> Why would you do it that way? However you do it, it's hard to beat the 5-10%. The point is that efficiency does matter.
On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > Bastiaan Bergman <bastiaan.berg...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> A car running on 10kW electric from a cold fusion device connected to >> a 5% efficient heat to electric converter (steam or bismut or >> whatever) would spit out 200kW of waste heat . . . > > That would be a Rube Goldberg machine! Why would you do it that way? Put the > cold fusion reactor in the car and use a heat engine to convert the heat > directly to mechanical force. > When the technology is first introduced it might be cheaper to make the car > a hybrid like a Prius, where the mechanical force is sometimes converted to > electric power and stored. > Also, even small steam turbines are better than 5% efficient. > Thermoelectric devices will not come into widespread use for cold fusion > until efficiency is more like 20% I suppose. Present day ones are ~10% > efficient at 500°C. See: > http://www.electrochem.org/dl/interface/fal/fal08/fal08_p54-56.pdf > In the 1960s and 70s, thermoelectric devices were used with plutonium in > pacemakers, so they can be scaled down. In a pacemaker, wristwatch battery > or earphone battery you need only a tiny trickle of electric power so > efficiency does not matter. > - Jed >
