
Andy Zhao
@phandypack
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CTO @LimelightSteel | Disciple @ActivateFellows | Views are from somewhere between Boltzmann and Bessemer
Oakland, CA
Joined June 2009
Henry Bessemer figuring out how to dismantle the steel industry is a vibe.
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Choice in nuclear reactor design reflects something deeper about how these companies operate. Microsoft going for old as hell, legacy light water reactor. Google betting on fancy molten salt reactor. Amazon adding carbide coatings over uranium pellets.
Sep 20 - Microsoft announces Three Mile Island deal (Pennsylvania).Oct 14 - Google announces deal with Kairos (Tennessee?).Oct 16 - Amazon announces deal with X-Energy (Washington).
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@activatefellows was started by ARPA-E alums that wanted to empower scientists to turn their research into world-changing companies. @OliviaDippo and I would not be here without @ilangur and everyone at Activate that have supported us through magma and back again.
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@ARPAE was started by my heroes Steven Chu and Arun Majumdar in 2009 as a moonshot program to support clean energy projects. The work that has come out of ARPA-E for the past 15 years has relentlessly inspired me to think and dream audaciously.
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Blasting rocks with lasers to make metal continues to be the best job in the world. Grateful for this @ARPAE X @LimelightSteel collab. It means so much for the company, but also for me personally.
ARPA-E just announced $28M for 13 projects to advance zero-process-emission ironmaking and ultra-low life cycle emissions steelmaking⚒️. Learn more about the selected projects under the Revolutionizing Ore to Steel to Impact Emissions (ROSIE) program:
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In 81 BC, the Chinese emperor held a debate on whether to keep the state monopoly on Salt and Iron, or to abolish them in favor of a free market policy. Discourses on Salt and Iron is an ancient text that I'll rewrite for the 21st century one day.
en.wikipedia.org
Not a single soul:. Me: here is every thermal conductivity measurement of molten sodium chloride and iron since 1961
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When I got really bored when writing my thesis, I also rewrote the wikipedia page hahaha . After, when I was discussing something with my PhD advisor, he told me I should read the Wikipedia page and that it was surprisingly good. Then I was like my guy. .
en.wikipedia.org
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And here's my thread on high temperature measurements .
If you've ever driven into Las Vegas from California, you passed by this epic field of ten thousand mirrors, each the size of a garage door. Sunlight is concentrated to the top of a tower to heat molten nitrate salts over 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Here's a thread on hot salt 1/n
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If you'd rather read twitter threads instead of a 30 page pdf, here's a thread on modeling (surprise guests are silicon manufacturing and Oppenheimer).
It's honestly insane to me that humans can make silicon 99.9999999% pure. Here is an ape with less hair, who can arrange 1 billion silicon atoms perfectly with just 1 impurity, into a 500 pound ingot of silicon that gets sliced and diced into our computer chips.
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