Incredible new way to make electricity!

sonhouse

Fast and Curious

Science

08 Mar 10

sonhouse

Fast and Curious

slatington, pa, usa

Joined: 28 Dec 04
Moves: 53321

08 Mar 10

http://www.physorg.com/news187186888.html

Fire in the hole gets a whole new meaning now!

zeeblebot

silicon valley

Joined: 27 Oct 04
Moves: 101289

08 Mar 10

whatever happened to MHD?

sonhouse

Fast and Curious

slatington, pa, usa

Joined: 28 Dec 04
Moves: 53321

08 Mar 10

Did you read the article?
This is one version of solar MDH, magnetohydrodynamic power generation. Liquid metal flowing through a magnetic field generates power. This site I am linking to must be pretty old, it is all HTML, no CSS or anything.
http://www.linux-host.org/energie/smhd.htm

zeeblebot

silicon valley

Joined: 27 Oct 04
Moves: 101289

09 Mar 10

yeah, but i wonder how they will scale it up. 3000 deg K inside a nanotube doesn't translate to much outside the nanotube, i would guess.

zeeblebot

silicon valley

Joined: 27 Oct 04
Moves: 101289

09 Mar 10

Originally posted by sonhouse
Did you read the article?
This is one version of solar MDH, magnetohydrodynamic power generation. Liquid metal flowing through a magnetic field generates power. This site I am linking to must be pretty old, it is all HTML, no CSS or anything.
http://www.linux-host.org/energie/smhd.htm

i think it was probably written by a physicist.

i was thinking of coal-fired MHD. wiki says it's ok for retrofitting old single-cycle plants but not economical for new multi-cycle plants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHD_generator#Economics

zeeblebot

silicon valley

Joined: 27 Oct 04
Moves: 101289

09 Mar 10

my own web page uses HTML, CSS, a banner graphic and maybe a few widgets. your MHD link does have java, probably cut-and-pasted blocks to support Google ads.

sonhouse

Fast and Curious

slatington, pa, usa

Joined: 28 Dec 04
Moves: 53321

09 Mar 10

Originally posted by zeeblebot
i think it was probably written by a physicist.

i was thinking of coal-fired MHD. wiki says it's ok for retrofitting old single-cycle plants but not economical for new multi-cycle plants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHD_generator#Economics

Coal fired MDH. Heating a liquid metal like mercury and flowing through magnets? I guess that is supposed to be more efficient than running a steam boiler/turbine but show me the money🙂 I don't see any MDH online, do you? There must be some fundamental reason why they never caught on. Some of the original work was done almost 50 years ago.

zeeblebot

silicon valley

Joined: 27 Oct 04
Moves: 101289

11 Mar 10

the wikipedia link says it's not economical as new equipment in modern multi-cycle plants. it's only economical as add-ons to existing, older single-cycle plants.

zeeblebot

silicon valley

Joined: 27 Oct 04
Moves: 101289

11 Mar 10

maybe there is not enough residual energy for MHD left over after the multi-cycle plants are done.

sonhouse

Fast and Curious

slatington, pa, usa

Joined: 28 Dec 04
Moves: 53321

16 Mar 10

Originally posted by zeeblebot
yeah, but i wonder how they will scale it up. 3000 deg K inside a nanotube doesn't translate to much outside the nanotube, i would guess.

Scaling up would be just a bunch of nano's in parallel, trillions of them. It would be interesting to see how much energy one nano produced, then we could pretty much calculate what scaling up would mean, how many nano's would be required for a megawatt for instance.

zeeblebot

silicon valley

Joined: 27 Oct 04
Moves: 101289

17 Mar 10

reminds me of a power source i read about recently in a scifi novel. small (like a Pringle's can?), cool on the outside, jillions of degrees on the inside. think it was in Frederick Pohl's Starburst, 1982.