New Heat Pump Will Last 10,000 Years 191
formaggio writes "Most heat pumps maintain an average useful life of 10-20 years, but researchers at the University of Stavanger in Norway (USN) and the University of Oslo believe that they have developed a new heat pump that will last up to 10,000 years."
Is the warranty transferable? (Score:5, Funny)
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What about Efficiency? I did RTFA, couldn't find it, or it could be its time to go home and I missed it.
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They will not make that heat pump for too long anyway. After all, it will take 10000 years before anyone orders a replacement.
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Sounds like vapor anyway.
No, this is an announcement of academic research. It is quite usual for there to be many years between development of a technique at a university and a real-world product launch by commercial companies. This is not some company trying to prevent the sales of a competitor that beat them to the punch. It is just the standard development process in action that happened to pretty much all the technology that you use right now.
For academic institutions, the idea IS the product. That is why it is perfectly accept
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I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
An article about itty bitty peltiers? Do they come in white [slashdot.org]?
Where have I seen something like this before? (Score:2)
Or human shaped. Cue Replicator [wikipedia.org] jokes in...three, two, one. (Seriously, that's what the photo in TFA reminded me of.)
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Poor estimation (Score:4, Interesting)
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During the Vietnam War, Colt sold the M-16 to the Army with the promise that it would never need cleaning. And they were right. They just forgot to add the "unless you want it to keep firing" part.
Re:Poor estimation (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of that problem, iirc, was the US Army going with a different, cheaper, ammo then intended during design.
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Why go ruin a superficial anti-military rant with facts?
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Why go ruin a superficial anti-military rant with facts?
Because this is slash... oh, wait. Nevermind.
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sounded more like an anti-Colt M-16 rant.
funny how you think complaining that our troops were victims of a bait-and-switch is somehow anti-military. how did you even manage to reply on this thread? it must have taken you all day to mouth the words as you read it.
maybe you meant anti-something-remotely-military-related, but to those of us who read and comprehend english at a normal level, it just sounds like you're retarded.
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There were enough issues with the rifle other than the ammo problem, as anyone who researched the topic knows.
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Isn't it more anti-military to say the problem lay with the military using cheaper ammo, than to say it lay with Colt for promising more than they could keep?
Re:Poor estimation (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of it was because it was designed only for firing and carrying specs and tested only in clean conditions.
Jump into a couple of foxholes and you're disassembling the fucking thing to get the sand out from between the bolt and the receiver. Whereas you could shake an AK-47 clean in a muddy puddle and come up firing.
If the ammo added problems, that's the ammo's problem. The M-16 was a weapon characterized by an occasional failure to fail.
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> The M-16 was a weapon characterized by an occasional failure to fail.
That's my favorite phrase for this week.
Re:Poor estimation (Score:5, Informative)
It's worse than that.
Colt's M-16 was designed around a newer, cleaner burining rod type powder compared to the older ball type powders; but it also included a chrome barrel and integral cleaning kit in the stock. It was advertised as 'needing a minimal amount of cleaning'
The Army testing team, being hostile to the idea of switching away from a .30 caliber rifle, had sabotoged Colt's acceptance trials. When McNamara found out, he basically ordered the switch to the M16, but they continued to sabotoge the effort, taking Stoner's 'self cleaning' comments to not issue cleaning kits even as they deleted the chromed barrel and substituted dirtier ammo.
Basically, the M-16A1 was mostly just returning to Colt's original specifications.
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In other words the military version of bruised middle management ego...
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I can see this story can be spun many different ways, depending on which details you're presented with. Who decided to delete the chromed barrel and substitute the ammo? Was it still claimed to be "self-cleaning" after that?
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There is no gun that "never needs cleaning". You may be able to push a thousand or more rounds through a modern day M16-A2/A4, but sooner or later it will foul and cease to cycle. The most I've fired without a thorough cleaning is about 1200, and that was in fairly unusual circumstances which didn't afford me the time to clean proper
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Sorry, had to say it...
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AK was never designed for long range, so you can't really fault it for that.
If they want to hit someone from 800 yd, they'd call on the guy with a purpose fitting rifle, a SVD or something along those lines.
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What caliber of American ammo can be safely fired in a 7.62x39 AK? Seriously, I've never heard of such a thing.
Now, NATO 9x19 Para ammo can be fired in a Soviet 9x18 Makarov pistol (though this is definitely unsafe). But the Russians didn't design this as a feature -- rather, they designed their 9x18 ammo so that it couldn't fire in a NATO pistol to avoid having their own ammunition being used against them should any of it fall into enemy h
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What caliber of American ammo can be safely fired in a 7.62x39 AK? Seriously, I've never heard of such a thing.
