LENR vs Solar/Wind, and emerging Green Technologies.

    I posted this on the Media thread.

    Posting it here, relevant to this discussion.

    American Energy Innovation Council and ARPA-E DoE

    Scaling Innovation: A Proposed Framework for Scaling Energy Demonstrations and Early Deployment

    Jan 20, 2022

    COUNCIL REPORThero.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&ixlib=imgixjs-3.4.2


    Full Scale Prototypes

    Rapid Deployment


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    Download the report

    https://americanenergyinnovation.org/report/scaling-energy-framework

    I assume all the folks at the American Energy Innovation Council have seen the ARPA-E LENR workshop. On their board is the founding director of ARPA-E.


    I aim to compile a list, reviewing companies on the council, looking for individuals who are involved with the CMNS energy community.


    This is first I will explore...

    Lime Rock New Energy

    Lime Rock New Energy | Growth Equity for the New Energy Industry
    Lime Rock New Energy partners with entrepreneurs and management teams to bring private equity capital and value-adding partnership to growing companies across…
    www.lrnewenergy.com

    Thanks for finding. They come across as another high powered think tank to me. They make many proposals, recommendations, etc. for how the government can help move innovation out of the lab, and into the market. The world is not lacking ideas on how to save the planet IMO...the problem is actually making these ideas happen.


    I do like how they support expansion of the ARPA-E, which may be close to funding LENR after their workshop this past Oct.



    .

    I wish Omega a lot of luck, they have started on a very hard road. I occasionally speak to a low-profile UK company who have been working on something similar. Initially they contacted me about hydrogen, but now they use me as a sounding board to discuss technical and market-related issues.


    The biggest problem is that the IC engine business has over $1Tn invested in IC engine production systems. They visualise that on 10 years time that investment maybe a dead asset, worth perhaps 5% of it's current value. Because of this they are reluctant to invest in any radical IC engine production facilities, especially since it would be an additional burden at a time they are tooling up to build EV's and their batteries etc.


    Acceptance of a new engine type would probably involve the construction of perhaps 50 prototype powered systems -aircraft, cars HGVs etc for testing over a period of 3-5 years and cost something like $100-200M. and then the investments of $2Bn to build a new dedicated production line. Nobody seems to want to play.


    As a result, my contacts, having determined that their ICE is also an excellent gas compressor (when driven by an external power source) are now trying to get compressor manufacturers - who are generally smaller and more flexible to build prototypes for them.

    Quote from Shane D.

    This redesigned, improved Wankel Engine has withstood harsh internet review so far.

    Sad to note: My uncle and his friend developed such an engine - working prototype - more than 30 years ago already. So you cannot patent it anymore. The automotive industry was not interested and meant the sealing problem along the compressing unit always has been a concern...

    Quote from Shane D.

    This redesigned, improved Wankel Engine has withstood harsh internet review so far. Any thoughts, insights?

    If this is for automotive applications, it is too late. It is obsolescent already. Most automobiles and trucks will soon be electric, and electric vehicles are far more efficient and cleaner than any internal combustion engine ever will be.


    It reminds me of the Stumpf uniflow piston steam engine, introduced in 1908. This was a thing of beauty. It was the last major improvement on piston steam engines. But it came too late. By the time it was developed, steam turbines were being used on ships and in power generation. Many more triple expansion marine engines were made after 1908, but they were older designs and they were mostly made for WWII transport ships because they were tried-and-true technology. They did not last for long.


    Demonstration Model of a Uniflow Valve for a Steam Engine
    www.si.edu


    The Wankel engine is kind of like developing an elegant and highly accurate slide rule in 1974, the dawn of modern hand-held electric calculators.

    Consider 'green technology' applied to both space launch and space power systems? Solar - used only for space power (electric] which is used for systems, including in-space electric propulsion. Wind? Space sails utilize solar winds. Also called light sails or photon sails, a method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large mirrors. The only spacecraft to make use of the technology was IKAROS, launched in 2010. EO Portal Sharing Earth Observational Resources https://earth.esa.int/web/eopo…tellite-missions/i/ikaros


    IKAROS type space solar sail propulsion applications are limited.


    CMNS energy technologies are the only green technology on the horizon that will compete with present day launch systems, which are arguably not green. The importance of developments in this field of application, LENR energetics to synergistic space missions is a familiar subject to NASA. Electric space drive for deep missions and plenty of energetics for space colonization, in situ resource utilization and space mining. Cold fusion energetics may even replace polluting chemical launch systems. The greening of the space industry will take place because of the superior and abundant power from LENR systems. The cost to expand into space will continue to drop dramatically.


