It's always steam
It's always steam
65 comments
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I feel like the next big technological achievement will just be replacing water with some other fluid.
"Steam cycle? No, this is the much more advanced glycol cycle."
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The nice things about steam is you can get as much water as could want on earth, but something like ammonia which we used as a refrigerant for years would probably work well too and there's planets with ammonia rich atmospheres.
The interesting thing is the cycles are fairly similar at a high level, you just run out in one direction for power and the opposite direction for cooling.
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It's why photovoltaics are so cool. Direct electricity generation without having to spin magnets in circles like neanderthals.
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Solar is no doubt the coolest.
Hydro and wind are also very neat, going directly from mechanical to electric via generator, without a steam-turbine.There is also a very cool fusion-category based on dynamic magnetic fields, that basically form a magnetic piston which expands directly due to the release of charged particles via fusion and then captures the energy from that moving electric field by slowing it back down and initiating the next compression.
A fully electric virtual piston engine in some sense, driven my fusion explosions and capturing straight into electricity.
Feels so much more modern than going highly advanced superconducting billion K fusion-reactor to heat to steam to turbine. -
I swear those magnet spinners are so uncivilized.
Semiconductor gang rise up.
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Molten Salt Generators are cool Solar power too.
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"Direct" (from energy created by a massive nuclear fusion reactor in space).
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You mean like how refrigeration and heat pumps operate?
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We could try Brawndo. It’s got electrolytes, which are great for making electrocity.
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How do we go about "utilizing" the Brawndo?
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We already use different fluids for different power cycles, for example organic rankine cycles or just power cycles that use organic fluids are good for low temperature heat sources like low temp geothermals
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I hate this. So much.
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I can't let this slander against Josiah Willard Gibbs stand.
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"wait a second, what is the steam made of?"
"Tin. Why, what do you guys use?"
"Erm, nothing, just, continue please."
"Okay, so given the Strontium sulfide needed to balance the vapor out, we ended up with a Strontium-Tin mixture.We boys in the shop call it the Stin engine. Ain't that a blast?"
"Nevermind "
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It doesn't have to be steam. You can also use the generated energy to pump water up to a location of higher gravitational potential, then use that to spin turbines as it comes back down.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
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Ah yes, liquid steam
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Fantastic
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How are you generating that energy though? Oh yeah, steam. :panic:
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Why don't they just let the steam rise on its own? Are they stupid?
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Well yes assuming your reactor creates heat, you need to convert that to mechanical energy to run a pump. A steam turbine is very efficient for that lol
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But how do you get the energy to pump the water up stream
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Sometimes it's wind or water, and photovoltaic panels don't even use a dynamo. But classics sometimes are classics for a reason.
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"gets" ? or "has" ?
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he has to get it from the store because of other stuff the aliens did
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65 comments
I don’t know why this is constantly criticized as a method of energy capture. Liquids allow for maximum surface area contact, creating more efficient heat transfer from the irradiated rods.
Armchair nuclear physicists should release an improved model before being so critical of the most effective and reliable method of energy generation we currently have.
I don't think it's a criticism? It's more about highlighting the slight absurdity of super-high tech power generation still using the same method that has been used since the very start of electricity generation. A turbine spun by evaporated water.
Hey now, sometimes it's a turbine spun by falling water!
Well seeing as any and all cells in our body are powered by something you could very reasonably call an electron/charge turbine I think it's fair to say turbines are really frickin great though!
Also, water is an amazing coolant. At the molecular level its hydrogen bonding contributes to a bulk property called heat capacity that ends up much higher than most other substances, meaning it can soak up a ton of energy per unit volume (and later release that energy, e.g. into a turbine). And there's even more of that heat capacity in the phase transition from liquid to steam and back. It's crazy good.
It's also super cheap and abundant. The main reason water isn't the coolant for nearly everything is that it can be corrosive. Also steam can be quite dangerous due to all that energy it carries.
The heat of vaporization is also a huge negative of using water as you need to condense the water and then reboil it which wastes a bunch of energy
Not only that, but we're harnessing the humble yet awesome power of phase-changing matter. The same phenomenon breaks mountains down to rubble, constantly chews apart our infrastructure, and keeps our homes and food cool. It makes a lot of sense to use that same phenomenon to do work.
They would, but there are limited options for directly generating electricity. Outside of manipulating magnetic fields with kinetic motion, all we have are betavoltaics, photovoltaics, and thermocouples. And they're all kind of awful in terms of efficiency. Even chlorophyll is awesome at converting air, light, and water, into... sugar, which then has to be oxidized (burned) to be useful.
There’s plenty of room for advancement in alternative energy for sure. My comment about critics was referring more to the method of capturing and converting irradiated rod heat to electricity. Water vapor is still the standard for a reason. It’s like being critical of a jet engine because it’s basically just a compressor.
I mean it does seem kinda weird that running a heat engine to run a generator is more efficient than using a thermoelectric generator with no mechanical inbetween step.
Thermodyanmics in practice is weird like that. You would think solid state peltiers would be more efficient than a machine. Solid state usually is in any other application. Just this once, no, pelts kinda suck. They've been around for two centuries now and nobody has made a significant breakthrough to improve them.
Diagram please?