avernon (u/avernon) - Readit News

avernon commented on CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg thedriven.io/2023/04/21/w... · Posted by u/rippercushions

vidarh · 3 years ago

The thought of a return to more of a hub-and-spoke model sounds like a total nightmare. It'd take a huge price difference before I'd consider that, personally (EDIT: As in, I usually check "direct flights only" or equivalent and only relent if the cost is ridiculously much higher). Then again my perspective is being near multiple large international airports, so maybe that might appeal to some.

avernon · 3 years ago

Hub and spoke is primarily used to fill large planes. If you have 10-20 passenger electric planes you'd land at some random county airport, eat a hamburger or a taco while the plane recharges, then get back on the same plane and finish the trip. So you'd have a layover like hub and spoke but all the concerns about missing connections go away.

avernon commented on Metal Without Mining magratheametals.com... · Posted by u/sctgrhm

ChuckMcM · 3 years ago

Not to be too snarky here, did you read the link to the research? It too uses electro-chemistry with the defining feature: "This new process produces pure magnesium hydroxide, allowing researchers to skip energy-intensive and expensive purification steps."

My reasoning was to note that the Magrathea collateral is pushing "low energy" to make the connection. I am NOT saying I KNOW that this how they are doing it. It is because this is a "mature market" in terms of well established players who are doing this with lime and salt ponds that I was wondering "Has anything changed that would convince a VC (or Angel) to fund a new magnesium producer?" What would have to be true in order to have a value proposition that would convince someone they could succeed against the established players?

And so I go off and search various "research news" web sites to see if there is any news on Magnesium extraction. If they are not using this research then I would be skeptical of their success given the existing market is well established and making a new venture using existing techniques is pretty capital intensive.

avernon · 3 years ago

Yes, I read the underlying paper a while back. It only looks at the very first step of a Dow-like process, before any electrochemistry happens. Instead of dumping hydroxide in a tank, they expose it to hydroxide in a serpentine flow path. When I was reading into this before calcium didn't seem to be too big of a problem for the Dow process because the calcium compounds are more soluble than magnesium hydroxide. They were actually adding more calcium with the lime. So their comparison may be to a different method than the Dow Process. It didn't seem particularly useful.

Then you neutralize the magnesium hydroxide with hydrochloric acid to make Magnesium chloride and do molten salt electrolysis on it to make pure magnesium and chlorine.

avernon commented on Metal Without Mining magratheametals.com... · Posted by u/sctgrhm

ChuckMcM · 3 years ago

If you are wondering "how" they are doing this, I believe this company is the externalization of this research: https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/new-method-extract-mag...

(Kind of hard to pin down exactly since they don't say a lot about how they are doing it, but a quick check suggests this is the only "new" thing in extracting magnesium recently and Magrathea is a young company[1])

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/magrathea-metals

avernon · 3 years ago

They mention that they are doing electrochemistry. A huge portion of historical magnesium production is from electrolysis, including the only operating plant in the US. Past methods have used lime to precipitate magnesium (Dow) or evaporation ponds to concentrate it (the current Utah plant). Probably the new thing they are doing is using something like Chlor-Alkali to make base that precipitates the magnesium instead of using lime. Then the electrolysis of molten magnesium salts would be similar to products of today. There is some chance they have improvements in these areas, but there are really only so many options. The job descriptions they've posted support this hypothesis.

Recently most magnesium comes from China. They mine ore, throw it in a coal-fired furnace along with some reducing agents, then collect pure magnesium vapor. This process is more labor and energy intensive, but has significantly less CAPEX. Works for China.

Chlor-alkali is more expensive than lime and the back-end electrolysis is more expensive than thermal reduction. So I'd be skeptical they are going to lower costs without some kind of CAPEX reducing magic for molten salt electrolysis.

avernon commented on Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microreactor power-eng.com/nuclear/wes... · Posted by u/akeck

itsyaboi · 3 years ago

Heat water, make steam, spin turbine.

avernon · 3 years ago

In this case it is boil sodium, condense sodium to heat air, run air through turbine.

avernon commented on Utilities Want to Convert Coal Plants to Nuclear; Skeptics Abound wsj.com/articles/utilitie... · Posted by u/lxm

pabs3 · 4 years ago

Would coal to geothermal be more feasible?

avernon · 4 years ago

Quaise wants to use old coal plants. So yes if you can drill down super deep to hot enough temperatures.

avernon commented on Launch HN: Charge Robotics (YC S21) - Robots that build solar farms · Posted by u/justicz

avernon · 4 years ago

Will your system be robust to changes in solar farm design? Like if the industry goes towards the Erthos model of installing panels on the ground without racking or trackers?

avernon commented on Geothermal's path to relevance: cheap drilling austinvernon.site/blog/dr... · Posted by u/drocer88

DoingIsLearning · 4 years ago

It is important that we discuss cost, but I think the urgency of our need for mass generating non-intermitent power should override costs.

