Wet-Spun Carbon Nanotube Beats Copper in Carrying Electricity

And on a dollar per dollar basis how much would it cost to run wet-spun carbon nanotube wiring?
 
copper thieves are going to have a field day stealing more valuable carbon nanotubes!
 
copper thieves are going to have a field day stealing more valuable carbon nanotubes!
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I need to figure out how to break them down and mike bicycle frames and handlebars out of them.
 
Azhar said:
copper thieves are going to have a field day stealing more valuable carbon nanotubes!
Click to expand...

what makes you think it will be more expensive carbon is much more abundant than copper. the question is can carbon nanotubes preform the same jobs as copper currently does as in can motors use windings of carbon instead of copper or is this only good for long runs like house wiring or back bone grid wiring...
 
"what makes you think it will be more expensive carbon is much more abundant than copper."

We're talking about carbon nano-tubes here, not elemental carbon carbon. Copper was one of the very first metals humans learned how to manipulate for a reason. It's extremely easy to generate copper metal from ore (compared to other metals). What makes carbon nano-tubes so expensive is how much effort it takes to manufacture them from the raw carbon. Someday that relationship may flip as we learn easier methods of manufacturing them and as we deplete the global copper reserves but we probably won't see that happen for a long time.
 
I noticed it said "pound for pound."
So what you are looking at is a cable that might be slightly lighter than copper but also five times the diameter.
 
Just because it has greater capacity, doesnt mean it is viable or usable in real life situations. There are several more variables to consider. To name a few: insulators, heat, voltage capacity, capacitance, inductance, treatment of parallel magnetic fields, hysteresis, harmonics, etc.

It would be interesting to see how it stacks up in a full comparison.
 
Lunas said:
what makes you think it will be more expensive carbon is much more abundant than copper. the question is can carbon nanotubes preform the same jobs as copper currently does as in can motors use windings of carbon instead of copper or is this only good for long runs like house wiring or back bone grid wiring...
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Processing chips are mostly made of silicon which is abundant in silica based sands but that doesn't necessitate cheap end products. Raw materials, no matter how prevalent, are processed to become more valuable. The consumer will be paying for the research and development along with all the manufacturing and overhead.
 
gc8dc95 said:
Just because it has greater capacity, doesnt mean it is viable or usable in real life situations. There are several more variables to consider. To name a few: insulators, heat, voltage capacity, capacitance, inductance, treatment of parallel magnetic fields, hysteresis, harmonics, etc.

It would be interesting to see how it stacks up in a full comparison.
Click to expand...

The only real deficiency Nanotube conductors would theoretically have is cost.

And it's a whopper.
 
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-team-aims-graphene-nanoribbon-wires.html#ms

"Crammed into integrated circuits, these microscopic strips known as graphene nanoribbons could increase by more than 10,000 times the number of transistors per area in computer chips."

There are a lot of new materials being discovered which out-perform copper. Nearly as much effort is being placed into insuring these materials can be manufactured economically.

Carbon isn't the only element being researched to find a room-temperature superconductor: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-d-tin-super-material.html#jCp
 
BallerX said:
I noticed it said "pound for pound."
So what you are looking at is a cable that might be slightly lighter than copper but also five times the diameter.
Click to expand...

"The researchers analyzed the fiber’s “current carrying capacity” (CCC), or ampacity, with a custom rig that allowed them to test it alongside metal cables of the same diameter."
 
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