[extropy-chat] Moving on (was CF research)
Keith Henson
hkhenson at rogers.com
Tue Feb 13 15:45:12 UTC 2007
snip
There are critical industrial processes that just don't lend themselves to
distributed solutions.
Consider aluminum as an example. An aluminum pot line uses 250,000 amps at
800 volts. That's 0.2 Gw, if the plant has 5 pot lines, it eats a
Gw. (Metalic aluminum represents about 40 kwh/kg.) Or consider
cement. Last time I looked, grinding clinker to dust was taking 1.5 to 2
percent of the total US generation.
And when you are talking about solar cells, remember the cost of the
support structures. I have seen 100 nm films and let me assure you that
one hail storm would be the end of them.
You also have the problem of collecting the current from solar
cells. That's something I have been concerned with recently. There are
also serious difficulties with storage.
Now, much of this goes away with nanotechnology, but if you are talking
near term it's a hard problem.
Keith
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