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There are a million efficient ways to make heat and tons of new development to be made in making heat in new ways. There is relatively very little development in turning heat into kinetic energy and then electricity when size and weight are no object. The combined cycle turbine is incredibly efficient and is likely to continue to be ubiquitous in power generation for some time.
Reading the comments, it would seem most everyone here thinks that the usefulness of the steam is done when it gets used to turn a turbine at high pressure.
The steam can be used for much more than once. In the 1800’s and early 1900s when steam ran trains and ships, they built double and triple expansion engines that took the energy of the steam two and three times before it was done. It doesn’t need to be one and done. And when the energy is done being harvested for power generation, it can used for other things. Engineers today aren’t dumber than the ones in the 1800s.
I can remember a small rural Minnesota town that had their own coal fired electric plant. (Built back before the REA was a thing). They took the left over steam from power generation and then piped it to around 200 homes in the town and heated them with the leftover steam. While a bit costly to install, it was dirt cheap to run. Those homes lost all that when the power plant was shut down and they had to switch to either natural gas, fuel oil, LP, or electricity.
So don’t get hung up on just the power generation. Think what could be beyond that point.
All large cities in Finland are heated by combined heat and power (CHP) power plants.
These power plants first make super heated steam (like 800°C, 1500°F), runs that through turbine to make electricity, then send the cooled down water (80-150°C, 170°F-300°F) to all homes through district heating grid.
From that water the home is heated and hot water is used.
Now that we have the district heating network, when electricity is cheap, we can also use electricity to boil the water and send it through the grid. Water is also easy to use as storage, if the need of consumption requires buffering.
Smaller cities use just heat plants, were there is no turbine for electricity generation, just the heating of water to district heating grid.
Most plants use biomass as power source in the power plants, historically they were coal, but it has been now almost completely phased out.
Municipal steam networks are still operating today.
For new infrastructure, Electricity is just so good-enough, that it is hard to justify building out partial alternatives like steam pipes. But where we already have them, they are still useful.
The same principal has been tried with crypto mining to reduce waste / cost.
Capture the heat and use it elsewhere like to heat the building.
Downside for heating buildings though is unless you’re doing it somewhere where it’s always cold, you eventually still end up with heat you can’t use, and at that scale, there’s better heating choices. I heard the city of vancouver was looking into heating a swimming pool with it, at least that would have a constant use.
Then you still end up with the issue of the mining cards only being good for 2-3 years before the tech improves and they aren’t mining efficiently anymore, which then just leads to more e-waste.
But imagine if the cards themselves had a really long useful life or were super cheap and easily recyclable, we could put miners in things like space / baseboard heaters which were already going to be doing resistive heating and then gain something from that instead of just heat.
Imagine doing something like having a GPU based baseboard heater that folds proteins whenever it’s on, where it doesn’t become completely obsolete in a couple years. If the chips were cheap enough it’d be way better than just doing heat.
Edit: Taking the idea further… imagine if governments mandated reuse of the heat generated by data centers instead of piping it outside? You want to build a data center here? Build a public pool and heat the building / water with your excess heat. Then that commercial zone also gets a fitness center for anyone nearby.
Also the water is just a medium for energy transfer; it can be reused & recycled in near perpetuity in a closed system.
We’re used to open systems with water in power stations, including cooling towers etc, because water is abundant on earth so it’s cheaper to just dump it back into the atmosphere; we probably take the whole thing for granted.
But it could be engineered to be a closed system a bit like a coolant in a refrigeration unit cycling back and forth. And it probably will need to be a closed system in the future in space where water will be incredibly precious.
A good example of how you can do amazing things with steam is looking at the very last of the steam locomotives. Before they switched to diesel or electric, the steam locomotives were engineering masterpieces. Yes, you still got the classic steam locomotive puffs of steam coming out of the locomotive, but they only let the steam go once they had extracted the maximum possible energy from it.
Here’s a good video going over the whole design.
Steam had several technical and power limitations. It was dropped very quickly when electrification was an option.
