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Technology

Diamonds Are A Space Station's Best Friend 107

Posted by timothy from the ok-what-book-am-I-thinking-about? dept.
strredwolf writes: "Research is being done to replace standard solar cell pannels commonly used in satelites with one's made with diamonds. Supposedly, they would be more durable to conditions in space, as well as generate more power at the same cost. Same cost? The kicker is that they're not using gem-quality diamonds. Article on Beyond 2000, which amazingly is still around." Note: this is still a work in progress, not a finished technology, but if it pans out, this offers several benefits over traditional solar cells.
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Diamonds Are A Space Station's Best Friend More

Diamonds Are A Space Station's Best Friend

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  • Re:Interesting, but... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, I enjoy Beowulf jokes as much as the next person, but +1 Informative? Now that's funny!
  • I don't think our American friends are familiar with the show. It contains too disturbing scenes of deviant sexuality.

  • Re:The metal backplane dominates. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In this case you could not use a plastic backing film because the operating temperature of the cell is 1000C! I am not aware of any polymer that can take that sort of temperature (I could be wrong though).

    Richard Laxton

  • Whoa! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    According to this article, scientists can make diamonds from methane. I can see it now... farmers recycling cow farts to make jewelery.

    I have seen the future and it's made of crystallized flatulence.
  • If you think the problem of people ripping out cables for the salvage value of the copper, just wait until this technology hits. Soon we will have space-bound pick-up trucks driving off with the solar panels on the International Space Station. A sorry mess we will be in then!
  • The sharpening stone I use to sharpen my speed skates uses diamond grit. The bottom (the cutting side) is covered with what feels like sand paper. This texture is produced by the small diamond crystals stuck to the bottom.

    The stone cut really really well when I first got it, but it's not as good as it was. With use, the grit comes unstuck from the stone and/or gets clogged with metal. (Diamond stones use water the way a whetstone uses oil, to carry away metal dust, but it isn't perfect.)

    A stone about 30cm long and 5cm wide (and about 1cm thick, but the coating is just on one surface) cost about 60 $ canadian.

    A diamond burr stone (10x5cm or so) cost something like 10 $. (sold as a mini knife-sharpening stone at mountain equipment co-op).

    So, diamond stuff is out there now. The trick is to get it onto solar sails reliably. The cost of the raw diamond particles shouldn't be a problem.
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • You know, "Beyond 2000" sounded a lot cooler when we hadn't actually gotten past the year 2000. Now, it sounds like last year's news. And what's with 20th Century Fox? Sheesh! They each need to come up with a new naming scheme.

    I say for "Beyond 2000", they rename it "Five Years Out" - as that seems to be the amount of time everything talked about seems to be.

    As for 20th Century Fox...I guess it's easy enough for them to just change it to 21st Century Fox - it's not like they're likely to be around long enough for another name change anyway, right? Plus then they'd be able to use that cool song for their theme! :)
  • They have been making synthetic diamonds for quite some time. I'm from "oil country" and diamond tooth drill bits have been used for some time but only in certail situations... good for angle drilling when the neighboring land will not give up mineral rights. Seen some wacky shit in my times. Any way... synth diamonds are not new. Good idea for solar pnls though.
  • I thought spending on space projects was going down!

    A lot depends on how you interpret those last two words.

    Our culture is supposedly dominated in areas like science by people who say that they believe in evolution. The next obvious step would be space [aol.com] (although the previous atomic age [nexusmagazine.com] doesn't seem to have got very far in that direction). Without a program [asi.org] like this, Dr Malthus wins, albeit later than he figured, and everyone else loses [chatnfiles.com] (most of us die without any help from a rapacious industry, militant eco-nuts, Chernobyl or the Inquisition). Yet funding for space-oriented development is slowly, steadily drying up.

    Why?

  • Sure diamonds may have higher efficiency, but what they should also worry about is Watts/mass, not just efficiency. As long as W/m of GaAs is higher, they should think hard before switching.

