Monday, November 7, 2011

NASA prepares for moon tourism

USA Today

some day space tourists may be on the way to the Apollo mission lunar landing sites

And you know the one thing that tourists love to bring home.

Souvenirs.

So, the space agency released guidelines this summer on protecting lunar landing sites and artifacts.

Comment:  Good luck on that.  Unless you set up some kind of enforcement mechanism, how are you going to protect the sites?

 

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Docudharma ...blogging the future

Marrying Stranded Wind and Freight Rail Electrification


The darker the blue, the windier it is- that's better for power generation

excerpts:
  • It should, I hope, be clear that much of the best resource is in areas that do not have the highest electricity consumption.
  • That right of way is used to establish long distance High Voltage DC trunk lines to bring sustainable energy from the places that have it to places the need it [ comment:  What if you can do away with high voltage trunk lines?  What I'm saying is, why does this have to be necessary?  Couldn't you make your fuel "in situ" and use it on the spot?  That is, synthesize fuel from wind power.  You can synthesize methanol and then use the methanol in a fuel cell, or use the methanol to make diesel.  How to build the synthesis plants?  You could possibly use airships to bring in the construction equipment and supplies to build the plants.  After finishing construction, the airships could bring raw materials for the synthesis of the fuel.  The fuel can be also be transported to fuel depots in a like manner.]


The next step is to see if airships can operate in high altitudes. That might be a problem, as most of these windy areas are in high altitudes.  This may be achievable if the effort needed was deemed to be worthy.

Update:

Strolling through memory lane.  Here's a post almost a year old which describes how methanol can be synthesized in a nuclear reactor.  Substitute wind power for nuclear power and you can synthesize methanol that way.  It is all a part of the master plan to switch to the hydrogen economy.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Italian cold fusion machine passes another test

MSNBC  | 11/3/2011 | Natalie Wolchover

There's more and more coverage, but is there more and more acceptance?

Tesla Motors presents the 3rd Millennium electric sedan- MODEL S

Tesla Motors presents the 3rd Millennium electric sedan- MODEL S

excerpts:

  • Tesla Model S offers the responsiveness and agility expected from world’s best sports cars while providing the ride quality of a sedan.
  • Tesla’s uniquely quiet powertrain have been combined with scrupulous noise engineering to obtain the sound dynamics of a recording studio.
  • Assume average energy usage per mile is approximately 300Wh/mile (188Wh/km).
  • can bring tough competition for cars such as the BMW 5-series
  • 3,825 pounds (1,735 kg) 
  •  0–60 mph (97 km/h) in 5.6 seconds
  • base price of US$57,400 
This article could have been better written.  It is hard to tell from reading it what its actual range is.  It may be up to 300 miles.
Model S offers pioneering architecture with three battery option each achieving unprecedented range of 160 miles (standard) when fully charged using a 42 kW·h battery pack (24 kW·h/100 mi, 108 mpg) and battery pack will contain 5,000 lithium-ion cells, 230 miles and 300 miles. [comment: Huh?  Is it 160, 230, or 300?  Maybe it is an option, but that could have been made clearer here.] 

Electric cars are still no bargain.  But it appears that Tesla is approaching the market with a strategy that makes sense.  But this won't make much of a dent in the demand for oil.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Are you a betting man? revisited

I was just thinking about this again this morning.  What would it take to end the controversy?  A friendly bet? Something that would satisfy even the most hard core skeptic?  How could you arrange this?

There's somebody I won't name who might be interested in seeing, but not necessarily betting, on a possibility of just testing this thing under certain conditions.  One that might satisfy him would be to collect the water that goes through the E-cat, and then measure the heat in it and its mass.  This would take place after shutdown.

I checked the amount going through the E-cat on the Oct 6 test.  The rate was  .91 g per sec.  That figures out to  3276 g or 3.276 liters per hour.  Multiply that by 8 hours for a test and you get 26.208 liters for an entire test.  The idea is to insulate it so that it would keep its heat throughout.  Such a container would not be terribly big.  It could be insulated and a small pump installed that could keep the water mixed.

One problem is that the water is actually steam, so it has to be cooled down a little before going into the container.  To do that, just repeat that part of the test that was done on Oct 6th.  Run it through some heat exchangers until it got below the boiling point, then let it go into the container.  Then you can measure the heat from that process, plus the remaining heat in the container in order to measure all of the heat generated during the test.

A second problem is from the secondary water source.  I'm thinking of making this a small scale demo so that we won't have to use much hardware.  That means cooling this water down too so that it doesn't get too hot.

In order to do this, just set up a radiator, such as one that you may see in a car.  This can cool down the water so that you can recirculate it over and over again.  We are measuring the delta t at the heat exchanger, so it doesn't have to be any one set temperature.  Just as long as the difference is such that it can cool down the steam coming off the E-cat.

In the Oct. 6th test, the rate of flow on the secondary heat exchange was 640 liters per hour.   That would require a pretty large container.  In order to avoid that, the radiator can be called upon to cool the water back down.  Perhaps a fan that blows through the radiator would be helpful as well.  Perhaps at this point, you could limit the amount of water at the secondary to about 80 liters, or about the size of a 20 gal barrel.

At 640 liters per hour, it would circulate the complete contents of the barrel 8 times every hour.  This means that it has about 8 minutes to cool down after going through the radiator.  This may be enough to keep it cool. The return could come in at the top and be drawn from the bottom.  It would first go through the radiator and then empty back into the barrel.  You would need a pump that could pump at that rate for that long. Probably no big deal.

