[HN Gopher] New material gives copper superalloy-like strength
___________________________________________________________________
New material gives copper superalloy-like strength
Author : gnabgib
Score : 168 points
Date : 2025-04-28 00:19 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.lehigh.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.lehigh.edu)
| dcl wrote:
| Rearden metal...?
| sanex wrote:
| Not as strong as steel, real or imaginary.
| nine_k wrote:
| Milder steels have yield strength in the 200-300 MPa range,
| while this alloy reaches nearly 1000 MPa.
| AngryData wrote:
| Well not as strong as the best steels, but still stronger
| than many common steels. Even some less special bronze alloys
| can beat common steels in strength.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| That's a copper-iron alloy.
| mjevans wrote:
| Backup link
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250415035227/https://news.lehi...
|
| """
|
| Unlike typical grain boundaries that migrate over time at high
| temperatures, this complexion acts as a structural stabilizer,
| maintaining the nanocrystalline structure, preventing grain
| growth and dramatically improving high-temperature performance.
|
| The alloy holds its shape under extreme, long-term thermal
| exposure and mechanical stress, resisting deformation even near
| its melting point, noted Patrick Cantwell, a research scientist
| at Lehigh University and co-author of the study.
|
| """
|
| This sounds exotic, but possibly better performing in some use
| cases?
| WrongOnInternet wrote:
| I'm tired of articles with titles like "X makes Y
| bigger/faster/stronger," then never giving an answer to the
| obvious question: "How much?" This article is happy to tell you
| it costs $25M to develop , how many hours the annealed the metal,
| the patent numbers, the years the researchers got their degrees,
| but never once gives a single number related to the materials
| performance. Maybe its 0.1% better, maybe its 1000% better. I
| guess its not important.
| shakna wrote:
| There's a few numbers in the Science article, and they do
| actually link to it, unlike some. [0
|
| And the intro numbers are... Exciting.
|
| > This core-shell structure neither dissolves nor coarsens at
| temperatures of up to 800degC while also causing the yielding
| strength to be in excess of 1 gigapascal.
|
| [0] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr0299
| nine_k wrote:
| In other words, it makes the copper allow much stronger than
| mild steels, like the stainless steels, and on par with
| strong (but by far not the strongest) steel alloys.
|
| Imagine cutting stainless steel with a copper-based blade,
| and not the other way around.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Okay, this is cool.
|
| It's a copper-tantalum-lithium alloy: 96.5% Cu, 3% Ta, 0.5% Li.
|
| Tantalum isn't soluble in copper and doesn't form any
| intermetallic compounds, so under normal circumstances you'd get
| something like a metal matrix composite -- pure tantalum
| particles dispersed in a copper matrix. Add lithium, though, and
| the intermetallic Cu3Li forms, and tantalum is apparently very
| attracted to this stuff, so you end up with Cu3Li particles with
| Ta shells in that copper matrix.
|
| Yield Strength = ~1000MPa, so it's genuinely on par with high-
| temp nickel superalloys, though somewhat weaker than the cobalt-
| base ones, and far weaker than the best steels.
|
| Interestingly, it's actually a little bit weaker than the copper-
| beryllium alloy C17200. (YS: ~1200-1300 MPa.) But CuBe is very
| expensive, not very ductile, and potentially hazardous. Tantalum,
| though expensive, is still 10x cheaper than beryllium.
|
| Depending on its thermal and electrical properties, and on its
| ease of manufacture, this could be a very versatile material, and
| may replace nickel/cobalt alloys in certain applications.
| nine_k wrote:
| To put this into perspective: nickel is approximately 2x as
| expensive as copper, and cobalt is 5-6 times as expensive, and
| the major cobalt producers are all politically problematic (DR
| Congo, China, Russia).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| In the use cases imagined for this material, the cost of the
| base metals is basically irrelevant. Something like a jet
| turbine blade might have maybe 10$ worth of material, but
| after machining and a hundred other steps is worth 100x that
| ammount. A heatshield for a hypersonic missile? Maybe a kilo
| of copper, but perhaps a 1m+ purchase price
| nine_k wrote:
| More affordable price seriously widens the range of
| applications, and thus the total addressable market. Not
| using hazardous substances like berillium additionally
| helps.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| But it doesnt look very affordable. The process for
| making this stuff seems very involved. I dont think this
| will ever be a cheaper option, rather it will be
| something that offers new abilities unlike any existing
| material. So it will be for new use cases, not displacing
| existing materials.
| lazide wrote:
| Not using beryllium will dramatically increases available
| uses, and it should be much cheaper after development.
|
| Even firearm suppressors, high voltage electrical parts
| (especially in specific areas in ultra high power motors
| and switch contactors), etc.