    Short-term, yes. Lunar/asteroid-mined materials would be a different matter - since lofting them is much easier - and if you were going the powersat/habitat route, they could be arranged to emerge almost as a by-broduct of other refining (the slag/vapour from metals-refining would be relatively high-carbon).
  • It was better when it was originally shown on Showtime because you saw the original Lexx's bare heaving bosom in a shower scene. She was one hot biscuit! Too bad she turned into a lizard and died and got reborn as a hot but not quite as hot girl.

  • Do you want smaller government?

    Vote for midgets?

    Rimshot please.

  • They carefully control the quantity and quality of diamonds released to the public so that the level of supply and demand remains constant.

    I may be wrong, but I think they strictly regulate the number of gem quality diamonds on the market. I don't think they care a bit about black/brown industrial grade diamonds. Those are used every day in stuff like sanders, saw blades, etc.

    I read an article years ago about synthetic gem production, and wish I could remember what it said about the cost. But that's also key, there's probably a difference between "gem" and plain ole "diamond".
  • In this case you could not use a plastic backing film because the operating temperature of the cell is 1000C! I am not aware of any polymer that can take that sort of temperature (I could be wrong though).

    My mistake; I was thinking photocells.

    You could probably use a graphite composite, though, if weight was a serious problem. It's in vacuum, so it won't burn.
  • GaAs has the density of steel. I think diamond is about twice that (I don't quite remember).

    No, diamond is just 3.5 or so. Steel is about 8. Silicon is about 2.3.

    I agree with most points, except that though in space you don't need much backing, you still need to reinforce them for launch. Which entails about 4-6gs for a shuttle, and lots of vibration.

    What you'd actually do if you had a photovoltaic film (on metal or plastic) is roll it up for transport, and unfurl it in space. You can keep it thin that way.

    The limiting factor will be the required thickness of the electrode films (the two metal films sandwiching the diamond film). These will have large sheet currents going through them, and so will have to be thick. The diamond film can be as thin as desired, down to a few light wavelengths, I think (a few microns).
  • The front sheet cannot be thick -- light has to pass through it!

    What you do is you use a thin film with a mesh of thicker wires over it to carry the bulk of the current. Take a look at a conventional solar cell, and you'll see a dentritic wire pattern on it that does this.

    The _average_ thickness has to be enough to carry the required sheet current, even if the thickness on most of the surface is small.

  • The metal backplane dominates. (Score:3)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @12:15PM (#291382)
    The prime cost of putting things into space is not material, but the rockets you build to put them up there. Diamonds are much more dense than silicon or GaAs (the solar cell of choice in space nowadas, so the article is kinda wrong), so they will be correspondingly more massive.

    You're talking about a film a few tens or hundreds of microns thick on a sheet of metal.

    The density of the diamond film is moot point.

    Even if you deposit both a metal film and a diamond film on top of a lighter substrate (like mylar or another plastic), 1) the metal film will still outweigh the diamond film - it has to be thicker, because it's carrying current sideways instead of axially, and 2) the weight of the plastic backing will be much more than the weight of either of the films, because you'd only be using a backing if you could make the films very thin (otherwise you'd just use the thicker metal layer as the backing - this is a space environment, it doesn't have to be very strong).
  • Wrong... didn't you read the article? The system doesn't work like silicon. The diamond film converts HEAT to electricity. (Simular to piezo-electric crystals)

    So, you're going to have a big black sheet of metal heated up really hot.

    Pan
  • Yeah, I used to watch that show all the time as well. When they went to doing "The Next Step" later in the 90's, the co-creator of the show went on to host CNET Central, which went off the air a couple years ago. He's still doing News.com broadcasts on CNBC, but as far as I know, Beyond2000 and Next Step went off the air completely some time ago. I was shocked to see that they still have a website up.

