Scaling Object Lesson #2: Water Electrolyzers For Hydrogen Production We learned about vertical scaling in the 1st article in this series: …and about horizontal scaling or “numbering up” in the 2nd: Now we’ll use these tools to examine the scaling future of an extremely important decarbonization technology: electrolyzers for producing hydrogen from renewable electricity. My readers will […]
Category: Process Development
Scaling Example #1: Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
Now, let’s used the tools we’ve learned, to took at some examples from the effort to decarbonize our economy. The first example to take a swing at with our new understanding of vertical and horizontal scaling is the small modular nuclear reactor, or SMNR for short. SMR means something else to me- steam methane reformer- […]
Horizontal Scale- Numbering Up
An article written while I worked at Zeton may be instructive in relation to this topic as a backgrounder: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scaling-up-down-paul-martin/ Once we reach a certain maximum practical vertical scale for a particular piece of equipment, it becomes impractical to build a bigger unit, or to transport and erect it once it’s built, as noted in […]
Economy of Vertical Scale
There are lots of proposals emerging seemingly every day, based around the notion that we will mass produce some device, plant or process, and then use those mass-produced devices to produce some commodity product- frequently a product made by devices, plants or processes already operated commercially at much larger scale. A few examples seemingly popular […]