Thanks for the ping.
Here is the latest on Rossi’s US patent application. Below is an excerpt I mined out of it. This is getting interestinger and interestinger.
[0038] Considering that about 10,000,000 tons nickel for year are produced through the world and since, as it will be disclosed hereinafter in Table 1, 1 g nickel would generate an energy amount equivalent to that produced by 517 tons oil, thus the yearly produced nickel amount, assuming that only 1/10,000th generates nuclear processes, will provide 1,000,000,000,000*517110000-51,700,000,000 (oil equivalent) ton per year.
[0039] And this without considering the fact that the yearly nickel production could be easily increased, depending on demand, and that, like mineral oil, nickel can be recovered and remelted from nickel scraps of steelwork and electronic applications.
[0040] Actually, nickel is one of the most abundant metals of the Earth crust.
Recently, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), the energy-monitoring body of 28 industrialized countries, also trimmed its 2011 world oil demand outlook, citing the impact of persistent high prices and weaker economic growth for developed economies. IEA predicts that global oil demand would increase by 1.5% (or 1.3 million barrels per day) annually, reaching 89.2 million barrels a day in 2011 from last year’s 87.9 million barrels a day. The energy agency’s current estimate for 2011 is lower by 190,000 barrels a day from its last report, issued in April 2011. (From results of World Oil Demand search - Jim)
American oilmen usually reckon quantities of oil produced, moved or processed in barrels per day (bpd or b/d). The loose but simple rule of thumb for conversion is that a barrel a day is roughly 50 tonnes a year (approx. 55 U.S. tons), but the relationship varies according to density and so according to product. (From oil industry conversion chart - Jim)
According to my figures (89.2 million bbls per day of demand x 55 U.S. tons yearly each) current oil usage should amount to 89.2 x 55 = 4906 -— or 4.9 billion tons annually. In [0038] Rossie seems to be saying that 1/10,000th of the current annual world production of nickel, if diverted to LENR usage, would amount to over 10 times (51.7 billion tons) the present annual energy equivalent of oil usage. That is simply astounding! - Jim
I have my flame suit on. If someone can blast my figuring to smithereens I will stand corrected. To see patent go here:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RossiAmethodandaa.pdf
See #138.
IIRC nickle is a tricky metal in that it is often the byproducts of other mines. So if a lead mine makes 10% of earnings off nickle byproduct.... Then whether it does more exploration or mining is dependent on the lead price not the nickle price
Silver often has this problem. It is often the byproduct of a mine, say a copper mine.
I don't see where he gets that figure.
From my calculations in post #136, a gram of nickel would produce 1.3 ×1010 joules, or 13 gigajoules.
A barrel of oil is 6.1 gigajoules, so that's more like 2 barrels per gram.
Looking at another site which compares energy content of various fuels, a 1,000 MW power plant would consume about 9,000 tons of coal per day, or 40K barrels of oil, or 3 kg of U235, putting a gram of U235 at about 13 barrels of oil. A U235 fission produces more Mev of energy than the nickel fusion reaction, so it makes sense.
That's still a hell of a lot of energy.
As far as our running out of nickel, all we need is to have an energy source that will keep us going comfortably for the next century. We need to get into space.
Once we're in space, then we have lots of iron-nickel asteroids to mine. Iron-nickel meteorites tend to be 5-25% nickel. There's this cute little iron-nickel asteroid called 16 Psyche that's 200 kilometers in diameter, which can meet our needs for quite a while.