On Sat, 02 Feb 2008, Wildepad <noreplies> posed:
>The ultimate garbage disposer is built -- [...]
>The inventor admits there are some minor problems with the process,
>and number 1,896 on his list of things to change is that the carbon
>comes out as flawless 36 pound crystals. [...]
>it's piling up at the rate of about 1000 tons a day.
>What do you do with it?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_properties_of_diamond>
At 3.52 g/cm^3, 36 pounds (16.33 kg) is 4639 cm^3 in volume -- a
sphere 10 cm in radius or a cube 16 cm on an edge, or a 1-cm-thick
square sheet 68 cm on an edge.
"Diamondoid" (as an umbrella term for all forms of structured
hexagonal and tetrahedral carbon) is the standard material in
speculations of molecular manufacturing -- but it's *fabricated* in
the desired end-form.
There are applications for *small* amounts of diamond -- computer chip
substrates (it's an excellent heat conductor), high-strength coatings,
cutting surfaces. But today we use vapor-deposition techniques for
those.
But diamond whose raw form is bulk? You can't melt it and reform it
in molds, or extrude it as fibers. You *could* shatter it and use the
fragments on industrial cutting surfaces -- they already use titanium
nitride, carbon nitride, and artificial "industrial diamond" (produced
IIRC as tiny yellow-brown crystals that are useless for jewelery).
Can you carve it into sheets? (Using a diamond-edged saw, of course;
laser? water-jet?) Is bulk diamond as good as glass, or does it
shatter too easily? You could process it (laminate, coat) and use it
for home windows. Or, if the sheets aren't large enough, photo frames
and display cases.
The "diamond baseball trophies" of _Unbounding the Future_ become
practical (although the effort of *cutting* the bulk diamond might
make them expensive).
Pure monocrystalline diamond shatters easily (unbeatable hardness,
poor toughness), so Klaatu's assertions in "Day the Earth Stood Still"
notwithstanding, it wouldn't make good money. (Once you carved it
into tokens. And doing so would probably be more expensive than
minting mentals. Implant impurities to change its color to form
pictures? Use intersecting lasers to carve the mint-marks inside?)
Facets of the Times Square New Year's ball?
Cut it into thermal-transfer rods. Will merely abutting two rods
permit sufficient heat flow? The thermal conductivity of diamond
(2000-2500 Wm/m^2K) is superior to any other solid, but what about
liquids? Would it work better than the liquid cooling loops available
for high-end PCs? (It'd certainly be simpler.)
It's a good electrical insulator. Better than ceramics? Use it in
electrical transmission systems.
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