Tech Tuesday – Puppy Power Edition

Oscar Gordon

A Navy Turbine Tech who learned to spin wrenches on old cars, Oscar has since been trained as an Engineer & Software Developer & now writes tools for other engineers. When not in his shop or at work, he can be found spending time with his family, gardening, hiking, kayaking, gaming, or whatever strikes his fancy & fits in the budget.

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7 Responses

  1. Michael Cain says:

    TT05: It emits no CO2 only if there’s some place other than the atmosphere to dump the CO2 it produces. There have been a lot of proposals made in the past to oxidize carbon such that the CO2 stream is easily captured — see, for example, solid carbon fuel cells. They fall apart when the energy and dollar costs of disposing of the CO2 are included.

    TT13: Just my opinion, but the AI in question is still just a software tool. We are a long way from a piece of software capable of being credited with the actual invention.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Michael Cain says:

      There’s a clever system to turn CO2 into bananas and strawberries, similar to the recent breakthrough on better vegieburgers that feeds grain and vegetables to cows, which then convert them into tasty meat.

      Anyway, their power system sounds more like what you’d have for a rocket turbopump’s preburner. Switching to pure oxygen drastically raises combustion temperatures, so they have to be run way off stoichiometric to avoid melting the turbine blades. Recirculating the CO2 to use it as an inert diluting gas would accomplish the same thing.

      I recently suggested an engine cycle where the helium tank pressurant was used to dilute the O2 in the pre-burner. The CO2 and H2O are then easily separated from the helium via the extreme cold available when you’ve got a LOX tank ten feet away, and the helium can either go back in the main tanks to pressurize them (It’s original purpose) or circulated through the burner and turbines as needed.

      A fixed powerplant could likely also substitute helium for recirculated CO2, but it would take a bit of math to see if that would be worthwhile.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Michael Cain says:

      Yes, you do have to have somewhere for the CO2 to go, but we have such options, especially when you already have a pure CO2 source to work with.

      It’s one of those things where, if we weren’t so concerned with releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, the plant would not be economical. But because we are…Report

  2. DensityDuck says:

    [TT11] of course a planet that’s literally face-melting heavy metal would be named after W.A.S.P. 😀Report

  3. Michael Cain says:

    Microsoft researchers have found the Russian government is making a big push to break into the software on Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It appears that the owners never bother to change the default password in a disturbing percentage of cases. I seldom say nice things about Comcast, but the default password on their cable modems is now a fairly strong randomly generated string, unique to each device.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Michael Cain says:

      I seem to recall a number of articles quite a few years ago regarding the utter lack of security being built into IoT devices, and that no one was really interested in taking security for IoT seriously.Report

      • Hardly anyone in a position to matter is taking IoT security seriously today. We still struggle to get people to install anti-malware software on personal computers and keep it up to date. How many people are going to do that for their refrigerator? Or thermostat?Report