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| No material is cheap when it has just been developed.
| Titanium alloys were science fiction in the 1980s, and
| now I can find titanium camping forks and mugs for EUR10.
|
| Special steels can also cost a fortune (powder
| metallurgy, superduplex).
|
| There are many more foundries and workshops producing
| copper alloys than nickel alloys. The supply chain is
| much simpler and more diverse.
|
| Copper recycling is a reality, but nickel alloy recycling
| is less so. Significant efforts are being made to reduce
| dependence on rare metals. No one really knows which ones
| will actually break through in the future. But having
| more options is always a good thing.
| imtringued wrote:
| This isn't true actually. Aerospace grade aluminum, for
| example, is much more expensive and since you want to
| minimize weight with ortho- and iso-grids, you're throwing
| at least 50% of the material away. Another problem is that
| you not only need to consider the "base metal" of the part
| you're cutting, but also the cost of the tools that do the
| cutting (ignore the machine itself). You're consuming a lot
| of expensive endmills to get rid of the material.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| Australia is the fourth largest producer. There are efforts
| to scale it up, although there are issues with that
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-24/critical-minerals-
| ele...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Isn't cobalt basically a byproduct of copper mining though?
|
| Googled it and the Cobolt Institute says:
|
| > the vast majority is produced as a by-product from large
| scale copper and nickel mines
| Qwertious wrote:
| That isn't contradictory with "the major sources of cobalt
| (congo, russia, china) are problematic - it just implies
| that congo/russia/china have copper/nickel mines too.
|
| And to state the obvious, just because cobalt is usually a
| byproduct of copper mining, doesn't mean that copper mining
| usually produces cobalt as a byproduct.
| hinkley wrote:
| For instance
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennecott_Utah_Copper is
| sort of famous for coming into existence along with new
| techniques to extract copper from low density ores.
| They're dismantling an entire mountain to produce 1% of
| the world's copper. The word cobalt does not appear on
| this page.
|
| However I found a news article from about 18 months ago
| stating Rio Tinto, who apparently own that mine, signed
| an MOU with another company to explore recovering cobalt
| and bismuth, by experimenting on this mine. Which I take
| to mean is possible but not being done at present.
|
| But in a January update they mention bismuth experiments
| but not cobalt:
| https://www.fortuneminerals.com/news/press-
| releases/press-re...
| fakedang wrote:
| Tantalum is a conflict resource (DRC).
| nine_k wrote:
| True. OTOH less tantalum is needed than cobalt would be
| needed for alternative alloys. Maybe the production of
| Rwanda, Brazil, Nigeria, Australia could suffice.
| junon wrote:
| Doesn't cobalt also have the problem of rampant child labor,
| too?
| nandomrumber wrote:
| For reference, regular old structural steel is 250 to 350 MPa
| tensile yield strength.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Mild steel for rebar, sure. But even the average tool steel
| exceeds ~1400MPa, and today's most advanced maraging steels
| can hit 3000MPa. Steel wire can get even stronger than that.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Can you make decent bronze age sword out of it?
| xxs wrote:
| 1000MPa is similar to the bolts used in automotive industry,
| so totally - but not with a bronze age style metallurgy.
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| It does not mention corrosion resistance or thermal fatigue at
| all, but a copper-based alloy with good dimensional stability
| and thermal conductivity could be an interesting alternative to
| Inconel alloys for heat exchanger tubes.
| xxs wrote:
| The article mentions one year test at 800C being annealed. I
| suppose you meant thermal cycles?
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| English is not my native language. I am referring to
| fatigue caused by thermal cycling. Annealing for one year
| is done to test the chemical stability of the alloy and
| ensure that there is no migration or segregation of alloy
| elements.
|
| There may be unstable hydrodynamic phenomena in a pipe or
| heat exchanger, which generates a large number of thermal
| cycles. Such as the instability of a vortex in a mixing or
| heat exchange zone.
|
| This is a different ageing mechanism. It is very
| complicated and time-consuming to test in the laboratory.
| mapt wrote:
| The two outstanding things we get out of copper are thermal
| conductivity and electrical conductivity. If it converts, we
| get those properties in a mechanically strong material.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think one of the critics of ITER points out there's not
| enough beryllium production on the planet currently to supply
| more than a few fusion power plants. And it's rare enough that
| maybe it couldn't be ramped very high.