    -Julius X
  • The show is apparently been airing continuously in Australia since 1985, and is in its 15th season (or "series" as everyone there calls it). The website has information about it here:

    http://www.beyond2000.com/show/index.html [beyond2000.com]

    -Julius X
  • This is very true. Diamonds are actually much, much more common than say, rubies or emeralds. The same thing is true of gold. The only reason gold is so expensive is because most of it is tied up as specie for national economies around the world. The only reason diamonds are so expensive is because the DeBeers family has a multinational cartel set up in Africa to control the mining and sale of diamonds. Supposedly, a lot of the civil wars in Africa are masterminded by the DeBeers in order to keep their pawns in power so they can continue to control the diamond market. Quite ingenious, actually, but also quite unethical, immoral, inhumane, etc.
  • A small diamond bit is used as a seed for the crystal, and methane gas (at the appropriate temp and pressure) is passed over it. The carbon sticks to the growing diamond, and the hydrogen continues on its way. In theory, this can create arbitrarily large diamonds.

    I hope industrial diamonds get more popular (not as jewelry) because they really are lovely material to work with. As has been mentioned, they conduct heat quite well, are quite strong for their weight, resist abrasion, etc. There's a good reason why lots of sci-fi uses diamond as a building material...
  • Yeah that show was awesome, and so was the little Aussie hottie... I guess there weren't enough shark chases or car attacks for Discovery's audiences.

  • Wow, does any one else remember this show from the Discovery channel? I used to watch this religiously through middle and into high school, when it was taken off the air. (or at least I thought since the Discovery channel dropped it) Does anyone know if it is still aired in the US? Their site didn't seem to offer that kind of information oddly, but they did say it is aired "around the world".

    I wonder if "The Next Step" is still on as well. Any of you other tech geeks out there remember those days? :)

  • The prime cost of putting things into space is not material, but the rockets you build to put them up there...<snip>

    The main issue with this idea (as is outlined very early on) is that they are rad hard. Solar Cells in orbit loose a significant proportion of their efficiency due to radiation effects. I have seen solar panels loose 5% due to the effects of one solar flare. Anything that makes the panels more rad hard keeps them working longer, keeps the satellite (or more of it) operating for longer. Neither Mass or Cost is the prime issue here (although they obviously have significance).

    --
  • It actually started with the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Co), the government owned channel as a show called "towards 2000". Then as 2000 approached and it got popular, Channel 7 (a commercial channel) bought the rights. It also changed its name to "beyond 2000" (but kept mainly the same team of reporters).

    IT gradually turned more mainstream and more engineering and less "science", so I lost interest. IT kept going for a few years, but I haven't seen it on comercial TV here for a while.

    I can still remember an '85 vintage (odd) story on mobile telephones, back when they were bigger than bricks, and filled half the boot (truck) of a car. They reckoned that "by the year 2000" (their favorite phrase in towards 2000) they would be small enough to fit in your pocket and that most people would have them. Noone really believed them! (They also made a lot of incorrect claims).
    I think it would be great to run that first series again, just for the comedy value.
  • If synthetics that defy all attempts to distinguish from naturals finally show up, we'll at last get to see the end of those insipid commercials. However, what effect will this have on the diamond-loving portion of the female population? Will it encourage a greater sense of aesthetics independant of size? Or will it encourage 50 carat boulders "for just 39 cents more?"

    Now on a more serious note: what is the heat dissipation on a diamond heat sink as opposed to (for example) an aluminum (aluminium) heat sink? Wrong direction or will I finally find something that can adequately cool off a >1GHz Athlon?

  • Timothy is probably thinking of ACC's 2061: Odyssey Three, in which the discovery of enormous jovian diamonds permits humanity to build space elevators and preserve all historical monuments.
  • Now our space stations will look like Puff Daddy with all those crusted diamonds...

    No, wait, it's P. Diddy now. Imagine that - the P. Diddy International Space Station.

    We're asking for an alien invasion.
  • prime cost of putting things into space is not material, but the rockets you build to put them up there

    And the cost of replacing them. Its not just the power/mass ratio of the operating unit, but the survivability.
  • Civil wars can also cause De Beers big headaches - there is a river valley in Africa where many of the riverbeds have gemstones in such quantiity you can shovel them up. The area that falls within South African territory is strictly policed to stop the bottom falling out of the diamond market, but during a recent conflict in Angola, De Beers was having to buy up supply from diamond poachers to keep them off the market.