    The Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX

    27January2022 By Bruno Venditti

    The Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX
    How much does a space flight cost? Here’s a look at the cost per kilogram for space launches across the globe since 1960.
    www.visualcapitalist.com


    SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched a cargo capsule to deliver supplies and Christmas gifts to astronauts in the International Space Station.


    Just eight minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s first stage returned to Earth, landing on one of SpaceX’s drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean. This marked the company’s 100th successful landing.


    The Cost of Space Flight Before and After SpaceX

    ▼ Use This Visualization



    An improved Wankel engine reminds me of Toyota's Prius hybrid engines. These are wonderful things. They are more efficient and cleaner than any internal combustion engine-only configuration ever will be. But, they are obsolescent. Toyota announced they will no longer charge for royalties on the patents. They are giving away the patent rights. They hope that other manufacturers will make the engines and purchase parts from Toyota. Alas, it is too late for that. Other companies are going directly to all-electric vehicles.


    A plug-in Prius is probably the most efficient, best choice for long-distance highway travel in sprawling country like the U.S. But within countries such as Norway, electric vehicles can already drive the farthest you can go in one day, so there is no need for a plug-in hybrid. Next-generation electric vehicles will have enough range that they will be almost as good as plug-in hybrid in the U.S.


    There are many examples of elegant technology that came along too late. In the 1970s and 80s, many computer gadgets such as RAM memory devices and printers were invented too late to succeed in the marketplace. In the 1950s there were some elegant long distance propellor driven passenger airplanes. The Lockheed Constellation was beautiful and reliable. It later used turboprop engines, which conceptually resemble a Prius hybrid motor, being a combination of old and new technology. The Constellation was a wonderful machine, but it did not last for long. Jet aircraft made it obsolete.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Acceptance of a new engine type would probably involve the construction of perhaps 50 prototype powered systems -aircraft, cars HGVs etc for testing over a period of 3-5 years and cost something like $100-200M. and then the investments of $2Bn to build a new dedicated production line. Nobody seems to want to play.

    Very true. Majority of automotive Investment goes into electromobility.


    A clear course: Audi is increasing investments in electromobility
    This year, Audi doubled its product portfolio of purely electric models. With the world premiere of the Audi e-tron GT (Audi e-tron GT quattro: Combined…
    www.audi-mediacenter.com


    Maybe the DoD is interested since you have a powerful and light weigth engine

    to power drones?

    Quote from Gregory Byron Goble

    CMNS energy technologies are the only green technology on the horizon that will compete with present day launch systems, which are arguably not green.

    I do not think any version of cold fusion demonstrated so far can be used for earth-to-orbit launches, even in principle. Cold fusion would be excellent for deep-space applications or robot explorers on Mars or the Moon. But I do not think it has the power density or potential high temperature Carnot efficiency needed for earth-to-orbit engines. Perhaps it could be used for high altitude aircraft air-launch systems.


    Launch systems using only hydrogen and oxygen are as green as you can get. I don't know if any are in use. Cold fusion would make the cost of hydrogen fuel so cheap it would be negligible. You could launch a thousand rockets a day for practically no fuel cost. Other costs would be high, of course.


    I think the best earth to orbit system would be a space elevator. I think we may be closer to making one of these than people realize. The tether would not be the way people imagined it in the past. It would be very thin, and about as wide as a printed newspaper sheet, and more than 36,000 km long. It has to be longer than 36,000 km because you need a counterbalance beyond geosynchronous orbit, or the whole thing would be pulled to earth as soon as you send a car up the tether.

    JedRothwell


    Electric propulsion launch capabilities yes, so important to so many. Thermal plasma systems in development use electricity for heating. I'm still following this field, hybrid systems, etc. A nano tech dependent art they say. This paper has a great up to date reading list...

    "Perspectives, Frontiers, and New Horizons for Plasma-Based Space Electric Propulsion"

    editors-pick AIP

    Physics of Plasmas 27, 020601 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5109141


    Finally, in Sec. IV, we will set the longer-term goals and directions for this exciting field. We aim our Perspective article at the most general physics audience and students who may benefit from a comprehensive top-level view of the present-day state of the art in the plasma propulsion as a whole and see what opportunities, challenges and problems are there to be considered in the nearest future. For the more specialized expert audience, we will provide an extended (over 230 publications) list of the most recent specialized textbooks and papers on the topic.

    Thermal plasma cold fusion systems are limited to the melting point of the metal. I thought about this, and I asked around. I do not think they could be made hot enough or with enough power density for earth-to-orbit vehicles. Perhaps I am wrong about that. I don't know much about rockets.


