Re: "but there is still a long road to hoe"

hhc314@xxxxxxxxx included:


Given this post from your quoted paper:

"Elemental boron is now produced at very high prices, 23 to 400 times
more for a pound without oxygen than for a pound with, $360 to $6,400
per contained kilowatt-day."

How would you deal ith the fact that a conventionally or nuclear
produced kilowatt-day, currently sells for under $3.00 even after all
the distribution charges are added to its raw generation cost?

I would tend to agree with you that boron, like hydrogen, does have
some exotic technical applications but perhaps unlike you I find it
hard to believe that it will ever have any useful commodity energy
role. Can you imagine the cost of warming your home or running your car
on either of these two exotic and costly materials. The same is true of
aluminum (I've seen an oxy-aluminum torch perform some rather
spectacular demonstrations such as seeing it burn layers of fire
brick...still, that is not where the energy demand lies. (Rutgers
university demonstration back around 1965.) Most of us do not have an
urgent need for a cutting torch that will cut through firebrick at
extraordinaly cost. What we do need is a safe, reliable power/energy
supply that will warm or cool our homes as required by the season, and
a fuel to meet our transporations needs at competitive costs.

Given my perspective as a physicist and engineer with over 50 years of
experience, it appears clear to me that nuclear will grow to supply
most of the nation's energy demand over the next 30 years, just as the
US Navy has done in the past on their larger ships and submarines. Cars
and trucks are next, the challenge being how best to supply them with a
source of nuclear generated electricity while mobile.

Well, that's where I define the challenge differently:
I say it's to supply *heat* from a big nuclear reactor
or giant solar concentrator to a moving vehicle
that isn't carrying either.

I guess aluminum today is going for sixty cents a kilowatt-hour.
It is produced at a rate of a tonne a second, 30 GW,
which capacity-wise isn't out of line for a large oil refinery.

So if we decided cars were going to run on nuclear-generated
aluminum, it would make sense for the nuclear aluminum plants'
capacities to be in that same order of magnitude -- or higher,
since aluminum can be heaped, doesn't need tanks.

If the whole world's 2006 aluminum production capacity
is equal to that of *one* 2016 nuclear aluminum plant,
a kWh(Al) is going to cost a lot less in that year.
And economies of scale apply even more strongly to boron deoxidation,
now-a-days done at a worldwide rate of 0.0001 GW.


--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: internal combustion without exhaust gas:
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/Paper_for_11th_CHC.html

(The thread title is a quote from
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2006/March/HydrogenOnBoard.asp
)
.

Relevant Pages

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