or other platinum group metal can withstand. That can be estimated from the amount used in an automotive catalytic converter. They use as little as possible, because these metals are expensive. I extrapolated from the amount of energy produced by automobile engines and the amount of Pd and Pt they now consume, and came up with roughly the same answer as Martin did: about a third, or maybe half. If this Pd limitation applies, and you cannot produce CF using some common metal such as Ti or Ni, then we would only use Pd for centralized generators. Or, in the case of the Steorn device, we would only use the magnetic generators for large, baseline power generators that run 24 hours a day, like today's uranium fission generators. We would supplement them with existing hydroelectric, natural gas, wind and so on. However, I think there may be another way to overcome this problem. Assume that CF or the Steorn effect works, and produces very high power density. To some extent, the "recoverable reserves" of any element depends upon the cost of energy. As I indicated above, if you have enough energy to vaporize several cubic square kilometers of ocean water or ordinary rocks, you can recover Ne or other rare elements from these low-density sources. For that matter, you can build rocket engines that are far more efficient than the ones we have today, plus space elevators. From there, you go to the Moon, Mars, the asteroids and various other places in the solar system to prospect for precious metals. 300 GW of Ne-powered rockets is enough to explore the solar system in depth, and bring back megatons of ore -- or perhaps better yet, to refine it on site, and bring back the extracted precious metals only. There is some debate about how much of these precious metals are available elsewhere in the solar system, but I do not think this matters much. Once you leave the Earth's atmosphere and go to the moon or an asteroid, you can then use raw solar energy to vaporize as much low-grade or as you like, and to separate out precious elements using the kind of energy intensive techniques now used to separate out uranium isotopes. - Jed
Re: [Vo]: Bad News for Steorn
Terry Blanton wrote: But magnets will NOT save the world. Consider this: There are known recoverable reserves of Rare Earth Elements in the entire world of approximately 6 million metric tons. Of this REE about 20% is neodymium. According to Sean, he expects to get 0.5 W/cc from his technology. The density of NdFeBo magnets is 7.5 g/cc. The Nd content is 27% by weight; so, the density of Nd in a magnet is 2.03 g/cc. This means that we can expect to get 0.5 W per 2.03 g of Nd. With known extractable reserves of 1.2 million metric tons of Nd in the world, if we used ALL the Nd to make electricity, we could generate 1.2 x 10^12 g times 0.25 W/g or 300 Gigawatts. The US generating capacity in Dec of 2005 was 1.07 Terawatts. Terry Or possibly some type of new magnet --> http://www.physorg.com/news84643085.html Paul
Re: [Vo]: Bad News for Steorn
Terry Blanton wrote: > But magnets will NOT save the world. Consider this: > > There are known recoverable reserves of Rare Earth Elements in the > entire world of approximately 6 million metric tons. Of this REE about > 20% is neodymium. According to Sean, he expects to get 0.5 W/cc from > his technology. > > The density of NdFeBo magnets is 7.5 g/cc. The Nd content is 27% by > weight; so, the density of Nd in a magnet is 2.03 g/cc. This means > that we can expect to get 0.5 W per 2.03 g of Nd. > > With known extractable reserves of 1.2 million metric tons of Nd in > the world, if we used ALL the Nd to make electricity, we could > generate 1.2 x 10^12 g times 0.25 W/g or 300 Gigawatts. The US > generating capacity in Dec of 2005 was 1.07 Terawatts. > > Terry Then hopefully he can power the world on C8 ceramic magnets, which are basically 1/3rd the field strength and 1/4th the coercivity as NdFeB magnets. Paul Lowrance
