Agent641Turbine go brrrr
The Supercritical CO2 Turbine: Waterless Wonder
still waiting for someone to demonstrate a more efficient power transfer solution
You’re in luck. Supercritical CO2 turbines are a thing now, and they’re way more efficient because they don’t involve a phase change.
Got any sources on that? I would love to learn about some new tech in electricity generation.
silver
Morphit A good video on it dropped recently: youtube.com/watch?v=M55XzxjmON0
The Supercritical CO2 Turbine: Waterless Wonder
It’s funny (in a sad and sardonic sense) - I pay attention to the energy industry and the outcry over data centers has got me watching these generators closely. If they deliver on their promises, they could represent a great way to deliver on mirror-based solar reactors in areas with limited water resources. (And to recapture and use waste heat from the servers of data centers.)
Society is on the precipice of investing a lot into increasing energy generation for data centers that have to be near the same sorts of resources that people need - fresh water, environs conductive to generating power, stable (enough) climates. But this technology is arriving/set to reach adoption just in time for this boom-bust cycle. All those data centers in populated areas already have a timer ticking for when the shell corps have their rugs pulled.
Tlaloc_TemporalUnfortunately, there’s no way to get energy out of waste heat that won’t be spent pushing that heat a little harder. Already a significant amount of energy is spent cooling data centers, any attempts at energy recapture will just make that cooling harder.
The best we can do is something like district heating, because heat pumps can get over 100% effective efficiency.
The energy needed for phase change for supercritical CO2 is substantially lower than steam.
There’s more wiggle room. My understanding is that similar to heat pumps, they can build systems with different optimal temperatures, and even daisy chain them together. They’ll never make a perpetual motion machine, but they can waste less energy.
SkunkWorkzHelios is trying to build a fusion reactor that harvests the energy through electro magnetic induction.
Helion's approach to fusion: How it works
I’ll believe it when I see it. They have so many material science challenges ahead of them and aren’t very forthcoming with progress.
fission. aside from the fact physicists didn’t invent either, we’ve yet to boil any water with fusion.
Give me a concave mirror and I’ll change that
FiniteBanjoWe’ve boiled tons of water with it, but there have been no functional turbines involved in a ten mile radius.
I’ve got to disappoint you. We’ve boiled water with solar to crank a turbine for electricity.
wieson
MurseCan’t find it for the life of me… Describing a web comic vs actually posting it always feels like a flop, but…
Aliens abduct a physicist, who doesn’t seem to give much of a damn about the abduction but is instead enthused to learn about the alien tech on board, so they give him a tour of the ship. They get to the power reactor and start dropping a bunch of sci-fi jumbo about “We harness dark matter to… (sci-fi Ruth Goldberg machine) …and finally, we use the heat it generates to boil water and crank a turbine!!”
*Physicist drops to his knees in despair and let’s out a dramatic ‘noooooo!’
Paraphrasing heavily due to having shit memory. I thought it was a SMBC comic, but… /shrug.
I swear we are going to be travelling to other planets and the biggest issue is going to be how do we stop water leaking into space from our steam turbines
you did a good job i remember the comic
“And then, the power generated is used to heat water and generate steam!”
“No…”
“That steam is used to turn a wheel!”
“No! NOOOOOOO!!!”
“Hey dude, calm down.”
-Actual exchange during first contact.
SubArcticTundraMofos just reinvented the steam engine
Ok hear me out…
Even wind power still turns a generator, but solar is just completely different than everything else
But what if… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power
They’re actually quite similar to thermoelectric generators. But the potential difference between two semi conductors is created by a heat differential rather than by photon excitation.
Thermoelectric generators have been used on various rovers and deep space probes as well as in remote lighthouses.
And we are harnessing its power WITHOUT boiling water
Didn’t China recently use super conducting CO2 instead of water?
You can use molten salt to move and store heat but you don’t put it through a turbine. Molten salt systems run it through a heat exchanger that heats steam or CO2.
This is what I think of when I hear molten salt.
George Lucas in the background of some random documentary
ChaisSupercritical CO2 has been looked at a lot for the Brayton cycle which can get 50% efficiency compared to steam that generally caps out around 34%
The US and china both published studies talking about a brayton turbine but to my knowledge no commercial plants running off of it have been built yet
gandalf_der_12tephysicists looove hot showers! they’re the best! so comfy ☺️
Seth TaylorMan… can you imagine? Someone could shut down the whole power grid just by watching all that water.
Iirc one of the theoretical ways of generating power with fusion is magnetohydrodynamic generators which use the magnetic field created by the plasma to generate an electrical current directly. Still theoretical though…
“That’s it?! That’s the nuclear power? That’s just boiling water!”
Ancient meme I had back in the day…