From: schillin@spock.usc.edu
Ian Stirling writes:
>Paul F. Dietz wrote:
>> Henry Spencer wrote:
>>> And indeed, the big snag is availability. If you want a thousand tons of
>>> xenon, you simply can't get it in any reasonable amount of time. Even a
>>> hundred tons would be problematic unless you order years ahead. This is
>>> essentially independent of the price you're willing to pay; even if you
>>> outbid everyone else, there simply isn't that much production capacity.
>> I'm sure if you wanted to spend enough money, you could get more, but
>> the cost would be frightening. Xenon is obtained as a byproduct of
>> air liquefaction/separation, and is affordable only because almost all
>> the cost is borne by the customer who needs the oxygen, nitrogen, etc.
>> You'd have to build entire new air separation plants just for making
>> the xenon.
>I was about to ask this earlier.
>Does anyone happen to know what fraction of air seperation plants extract
>the Xenon - as upgrading ones that don't might be cheap.
IIRc, it's somewhere between a third and a half, but hard to pin down
exactly because lots of the big producers (e.g. the Russian steel
industry) are not known for the free and reliable dissemation of
hard data about their operations.
But yes, we can get a factor of two or three increase in global Xenon
production relatively cheaply.
>Also, what's the size of this sector? I'd guess at tens of billions
>a year,
The world Xenon production industry is a ~$100 million sideline to
the ~$100 billion world steel production industry.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schillin@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
