Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:I've seen work on this (Score 1) 51

I don't know anything at all about this technology, I'd not heard about it before. I came to the comments to find out if it was relying on liquification of CO2, which I assumed, or was something else.

First point to note, 80 bar isn't high pressure in an industrial setting and 30C is low enough that there's large parts of Europe where you can assume that ambient air temperature almost never exceeds it. Therefore passive cooling is possible and in many cases, forced air cooling will be is sufficient. (I liquified CO2, indoors, in the summer months, as an undergraduate in the UK with only passive cooling required. I don't recall the exact pressure but it was around 60bar which suggests the indoor temperature was around 20C.)

A long pipe passive atmospheric heat exchanger is almost certainly all that is needed, much like the radiator on domestic fridge.

You don't mention it but the decompression cycle is likely more problematic as, I would guess, ice buildup might restrict the ability to use passive or forced air heating unless you're using dehumidified air (which you might be anyway to avoid corrosion). You also need to avoid the CO2 freezing.

Long term storage - while I suspect this technology isn't intended for long term storage and is expected to cycle in a few days, storing liquid CO2 isn't a problem. CO2 cylinders will store gas for months even after first use. It's not like helium where without incredibly careful setup, you'll lose all the gas overnight once you break the factory seal.

Likewise impurities, The initial loading of the CO2 will require a pure gas and you'll want water vapour in particular excluded. Trace amounts of nitrogen and oxygen probably aren't going to be a problem (I don't know about how they affect the critical temperature, it might be that they also have to be totally excluded but that just makes initial loading harder). But it's not hard to produce equipment that is impervious to CO2, N2, O2, Ar and H2O that can maintain integrity at 100bar (you've got about a 40:1 safety factor for steel at 100bar). If trace amounts of impurity are a problem then you'll probably need to bake the equipment to flush out the adsorbed gasses but I'd guess flushing the pipework with CO2 at high temperature would be sufficient, I doubt you'd need to get to CERN levels of outgassing elimination.

Comment Re:Why they are more expensive (Score 1) 28

Manufacturers in China have enjoyed a distinct advantage in in lax environmental regulations, low material costs and labor rates compared to US. US manufacturing is competitive on the high end. We just cannot compete with cheap volume manufacturing.

I suspect US manufacturing can compete at much of the low end now as labour costs is becoming almost irrelevant to much of it.

However, the up front cost to build a fully automatic factory is substantial, and it requires constant ongoing capital investment to stay useful. You may not recoup your investment unless you can stay useful for 10 years and initial orders may have an estimated run time of 6 months.

One of the things that would help, but is one of the things that seems anathema to western corporations, is standardisation, A fan motor fails in a laptop, it's usually reasonable simple to replace except that that motor is specific to that particular model of that particular laptop from that particular manufacturer and your best source of parts might be a "not working" laptop of ebay.

There is certainly a case for custom parts like motors in some cases but most of the time, like arbitrary power plugs, it's to benefit the manufacturer and force obsolescence earlier.

Imagine manufacturers getting together to standardise some of these things. Maybe they create a new standard every 5 years. If you want a drone motor you'll know what sort of power supply so what voltage it should take, whether it's a high RPM or lower RPM use case, what power and what weight. Perhaps there's nothing suitable, then you have to have a custom part, but then there can be a "custom part tax" - high enough that manufacturers won't ignore it, but low enough that genuine use cases aren't prohibited until the next round of standardisation.

Even washing machines. I have a small kitchen and there is a space for a washing machine but there's no possibility of rearranging things to make more space. This is an absolutely standard (European) sized space. 20 years ago pretty much every washing machine would have fitted. Now lots don't, and even worse, manufacturers/retailers make it hard to tell if a replacement will actually fit. It's not at all uncommon in the UK to visit someone's house and discover a washing machine that is sticking out from the cupboard line by 8cm or so - because "I assumed it was a standard size and would fit". In larger houses it's theoretically, if not financially, possible to replace the entire kitchen with deeper worktops, but in smaller places this can be impossible.

Comment Re:Cameras in your bathroom will also detect crime (Score 1) 56

RE the divorces comment, that's a feature not a bug when you realize that what's being uncovered is 100% deeply dishonest behavior.

Personally I don't know why DNA testing at birth isn't mandatory even if it was only to confirm paternity and then disposed.

Comment This always amazes me... (Score 2) 35

We get these reports with phrases such as "rocketing through space".

Um, relativity teaches me that it is relative, whatever it is. So, rocketing through space relative to what, us? And the Solar System is also rocketing through space, relative to what?

I'm guessing there is some reference point the experts have declared to be THE reference... And like that, the experts just make it up, in this case for convenience...

Or not. Comments?

Comment Re:iRobot couldn't afford to operate. (Score 1) 74

Well, and not only that, but the article itself clearly says that it was the tariffs that killed the company, not Lena Khan. So the headline looks a bit like it's just clickbait nonsense, and Lena Khan had nothing to do with this. Sure, if Amazon had acquired them, maybe they would have operated at an apparent loss in order to collect all that hot hot private home use data, but that would not have been a win.

The worry that iRobot would be acquired by Amazon was reason enough for me to disable my device—I hadn't actually heard that the merger was canceled, because I moved shortly after that and we sold the Robot so we wouldn't have to move with it. :/

Comment Re: scum all day (Score 1) 37

And all this time I thought the point was you were trying to prove how clever you were, how stupid I am, how I don't get it, and how you are just superior. Which of course you don't think I get because I don't believe you. Why would I? Why would you believe me if I said the same things to you? We all think we're right. And in the end it's all a big whoosh.

Comment That's curious (Score 0) 90

I've been reading a lot about this and for the last 20 years largely the agw global warming advocates have INSISTED that food crops wouldn't flourish in higher CO2 environs (despite obvious logical and ample evidence - cf greenhouses commonly run at higher co2 concentrations for just this reason).

www.purdue.edu/newsroom/archive/releases/2017/Q1/rising-co2-due-to-climate-change-may-not-improve-agriculture,-model-shows.html
Rising CO2 due to climate change may not improve agriculture, model shows

https://yaleclimateconnections...
"A recent Department of Energy report falsely states that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will boost agricultural yields. In fact, climate change is much more likely to make food scarcer and more expensive. "

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
"Carbon dioxide could reduce crop yields" Are we conceding that now? "OK yes it will help them grow but they won't be as nutritious" is th new line?
Just want to be sure I'm current where the argument's at.

Comment Re:scum all day (Score 2) 37

If you're selling (or just giving away) copyrighted content, they will seize your domain, and then go about trying to sue or arrest you.

So it's just who did you offend. You and me, getting malware because we tried an old site? Feh, as if they care. Sports league, yeah, we gonna hunt you. Movie studio, cut your Internet access off, suer you for billions, can we put you in jail?

It's just who you offend. And it's not just about the Internet...

Slashdot Top Deals

The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

Working...