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“Dyson Spheres? Look, playing with sunlight and mirrors was a fun side project, but you want to know a much more advanced method of generating power?”
“Please dont…”
“Thats right! By hurling entire water worlds into a star, we then capture the released steam which powers our gravitationally locked dynamo network.”
Throwing water into a star wouldn’t get you steam, it’d just fuel the star XD
You gotta seal the planet in a heat-safe bag, and make sure to not drop it out of orbit, or you’ll lose the water, as you say.
Nah. You’ll probably want several shells operating above any sane temperature for steam. You don’t want to lose that extremely high temperature by just heating water to 600 °C or so.
Most common fission reactions today release most of their energy in the form of neutrons. The only way to extract energy from neutrons is heat. But there are fission reactions which release a large portion of their energy in the form protons. And since protons are charged, their energy can be electromagnetically converted directly into electricity, with no need for intermediate process steps.
There’s already at least one company building prototypes like this, Helion, using D+He3 fusion, rather than the more common D+T fusion in other reactortypes like Tokamaks.
Real engineering has a video on Helion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38
Every damn power plant is a glorified steam engine
Except solar. And wind. And hydro.
Some solar is also boiling water
My local solar steam generator was shut down years ago as it was no longer worth testing direct reflector material anymore — even if they had gotten perfect reflectivity they couldn’t compete with photovoltaics anymore
And some of it is boiling salt!
Which then boils water, of course.
But some of it is electrons from photonic impact, no water involved! In the process of energy generation anyway. Statistically and perhaps somewhat ironically, the electrons from that photonic impact may well be used to boil water regardless… Humans just fucking love boiling water.
Isn’t salt like the main bees knees these days?
I don’t know, but the Ivanpah solar power station near Primm NV, which is a set of three molten salt towers is reportedly getting decommissioned, removed, and replaced with PV panels. Word is PV technology had improved in efficiency and stopped in cost enough that the whole molten salt thing is no longer economically viable, at least in comparison.
Oh, absolutely. It’s very cool technology! Molten salt is corrosive as fuck, but that just kinda makes molten salt solar towers even more awesome.
I’m assuming ceramics to the rescue?
:D
Something all the way down something
And zapping birds!
They did fix that pretty quickly, but what a classic mad scientist blunder that would turn a well meaning researcher into a villain in any action hero film.
And some fusion is direct to current in coils. The z-pinch style approaches mainly.
that’s why IMHO it’s more important to classify the core coupling mechanism (e.g. photoelectric effect, electromagnetic effect) instead of classifying the total energy in -> energy out types.
Expect for solar, it’s all just flowy stuff through spinny stuff: wind, water, steam. GRAAAAAAAAAA
Good ol’ mill.
Spinny stuff is basically the universe on all scales, so it makes sense. And that’s fucking cool, IMO.
Solar is very tiny flowy stuff through very tiny spinny stuff
you forgot the electrochemical battery
And wind.
wind is just the effects of premade steam
Isnt hydro in a small part powered by steam just post condensation steam.
I do enjoy a nice glass of post condensation steam on occasion
And theoretically a massive proton exchange plant.
Hydro also uses steam
In liquid form?
Condensed steam.
It’s still the same turbine shit
It’s all turbines, but quite dissimilar turbines.
and fuel cells
And waves/tidal, but now we’re getting into the really niche types.
i knew i was forgetting something
Are these really power plants? I thought they were called field or farm or something else
I dunno if “power plant” quite fits for solar and wind. Definitely for Hydro, though.
“Power Plant” won’t be a fitting term until we can generate electricity (at a viable scale) from chloroplasts.
And wouldn’t that just be solar with extra steps?
fun fact: chloroplasts generate an electric potential across the cell membrane during photosynthesis. essentially, they have membrane proteins in their chloroplast membranes that push electrons from one side of the membrane to the other side whenever a photon hits the protein. It’s essentially a natural photovoltaic cell.
