Metal Hydride storage

[Captain Jonah]

This is even more theoretical than jump drives at present though as you need to accept that energy required to overcome the coulomb barrier is less than the end result of slaming those Protons together,

See the Sun for a working example. Remember, one of the byproducts IS deuterium...

Do you mean the large solar light bulb or do you mean the red top paper with the topless girls had an article on science :shock:

 

[DFW]

Do you mean the large solar light bulb or do you mean the red top paper with the topless girls had an article on science :shock:

Hmm, not familiar with the latter. Link?

 

[rust]

Hmm, not familiar with the latter. Link?

Obviously a professional medical journal focussed on plastic surgery:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/virals/superbabes/

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

After all... "the Sun says"....

 

[DFW]

Hmm, not familiar with the latter. Link?

Obviously a professional medical journal focussed on plastic surgery:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/virals/superbabes/

:lol:

 

[rinku]

Yeah, I'm with DFW on the p-p reaction having to be the basis for Traveller fusion. As usual, this is explained with gravitics, but for once it's clear and logical. A strong artificial gravity field is *precisely* what you want for a fusion reactor.

If deuterium was the basis, refuelling from water sources would take a lot longer than it does, you'd think.

 

[captainjack23]

Deuterium would require scooping and filtering 6666 Dtons of Hydrogen which would take years for your 20 Dtons a day purification plant. It is more likely that a ships entire fuel load would be filtered to provide the Deuterium with everything else apart from the H then vented to space and what is left being the jump bubble H.

According to the description in the rules a fuel processor does not filter
fuel out of something else, it processes the unrefined fuel into the same
amount of refined fuel. While I have no idea how this could be done, it
seems to turn normal hydrogen into the deuterium required by the reac-
tor.

a suggestion from Long Ago In This Forum(tm)

Sat Aug 09, 2008 4:56 am Post subject: Re: Why hydrogen?

Klaus Kipling wrote:
We know that jump drives use (preferably refined) h2 for jump fuel, and that power plants use the same.

We know from this version of Traveller that most of the h2 used in jump is used to inflate the jump bubble.

But why h2?

This is just idle speculation, but could it be something to do with the fact that if you strip the electron from a hydrogen atom, you're left with a proton? Is this some useful handwavium we can use to embellish our MTU jump theories?

Actually, and this is just my own speculation, that may be sort of the case.


The unique thing about H atoms is exactly that - the nucleus is one proton, and nothing else....except for the much less frequent heavy isotopes with one and two neutrons, correct ? So, a cool solution would make the need for H2 fuel dependent on its unique properties.

So, how 'bout this. We know from the previous discussion that 1. potential fusion reactions like more heavy isotopes of hydrogen, and that 2. unrefined fuel has to be a lot cleaner than often supposed -ie you can't throw "any old gas involving hydrogen " in there and make it work(the "pull my finger" refuel, as my useless players call it...) . So, basic scooping has to largely result in mostly H2; what do the refineries do, and why is it that it takes much time at all ? Gas separation isn't wildly hard nowadays, and can't help but get easier.

Here's a thought: most of the job in refining fuel is enriching the powerplant fuel with heavy hydrogen from the jump bubble hydrogen. Unrefined fuel for the fusion plant is simply unenriched hydrogen, and possibly has minor contaminants; but mainly it is unenriched.

So we could stop there, but we can tie it to the jump bubble....

suppose then, that whatever jumpspace is, one of its dangerous qualities is that of supressing or at least degrading the strong nuclear force which binds protons and neutrons...thus causing an atomic nucleus from our world to blast apart -and even heavy hydrogen would shed neutrons like crazy. Single proton Hydrogen, however, doesn't have that problem.

So, the more the jump bubble is composed of single proton hydrogen, the better it works; the more complex atoms it contains, however, the more we get sudden bursts of protons and neutrons. This would be....bad.... in general for the ship and crew...and as the ship's jump bubble enters jumpspace, too many bursts could well disrupt the jump to the point of causing misjumping.

So. The refining process transfers the heavy hydrogen from the jump bubble fuel into the powerplant fuel (as well as minor filtering) ; the hydrogens unique ability to resist jumpspace is increased by the process that makes the powerplant fuel more effective. Talk about efficient dependency !

The nice thing about this, is that the unrefined fuel modifier is no longer caused by the fuel effecting the powerplant but rather the jump process itself. And the whole Jumpspace/jump thing is so vaguely defined as to cause far less problems than making assumptions about engineering or powerplants......

There's more if you want.....

