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Hydrohomies!
We need this on lemmy
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.
Wasn’t there one concept too with catching neutrons directly to …generate heat, ah right.
With rising sea levels and general water shortages, why don’t we also use them as desalination plants?
Surely there has to be a way to deal with brine, it’s just salt and water after all?
In other words, boil water yet again?
Salt is absolutely terrible for any equipment involved in power generation. You’re better off with a power plant and a separate desalination plant than trying to use one for both
But you’re right, cheap energy will help immensely with this
Say that too molten salt reactors! /s
Haha true that, though if I’m not mistaken a large part of the engineering of molten salt reactors is dealing with the salt…man I want the cool tech to be rolled out
In Germany, funding for research is being cut alot. The solar cut happened a long time ago and fifty thousand jobs where lost at the time. Last year, they basically cancelled almost all battery research (needed for electric cars and stuff). Now, many more important stuff is being defunded. Except for fusion. Fusion is receiving a big boost in funding. Everyone and their dog are doing fusion research now
I think, that’s not despite the famous “fusion constant” (fusion being always “only” thirty years away), but because of it. Unlike solar or batteries or anything else that actually works, fusion does not threaten to disrupt the oligopolies of the power companies, or the car companies or anyone else’s. It enables a wealth transfer (accumulation through dispossession) to companies involved in the research, without contributing to the crisis of overaccumulation, because no use value exists, so no value ever needs to be realized. It’s like building a pyramid in the desert.
Ofc a new fully renewable insanely powerful source of energy will disrupt the oligopolicies of the power companies. It will disrupt nearly every inch of society.
If it’s possible at all
use cherenkov radiation to power photovoltaic array.
Yeah but photovoltaic has a yield of less than 50% even for the best panels. Lots of waste there, compared to steam.
What is the peak efficiency of steam turbines?
Supercritical steam is nothing to fuck with. Even old school sub critical steam will happily kill you as if it were fire instead of water.
Edit
Utility steam turbines operate with inlet steam pressures up to 3500 psig and exhaust at vacuum conditions as low as 2 psia
Damn
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.
You can transfer gas to electricity without boiling water. But it is much more efficient to combine it with boiling water
Well, hydro is just spinning water again, wind is spinning air. Solar is stealing electrons from the sun (i think?) So that’s cool
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).
But it’s all profit baby! Let something else figure out cousin, put 0% effort in and collect the rewards!
Well, the sun is sending them to us, so it’s not really stealing!
stealing
reappropriating :D
Getting electronics knocked around by photons.
Domestic Appliance Violence
They pump water through it. The water gives energy, all our energy is hydrogen baby
Why is that a problem, exactly?
Because it’s not as cool as directly harvest the energy itself like in scifi.
geothermal is boiling water too, and it’s pretty neat
I’ve been thinking that for a while. Issue is that it’s risky, if you fuck up there’s a pretty high chance that there are going to be a lot of houses with cracks in their walls (assuming you’re doing it in a relatively densely populated area that doesn’t normally see earthquakes).
You mean, like fracking (for oil power) minus the poisoning groundwater part?
We could just not use any power source that severely damages our environment. Solar and wind don’t have these issues to this extend, even if you include the necessary storage capacity (batteries, hydroelectric reservoirs) and include the resource use for building them (though that resource use is still a pretty big issue).
Though it’s not impossible to use geothermal energy without severely damaging the environment, you just need either a large amount of unsettled land (like Iceland) or you need to be really, really careful and limit the kinds of things you do - using geothermal energy for district heating apparently is a lot less likely to create earthquakes than what Iceland is doing.
Yes, geothermal heating is common here (switzerland). Power gen. less so.
Any powerplant will usually done in a pretty isolated area for safety reason, so i’d assume the chance of it happen is very, very slim. If location isn’t permitted it’s probably shouldn’t be build, especially for the type that need to dig very deep to access the heat, so solar panel on roof is probably the best way for any power generation that is placed close or in the populated area.
Here in Germany, that hasn’t been true at all so far. For starters, there aren’t any “pretty isolated areas” in the first place, since the entire country is pretty densely settled compared to e.g. Iceland. There are still some ongoing projects, though, IIRC they are usually being done for district heating, which has to be near populated areas per definition. I think these types of projects aren’t as likely to create earthquakes as the ones for electricity in Iceland, though.