That electric potential is then used to create ATP in nature, while we just directly extract the electrical power through cables.
Even better if you can use it to power a humanoid robot for a real world plant golem.
Isn’t that the goal?
You should look at mitochondria:
- The power plant of the cell.
- Runs on a proton-gradient.
- ATP synthase is essentially a molecular turbine and a generator.
- oh. a turbine. Damm thing spins ~18000 rpm at medium throttle, pumping out elec- ATP. ATP.
Oops… it’s turbines all the way down.
runs on proton gradient
So I can launch it from Lutris?
I dunno if “power plant” quite fits for solar and wind
Why not?
The First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy Cannot Be Created or Destroyed
Fossil fuel power plants merely convert chemical energy into another type.
Just that “power plant” I think most people associate with large enclosed facilities that house power generating equipment, which doesn’t quite describe wind and solar farms. Hence that most people refer to them as “farms”.
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We’re living in a steampunk world after all
I’m a steampunk girl
In a steampunk world
It’s not a big big thing if you steam me
I’m going to be this person I guess, but the defining trait of steampunk isn’t the use of steam alone. It’s that energy is transfered by delivering steam to where it’s used, rather than using it in-place to crested electricity. This means that steampunk machines operate off of some kind of kinetic energy, rather than electrical energy.
Basically, computers (and everything else) are spinning gears, not silicon.
Aaackually…
That was a really cool explanation, thank you!
Readily available, low boiling point, non corrosive (relatively), and ecologically safe. What more do you want?
Also a ridiculously high heat capacity. It does make sense.
Molten salt. Lower pressure, higher efficiency, and I believe less reactive in the event of an uh-oh.
The molten salt is used as the first step. It then makes steam through a heat exchanger. Molten salt is safer next to the actual reactor because water is not a good coolant in case of emergency.
Oh, I was just joking around. What my water system is missing is molten salt.
Although for the sake of preposterousness, I’m going to suggest we use the molten salt to turn a giant water wheel.
Hydro isn’t. Nor is solar photo voltaic, wind, or tidal, but yeah, nearly everything else is. In a combined-cycle natural gas or diesel plant half of the power generated isn’t steam power, but the other half is.
Hydro is liquid steam
aah, but it didn’t say steam, it said boiling water.
smaller gas generators based on internal combustion engines don’t boil water though, right?
boiling just makes the water move, hydro just cheats
gas generators based on internal combustion
they heat air, afaik. hot gas expands -> mechanical movement moves magnets -> electromagnetism -> electric power.
Electromagnetic induction.
Basically electric motor in reverse…instead of electricity powering the motor, the motor powers electricity.
But the trick is in “what spins the motor”. In the case if ICE generators, it’s usually a pulley off the crankshaft.
Or it could be moving water.
Molten ice.
for ccgt it’s more like 2/3 for gas turbine, 1/3 for steam turbine split, even more uneven for diesel/steam because diesel exhaust is much colder
I watched a video a while ago about a new approach to fusion which uses induction iirc https://youtu.be/uRaQLZaaHWo
It’s always been about finding new ways to spin a turbine
Hydrohomies!
We need this on lemmy
We have it already! ^^ <3
There are actually versions of fusion reactors that use the magnetic fields generated by the plasma in order to make electricity directly.
There’s only 3 major ways to transform different forms of energy into electricity, which are:
- solar panels (light -> electricity)
- mechanical engines/generators (mechanical movement -> electricity)
- electrochemical battery (chemical dipole -> electricity)
there’s a whole lot more, such as thermoelectric generator and piezoelectricity but these are the three significant ones.
note that i distinguish these categories by their core essence, such as whether they’re using changes in magnetic flux (like a mechanical generator) or transferring 1 photon on each electron (like solar panels), instead of looking at what source type of energy they transform.
because there’s many ways to transform e.g. light energy into electricity. you could also heat water with the sunlight and then drive a steam engine with it. but that’s not what i care about. i care about the fundamental connection between different types of energy, and how they can be directly transformed to one another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device
We use steam because it is very efficient and lowest cost to maintain.