 

[captainjack23]

Whoops ! Found some more stuff to Blather from Archived material..:lol:

Yeah, I'm with DFW on the p-p reaction having to be the basis for Traveller fusion. As usual, this is explained with gravitics, but for once it's clear and logical. A strong artificial gravity field is *precisely* what you want for a fusion reactor.

If deuterium was the basis, refuelling from water sources would take a lot longer than it does, you'd think.

It is interesting that as far as I can see, the use of gravitic compression isn’t addressed - the focus is on thermal initiated or magnetic compression reactions. So I wonder if my idea is off base by a big margin......Still, very very helpful. So, taking big chunks from that article (thanks to : J. Duncan Law-Green at http://traveller.mu.org/house/fusion.html )

So, assuming the gravitic compression model is usable, I see a dual or triple phase start up:
1. a cold start D+D fusion, possibly via standard means -can be stored in a cache after protium filtering;
2. possibly providing power for a catalyzed PP (CNO) reaction to get the grav compression running to levels needed to
3. squish out pulsed PP fusion as described above, probably allowing fusion to occur only on a very small number of H atoms.
4. The pesky extra hydrogen is plasmafied by the fusion pulse and then passed thru an MHD for power, and then thru a heat exchange box to grab the last ergs, the rest is dumped, possibly for reaction jets, or to provide the blue glow.
5. Power is first routed to the Grav system for the next pulse, and then to the ship as a whole.
6. When the reactor goes into overdrive for jump, I'd see the reaction simply allowing the fusion pulses to occur more often; possibly with a catalyst reaction to increase efficiency.

The D for the startup is either from the processing of the jump fuel or provided in very small amounts by the basic power system; alternately they could be completely seperate - the excess D & T from the jump bubble could just be vented in Jumpspace or wherever. (try to be polite and avoid inhabitated areas, obviously)

The CNO for the phase two reaction cycles and can be very easily topped up.

The huge amount powerplant fuel is explained by lowered efficiency of the PP cycle, (but higher safety), and the fact that most of the H is used as plasma, not as a fusion fuel.

Messy Hydrogen (unrefined) in the power plant can cause problems as mentioned above; and this is an even bigger issue in overclock ( along with the posited issues of non-monatomic H in the jump bubble at entry) -thus the minus to jump roll.

 

[DFW]

Thanks Captain. Haven't read those (they've been around for decades) in >15 years. I like the single proton theory for why H is vented into the jump bubble.

 

[DFW]

Yeah, I'm with DFW on the p-p reaction having to be the basis for Traveller fusion. As usual, this is explained with gravitics, but for once it's clear and logical. A strong artificial gravity field is *precisely* what you want for a fusion reactor.

If deuterium was the basis, refuelling from water sources would take a lot longer than it does, you'd think.

And, in prior editions is how superdense hull metal is produced. It takes less energy to induce a P-P cycle with H than to collapse heavy metals at the atomic level.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Thanks Captain. Haven't read those (they've been around for decades) in >15 years. I like the single proton theory for why H is vented into the jump bubble.

Agreed.

This is of course using the jump space idea and not the pocket universe idea as there isn't anything in the pocket universe to interact with

Where are those articles hidden, I'll have a read later as you stopped part way through

 

[captainjack23]

Thanks Captain. Haven't read those (they've been around for decades) in >15 years. I like the single proton theory for why H is vented into the jump bubble.

Agreed.

This is of course using the jump space idea and not the pocket universe idea as there isn't anything in the pocket universe to interact with

Where are those articles hidden, I'll have a read later as you stopped part way through

Well, DFW's standard teasing answer aside, those are from about two years ago on this site -and on COTI, and SJG traveller forum. I'll repost the links when I have a minute or so .

And DFW, where are they to be found decades ago ? I'm presuming that you mean the ideas, not the actual text and content . I wrote the words, see, and would credit the author if I was aware I was quoting -or even the source of the inspiration. I'm not surprised that they are not new ideas, but it would be hard to find them before I wrote them, especially on the internet (at least) Decades ago....... ? One of the traveller mailing lists ?

 

[captainjack23]

This is of course using the jump space idea and not the pocket universe idea as there isn't anything in the pocket universe to interact with

Whipsnade over on COTI suggests that the H is used to create the interface, not to inflate the bubble, per se. One could modify this to have the field inside the interface require the protium, perhaps.

So, once again, with SuperPseduoScience Rationalization power, all can be made to fit..... :lol:

 

[DFW]

Thanks Captain. Haven't read those (they've been around for decades) in >15 years. I like the single proton theory for why H is vented into the jump bubble.

