The first ocean-going steamships still had sails - it took many years for steam power to fully displace sail. Presumably a new maritime power system, like fusion, would follow a similar pattern.
Let's be realistic, it would have a diesel engine as a plan B.
But if you like sails: my pet hypothetical technology is wind-driven hydrogen tankers (or tankers for some other e-fuel derived from hydrogen) that sail out empty, then cruise around wherever there is plenty of wind. They'd have a turbine/generator setup driven by the water passing by and use the energy harvested there for filling the tank. Cruise around as long as it takes to nearly fill the tank then return to port (and fill the rest on the way back). There's a lot of oceans where systems like that could cruise around on. (same concept could also be used for desalonation, there it would not only be about energy but also about avoiding local brine concentrations)
The largest Q-Max-class gas tanker is 345 meters long [1]. Let's say you manage to fit 3 giant Siemens wind turbines on it, with 100m long blades [2]. It's a bit cramped but let's say you have extenders on the side to make room for all 3 of them. And also let's say you found a way to prevent the ship from tipping over when the wind is strong. By deploying floaters on the side or whatever. Not unsurmountable.
Each of those wind turbine has a rated power of 14.7 MW [2]. Let's say that you found a place where the wind blows super strong (but not too strong) and steady all the time. It's possible, since you are a mobile ship, after all. Let's say that you have a way for the ship to keep in the same place despite the strong and steady wind pushing you constantly. Using engines is going to lower your efficiency, so let's say we found another way.
So, now your ship is generating 45MW constantly. According to ChatGPT, this is 32 kg of hydrogen per second, taking hydrolysis losses into account.
Tanker capacity is 18 620 000 kg of liquid hydrogen. It will take 581 000 seconds to fill up. 9697 minutes, 161 hours, or 6.7 days. Much shorter than I thought... Did I miss something?
You have it reverse wind turbines need mooring, stay upright and so on. That's highly impractical. No, you build a fast-going sail vessel (using big traction kites, because it's not the 19th century anymore) and power the generator from much smaller turbine blades in the water. Hydrogenerator is the term established in recreational boating.
I sure would not expect any returns in days, more like months or years. But if we (humanity) could just solve the purely man-made problem of piracy (or would it technically be salvage?), I believe that a robotic fleet of cruising hydrogenerators could be a huge contribution to our energy needs.
The main issue is that prevailing winds have a direction, and there's not a continuous open ocean path other than the Southern Ocean which is harsh even by the standards of oceans. Sure you can steer along trade winds in the Atlantic or Pacific but there's quite some efficiency loss.
(Give climate change another decade or so and the Arctic Ocean maybe becomes an option, although by then we'll have bigger fish to fry, or perhaps poach).
Boats go considerably faster, as in overcoming more water drag, going crosswind than going downwind. I suppose that adding extra drag with a hydrogenerator will change the maths of that relationship, but certainly not so much that it would be prohibitively wasteful to not specialize a hydrogenerator carrier to downwind-only. (if the downwind-only setup can be competitive at all, not sure I'd take that as a given)
It strikes me that having the turbine and hydrolysis plant fixed in place, and having ships visit those sites to refuel, is probably an easier setup than mobile turbines.
But I think your maths is wrong somewhere. Hydrogen supplies 33MWh/tonne, and you've stated the ship capacity as 18620 tonnes. 18620/(33*24) gives a generation time of 23 days, even before we allow for hydrolysis overheads.
Marine hydrogen isn't a terrible idea though. Tank weight and bulk is prohibitive for aviation, but less so for shipping.
There are only so many windy places to affix turbines to. There's a lot of ocean to cruise on.
The mobile hydrolyser (not a boat to solve shipping in a quasi perpetuum mobile away, but an energy harvester that focuses on just that) would solve mooring: the "lateral lift" of the boat would take care of that, just how your plain old America's Cup boat isn't just slowly dragged downwind. It would solve linkup: a serious cost component in not all too conveniently located off shore wind installations is the grid connection. And it would solve intermittency: hydrogen is inconvenient compared to hydrocarbons, but it's super convenient compared to getting even more electricity at a time demand on your grid is already satisfied to saturation.
(GP's math is likely wrong, but the assumption that you could somehow cram multiple turbines from the bigger end of market offerings on a boat and call it a day seems so far off to me that I never really looked at the numbers)
Ugh, turns out I suck at math too. At least attempting it before coffee.
The ship's capacity in MWh is 18620t x 33MWh/t = 614460MWh.
At 45MW generating capacity, an electric hydrolyser at 80% efficiency delivers hydrogen at a rate of 36MW. That will unfortunately take about 70 years to fill the ship to its maximum capacity.
On a more positive note, 36MW is still a heck of a lot of power, plenty enough to run a mid-sized cruise liner or warship. So a marine generating station with three of these turbines could, for example, refuel a liner once a month, and then that liner have enough fuel to cruise for a month, and so on.
This would require a fuel tank with a more reasonable 750 tonne capacity. That's still several times more than the Shuttle, but not beyond the realms of feasibility - and a stronger, heavier tank allows higher pressures / smaller volumes.
I am totally mesmerized by the idea of a floating hydrolizing platform , where ships can dock and load hydrogen fuel ( not sure what form suits best ).
Must start some economics of it. Also marine environment is very unforgiving...
Platforms are does-not-scale hard though: they require mooring and every bit of ocean floor is different. Drilling platforms come in multiple "species", as different as spiders, fish and birds. Roaming hydrolysers on the other hand would be one design fits any ocean. You'd want to build lots of them, more Model T than Death Star. And where a stationary platform would have to be able to brace a hurricane, the roaming unit would just go to a neighboring sea with a friendlier forecast. Or ride along on the edge, if power throughput has enough headroom.