Why don’t we just pipe our water all the way out to the sun and pipe the steam back to earth.
That’s silly.
Clouds would knock the pipes down.I was thinking you could put giant fans on it to blow the clouds away, but then the moon would also knock it down once you got up that high.
What if… hear me out… we pipe straight up into space, and then use a 90° bend to angle the remaining pipe to the sun. Shouldn’t Be too difficult, but I bet those plumbers would charge an expensive ass trip fee.
~We’ll need a shit ton of that purple PVC glue though.~
Then we have to wait until the purple PVC glue goes on sale
And we’d need to negotiate with that damn plumbers union
A few trillion dollars under the table should work
I GOT IT! I FIGURED IT OUT!!!
We make a single straight pipe the diameter of earth’s orbit, and just slightly offset it to go near the surface of the sun.
We pipe water at one end and send it off while earth continues it’s orbit. We wait six months and we’ll meet the other end of the pipe which will have nice hot steam arriving from the sun. We use the hot steam for six months until it condenses back to liquid water, then restart the process when we meet the other end of pipe again.
A couple more 90° bends and you’ll have boiling water in no time. (or one 100° bend)
A 100 degree bend would only work if it was a Celsius bend, otherwise it would take at least two.
We’ll need a shit ton of that purple PVC glue though.
Nope, because you can’t use PVC for piping steam. You’re going to need to use metal pipe. Iron pipe is the cheapest bet but it’s such a pain to work with. Personally I’d run copper. I think that’s to code for low pressure steam anyways.
Wait, if it’s going into space then whos building codes are we using?
pump ammonia! Can evaporate at PVC compatible temperature.
A very minor problem with this scheme is the mile thickness insulation needed to not lose much of the sun’s heat to space, on the trip back. A 2nd minor problem is the actual pipe section close to the sun.
Psh. Codes are for wussies.
Then we have to get rid of the clouds
How long is that gonna take? A few decades?
-Sam Altman, when he hears about this
Don’t worry, once we set it up we’ll have a consistent supply.
Couple of years maybe … maybe longer
I know one person who will answer “two weeks”.
What a stupid suggestion…
Let’s instead move the earth closer to the sun and boil the oceans directly…
building a pipe all the way to space would mean the pipe would have to sustain its own weight, which is the same problem as a space elevator. that doesn’t work either because there’s no material on earth strong enough to support its own weight over that distance.
Because it would cool down on the way back.
We just have to pipe it faster
I’m curious if it would even be thermodynamically possible. If we could magically run a pipe that far, would the heat from the water radiate into space before it reached earth to do anything useful?
Someone get XKCD to do a video short on this.
i imagine filling any decent sized pipes (! plural because heat exchange has to loop) to 1au would use most of the water on earth.
What if instead of a pipe to return the steam we use a freaking laser beam!
So we generate energy with boiling water next to the sun, and we send the energy back to earth as a laser beam.
Guess how we turn the laser beam back into energy.
Oh yeah! I did that for my house. We have free heat and power. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass to build the pipeline that far out and it took me many more hours than expected, but, the system toots along just fine.
One of the fusion startups says they can use the plasma B field directly. Basically making the plasma the rotor in an electric generator to induce current in a wire.
I really like this concept, wonder how viable it really is though.
It seems promising, they’re acting like they’re close. They’ve been promising concrete deliverables, I think they’re supposed to have a working model that can actually capture the energy next year
You never know, but they’re called Triton if you want to check them out. They don’t share progress often, but when they do it seems pretty candid about their progress
Please don’t let it be another Theranos, please don’t let it be another Theranos 🙏
It’s not. Maybe they’ll fail, maybe it can’t math out, but it’s not vaporware
I’ve been watching these guys for a while. They have a real shot at getting something on the grid before ITER is even fully operational.
I’m guessing something like most of the magnets contain the plasma, but some transfer energy off it?