I remember seeing a documentary about a village in Germany, where many houses were damaged by geothermal plants, caused by water entering layers where it usually didn’t reach and the material there taking in water and expanding. So it probably depends a lot on the local geology and also on the depth. I sadly don’t remember how deep the one in the documentary was.
I know a few people that got geothermal heating installed for their homes (in Germany), which goes a lot less deep than something intended for whole cities or districts. The one at my friend’s home is 50m deep, and it looks like anything less than 400m is considered “near surface”
Huh, interesting. I checked my country for this and it seems here we too have a coal plant right next to housing area, but it seems like the housing is the one creep toward the coal plant, not the other way around.
But then i’m not sure what sort of error will cause a quake and ruin houses. Is there any case happen to past construction?
assuming you’re doing it in a relatively densely populated area that doesn’t normally see earthquakes
dropping the latter assumption?
What do you mean?
Assume it’s an area with frequent earthquakes
But that’s usually not true. You can either just not do geothermal in areas that aren’t prone to natural earthquakes, force every homeowner to make their home earthquake-proof (which is extremely expensive, probably a lot more than just building batteries for solar+wind) or suck it up when they get damaged, or the owners of the geothermal plant have to pay for any damages (unlikey).
Like solar panels converting photons to electrons?
Like solar thermal powerplant or molten salt reactor, LAME.
That’s why solarpunk is the coolest.
Honey, go toss another plutonium pellet in the house slot, please.
Let me guess, you need to boil some water?
It’s not really a problem, it’s just funny that so many forms of power generation we have are just boiling water to make steam that spins turbines.
Eh, we’re still moving electrons around in wires like Faraday did in the 1800s!
It only feels odd because that is genuinely an incredibly effective means of generation, and we found it very early on because steam is so fundamental. Nothing wrong with sticking to the best method ever discovered.
and we found it very early on
just FYI, the electrochemical battery was invented in 1800, while electromechanical generator was invented in around 1866.
Solar concentration is boiling some other liquid, so there’s some variance 😅
Living somewhere that makes 90+% of its electricity from hydro, I am slightly confused.
Most modern means of electricity production involve creating heat in some way, then using that heat to boil water, creating steam. That steam is then used to turn a turbine, which generates electricity.
Somebody was using the push against magnetic confinement in a pulse reactor to harvest magnetic - > electric directly but it’s been a while since they’ve been in the news.
Every damn power plant is a glorified steam engine
I watched a video a while ago about a new approach to fusion which uses induction iirc https://youtu.be/uRaQLZaaHWo
Except solar. And wind. And hydro.
Are these really power plants? I thought they were called field or farm or something else
Some solar is also boiling water
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.
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 some fusion is direct to current in coils. The z-pinch style approaches mainly.
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.
Expect for solar, it’s all just flowy stuff through spinny stuff: wind, water, steam. GRAAAAAAAAAA
you forgot the electrochemical battery
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
Good ol’ mill.
And wind.
wind is just the effects of premade steam
and fuel cells
And waves/tidal, but now we’re getting into the really niche types.
i knew i was forgetting something
Hydro also uses steam
In liquid form?
Condensed steam.
It’s still the same turbine shit
It’s all turbines, but quite dissimilar turbines.
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.
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?
Even better if you can use it to power a humanoid robot for a real world plant golem.
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.
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?
gas generators based on internal combustion
they heat air, afaik.
boiling just makes the water move, hydro just cheats
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 mean, you can use a magneto hydrodynamic generator to replace the bits normally spin up by steam.
But, eh, it’s less efficient than a rankine cycle.
Why don’t we just pipe our water all the way out to the sun and pipe the steam back to earth.
What a stupid suggestion…
Let’s instead move the earth closer to the sun and boil the oceans directly…
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.~
A couple more 90° bends and you’ll have boiling water in no time. (or one 100° bend)
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
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’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!
Because it would cool down on the way back.
We just have to pipe it faster
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.
Reminds me of one of my favorite photos, a steam engine being delivered by steam engine!
Derail Valley Simulator won’t let you drive that exact steam engine, but it simulates Diesel, Steam, and an Electric engine quite satisfactorily. To the point that I can’t use the steam engines without blowing them up accidentally.
But more seriously, watch the water in your sight glass, keep it about 3/4 full at all times and check it like you check your rear view mirror in your car, and don’t forget to open the cylinder cocks every time you stop (or at least when you first start moving) and you should be pretty good to avoid unexpected damage to your locomotive!
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
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.
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.
the only things i’ve been seeing from those guys recently are investor pitches…
Maybe it’s based on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator
