At last, Doc Smith superalloys!

[fivemack]

While idly looking for information about NASA's new class of nuclear power source for space missions, I came across something I've been looking for for ages: studies of the analogues of high-strength steels made using elements further down the periodic table. Whilst rhenium is readily purchased on ebay, the furnace requirements are unfortunately rather exacting for doing this work in one's back garden.

http://sakimori.nims.go.jp/documents/990225b.html was the first one; the interesting bit of data is figure 1. MarM247, sitting there quite a long way under the red iridium-based lines, is a current best-available turbine-blade alloy.

http://sakimori.nims.go.jp/documents/001113a.html investigates four-element alloys, though the character-set information has been slightly mangled; http://nippon.zaidan.info/seikabutsu/2003/00916/pdf/igtc2003tokyo_ks2.pdf is a large but interesting overview article.

OK, there are some small pricing issues associated with making the blades for jet engine or power station turbines out of materials slightly more costly than platinum, but the design and machining costs are themselves large enough that even that class of material cost is not insuperable, particularly since a 500MW turbine produces electricity with a retail value of about a hundred thousand pounds per hour of operation and consumes, at the 33% thermal efficiency of Drax, 1200 tonsworth of CO2-emission permits which at one point cost 30 euros the tonsworth: that iridium is twice as dense as lead does make things a bit awkward, but increasing thermal efficiency significantly, so substantially reducing the weight of CO2-emission permits that you are burning an hour, might well be enough to break even.

What surprises me slightly is that all this research is in Japan, whilst if asked to name four jet engine manufacturers I'd list Rolls-Royce, General Electric, Pratt and Whitney, and then confess myself lost and try to Google up who Sukhoi and MIG's suppliers are. I suppose there are quite a lot of power stations in Japan, mostly built by Japanese companies, and that this has built up expertise such that the turbines in power stations worldwide may well be bought from Hitachi.

Comments

[ckd]

On the jet engine manufacturers list, I'd say those three and then SNECMA, with BMW as the fifth one I'd think of. (I'm ignoring joint ventures among these like IAE, Engine Alliance, CFMI....)

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

500MW turbine produces electricity with a retail value of about a hundred thousand pounds per hour of operation

True, but not so likely to be as relevant as the wholesale price; suppose you're a domestic supplier, then you're more likely to buy from the market than run an expensive station. When I return to the day shift tomorrow after my break, without having looked at even any of the public data, I would expect baseload generation to be priced at £31/MWh +/- 20%.

consumes, at the 33% thermal efficiency of Drax, 1200 tonsworth of CO2-emission permits which at one point cost 30 euros the tonsworth

I don't doubt your figures, but I'd love to know where they came from! Drax emitted 20.8 megatonnes of CO₂ (http://www.oneclimate.net/2007/07/20/drax-facts/) - and though that article doesn't quote a timeframe, I'm pretty sure that's over a year. Assume Drax ran at 2/3 load factor (more likely to be an understimate than an overestimate) and you're looking at about 4 megatonnes for 500 MWyear - 4,000 kilotonnes for 500MW * 8500 hours, so (off the top of my head) it seems to be more like 500 tonnesworth of CO₂ for 500MWh. Well, we agree on the order of magnitude!

PointCarbon (http://www.pointcarbon.com) suggests that the tonne of CO₂ equivalent is currently trading at €21.63 - though everything up to the end of 2007 is effectively free (a few eurocents) due to Phase 1 of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme having turned out to be a bust.

Am not sure who made the turbines we use and what sort of alloy they're made from, but now you've made me curious. (I fear the answer is commercially confidential, though!)

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I googled to find a site that said 'coal-fired power stations emit 850 tonnes of carbon dioxide per gigawatt hour', but interpreted that mistakenly as GW_thermal rather than as GW_electrical, so I divided by thermal efficiency twice. Sorry.

My 1200 ought to be 425, and now I agree with you. Though baseline generation still seems a reasonable business to be in; you burn 18000 Euros of CO2 permits to make 43000 Euros of wholesale electricity, so coal had better cost less than 100 Euros the ton [assuming coal is mostly carbon so I can estimate coal-in as 12/44 * CO2-out].