Behold: a carbon-nanotube catalyst that’s over six hundred times more effective than platinum.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sorry, that was sloppy. More cost-effective (that is, cheaper) than platinum, not six hundred times better as a catalyst.
21 thoughts on “Dampening The Asteroid Mining Market”
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I think that this is marvelous. However, your title to the article is wrong. They have not measured the effectiveness yet for a comparative analysis and as the article says, there is a lot of optimization to be done.
I really do hope that it works, but like some of the claims by JPL of 63% efficient solar cells, there is a big difference between a lab result and a manufacturable product.
That is sweet work. Whatever the NSF spent on them, it was worth it. Don’t forget two additional side benefits: carbon weighs a hell of a lot less than platinum, and it’s much more environmentally benign on cleanup or disposal.
This is a textbook example of the substitution effect in resource utilization. If this can be done with all of the Platinum group elements, not just Platinum itself, the economic case for asteroid mining will be significantly weakened.
What about Hafnium? Its rather pricy compared to other metals (but not as much as PGM’s).
The only economic reason for going into space is to expand the economic sphere itself. No import to earth (well, perhaps spice from the planet Dune???) will ever justify going to space and is not needed.
If we are forever starting from earth we are never going to get very far. Starting someplace else makes the next step from there easier. That’s all the justification you need. Information is the only export/import that is economical to transport in space. That information includes ownership of companies that may exclusively operate in places that do not include earth.
However transportation of things not profitable to repeatedly deliver can be profitable for transportation companies since those things may still have to be delivered for other progress to occur.
If this does pan out, it will be truly great. And I suspect it would actually add to space development not retract from it. The killer app for space is settlement, the entry barrier is wealth and low cost technology for doing so.
This would have a significant positive effect on the world economy, increasing prosperity and available investment for space. I suspect it would also make propellant more affordable (not that propellant cost is currently significant).
Something not mentioned in the article (but mentioned in comments), is that this might also enable low cost (and highly efficient?) electrolysis systems. Large scale energy storage and efficient long distance energy transport via hydrogen (bypassing the national grid) might become possible.
This would, for example, enable the potentially very low cost exploitation of southern ocean wind and wave energy (a huge resource). A ship with water turbines pulled by a ~1km diameter parachute could fairly continuously generate around a gigawatt of electricity for as little as perhaps $0.01/kWhr. Circling Antarctica it is possible to go continuously downwind in some of the world’s consistently strongest winds. But the problem has always been getting that energy to somewhere useful.
An obvious application for this technology would be cheap and effective electrolysis units for converting lunar ice into propellant.
Ah, a catalyst made from nanotubes, not for producing them. Still very cool.
The current market for PGM’s is $7 billion per year, most of that in the form of catalysts. If this works out for most applications, that market will drop to less than $1 billion or even $100 million.
I agree that doing something in space to sell back on Earth is not the way to get into space. Space settlement will not occur until it becomes cheap enough that it is self-financing by the people who do it. Dyson made this point over 30 years ago in his “Pilgrims, Saints, and Spacemen” paper.
ken, I’d say that another way. Economic analysis of mining asteroids should be made from the perspective of someone living on an asteroid that wants stuff from Earth, not from the perspective of someone living on Earth who wants stuff from an asteroid.
How much platinum would you trade from a hamburger? Well, it depends on the local availability of platinum and hamburgers.
What about Hafnium? Its rather pricy compared to other metals (but not as much as PGM’s).
Gah, mistyped…
Hafnium is a lithophilic element, so it will not be enriched in asteroids relative to Earth. It’s produced as a side stream of zirconium production, in particular production of nuclear-grade zirconium (which must be purified of hafnium).
I dove into the paper for this catalyst. They used methanol for the fuel, which is far from the best fuel for a platinum catalyst. How many billion barrels of methanol can we make per year?
It would be interesting to run this on a pure hydrogen stream. There is a pretty good likelyhood that this catalyst would rapidly disappear due to the combination of the hydrogen with the carbon in the nanotubes.
This will be great for cell phone fuel cells and the like though.
Ah well, my asteroid mining scheme wasn’t dependent on platinum exports anyway
Everyone should have stayed in Europe. What did you need the trees and stones of America for ?
But the asteroids are out of range of ObamaCare. I think.
The platinum group metals in general have many uses other than catalysis. They are highly refractory, for example, and, so, if the price were low enough, they would find their way into every new gas turbine on the planet. Because of their properties they have a large number of other potential uses, currently not done, because of their very high cost.
At some point in the future, I expect the supply of platinum group metals to the Earth for these multiple purposes will be a huge business.
Two things are required for this to occur, first, a mature space transportation system with a cost of access to orbit that is a single digit multiple of the propellant cost, and, second, a market in space for the large quantities of nickel steel that will remain after refining.
ken anthony Says:
March 24th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
“The only economic reason for going into space is to expand the economic sphere itself. No import to earth (well, perhaps spice from the planet Dune???) will ever justify going to space and is not needed.”
= ==
I agree with Ken, except for the last four words, “. . . and is not needed.” Well, maybe “not needed” however being able to export material to Earth certainly would be helpful.
Sending extra-terrestrial platinum from out there (Moon or NEOs) back to Earth can offer a medium for infusing and then selling intangible value to help raise the working capital needed to expand the human economic sphere beyond Earth.
Bringing PGM back to Earth from out there provides symbolic evidence that we are expanding our economic sphere and thus can be sold as a status symbol regardless of its actual utility. I believe coins are an ideal medium for infusing extra-terrestrial platinum with symbolic or aspirational value.
In any event PGM exports to Earth are NOT a justification or reason for going out there; at best such exports are an enabling mechanism to help pay the costs of going out there.
IMHO, as always.
Ken, if the economic sphere truly expands beyond the patchwork covering the surface of this planet, then there will be trade all across that economic sphere – not necessarily involving the Earth’s surface at all, at least not directly.
Exactly my point Ed.
being able to export material to Earth certainly would be helpful
Probably so, but this belief that it’s required blinds people and slows development. Cut away that anchor and realize the immense wealth the earth could achieve by being a small part of a solar economy.
Combine that with the fact that no matter what the current cost of travel, it pays for itself with just one square kilometer of land.
I don’t know how Zubrin gets to $300k per person to colonize mars when cost per person to orbit starts at $20m, but even if it cost $100m per person we could still fill the solar system with people. Today.
But to do that we’ve got to lose the idea that exports to earth are the only financial incentive. The real financial incentive is the solar stock market with both locals and the much larger earth trading shares.
=== But to do that we’ve got to lose the idea that exports to earth are the only financial incentive. ===
I agree
Actually the PGM wouldn’t be going directly to Earth in an emerging space economy. It would have value added on the Moon or in Zero-G by being transformed in electronic components or into materials are best manufactured in low gravity high vacuum environments, which would then be shipped to markets on Earth. That is just Logistics 101, when shipping costs are high you maximize the value added at the source to minimize the mass shipped.