|
| By the ITER design they use beryllium to multiply neutrons to
| make their supply of Helium 3.
|
| Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berylliosis does not sound
| fun.
| wpollock wrote:
| Could this material be a cost-effective replacement for stainless
| steel? I'm thinking of applications where the antimicrobial
| properties of copper would be beneficial.
| coder543 wrote:
| Nope... this stuff is 96.5% copper, and copper is ~3x as
| expensive as stainless steel. Even if tantalum and lithium were
| free, it would be substantially more expensive. Tantalum is not
| free, though. It's a very expensive material at about 100x the
| cost per kg relative to stainless steel, so it nearly doubles
| the cost of the raw material inputs by itself with its 3%
| contribution. The process of making this alloy is also likely
| to be expensive.
|
| I'm also not sure how much being in an alloy would impact the
| antimicrobial effects of copper.
| kragen wrote:
| You're right about the cost angle, though it might be cheaper
| than stellite, inconel, monel, that kind of thing.
|
| Generally copper does retain its antibacterial properties in
| alloys where it's a high proportion of the alloy, like this
| one.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Well, this could dramatically increase the demand for
| tantalum, which (econ 101) could dramatically increase the
| supply over time? Is tantalum in much demand today?
| coder543 wrote:
| Huge demand for copper hasn't brought its price down to the
| price of stainless steel, has it? Most definitely not, so
| it seems like Econ 101 was incomplete. Not all goods are
| perfectly elastic. Inelastic goods do not get cheaper with
| more demand.
|
| Tantalum is in demand today, yes. Tantalum capacitors are a
| well known application, but it is used in all sorts of
| things.
|
| My point was that even if tantalum were free, a material
| that is 96.5% copper is still not going to be significantly
| cheaper than copper, which I think is a pretty self-evident
| outcome.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I'm struggling to think of applications where both strength and
| antimicrobial properties matter. Isn't it usually one or the
| other?
| wpollock wrote:
| I was actually thinking of sinks, shower heads, door knobs,
| stuff like that.
| kragen wrote:
| Hot water heater tanks, dishes, silverware, handrails, air
| conditioner heat exchangers? But in a lot of cases you can
| just electroplate a strong alloy with copper, brass, or
| silver.
| thfuran wrote:
| None of those need high strength.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| So says someone that's never used chintzy silverware.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Have you even lived until you've folded a spoon trying to
| scoop ice cream with it? Woah, I guess I don't know my
| own strength!
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Chunky stainless steel flatware is the best. Being able
| to get the same thing in copper without significant loss
| of strength would be awesome.
| amluto wrote:
| You are welcome to eat with copper flatware and get sick
| if you eat something acidic or otherwise corrosive to
| copper. I'll pass.
|
| There's a reason that people tin-plate the food-contact
| surfaces of copper cookware.
| ajuc wrote:
| Bending iron horseshoes was a common party trick
| historically. Augustus II the Strong (king of PLC and
| elector of Saxonia) was known for doing it.
|
| Sounds impossible if you don't realize the horseshoes
| weren't steel.
| thfuran wrote:
| The bar is at not-atrocious, not superalloy.
| kragen wrote:
| Actually, they all do.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Depends on what is meant by high strength. Silverware is
| a fair point that hadn't occurred to me. Handrails is an
| interesting one but I suspect it's more cost effective to
| place a thin contact surface on top of something cheap.
|
| The others I'm not so sure about. I think you'd have
| corrosion issues with water tanks and bacterial issues
| there are easily addressed by regulating temperature. And
| why would heat exchangers require particularly high
| strength? Since when are those a structural component?
|
| In any case as you said electroplating something cheap is
| probably the way to go.
| kragen wrote:
| Recuperator-type heat exchangers need high-strength
| materials because both the strength of a wall and its
| thermal resistance are proportional to its thickness. So,
| if you can magically make copper five times stronger, you
| can make it one fifth as thick, cutting its thermal
| resistance by a factor of 5 and getting a much better
| heat exchanger.
|
| As for water tanks, regulating temperature is not always
| "easy", and a major reason copper is used for water pipes
| is its great resistance to corrosion. In this case
| apparently it will be more expensive than the same mass
| of stainless, but it's apparently also stronger than
| stainless, so maybe you can use less of it, making it
| cheaper again.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Fair point about water pipe corrosion, my mistake.
| Although thinking about it more carefully what is
| strength saving you there other than cost? This material
| is going to be _at least_ a 10x cost premium judging by
| the elemental composition. And if we 're talking
| household temperatures I expect there are polymer
| coatings that would work better.