    Apparently inflation in the local area was like the 1849 gold rush in the USA, with a can of coke going for over $100 cash in US currency.

    De Beers has huge warehouses with years of supply stockpiled - they limit the sale of gemstones to 2 tons (IIRC = 10m carats) a year.

  • One's, ones. (Score:3)

    by grytpype ( 53367 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @12:34PM (#291398) Homepage
    OK, since they don't teach this in school any more, I'll try to explain.

    One's is a contraction of "one is," or the possessive of "one."

    Ones is the plural of one.
  • hrm.

    What efficency is that? Some back of the napkin calculations: earth orbit is r = 149,597,890,000 ~ 1.49 E11 meters from the sun (according to www.space.com). So the total surface area of that dyson-sphere is 4*pi*r*r ~ 2.23795 E22 m2.

    A search for "power output of the sun" gives it as ~ 4 E 26 Watts, so we get an energy flux of ~ 1.7 E4 W/m2 = 17 KW/m2.

    So I would be VERY suprised if they manage to get 100KW / m2.
  • I think it would be great to run that first series again, just for the comedy value.

    Did you mean the science or Maxine Gray's fashion sense?

  • I was just impressed that he didn't use "supposably".
  • But in large volumes you should be able to make this material for about $1 per square centimetre.
    That may sound cheap, but it's not -- for a square meter, that's $10,000. Above the atmosphere, the sun's energy is about 1300 Watts/m^2, so assuming that you have a 100% efficient solar cell (and conventional cells are 5-10% efficient if I recall correctly) it's obvious to see that this isn't going to be very cost effective down here on the ground. Up in space though, things are different.

    The goal of the project is to produce a prototype cell that is a centimetre squared in size and produces 10 watts of power at 1,000 degrees Celsius.
    Such a cell will certainly not be powered by sunlight, unless you use a big mirror/lens to concentrate the light on it. 1 cm^2 of sunlight has well under one watt of power.

  • Exactly. I understand that synthetic diamonds are a dime a dozen, because they have an incredible demand in the tool-making industry for being the hardest substance known.

    (Before I get trolls, let me note that don't actually make tools out of diamonds, rather they cover the abrasive or sharp ends of said tools with synthetic diamond sand...)
  • Um, but it is only 1cm square.
  • Arthur C. Clarke has done it again, in 2061 after Jupiter turns into a sun it ejects a massive amount of diamond which the earthlings use to speed up communication between planets, and various other uses I'm sure.
  • I wonder if this will give solar power technology the boost it needs to keep California out of th e dark. ... oh wait! Scratch that! A fat lotta good solar power's gonna do at night. And if you're gonna have massive battery storage, you may as well build another bunch of nuclear reactors!
  • Did you read the article? I talks about a process for making the diamonds they require.
  • Ummm ... no. You didn't read the article. The device converts heat to electricity, not sunlight to electricity (rather, sunlight produces electricity indirectly by generating heat which generates electricity).

    All they're saying is that if you heat one cm^2 of this stuff to 1000 degrees C, it should produce 10W. They don't address whether or not they intend to actually run the things at that temperature (which, as you say would involve solar collectors).
  • I don't know anything about diamond creation but diamonds are crystals and they make crystals in space now (experimentally) so i think possibly we could just manufacture the diamonds in space then the whole weight issue becomes moot right?
  • And connoisseurs can spot them a mile away.

    Yeah, the "L" stamped on the back is a dead giveaway.

  • Re:Linde Stars (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @06:07PM (#291411) Homepage
    You can still get synthetic star sapphires. Wholesale, even. See SyntheticGems.org [syntheticgems.org], a Thai manufacturer. You can even get sapphire bar stock [maintechsapphires.com]. Linde Chemical did make a particularly nice star sapphire, though.