As an example Solar energy as it exists now would have been ridiculed in the late 80s as something that would never be cost effective.

It was the massive subsidies/tax rebate schemes in Germany and later on in other EU countries that open the window for manufacturers to produce at scale and make it the cost competitive source of energy that we see now.

I mentioned this in a previous comment on a biomass thread. We would be better off with EU funds allocated to solving the massification of geo-thermal or the massification of small vessel nuclear reactors, than to continue to pour money into converting coal plants into natural gas plants and opening up new biomass furnaces.

Natural gas and biomass are just a means for governments to play with statistics on 'renewable' pie-charts. Until we solve the problem of mass energy storage of intermitent renewables or a far away nuclear fussion we need to start _now_ deploying non-carbon emitting non-intermitent energy generation.

We have to be realistic and accept that we need to find a means of replacing coal and not all regions have the resources for hydro-generation, geo-thermal is the next best bet considering the time and friction it would take to roll out more nuclear for example.

avernon · 4 years ago

Germany has a 220 euro/kWh feed in tariff subsidy for geothermal.

avernon commented on Geothermal's path to relevance: cheap drilling austinvernon.site/blog/dr... · Posted by u/drocer88

chris_va · 4 years ago

Drilling cost is usually estimated as ~depth^2.

So, a 1km geothermal well? Break even, and you are limited to only a few places in the world.

A 5km geothermal well (needed for broad power availability)? 25x the cost...

So, sure, if you can get a 25x cost reduction in an already cutthroat industry, all power to you (no pun intended).

avernon · 4 years ago

Drilling cost is usually estimated for drilling in sedimentary rock with assumptions about how casing is run ;)

It is possible that drilling 30,000' of granite has conditions that make the estimation model irrelevant. 5 km isn't really deep enough, anyway. My next post will cover the thermo. It is pretty dang hard to get down to anything approaching $50/MWh. Definitely need more than cheap drilling.

avernon commented on Tesla Q3 2021 Vehicle Production and Deliveries ir.tesla.com/press-releas... · Posted by u/bald

NikolaNovak · 4 years ago

Not to disagree,but for different perspective

1. How long has Tesla been manufacturing vs Rivian

2. How does Tesla compare to Toyota

I feel it's all apples and oranges both ways. They're all in different manufacturing maturity place

avernon · 4 years ago

Tesla was founded in 2003, Rivian in 2009. So Tesla took five years to start Roadster production, while Rivian has taken 12 years until first customer deliveries. Maybe Rivian will ramp faster. Sam Korus tracks the numbers and so far Tesla is ramping faster than Ford, making it the fastest ramping car manufacturer in American history. I wouldn't be surprised if some Chinese companies could go faster. It is much faster than what Toyota did. They are very methodical, which is why they have almost zero pure EV sales.

avernon commented on In older adults alcohol abstinence is associated with increased dementia risk psyarxiv.com/7835k/... · Posted by u/garren

spicybright · 4 years ago

I'm not scientifically versed enough to vet the paper, but this seems very unlikely to me.

Can someone better trained here try and analyze this paper?

avernon · 4 years ago

The data is observational, which generally means you should ignore it. It is too noisy.

There were those studies that showed moderate alcohol use improved health and only heavy drinkers saw detrimental health effects. The problem was that "no drinking" group included people that weren't drinking because of poor health. Later studies compared drinking vs. a "no drinking" sample of people that drank around two glasses of wine per year. The improved health effects completely disappeared. The more you drink, the worse it is for your health.

So this study is like that in using a potentially unhealthy comparison group. They try to offset that a little by also throwing in people that quit drinking. But it is likely that some people quit drinking because of health problems. So I'd guess that this study has the same problem with an unhealthy comparison group. The study probably can't tell you what the actual relationship between alcohol use and dementia with any authority.