|
| The heat exchanger point is interesting. However doesn't
| stainless already lose out to 3D printed aluminum for the
| sort of applications where the optimization is worth the
| cost? This material is even heaver than steel and
| substantially more expensive.
|
| It's tangential but I wonder how amenable to 3D printing
| this material will prove to be.
| kragen wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43816979 suggested
| that the raw materials imply about a 6x cost increase
| over stainless, which is less than 10x. I haven't done
| the numbers myself.
|
| High-energy cryogenic ball milling of 10 grams for four
| hours in a continuous flow of liquid nitrogen under an
| argon atmosphere with <1ppm oxygen (https://www.science.o
| rg/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.112...) sounds
| expensive, but maybe they only did it that way because it
| was a low-risk way to ensure the alloying worked with the
| lab equipment they had on hand, not because it's the
| cheapest way to make the material. Hopefully cheaper ways
| are found.
|
| I'm no expert in heat exchangers, but my calculations
| suggest 3-D printing is or will be an enormous boost
| there, and may reverse the gradient of merit for wall
| material thermal conductivity, favoring good thermal
| insulators over good thermal conductors like copper and
| aluminum. As for aluminum, it is only suitable for low
| temperatures.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| 6x for the raw materials before you account for the
| production process.
|
| I'm curious. What mechanism would lead to an insulator
| being favored in a heat exchanger?
|
| Fair point about aluminum and temperature. As a layman an
| engine block is high temperature to me. I guess this
| would be extremely useful for more exotic stuff.
| kragen wrote:
| If the fluid path through the heat exchanger is very
| short and the contact area is very large, preventing
| lengthwise conduction of heat from one end of the fluid
| path to the other, rather than getting enough conduction
| between the fluids, should become the performance-
| limiting factor. See
| https://dercuano.github.io/notes/capillary-heat-
| exchanger.ht....
|
| I could be wrong about this, but I didn't just make it
| up; I got it from Lingai Luo's book on heat and mass
| transfer intensification, which hopefully I've understood
| correctly.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| No I think you've understood that correctly. I'd count
| that as one of those things that's blindingly obvious
| once it's pointed out but not until then.
|
| With 3D printing I wonder if you could insert bands of
| insulator into an otherwise conductive wall? But you're
| dealing with large (potentially ridiculously so)
| temperature ranges so I wonder if it would prove
| difficult to match the thermal properties of the two
| materials closely enough.
|
| I now have the weirdest desire to play with heat
| exchanger designs that I have absolutely zero use for.
| I've been nerd sniped.
| kergonath wrote:
| No, they don't. The force a man can apply does not
| require "high strength" materials to withstand. They
| don't need high temperature performance, either.
| Seriously, we don't need superalloy spoons.
|
| When we're talking about advanced materials, "high
| strength" means hundreds of MPa and "high temperature" is
| beyond 500degC (and more depending on the application).
| kragen wrote:
| Any material can withstand the force a man (or a woman)
| can apply if you make it thick enough. Contrapositively,
| if you make it too thin, it can't. So sign me the fuck up
| for the superalloy spoons, but hold the nickel, please.
|
| (It would be excellent to be able to clean my silverware
| by firing it in a kiln, though with a copper alloy I'd
| probably have to scrub off the verdigris.)
| kube-system wrote:
| 304 stainless is already strong enough that you could
| make a durable spoon thin enough that it would be painful
| to use. And it is cheap.
| kragen wrote:
| 8-11% nickel, not antibacterial, and five times weaker
| than this CuLiTa alloy in the annealed state. Thin out
| the middle and leave thick edges to avoid pain. None of
| this is an option with this new alloy unless someone
| finds a cheaper way to make it and probably some kind of
| beryllium-copper-like precipitation hardening process so
| you can form it.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > Thin out the middle and leave thick edges to avoid
| pain.
|
| Ok but if you do that then what is the point of the
| exercise? I thought fancy flatware was thin because of
| the appearance. If the edges are thick doesn't that
| defeat the purpose?
|
| The equivalent thickness being something like 5x stronger
| is of course the benefit here.
|
| I don't think price is an issue for high end home use
| items. Rich people buy far weirder and more expensive
| things.
| amluto wrote:
| Nickel-free (e.g. 18/0) flatware is just fine from an
| engineering perspective, and it's cheap, and it sticks to
| magnets, which is fun. It's even available as fairly
| nice, decorative name-brand products.