In terms of equipment, you now have 3 20 gal barrels, two of them filled with water.  One of these is to go through the E-cat, and one would go through the heat exchanger.  The third is to collect the water and measure its temperature at the end of the test.  It could be already half full, since you are not going to use all of that one barrel.  This third barrel will be fully insulated and have a pump to recirculate the water so that it always well mixed.

The location of the test should be remote in order to eliminate the possibility of any hidden energy source.

To test remotely, you need to be far away from the grid.  That means a portable generator which can power up the E-cat device until it reaches self sustain mode.  The generator will need to run the pumps and so forth. Such a generator wouldn't be all that big.  It just needs to be big enough to do this task, which isn't all that demanding.

All of this equipment could fit into a van, I would estimate.  The generator, the 3 barrels, the pumps, the control equipment and the E-cat unit itself.  None of these items are all that big.  It shouldn't be too demanding a task to get it all into a van.

Take the van out into the countryside, and set up the equipment.  Run the test.  Take the measurements and see who's right.

The costs?  You may be able to rent some of this stuff, so you won't have to buy it.  It shouldn't be terribly expensive.

The last part may be the most difficult.  Getting an E-cat to test.  That may mean buying one.  Who would want to buy one of these things?  Not me.  Rossi wants 2k for each kilowatt.  A 2.7 killowatt device would cost 5400 bucks.  You would need to buy one and set the sucker up and so forth.  The test could run in the thousands of dollars.  Then you would have to have a way to judge who won the bet.

If enough people wanted to, they could set up the scenario and share the expense.  The losers would end up paying for the test.

Let's say it would cost 10 grand to buy an E-cat and set it up.  If you can get enough people to get in on the bet, you may be able to cover that cost by a factor of two.  Then you would need even money on the bet.

Twenty grand may do it.  Ten grand to buy the E-cat and set it up.  Ten grand purse to pay the winners and make it a no lose if you win.  The losers lose their ten grand.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Believing in Cold Fusion and the E-Cat

Mark Gibbs, Forbes.com

excerpts
  •  Rossi has previously conducted several demonstrations of the E-Cat
  • revealed results have done little to convince the skeptics
  • A subgroup of the Believers which I shall call the “Suppresists”, appear to be firmly convinced that there is a conspiracy by commercial interests and or the government to prevent any device that upsets the energy economy status quo from being developed and made public. [ comment:  I can believe this, yes sir.  It is naive to believe that with so much on the line in terms of money and power, that those affected would stand by and do nothing to stop it.]
  • So, if Rossi isn’t in it for the money, then what else could he be in it for? If his goal was the betterment of mankind, he’s going about it in a very strange way. If it’s for fame and glory, his current way of promoting the E-Cat makes no sense. [comment:  Yes, of course.  Don't underestimate the power of incompetence.]
  • So, as with the other E-Cat tests, we’re really not much better off than we were prior to the 28th.[ comment: Yes, but that can be corrected to a certain extent.  Not necessarily the way this guy says, but in a way that can satisfy reasonable people.  Rossi isn't going to allow third parties to check it out.  But maybe he doesn't have to.  Or he could do it in a novel way, like by demo on the internet or something like that.]

Rebuttal to Krivit's Accusation that Andrea Rossi is a Fraudster

FreeRepublic

Well, I guess people may be persuaded by this, but not me.

Hard data please.

Friday, October 28, 2011

With respect to the Rossi Test today, 10/28/11

Not much to say.  I got Rossi's report off his website.  There are a few jpg pics and a spreadsheet file.  So, I checked out the spreadsheet.  My computer can't handle the data, evidently.  Or not all of it.  At any rate, all I can tell is that the temperature went up to boiling point and slightly above and stayed there for several hours.  This doesn't yield much data for analysis.  There may have been more though, but this is all I can get.  I am waiting to see if anybody out there has more to say.  So far, nothing.

Update: 10/29/11  7:48 am

There are now plenty of reports of the test.  It appears from the reports that it has been successful.  However, the data is still not in a form that my computer will accept totally.  It is giving me an error report.  Evidently, I need Excel, which I don't have.  Microsoft's Works won't get it all.

Unless there's something in the data which I can't access as of now, I don't believe this is going to shut up the "seagulls".   They will still squawk about this.  From where I'm standing, I can't say anything to answer them.  There's not enough data.

A sale was made.  I suppose congratulations are in order.  But, as an independent person, I am not convinced of much by this test.  Sorry.

Update 2: 10/29/11 11:45 am

I've managed to find an Excel viewer and this is what I couldn't load up.

Again, there's nothing here.  The only thing that appears to have been accomplished is that Rossi has sold this unit.  It is not scientific proof at all.  But, that is probably no concern to Rossi.  Just the same, I'd like to have more data.

1MW TEST: E-DAY or T-DAY for ROSSI?

EGO OUT: 1MW TEST: E-DAY or T-DAY for ROSSI? October 28. 2011- the much hyped and waited 1MW E-cats test takes place in Bologna, after being planned...


Update:

Video via ColdFusionNow YouTube page

Race to Mine the Moon Heats Up

Didn't know that there was a race. I've been in favor of this idea since I first learned about the opportunity.

Rush Limbaugh likes to say that he is on the cutting edge of societal evolution.  If I may brag a little, I think I know what that must feel like now.  Mining the moon is cutting edge stuff.  So is the E-cat.  And I am in on the cutting edge.

How 'bout that?