Thanks for the info, my goal was to finish research for Delta shields and the associated shield regen. if it is 1-5% that should be an average of 3% gain per disassembly, so if I fully research Beta shields and 1. 5 shield regen I should be able to complete Gamma and Delta research via disassembly, with some shields left over. But if I just disassembled in place I would probably not complete Delta.
I dispatched my high speed freighter for the pickup and 97 shields fit into a cargo hold with enough room leftover for room 375 Duranium, but curiously it still shows Available capacity as 24,347 even though no more minerals can be loaded.
I didn't see any way to view component details on the stockpile screen of population and production. But I unchecked "Own tech only" in ship design and the shields now show up - thanks for pointing me to that! the component shows as size 1 under design spec, where a standard cargo hold is 500. So the information I found on an earlier thread appears to be correct - ship components appear to use about 5x their Hull space in cargo size.
edit: Somehow I messed up the URL link. here it is:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9699.0