|
| And I found some studies suggesting that 304 and 316
| stainless steel leach very little nickel when in contact
| with food. It's the cheaper nickel-containing stainless
| steel that's a problem.
| fsckboy wrote:
| you're not making them thin enough
| elchananHaas wrote:
| The high temperature talked about in the article is close
| to 800 Celsius. That far exceeds home or even most
| industrial appliances. The primary use would be in turbines
| where the combination of strength and heat conductivity can
| keep the blades from melting and improve efficiency.
| kragen wrote:
| Yes, I was only talking about combining near-room-
| temperature strength with antimicrobial properties, not
| the red-hot strength they're focused on.
| jandrese wrote:
| I feel like the antimicrobal properties of something that
| runs at 800C are maybe not so important.
| amluto wrote:
| Copper is not awesome for hot water. Utilities treat their
| water to minimize corrosion of copper and lead, but a
| fairly small change in the composition of water will make
| it corrosive to copper, and heating it is unlikely to help
| matters.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Brewing beer. Pharmaceuticals. Any industrial use of bacteria
| under pressure.
| ajuc wrote:
| Kitchen knife?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Sword!
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I doubt antimicrobial matters much there (don't you wash
| your knives before and after use?) but the idea of a copper
| knife without significant loss of strength is neat. I want
| one already.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| If it's hardness is in the mid 50 it will make some
| badass looking knife. And something with the thin profile
| of guyto but with the heft of a Chineese cleaver will be
| interesting to use.
|
| But even if suitable - it will be mostly novelty I guess.
| Still want one.
| ajuc wrote:
| Hear me out - copper-titanium damascuss.
| lazide wrote:
| Alex Steele did it, albeit with some nickel. It's pretty
| cool looking.
| hkra wrote:
| Ships hulls?
| londons_explore wrote:
| This material won't ever be cheap - all 3 ingredients cost a
| lot more than stainless steel.
| adrian_b wrote:
| It is unlikely that it has better corrosion properties than a
| cheaper copper alloy, like copper-nickel alloy.
|
| This new alloy is useful only for high-temperature
| applications, like turbines and heat exchangers, where its main
| advantage over the existing alloys (based on nickel or cobalt)
| is its much higher thermal conductivity.
|
| Moreover, the kinds of stainless steel that have little or no
| nickel content (e.g. ferritic, martensitic, superferritic,
| duplex, manganese-austenitic) will always have a price several
| times lower than any copper alloy.
|
| This copper alloy will be rather expensive due to the high cost
| of tantalum. However the content in tantalum is small, so the
| price will remain acceptable for its applications.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >Could this material be a cost-effective replacement for
| stainless steel?
|
| Iron ore costs $~100/ton, The cost of copper ore is hard to
| find (possibly because there are so many types, and because it
| tends to be processed locally AFAICT) but you're looking at
| ~$5000/ton.
|
| So the raw-material cost should be about 50x, and apparently
| stainless steel costs ~$2500/ton so even if the processing is
| _free_ you 're already 2x the price.
|
| So, no. Copper is about as rare as lithium, for context. Iron
| is an amazingly cheap metal.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Copper is technically a precious metal:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precious_metal
| lutusp wrote:
| Legitimate content aside, this article is a perfect example of
| modern public relations writing, of flash over substance. Each
| paragraph is larded with PR buzzwords like "breakthrough,"
| "cutting-edge," "groundbreaking," etc. to the degree that the
| topic is nearly lost in the lexical shrubbery.
|
| And it's clear the article's author doesn't understand scientific
| writing. Each participant is identified as having a PhD (when
| true), contrary to accepted academic practice. Imagine a
| scientific article by Albert Einstein, tagged with "PhD" --
| except that in 1905, any relevance aside, Einstein didn't have
| one. My point is that the participants' academic degrees are
| irrelevant to the science. As Richard Feynman said, "Science is
| the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion".
| Oh -- wait -- did I mention that Feynman had a PhD?
|
| My favorite phrase from an article that tries to raise empty PR
| prose to an art form: "... Lehigh is the only university _in the
| Lehigh Valley_ to have this designation ... " Noted. But this is
| like saying, "We're tops in our ZIP code!"
| syllogistic wrote:
| good take overall, though the last point is forgiven as a
| subtle dig at lafayette
| kragen wrote:
| Rearden metal heat exchangers, eh?
| fnord77 wrote:
| will it make a good bicycle frame?
| eCa wrote:
| They mention both high temperature durability and conductivity
| as positives. Not really the most important qualities in a bike
| frame to be fair.
|
| I doubt it beats aluminium in cost, so it would need to
| significantly beat carbon in performance to make it worthwhile.
| xyst wrote:
| It would be a very expensive bicycle frame. That is for 100%
| certain ;)
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Well it's on par with stainless steel strength wise while being
| both more expensive and heaver. Presumably also much more prone
| to corrosion.