Agreed.

This is of course using the jump space idea and not the pocket universe idea as there isn't anything in the pocket universe to interact with

Where are those articles hidden, I'll have a read later as you stopped part way through

Well, DFW's standard teasing answer aside, those are from about two years ago on this site -and on COTI, and SJG traveller forum. I'll repost the links when I have a minute or so .

And DFW, where are they to be found decades ago ? I'm presuming that you mean the ideas, not the actual text and content . I wrote the words, see, and would credit the author if I was aware I was quoting -or even the source of the inspiration. I'm not surprised that they are not new ideas, but it would be hard to find them before I wrote them, especially on the internet (at least) Decades ago....... ? One of the traveller mailing lists ?

In the 90's I didn't interact on the internet regarding Traveler . So, I don't recall what pub I read them in. If you want to be snarky, PM me with your real name. Otherwise, buzz off.

 

[captainjack23]

Agreed.

This is of course using the jump space idea and not the pocket universe idea as there isn't anything in the pocket universe to interact with

Where are those articles hidden, I'll have a read later as you stopped part way through

Well, DFW's standard teasing answer aside, those are from about two years ago on this site -and on COTI, and SJG traveller forum. I'll repost the links when I have a minute or so .

And DFW, where are they to be found decades ago ? I'm presuming that you mean the ideas, not the actual text and content . I wrote the words, see, and would credit the author if I was aware I was quoting -or even the source of the inspiration. I'm not surprised that they are not new ideas, but it would be hard to find them before I wrote them, especially on the internet (at least) Decades ago....... ? One of the traveller mailing lists ?

In the 90's I didn't interact on the internet regarding Traveler . So, I don't recall what pub I read them in. If you want to be snarky, PM me with your real name. Otherwise, buzz off.

Thanks, but I'll pass on both, kind though the suggestions are. Actually, I thought you were being snarky; It seems we were both wrong. Shall we move on from the metadiscussion ?

Here's the point: If you did read articles like that, I would honestly be interested in reading them. Even a suggestion as to what...fanzine ? they were in would be helpful.

 

[DFW]

Here's the point: If you did read articles like that, I would honestly be interested in reading them. Even a suggestion as to what...fanzine ? they were in would be helpful.

If I recall (I didn't play this version) TNE core rules talked about fusion plants simply needing plain hydrogen. Page 201: It stated (paraphrased) the purification process was simply separating out the hydrogen from water, ammonia, etc., This would indicate P-P fusion process as there was no processing for deuterium in the process description.

"Ocean Refueling: ... The process calls for the ship to land in or near an ocean and fill its tanks from the local water supply. It takes approx 2 hours and results in fuel tanks filled with unrefined fuel."

So, clearly, filling the tanks once with water means that you are refining to plain H...

 

[rinku]

Hmm... it shouldn't take that long to just fill up with water. I'd take that to read "It takes 2 hours to electrolyse enough unrefined H2 to fill the tanks". Filling the tanks with seawater then later electrolysing it makes little practical sense - easier to pump it in, zap out some hydrogen, release the oxygen and pump out the water before it's reduced to a salty slurry or residue. It's unrefined at that point because you'll have contaminants in the gas mix. Running it through the fuel processor then or later will address that issue.

 

[DFW]

Hmm... it shouldn't take that long to just fill up with water.

Using a hose to fill tanks that are at a minimum 20 tons, can easily take a couple of hours. Using hoses is described in more than one place.

So many pubs. Anyone remember The Adjutant out of CA and that Canadian fanzine, Third Imperium?

 

[captainjack23]

Hmm... it shouldn't take that long to just fill up with water.

Using a hose to fill tanks that are at a minimum 20 tons, can easily take a couple of hours. Using hoses is described in more than one place.

So many pubs. Anyone remember The Adjutant out of CA and that Canadian fanzine, Third Imperium?

heck yeah ! The adjutant was a classic gunporn fanzine, and third imperium mapped the Outrim void, among other things. Great stuff. I think 3I is/was available online from the editor.

 

[DFW]

Hmm... it shouldn't take that long to just fill up with water.

Using a hose to fill tanks that are at a minimum 20 tons, can easily take a couple of hours. Using hoses is described in more than one place.

So many pubs. Anyone remember The Adjutant out of CA and that Canadian fanzine, Third Imperium?

heck yeah ! The adjutant was a classic gunporn fanzine, and third imperium mapped the Outrim void, among other things. Great stuff. I think 3I is/was available online from the editor.

I still have my copies of "The Traveller Chronicle" from that guy in Kentucky...