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Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

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Re: Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

#51

Post by s1artibartfast »

danans wrote: post #46
s1artibartfast wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what they are. I am skeptical that they more economical than other forms of grid power storage. IF you just want to go electricity>heat>electricity Industrial Arc furnaces can go to 2000 C (and much higher but they have no industrial need). I would love to be wrong.

> IF you just want to go electricity>heat>electricity I think the idea here is to go electricity->heat-storage->heat-usage, using the heat storage to take advantage of cheap renewables that might be otherwise curtailed and to buffer the heat to provide reliability for whatever process it is used for. Almost any form of energy storage other than heat (i.e. batteries, hydrogen, gravity) would be far more expensive in t…

Thanks, I understand better. I'm sure there are some applications for pre-heating to time shift demand, but I do think it is limited.

Re: Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

#52

Post by hristov »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #22
kukkamario wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it is just a brick that can acts as a heating element. In terms of converting electricity to heat it is almost 100% efficient like every other electric heating element. I didn't spot any mention of voltage requirements for that so maybe it requires so high voltage that cause it to be a bit harder to actually use.

> In terms of converting electricity to heat it is almost 100% efficient like every other electric heating element. except there are many types of heat pump in this world that routinely achieve well above 100% efficiency, since pumping heat from a cold heat bath to a hot one can cost significantly less energy than generating that heat resistively.

Yeah except heat pumps are really not very efficient at high temperature differentials. They are great if the outside temp is 5 deg C to bring it to a nice comfy 20 deg C. They would not work very well if you want to brung the temperature to thousands of degrees C.

Don't get me wrong, it would be super cool if someone creates a heat pump that can bring the temperature up enough to melt iron ore at greater than 100 percent efficiency, but it does not seem like anyone currently making heat pumps considers this remotely possible.

Re: Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

#53

Post by s1artibartfast »

visarga wrote: post #8
tentacleuno wrote: post #2

https://archive.is/QGs6x

Wondering why archive.is is ok to replicate articles beyond paywalls while chatGPT got sued for a few unintentional regurgitations. Should there be a "protect it or lose it" rule for copyright as in trademarks?

Who said Archive is OK with publishers? They are just based in Russia and give the middle finger to anyone who tries to sue them.

Re: Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

#54

Post by s1artibartfast »

amelius wrote: post #40
klyrs wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every material is a conductor in a high enough potential! And if you pass enough current through copper, it can get to the same temperature, provided you're careful enough to maintain contact after it melts. The distinguishing feature to call these "conductive" is that you could make a kiln of these bricks and ordinary bricks, and the current should preferentially pass through the conductive ones. Some of the current…

> And if you pass enough current through copper Yeah, but how do you make a copper wire heat up without also heating up the wiring that leads to that copper wire? You can make it thinner, but these bricks aren't very thin.

You stick a large high temperature electrode into molten copper. This is how an arc furnace works. Some have water cooled electrodes to keep them from melting.

Re: Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

#56

Post by tonfreed »

throwup238 wrote: post #12
mauvehaus wrote: post #10

How does this fit into the wider picture of steelmaking with electric arc furnaces? Those have been around for a good long while; what can this do that an electric arc furnace can't? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace

Pretty much nothing, at least for steel. You still need the carbon to incorporate into the alloy so like arc furnaces, they can only be used with mostly scrap material. That’s why steel makers still use coal. They need the coke.

Thanks, was going to ask where the carbon was coming from

Re: Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

#57

Post by klyrs »

amelius wrote: post #50
throwaway173738 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induce a current magnetically and you don’t need a direct wire connection. As for what to put in the intervening space I will leave that as an exercise. Induction cooktops are ridiculously efficient at heating

Nice idea, but for generating that magnetic field you propose to use ... electric current? ;)

Responding to your question two above:

You've probably seen multiple instances of this in your daily experience. A fuse is a thin conductor between thick electrodes. A light bulb is a very fine conductor between thick electrodes, encapsulated in a vacuum bulb. If you use tungsten electrodes, you can easily melt copper in the manner I've described -- that's how TIG welders work.

Responding to your question about electric current:

Quite simply, use leverage! Take a transformer with multiple (N) windings on the primary and a single winding on the secondary. Putting one (DC) amp through the primary will induce N amps through the secondary. With induction, you can use a low current to induce high current. Or correspondingly, transform low (AC) voltage to high voltage -- this is how high voltage power lines work.

Re: Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

#58

Post by Retric »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #42
Retric wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your primary goal is thermal storage The goal isn’t thermal storage the goal is to do something that needs extreme temperature. You can’t melt steel at 500C, you can melt it in bricks at 1500C that then cool to 1400C. Use electricity to heat a brick to 1500C and you get 100C worth of energy storage. Use solar thermal to get to 1400C and you get zero energy storage.

I think that is kinda my point. These comments are all in reference to the idea of using these bricks for electrical storage, as an alternative of offset to other technologies like molten salts, batteries, or pumped hydro. Im skeptical that they would be improvement on other forms of grid power storage. This is independent of the question if they are good for melting steel. I guess I dont understand the point you are…

The energy never gets turned back to electricity. It’s electricity > melting iron for steel (or whatever) and we’re inserting an energy storage in the middle because it’s effectively free.

The total energy storage is also unlikely to be huge so it’s more like load management not really grid storage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_management IE: Because we have energy storage and other users don’t we can cut demand when prices spike. Utilities will cut special rates for companies that allow the utility to load shed them first.

The same basic concept is common in other areas. Get enough storage for ~free such as with an EV and you can simply wait until prices get cheap before charging.

Re: Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

#59

Post by throwup238 »

tonfreed wrote: post #56
throwup238 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much nothing, at least for steel. You still need the carbon to incorporate into the alloy so like arc furnaces, they can only be used with mostly scrap material. That’s why steel makers still use coal. They need the coke.

Thanks, was going to ask where the carbon was coming from

Electric furnaces introduce carbon using graphite electrodes which is enough for the carbon that gets embedded in the alloy but to convert the iron oxide in raw ore to pure iron in a blast furnace, you need a lot more carbon as a reducing agent to bind to oxygen, preventing it from oxidizing the working material as the metal cools. The coke also serves a dual purpose as a semi-permeable solid that allows the hot gasses to escape from the furnace without collapsing under the weight of the molten metal.

Re: Electrically conductive bricks can replace fossil fuels in industrial processes

#60

Post by amelius »

klyrs wrote: post #57
amelius wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice idea, but for generating that magnetic field you propose to use ... electric current? ;)

Responding to your question two above: You've probably seen multiple instances of this in your daily experience. A fuse is a thin conductor between thick electrodes. A light bulb is a very fine conductor between thick electrodes, encapsulated in a vacuum bulb. If you use tungsten electrodes, you can easily melt copper in the manner I've described -- that's how TIG welders work. Responding to your question about elect…

True, but something should be there to close the loop on that not-so-thin brick, and that something will get hot. That picture shows only a single brick, not a loop of bricks so something does not add up.
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