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| For a bicycle frame, we want an alloy that is relatively light
| and easy to weld. At no point is weldability considered, and it
| is not impossible that this alloy welds very poorly (losing its
| properties in the area thermally affected by welding, requires
| a very narrow energy range to weld properly).
|
| The advantages of this alloy do not make it a better choice
| than special steels or titanium alloys when it comes to
| metallic materials.
|
| There are few cyclists on Venus.
| Maken wrote:
| If you don't mind it being heavier than a steel frame.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This could be useful in heat exchangers and rocket engine thrust
| chambers. I imagine this has very high thermal conductivity
| compared to steels. The thermal conductivity of copper is about
| 20x that of stainless steel. So, you can make the walls of the
| passages an order of magnitude thicker, increasing their strength
| proportionally.
| jbay808 wrote:
| This might be a great alternative to beryllium copper for the
| spring contact element in high-current electrical connectors.
| xyst wrote:
| Besides space and ~~efficient killing/murdering~~ military
| industries, where would this "superalloy-like" strength be useful
| in?
|
| Nuclear plants?
|
| Maybe useful in supercomputing/quantum computing?
| topspin wrote:
| It's difficult to predict. High performance heat exchangers are
| an obvious application, but the potential is great for many
| other things.
|
| "Nuclear plants?"
|
| Sure. One of the most challenging problems in a PWRs is heat
| exchange; the so called "steam generators" that circulate
| primary and secondary water, for instance. They're huge,
| expensive heat exchangers and their primary failure mode is
| cracking. A durable, high temperature, high thermal
| conductivity copper based alloy goes directly to this. Better
| thermal conductivity could make these devices substantially
| smaller, reducing costs in all sorts of way, or enable novel
| designs.
| kragen wrote:
| It still might be prone to fatigue cracks.
| topspin wrote:
| Yep. Cracking is a subtle process. This new material and
| the new designs based on it will be either better or worse
| than the nickel alloys that have been used, but only time
| will tell. At least an opportunity exists for improvement
| now.
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| Pressurised water reactors use Inconel tubes. Inconel 600
| alloys are high-chromium nickel alloys for steam exchange tubes
| that are highly resistant to various forms of corrosion
| (capable of withstanding to 30 years in water with boric acid
| and 300degC+).
|
| The design of these alloys and exchangers is extremely complex
| and benefits from several thousand years of operational
| experience. This applies to the alloys themselves, their heat
| treatment, shaping, interaction with other materials, ageing,
| etc.
|
| It is highly unlikely that these alloys will be abandoned in
| the next 20-30 years.
| fpoling wrote:
| Efficient and less polluting coal plants. To approach 50% or
| more efficiency when converting the thermal energy of coal to
| electricity the temperature must exceed 700C, but that brings
| all kind of problems as it presently requires exotic alloys.
| nine_k wrote:
| Coal is problematic due to ash and sulfur. Natural gas-fired
| plants, OTOH, are not going anywhere for next few decades.
| And even if they go, and get replaced with nuclear or even
| fusion, the steam generation step does not go way anyway.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The recuperator in Allam Cycle CO2 turbines.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allam_power_cycle
| chuzz wrote:
| would this be useful for better power lines? assuming electrical
| conductivity is about the same, as implied by the article
| philipkglass wrote:
| Plain copper is already too expensive for power lines, and this
| alloy is more expensive than copper alone. Transmission and
| distribution lines are typically made with aluminum conductors
| layered over a steel core for mechanical strength:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium-conductor_steel-rein...
|
| Aluminum is a worse conductor than copper on a volumetric basis
| but a better conductor on a mass basis, which is important for
| overhead lines supporting their own weight against gravity. It
| also costs significantly less than copper.
| chuzz wrote:
| My point was that maybe the improved mechanical performance
| would help with their own weight. I concede that a more
| expensive, heavier overhead line that could hang for longer
| distances does not sound good unless costs are dominated by
| tower construction
| convivialdingo wrote:
| Wonder if this could work for li-ion batteries as a current
| collector? You could potentially lower charging times and handle
| higher power applications and higher temperature ranges.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-28 23:01 UTC)