Any 7.62x39 ammo manufactured by an American company, obviously.
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You can also fire 9mm Luger (aka Parabellum, 9x19) through a
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Interesting... while the weapon can be used at that kind of range, it would take a *lot* of luck to actually hit anything accurately. When I was in the military, the max effective range on a C7-A1 was about 300m, and at the range, people usually didn't train at ranges further than 200m except when they were doing the 300m rundown certification.
Keeping in mind that the C7-A1 is essentially an M16-A2 with a continuous fire mode (instead of the "burst of three" that the American counterpart is limited to), and
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It is not the caliber which limits precision at range, necessarily. The NATO M855 round is lighter and more cheaply made than match ammunition, as are the M16 family of rifles. They're not match grade, be
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Well they will last 100 years. You still need to do maintenance. It's like my house, it's 180yrs old. But it won't last another 5 if I never keep the maintenance going on it.
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The problem is that we wouldn't know how to build something like that.
In a small city in northern Portugal there was this stone wall (maybe 50ft high) that was erected during the Roman era. Several years ago part of it finally collapsed. So they decided to rebuild it. That bit collapsed within a year. I don't know what's happened since, but I suspect it involves concrete and rebar.
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Rebar is the big problem modern construction. It gets wet, it will wick water from the outside. It expands differently from the surrounding material(leading to cracking from the inside). In days of yore it was an unknown, building materials + concrete mix where what was used to make it strong.
As for not knowing how to do it? You're right. We're still nearly 2000 years behind in concrete construction and understanding how the romans did it, and did it well.
Re:Poor estimation (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, skyscrapers today just don't compare with skyscrapers from ancient Rome.
And have you seen those entire buildings they put up in a couple months with a crew of 20 or so? I bet they won't be standing in 2,000 years.
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To be fair in the case of the bridges, they probably failed to account for increased traffic over the last fifty years and underfunding of maintenance by corrupt local governments. First one's the bridge buidlers' fault, the second one is the public's fault for only electing spoiled children to run local governments, but in either case I doubt it was so much as out-and-out fraud.
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To be fair in the case of the bridges, they probably failed to account for increased traffic over the last fifty years and underfunding of maintenance by corrupt local governments. First one's the bridge buidlers' fault
Not really. A bridge in the 60's may, or may not, have included a planner or planners. If it did, the traffic volume would have probably included a planner in the first stage, defining the traffic and thereby the cyclic loading. If not a planner, then there may have been an engineer filling the same role. If there was no planner, then it went straight to an engineer for preliminary design, then another (or possibly the same) engineer for final design, then the final design would have been presented for
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It may have been the fault of planners, engineers, builders or even an incomplete understanding of the materials involved.
I was just lumping all people involved in planning, design, and construction together as 'builders.' Whoever was supposed to plan for increased road/rail traffic didn't (probably, in some cases, so I assume, etc.).
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Or not...
http://youtu.be/IqK2r5bPFTM [youtu.be]
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well, the parts are probably ceramic and metal, no rubbers, lubrication or stuff like that. it's solid state(essentially)
it seems like a small peltier unit. dunno why they wouldn't last for a loooong time. which makes this article seem like a blast from the past and these norwegian researches like total douches who haven't read science mags at all in their life. because then they'd would have thought that they would need to give us a bit more information on how this isn't just the same thing as any other pe
peltier? (Score:3)
Soooo this looks like a thermocouple or peltier element. What's new?
heat pump? (Score:2)
I just want a radiator belt that will last a thousand years.
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Now it's the alternator belt that goes out.
(Shh. Don't tell anyone it's the same belt.)
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Radiators have belts?
Yes, they do... if you're in the minority without an electric cooling fan.
As I recall, there's a well known Jaguar advert where a pretty lady uses a stocking as an impromptu fan belt*.
*I forget what the american term is.
Re:heat pump? (Score:5, Funny)
*It's "fan belt", but without the extra 'u'.
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In Norway "imperial units of measure" are typically called "English units of measure", so a mile is typically called "an English mile". The question "how long is an English mile" is thus usually answered "as far as an English car will run".
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10,000 (Score:5, Informative)
The miniature pumps will just continue to pump. We stick fans on them, and they must be replaced, but the heat pump itself will stay and be equally effective after 10 000 years," Bording continues.
Misleading headline, both on this blog post and on the blog post that this blog post cites.
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So, reading your quote it sounds more like Lincoln's ax than an amazingly durable machine. You might swap out every individual element over the course of 10 years, replace the fans once or twice, and the power supply a couple times, but by the summaries logic, it's still the same heat pump.