  • Diamonds are cheap (Score:4)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @11:23AM (#291412) Homepage
    Industrial diamonds average about $4 per carat. And those are for stones; grit and such runs around $0.50/carat. (A carat is about 1/5 of a gram.) Synthetic industrial diamonds are available in sheet stock for use as heat sinks [td-diamond.com.cn]. Diamond substrates for semiconductors have been considered before, but never really took off.

    The price of gemstone diamonds is propped up by the increasingly frantic efforts of the De Beers Consolidated Selling Organization Ltd, the people behind the "A Diamond is Forever" promotion. But that's for gemstones. Most industrial diamond is synthetic.

    DeBeers is currently fighting attempts by synthetic diamond manufacturers to move into gemstones. They fear a repeat of the star sapphire debacle. Around 1970, Linde Chemical started manufacturing and promoting synthetic star sapphires, using the name The Linde Star [theimage.com]. They glutted the market and the price of sapphires went way down. Then Linde exited the business, and others took the price even lower.

  • I've seen that show several times and it was quite interesting.

    For those who missed it, here's a very brief overview of the CSO: http://www.infonorth.org/diamonds/html/diamond_mar keting.html [infonorth.org] thanks to Google. Apparent mirror site at http://www.gov.nt.ca/RWED/diamond/project7.htm [gov.nt.ca]

  • Next thing you know, they'll be using silver for electrical wiring just because its a good conductor.
  • de beers [debeersgroup.com]
  • The goal stated in the article is to achieve 10W/cm^2. At that level of efficiency, the panels will be so much smaller that the higher density simply won't matter.

    Of course, they're also talking about a temperature of 1000 C, so I don't expect to put something like that on my roof any time soon.

  • well, you still need to send up the stuff you use to make them crystals.
  • Oh. Right. Which just shows how long it was since I worked on these things. Thanks.
  • beauty of diamonds. They are hard as hell, and to me that's the real beauty. Sorry, but ranting from an ex-engineer.
  • Well, they use to call the show "Towards 2000" in the 80s. Then switched to B2K in the 90s. But glad to hear they are still around because I loved the show when I was a kid! People should watch this more so they won't go buy stuff from places like this [http]

  • Well, space-qualified GaAs cells cost >>>$1 per cm^2.....(I think it was something like $30-$50 per cm^2 the place I used to work in bought one.)
  • GaAs has the density of steel. I think diamond is about twice that (I don't quite remember).

    I agree with most points, except that though in space you don't need much backing, you still need to reinforce them for launch. Which entails about 4-6gs for a shuttle, and lots of vibration.

  • Interesting, but... (Score:4)

    by efuseekay ( 138418 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @10:25AM (#291423)
    The prime cost of putting things into space is not material, but the rockets you build to put them up there. Diamonds are much more dense than silicon or GaAs (the solar cell of choice in space nowadas, so the article is kinda wrong), so they will be correspondingly more massive.

    Sure diamonds may have higher efficiency, but what they should also worry about is Watts/mass, not just efficiency. As long as W/m of GaAs is higher, they should think hard before switching.

    Still, ranting over, it's a real cool technology. Imagine, building a zillion nano-vacuum tubes!
  • Diamonds and solar cells make sense. Considering rubies are some of the better laser making crystals, it follows that anything with light works well with natural substances and the more pure the substance the better the light that comes through.

    I wonder if cubic zirconium would create the same effect or a slightly lessor effect at a fraction of the cost.

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
  • yeah, except for the fact that they are talking about using synthetic diamond material.

    nice troll, though

    ---

  • Re:Value of Diamonds (Score:3)

    by Fishstick ( 150821 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @12:07PM (#291427) Journal
    Make sure to catch the PBS FrontLine [pbs.org] program called the diamond empire [pbs.org] sometime.

    Really excellent expose' on the DeBeers cartel and how they create an artificaial scarcity of diamonds worldwide to keep prices from falling below that of aluminum.

    ---

  • Dude...have you ever thought how much sattelites look like dragonflies? You know what would be cool? If geneticists or something, like, bred a gigantic dragonfly to be a sapcestation? With wings for solar panels!"