    Jet aircraft engines actually operate at temperatures higher than the melting point of the turbine blades. That sounds like black magic. It works with a thin layer of air between the blade and the flames. This is done with thousands of precisely aligned small holes in the blades. Air is forced into a cavity in the blades and out through the holes. Get one hole wrong, and the engine explodes! That happened with a Rolls Royce engine.


    Hydrogen-oxygen rocket flames are 3,200°C, which I think exceeds the melting point any any cold fusion plasma metal. Perhaps cold fusion engines could still work with lower temperatures? They would be bulky. The amount of deuterium fuel would be small -- a liter or two at most. But you need propellant. I think hydrogen being the lightest element is the best propellent. So you are back to needing a bunch of hydrogen again. Maybe liquid water would be safer? A gigantic steam rocket. Either that, or the water could be fractured into hydrogen and oxygen with high temperature cold fusion, and then resulting gas recombined in combustion, like a conventional hydrogen-oxygen rocket. Except the gas would be generated on the fly -- literally. The point is, the operating temperature of the cold fusion would be lower than the combustion. It is a way to concentrate energy and boost the operating temperature and power density without an end-run around the laws of thermodynamics. This would give a better isp than steam, wouldn't it?


    Generating hydrogen and oxygen on the ground would also boost and concentrate cold fusion energy (or for that matter, solar power or hydroelectricity), but you end up with a gigantic tank of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, which is dangerous. I assume this would be a rocket-airplane like the Shuttle. If a cold fusion powered gadget to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen failed during the boost phase, the rocket could glide back to earth.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Jet aircraft engines actually operate at temperatures higher than the melting point of the turbine blades.

    The point here is that in a jet engine the flames are hotter than the turbine blade melting point. Whereas in a cold fusion powered engine, the cold fusion reactor surface would have be hotter than the fluid used for propellant (hydrogen or water). So you cannot use the jet engine trick of running above the melting point.


    In a jet engine, the propellant is air. There isn't any air as you approach orbit, so you have to bring your own propellant. So, even a cold fusion powered rocket would be gigantic, mostly taken up by propellant, I assume. Especially if it starts from the ground. A high altitude air-launched version would need less propellant.


    Air launched rockets today are launched from high flying jet aircraft. I mean they are dropped, like the X-15. Which makes me think it is unlikely passenger versions will ever be popular. The aircraft uses air as propellant, and the rocket uses spent rocket fuel. Perhaps you could have both a jet engine and a rocket engine in one vehicle with cold fusion, because cold fusion needs only negligible amounts of fuel (heavy water). I think it would still be too heavy, because after you leave the atmosphere the jet engines would be dead weight. But I don't know enough about aerospace to judge.


    Here is a wild alternative to both earth-to-orbit vehicles and the space elevator: the space fountain. It was pioneered by people from the cold fusion community, Robert Forward and Lowell Wood:


    Orbital Railroads: Beanstalks and Space Fountains
    Space Fountains can be used to create truly gigantic structures and towers as well as used merely to hold a space station aloft.
    strangehorizons.com


    QUOTE:


    An alternative method to the Space Elevator for building a railroad into space is the Space Fountain. This concept was pioneered as a collaborative effort between Robert L. Forward, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Hans Moravec, Roderick Hyde, and Lowell Wood. . . .


    You gotta love things like this!

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Thermal plasma cold fusion systems are limited to the melting point of the metal. I thought about this, and I asked around. I do not think they could be made hot enough or with enough power density for earth-to-orbit vehicles. Perhaps I am wrong about that. I don't know much about rockets.


    Jet aircraft engines actually operate at temperatures higher than the melting point of the turbine blades. That sounds like black magic. It works with a thin layer of air between the blade and the flames. This is done with thousands of precisely aligned small holes in the blades. Air is forced into a cavity in the blades and out through the holes. Get one hole wrong, and the engine explodes! That happened with a Rolls Royce engine.


    Hydrogen-oxygen rocket flames are 3,200°C, which I think exceeds the melting point any any cold fusion plasma metal. Perhaps cold fusion engines could still work with lower temperatures? They would be bulky.

    The rocket is "pushed" by photons... You really didn't know about it... But it doesn't matter... The developers of rockets and rocket fuel didn't know either... This is how physics develops...

    The concerns voiced here are the reason I'm interested in Joseph Papp's engine. He showed that you can explode the noble gases. His engine purported to show it tamed. Most of the time. Not everything is going to run off batteries. Large ships, jets

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