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The link you provided does make it apparent that these pumps can also be used to produce electricity if the pump is placed between a heat source and a heat sink.
Too bad these aren't being used more as part of processes cooling troublesome spent fuel, producing some electricity at the same time. Wouldn't it be great if these could enable an ultra-reliable alternative to backup generators? The article doesn't say if the material is hardy against ionizing radiation.
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Probably was just not meant to be a factual statement, there's a lot of that going around.
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The 10,000 number was pulled out of the air for emphasis.
It was pulled from somewhere with foul air where the sun does not shine.
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Solid state heat pump - Peltier Junction?? (Score:4, Informative)
Solid state heat pumps exist already. It is called Peltier Junction. They are not used because their efficiency is bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltier_effect
The COP of current commercial thermoelectric refrigerators ranges from 0.3 to 0.6, only about one-sixth the value of traditional vapor-compression refrigerators
So what is the break through in the little heat pumps?? TFA is completely uninformative on that. It doesn't even specify efficiency of the heat pump.
PS. I've had an open loop heat pump for the last decade, and so far it didn't require "frequent inspection" or "maintenance" as TFA says it does. It comes with 20 year warranty. It is basically just like a larger version of a fridge. The only maintenance I can envision is simply cleaning the heat exchanger once in a while.
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I don't think there is a breakthrough... I think these guys are just working on the macro assembly angle of things. I can't see any claims as to better COP, which would make the claims that this would be more "environmentally friendly" a bit dubious.
There is work going on, mind you, on much better TEC and TEG devices using new materials and quantum dots and such, but I don't see any indication in the sources that these people are doing anything other than figuring out how best to package them for retrofit
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That's somewhat variable.
Peltiers basically blow if you use them at over half their 'sticker' maximum temperature difference.
At that point, they have perhaps a COP of 1.
At a temperature difference of around 1/6 maximum - they are up to around a COP of 4-5, which
isn't bad at all.
However - this is a delta of 6C or so - which isn't really usable in most applications.
It's worth noting that a COP of 1 isn't useless.
If you can make it cheap enough, you can make a electric heater with double the output.
I should ha
Re:Solid state heat pump - Peltier Junction?? (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA is on a stupid hippy-dippy design blog site run by children.
I'm sure they're impressed, but anyone who's been reading this grade of journalism in Popular Science for a few decades is not.
No kidding (Score:2)
I'd be real interested in a heat pump that can last a long time. I just spent about $7000 replacing one that broke, though it was marketed under its more common name: An air conditioner.
Basically any house A/C is a large mechanical heat pump. It has two radiators for heat transfer, and a compressor that it uses to force heat to one of them, which of course makes the other one cool.
Useful, and fairly necessary devices in hot climates. However lifespan is a problem. Not only does their efficiency drop with ti
Up to 10,000 years (Score:2)
That's nice, but we have no shortage of stuff that lasts "up to" millions of years.
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It reminds me of the advertisements saying "everything in the store is up to 70% off"
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That's like those ads that say "Everything's on sale!" and then say "(excludes electronics, clothing and all Apple products)".
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"Everything's on sale!"
"(excludes the shit you want.)"
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It's like those ads which say "Everything's on sale!." Yes, they will sell any of their stock to the public and make a sale when they exchange the goods for money.
Re:Up to 10,000 years (Score:4, Funny)
Technically everything will last forever, it just changes state a lot over that period. :p
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He knows changes aren't permanent,
But change is. -Rush, Tom Sawyer
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Not in quantum mechanics.... At least, not in the sense you mean. There an expectation value for, say, energy might be conserved, but it's not really the same thing. That is, your post seems to take the classical view that things "are as they are, as measured by the following variables that take on definite values: mass, energy, momentum, ..." modified by relativity saying "and they might turn into energy and geometry is weird so you really need to measure those things carefully, keeping track of your refer
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Like what?
Your average outcropping of rock looks a lot different from how it did "millions of years ago". Even your average buried rock is likely to have been mashed or cracked. Even the moon has gotten significantly smaller and moved farther away, and grown a mess of craters. The sun? Probably the most rapidly changing object between us and Proxima Centauri.
Pretty much nothing fails to change over that timespan.
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He's probably talking about all the ridiculous MTBF estimates that are basically developed from putting 1M widgets in a room for a month, and then when one fails, say that the MTBF on the device is a million months.
Because, you know, there's no such thing as corrosion or rust or wear or whatever...