This plasma. Does it contain any water vapor?
It’s boiling water all the way down.
Seriously though, it’s over 100,000,000° so probably not.
Water decomposes above 3000 C
First, fusion has 0 theoretical economic potential, but there is some potential for energy gains from 2250* + steam. Water deconstructs above this temperature into powerful HHO gas, that when ignited gains another 2500* that will chain react with higher pressure steam to make the steam even hotter/higher pressure. Minor problem of melting all known turbine material, is avoidable through just higher volume of pressured steam.
The one im aware of uses deuterium, aka hydrogen2, to generate helium 3. One of the byproducts being tritium, aka hydrogen3. This means there’s potential for 2 deuteriums to mix with an oxygen molecule,this creating ²H2O, aka heavy water.
I’m neither a chemist, nor physicist. So someone could probably prove me wrong at the drop of a hat, but Im calling it close enough.:p
Which one? My first impression is that ignoring all the energy in neutrons should be pretty inefficient
Helion, probably.
Yeah, I found what they do here
So they chose deuterium-helium 3 fusion where there is less neutron radiation. Still they need to breed helium 3 where a lot of energy is lost. Curious to see if they will reflect that in the energy production balance.
They seem to have a two stage reactor, where supposedly, the He3 is generated with a ~small energy surplus and then Fred into the bigger reactor.
the only things i’ve been seeing from those guys recently are investor pitches…
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There’s a great video by Improbable Matter on YouTube breaking down the issues with helion , well worth a watch https://youtube.com/watch?v=3vUPhsFoniw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_CFCyc2Shs I don’t listen to Lex much these days, but that was a fun discussion.
Maybe it’s based on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator
Wasn’t there one concept too with catching neutrons directly to …generate heat, ah right.
Low key this is a great way to convince people to switch away from fossil fuels.
Most people seemingly don’t know that coal/gas stations work by essentially boiling water. Most are horrified at how trashy and underdeveloped the concept is compared to high tech alternatives like solar, wind, or hydro.
Well, hydro is just spinning water again, wind is spinning air. Solar is stealing electrons from the sun (i think?) So that’s cool
Well, the sun is sending them to us, so it’s not really stealing!
I promise I’ll return them when I’m done with them.
stealing
reappropriating :D
Getting electronics knocked around by photons.
Domestic Appliance Violence
Agree, the quantum-chem of it is amazing… Then again, solar has an efficiency of ~30% compared to the 90% for spinning steam
I don’t think it makes sense to compare those efficiencies, as one is for converting heat to electricity, while the other is for converting sunlight. If you use sunlight to heat water and then use that for a steam turbine, the efficiency is similar to a photovoltaic panel. The efficiency numbers are still useful, but only when they refer to the same starting point for the conversion (e.g. only comparing things that turn heat into electricity).
You are right it doesnt really makes sense to compare them that way, it was just what the initial comment was doing. Nuclear fission is in itself only like 30% efficient. There are of course tons of metrics to compare these things, I personally like space-time efficiency or CO2/MWh.
Yeah, it’s comparing apples to crabs. It’s only looking at the very final stage and ignoring the efficiencies of the fuel, etc.
If you wanted to make the comparison more fair (and also show how bad it is), a coal power plant maybe has an efficiency of 35%. You can calculate that by dividing the thermal energy in by the electric energy out. You feed in enough coal to generate 8MW of heat, which generates 2.8MW of electricity, so 2.8/8 = 0.35. By contrast, a photovoltaic power plant generates say 2kW of electricity with 0 fuel, so it has an efficiency of ∞%.
But it’s all profit baby! Let something else figure out cousin, put 0% effort in and collect the rewards!
but crucially no moving parts. very little maintenance, especially compared to anything steam driven.
I am a big solar fan, but the moving part inertia thing is actually great for stabilizing the grid.
They pump water through it. The water gives energy, all our energy is hydrogen baby
You can transfer gas to electricity without boiling water. But it is much more efficient to combine it with boiling water