But yes, fuel-based powerplant, likely as part of a hybrid drive running electric motors powering propellers themselves.
Marine propulsion is already pretty optimised for efficiency (turn on engine, set to cruise power, maintain for 14 days, little acceleration, starts, stops, and/or hills), so a hybrid setup would work pretty effectively.
The far greater challenges are Q>1 and reliable fusion within a ship's structure.
We're serving customers in Africa, LatAm, & South Asia at the moment — but yes, nonetheless, we'll be pursuing an MSB and are planning on using infrastructure providers with MTLs to make sure we're fully licensed to handle this activity.
Join me at Rippling and be the first founding engineer on my team. We're building a brand new zero-to-one product and as founding engineer you'll get to architect it from the ground up, and scale it up from a handful of initial customers to thousands. This is a cool and unique opportunity to work with other former startup founders (like me) to build something new inside a great and fast-growing company.
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Hey, Linear is opinionated in it's philosophy of Project management and the usage of terminology. We do accommodate all the features that linear has in a general way. Plane is extensible where users can build the framework of their choice.
Height is a very general tool with it's focus on various kinds of teams. With Plane you do that as well. But it's focus is more on the Method. Method or the framework of choice that the team wants to use to manage their projects.
In the Bay Area you can find people flying at the model airplane field behind the Oakland Airport (https://goo.gl/maps/TBJTFuUoWhHapCwk7). It's quite a spectacle.
Ducted engines make less noise, which is handy for helipads in cities. They also increase thrust efficiency. If done right, the duct can contain any shrapnel if the fan blades come apart. The disadvantage of a duct is extra weight.
They're chasing the rich-guy helicopter market (think trips to/from/airports) due to the energy density issues of current battery tech, which is going to be much easier without the noise of supersonic blade tips.
For anyone interested in L. Reuteri, you can buy it in the U.S. as Gerber probiotic drops (https://medical.gerber.com/products/supplements/soothe-colic...). Marketed for babies but obviously works on adults too. Last I checked Gerber had an exclusive license on U.S. distribution of this bacterium—there’s a Swedish company, BioGaia, that IIRC is the original patent holder.
How long have you been eating the yoghurt?
Do you use any other tablets/pills/etc to make it?
Why make the yoghurt instead of just eating the pills?
What do you think it's done for you?
>>> How long have you been eating the yoghurt?
About 3-4 months now
>>> Do you use any other tablets/pills/etc to make it?
No, but there are other recipes in the book than combine different bacteria
>>> Why make the yoghurt instead of just eating the pills?
To increase bacterial count; often like x1000 (from millios to billions)
>>> What do you think it's done for you?
I did not take it for any particular reason, so I was not expecting much. Most definetively, improved mood after 3 weeks.
The strain itself (and its specific genome) can be patented. Not as it's found "in the wild", but with genetic modification. The thing is this "genetic modification" includes not just techniques like CRISPR, but also just letting the bacteria mutate in a vat.
I think it's total nonsense, but the law allows it. If wild bacteria growing on your skin happens to mutate into the exact same genetic code as a patented strain, you could technically be in infringement.
Is it possible to introduce this to the body without buying it specifically? Or put another way, how did people get L. Reuteri without pharmaceutical/supplement companies growing it in labs?
> It appears to be essentially ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, having been found in the gastrointestinal tracts and feces of healthy humans,[7] sheep, chickens,[8] pigs,[9] and rodents.[10] It is the only species to constitute a "major component" of the Lactobacillus species present in the gut of each of the tested host animals,[11] and each host seems to harbor its own specific strain of L. reuteri.[10][12] It is possible that L. reuteri contributes to the health of its host organism in some manner.[13]
The labs got it from nature, not the other way around.
Breast milk is inherently sterile (unless the mother has a severe bacterial infection). It usually gets contaminated with the skin microbiota during feeding.
So no, I wouldn't count on L. reuteri being found in a random sample of breast milk.
That's hotly debated. Even the study you cite cannot rule out skin contamination.
But unequivocally showing the existence of entero-mammary pathway (translocation of maternal gut bacteria from the gut to the mammary glands) would be very exciting news indeed.
Yes, because if you are buying breast milk from a woman who used a breast pump, then the skin contamination is very very little compared to actual breast suckling.
You've put more confidence in your statement than the scientific consensus allows.
A brain microbiome is hotly debated, no concrete proof (yet?). I personally also have a hard time believing in a healthy bacterial blood microbiota, but it's also proposed.
I know lactos are in the environment naturally. When I ferment peppers or other vegetables I lightly rinse them to make sure some bacteria is left. Eating raw fruits and vegetables would certainly pass some bacteria to the gut.
They know someone who knows someone who swears their cousin had the best kefir, or a proper “Tibetan mushroom” complex. Supplement companies aren’t the devil.
Thanks, I came to ask this. It seems like the probiotic market is largely a hit or miss. Reviews online are filled with people claiming their purchases failed milk culturing tests (I don't know if testing as such even works), claims that these bacteria can't survive on warehouse shelves, etc.
That’s why Visbiome ships in insulated packaging with ice packs. There’s even a color indicator that turns red if the contents exceed a temperature during shipping (and refunds are granted if this indicator is red when it receive the product). You then store in the freezer. Unfortunately, the product does not contain L. Reuteri.
Yes I use it regularly. But I don’t have IBS, Crohns, or any other GI disorder. I use it to periodically populate my gut. So to answer “am I satisfied” is difficult. I don’t notice a difference with or without it, because none of us are consciously aware of our gut micro biome. I could say “well I haven’t been sick in years”, but who knows what else contributes to that.
The patent is for a particular strain that was used in experiments. I don't know how likely it is that closely related but unpatented strains that you can buy from different companies have a different effect.
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