That's nothing! (Score:2)
That's nothing! I have a tuna sandwich that will last up to 1 billion years! (Your pick of long or short scale.) I absolutely guarantee that it will last no longer than that!
...
When will we stop giving an upper bound on the time until something will break when we should be giving a (preferably maximal) lower bound?
(Still mighty cool work of the University of Oslo.)
They know this how? (Score:2)
That's an annoying claim to make, even if they've done accelerated aging tests. The only human construct that's been proven to stay usable after 10,000 years is stone artifacts, such as blocks and arrowheads. Over a hundred centuries, there's plenty of chances for some unexpected failure mode to pop up.
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Well, being solid state, they are basically stone artifacts. Though yes, proving they won't fail for 10,000 years due to a number of known effects that take place on the nano-scale would be a daunting challenge.
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That's an annoying claim to make, even if they've done accelerated aging tests. The only human construct that's been proven to stay usable after 10,000 years is stone artifacts, such as blocks and arrowheads. Over a hundred centuries, there's plenty of chances for some unexpected failure mode to pop up.
I agree with you: it is somewhat annoying. However, to play devil's advocate (I find it irresistible) Human civilisation as we know it has been around on the order of 10k years. I hope and - figuratively - pray that we'll make it to 10^6.
CD (Score:2)
If I recall correctly, a CD was supposed to last for a hundred years. Maybe the first batch ever will even make a good run, but once it settles into mass production and the competition to lower the price warms up, you can pretty much squash the hope. And when you hit the period when the product is already superseded by the next generation, but still selling by inertia, you will be lucky if it still works by the time you get home with it. A 10k years? Whatever, i'd rather buy the one that promises 10 years.
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We may recall things differently, but when I was growing up and CDs were the "new" thing, it was assumed only that they'd substantially outlast cassette tapes (which degraded after a few years of regular use), not that they'd last a hundred years. Perhaps the "hundred years" claim was marketing hyperbole and the outlasting cassettes was the more reasonable widely accepted version.
In that regard they've done just fine; a CD that hasn't been scratched or damaged is still readable after at least a couple deca
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CDs are old enough now to be getting laser rot similar to LDs, and indeed they are. And talk to my LDs about how long they should last :(
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A 10k years? Whatever, i'd rather buy the one that promises 10 years.
Yes, sounds hugely over-engineered to me. So how much has that unnecessarily long lifespan added to the cost?
Dust? (Score:2)
It doesn't take a genius to see that the extremely small form-factor would be especially prone to dust.
The 10,000 year number probably requires some idiotic assumption like "as long as it remains dust free".
I'll believe it when I see it (Score:2)
http://xkcd.com/678/ [xkcd.com]
questions: (Score:2)
1. how does it work? 2. where is the motor? 3. it's generally either the motor that dies, or the heat-sink fins on the coils that crust over with deposits and growths, abd cause it to lose effieciency. does this unit work without a motor? does it not need a heat sink? 4. where is it getting the power needed to cause the heat to flow against the thermal gradient to pump it into or out of the transfer medium that goes to the air exchanger? is it efficient at doing this? 5. who cares how long it lasts if it's
Was it built by a guy named (Score:3)
Goering?
Oh wait...
Any High Tech artifacts that last even 100 years? (Score:2)
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What technology exists that is still working or workable after centuries or millenia?
Roads? Maybe not the way we build them now, but the ancients sure knew how to build 'em. They might be buried, but all you do is uncover it and you've got the same road as a few thousand years ago.
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clocks etc work quite frequently even if they're old.
and a lot of stuff, metal stuff, will last forever if you don't use them.
maybe you should go to a museum - or an old farmstead. or an antiquities store. old guns work too.
we could make plenty of stuff that would be operable for five centuries, provided that it doesn't get destroyed in the meantime. interesting though, that's much harder, like it is much harder to make something that is interesting even just today.
Freon, toxic? (Score:2)
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If you get a lungful of freon, you're dead, end of story.
You could be sitting on an operating table in a hospital when it happens and you're still fucked.
great news (Score:2)
it will be ready in 5 to 10 years...along with fusion and AI.
Just watch (Score:2)
Wow (Score:2)
Nature has them too (Score:2)
These geysers transfer heat from superheated hydrothermal networks underground (which in turn are heated by residual heat from the Yellow
The Long Now (Score:2)
Any chance this will be used by the folks at The Long Now Foundation [longnow.org]?
Power Interconnects (Score:2)
awwww geeeeze... (Score:2)
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not more inhabitant spam. Normally junk mail is addressed to resident . I blame those damn alien direct-marketroids with their faulty understanding of the English as she is spoke.
Physician, heal thyself.
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