    (Gurgles)

    Whoa, what I have always thought, is, since, you know, those fs cost so much, why not just like, build them pout of Gold? And the wings could be diamond plated? Wouldn't that be cool?!?!?

    (Gurgles)

    Yeah dude, and we could run the whole thing off a nine volt battery!!!!

  • there are places already that make diamond-filmed heat spreaders for CPUs. They're expensive or unavailable in small quantities though.

    Ask Google.
  • Ever see the James Bond movie "Diamonds are Forever",about a diamond-powered space laser? With enough development,this could be a start of a new generation of much more efficent solar panels.I'll watch and see what happens.
  • The spaceship LEXX is in the shape of a dragonfly. (TV Series on SCI-FI channel)

  • Value of Diamonds (Score:5)

    by NSupremo ( 161699 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @10:57AM (#291432) Homepage
    The worldwide diamond market is cornered by ONE COMPANY. (Someone find the name for me, thanks.)

    They carefully control the quantity and quality of diamonds released to the public so that the level of supply and demand remains constant.

    There are so many diamonds available that if even a fraction of them were released the value of diamonds would fall to nothing.

    If it were not for this fact, I would assume that synthetic diamonds would be far more expensive than real ones.

    But I feel synthetic gems would be required for manufacturing since you would have a billion identical.
  • The worldwide diamond market is cornered by ONE COMPANY. (Someone find the name for me, thanks.)

    I think the name is DeBeers. I could be wrong. But they do make great "Diamonds are Forever" commercials.

    -Cyc

  • ROTFFLMAO

    I would moderate this up as funny, but I already posted to this discussion. =)

    -Cyc

  • Diamonds are much more dense than silicon or GaAs

    True, but the article speaks of diamond film created by vapor deposition, so is it really likely to amount to that much extra? From the description of how the collector would be constructed, it sounds like the diamond film would amount to an insignificant percentage of the total mass.

  • In 2060, they wound up mining the debris from the ignition of Lucifer and using it much the same way. Turned out that the stuff was diamonds. :)

    Anyone know what happened to the Monolith in Seattle?

  • Just created a nice Proxomitron script to get rid of the user. (no need for HTTP, right?) Sorry, Proxomitron is only for Windows.
    Just change:
    [23]
    to
    [23]
    with a high byte limit.
  • No- Not boobs-

    Imagine a DIAMOND PROCESSOR.....oooohhhhhhh I like it.....Better heat transfer, higher insulation?

    Is this just too new(ly cheapened) and that's why it hasn't been done yet?
  • Supposedly, they would be more durable to conditions in space, as well as generate more power at the same cost. Same cost? The kicker is that they're not using gem-quality diamonds.

    Diamonds are one of the most plentiful resources on the planet. The only reason why they are worth so much is that a certain company restricts the supply of the certain gem quality diamonds(*KOFF* DeBeers *KOFF*). But imagine that engagement ring...

    "Yeah I got my fiancee a two karat diamond ring..."
    "Oh yeah, well my fiancee's ring is only a 1.5 karat, but doubles as a backup battery for a pda..."

    Rehab is for quitters...
  • Now how about diamond coated solar clothes [slashdot.org]?

    "Look over there, it's a pimp."
    "No, no, that's just a geek, see the cable running to his PDA?"

  • Re:Value of Diamonds (Score:3)

    by O.F. Fascist ( 198664 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @11:41PM (#291441)
    Yep its owned by DeBeers. Personally me being a good capitalist, I hate bullshit like that, also me being an Nationalist, Imperialist type I hate them even more because they are arent an American Company. So when I get married and what not, I will get the most bad ass American made Synthetic Diamond. Face it a Diamond is a diamond, dont matter how its made, or where it comes from as long as it looks good and does it job. Fuck those Debeers bastards.

  • Even for gem quality, all they would have to do is make a deal with DeBeers to take a chunk of their back stock for the pennies it's really worth (and would cost if it hit the common market) and use it in space.

    What does DeBeers care as long as it doesn't hit the common market?

  • I don't think our American friends are familiar with the show. It contains too disturbing scenes of deviant sexuality.

    Yeah, we get it here. Most of the sexual jokes are subtle enough that I guess the censors don't get it. We are one season behind the rest of the world I think though.

    Like you notice on Water in the garden the flowers looked like penises? :)
    -

  • Do you want smaller government?

    Vote for midgets?

    hehe That's pretty good.
    -

  • Your forgetting index of refraction.

    Since diamonds have such a high index, light that would normally not be captured by the cells may be utilized.
  • Considering rubies are some of the better laser making crystals...

    Rubies (Cr:Sapphire) are not good Laser media, they just happened to be the first used. Ti:Sapphire is far better (in terms of bandwidth the best) and very commonly used Laser medium.

    Zirconium is a metal and as such not suitable as (solid state) Laser medium or for solar cells.
  • Sanford and Son Jewelers.


    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    ~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
  • I'm not a licensed boilermaker -- yet-- but, I think that with steam you'd have a lot of issues going from, the micro to the macro scale in terms of your steam management.
    But since it was you who brought it up, Mr. AC, I'd like to briefly step parallel to the topic and refresh our memories that there have been many solar boilers produced in the last century and it's far from determined that this is an impractical technology without even bringing in diamonds. It's just that concentrated solar is not competitive for straight electricity generation compared to a pertrochemicals or nuclear fuel coupled to a steam or gas turbine.
    If you've got use for process heat though, it's a much more attractive proposition. There are several applications to be found in the deserts of California using simple parabolic reflectors or sheets of directed mirrors.
    I have also read that several solar furnaces have been built using parablolic reflectors and a simple glass tube around the "boiler" where the light focuses on a black section of pipe. The glass provides an insulation layer while allowing the intensely focused IR to penetrate to the target. Apparently, in such a system, the temperatures are too high to efficiently make use of water directly, instead other fluids such as oils are used to hold the heat and subsequently a heat exchanger is used to pass the heat to a boiler.
    So, although you may be able to use this diamond product to boil water, there are readily available materials which are much cheaper than a dollar per centimeter which can be used to produce steam from the sun. The reality is that steam turbines based on coal or oil or whatever are really hard to beat in terms of efficiency if you want to produce electricity rather than just collect raw heat.
  • This [abc.net.au] place says that there is a company trying to make kits for cars to produce industrial diamonds in their exhaust with the addition of microwaves that would "zap" exhaust fumes. But how do you collect the diamonds? Let them run into the gutters. Hey, that would clean the shit out of the streets and the gutters. Interesting idea. No really, that has some appeal if you're working with cement. Well, if you wanted the streets to be polished like glass it would be cool. I"d be into it, but I can see some practical issues that could stand in the way of widespread adoption. Think of the lighting possibilities of glass smooth streets though!

    And here's a whole different twist on it. Have your dearly departed loved ones [plus.com] turned into industrial diamonds?




    an advertisement in 1988 in a Phoenix, Arizona, newspaper, the Sun City Daily News, exhorting customers to: turn the ashes of your beloved into a diamond'! It seemed we can reduce a dead husband or wife to an ornament in order to reproduce the sparkle in their eyes. ..
  • This doesn't compare to conventional solar cells at all. The article says 10Watts per cemtimeter! Holy cow. Like the above post says, that's 100Kw a meter. Times a million for a kilometer. . . yikes. A hundred Gigawatts per kilometer? That's not your father's solar panel. That's the capacity of a couple or three big steam turbines --is it not?
    And the article says they think they can manufacture this at a dollar a centimeter? Whoa! Ten thousand dollars a meter times a million . . . hmm. Ten billion dollars just for materials eh? Well, it's still far from competitive with terrestrial power at that price point. If they could get closer to ten cents a centimeter though. . . You've got to keep in mind, California is talking about doubling retail electricity rates. A dollar a centimeter aint gonna get it, but they're within a single magnitude range assuming they can keep the launch costs under control too. Big if.
    Nonethless, that's about the price range for a 30 gigawatt coal plant right? Three hundred million US? Ci, no? I haven't bought one in such a long time.
  • using the amorphous silicon like in those solar clothes from yesterday's article? they are supposed to be way more efficient than current crystaline silicon

    -----------
    MOVE 'SIG'.
  • Imagine, building a zillion nano-vacuum tubes!

    And then, a Beowulf cluster of them!
    Sorry, but it had to be done.

  • what the fuck?

  • Re:What about fake diamonds? (Score:3)

    by stretch_jc ( 243794 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @10:57AM (#291454)
    If you had read the article you would have seen that they were talking about using synthetic diamonds:
    Instead it uses thin films made up of millions of microscopic diamond crystals. Polycrystalline diamond films can be made artificially from methane, through a process called chemical vapour deposition.
  • Is Beyond 2000 even on TV anymore? I used to watch that show all the time but i dont remember seeing it in a long time.

    hilltop

  • i watched it religiously. It is a british show..perhaps it's still on in the UK...
  • Why the surprise about "Beyond 2000" still being alive? After all, we're in 2001! I was surprised how they could be alive in 1999!

    :)

  • Actually, if you go to a gem show you will find Linde Star Sapphires selling for quite high prices. Seems Linde (now a division of Union Carbide, oops, a division of a division of Dow) had one chemist who actually knew the secret of making the blasted things. When he died, the secret of the Linde star died with him. Linde Division no longer makes star sapphires, and the distinctive artificial Linde Stars are as valuable in their own right as high-quality natural stones.
  • You can still get synthetic star sapphires.

    Of course, I didn't say you couldn't.

    Linde Chemical did make a particularly nice star sapphire, though.

    And you can't get them any more. Linde stars are no longer available, except as old stock. And connoisseurs can spot them a mile away. Because they are no longer made Linde stars are now as valuable as similar quality natural stones.


  • Elizabeth Taylor is starting the "Diamond Admirers Against Astronautical Misuse" or DAAAM to protest this action.

    boobs [antioffline.com]
  • I did read the article. If it made sense to you, it must be because you know enough about the subject to fill in the omissions without thinking about them. It compared the cost of the diamond thermionic cells to semiconductor solar cells, which work on direct, unconcentrated sunlight. It did not mention the cost of mirrors to concentrate the sunlight. It would definitely have left anyone without appreciable technical knowledge of solar energy with the impression that a 1 meter square array would give 100KW power -- when actually a 1 m^2 mirror would be needed to feed a few cm^2 of thermionics, giving well under 1 KW power.

  • Re:Diamonds are cheap (Score:3)

    by markmoss ( 301064 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @01:42PM (#291463)
    Diamond makes a wonderful heat sink -- the only things that conduct heat better are gold and superconductors. Of course, a big piece of diamond makes gold look cheap, and I don't know of anyone using gold either -- but diamond film sounds like a possibility for spreading the heat from a tiny chunk of silicon out to a larger piece of copper, and maybe it would provide the needed electrical insulation also. However, there might be some material incompatibility issues don't know about...

  • Peculiar arithmetic (Score:3)

    by markmoss ( 301064 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @01:49PM (#291464)
    The article claims this will get 10W/cm^2. Sunlight in earth orbit gives a power level of 1600 W/m^2 = 0.16W/cm^2.

    Possibly the plan is to use mirrors or plastic Fresnel lenses to focus the light onto small spots of diamond thermionic emitters. This would help explain how they are going to get the high temperatures needed for thermionic emission -- but the article doesn't say. Lousy reporting.
  • Notice the Dutch name--that's because they are Boers (Dutch colonialists in South Africa). Yes, this is the very same DeBeers that advertises on TV.
    --
  • You are so completely wrong. CVD diamond technology is here and ready to roll. True there are some engineering hurdles but the technology is sound. You can put a coating of diamond on almost anything today. The diamond will have a better Index of Refraction then SiO2 coatings. It will also be strong enough to withstand 1000's of micro meteorites smashing into it constantly. This will lead to thinner panels. Less weight to lift up there. Less maintanence. I could go on but I think i proved my point.

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