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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?
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
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.
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?
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
Agree, the quantum-chem of it is amazing… Then again, solar has an efficiency of ~30% compared to the 90% for spinning steam
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
They pump water through it. The water gives energy, all our energy is hydrogen baby
Getting electronics knocked around by photons.
Domestic Appliance Violence
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).
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some solar is also boiling water
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
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 fuel cells
And waves/tidal, but now we’re getting into the really niche types.
i knew i was forgetting something
And wind.
wind is just the effects of premade steam
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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!
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.
What if instead of a pipe to return the steam we use a freaking laser beam!
i imagine filling any decent sized pipes (! plural because heat exchange has to loop) to 1au would use most of the water on earth.
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.
I mean, not necessarily.
They could use a magnetohydrodynamic generator to siphon off some of the helium, though TBH it’s better suited for fission:
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?
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
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.
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.
Water decomposes above 3000 C
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
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.
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
We live in a Steampunk world without Steampunk aesthetics. 😩
Cyberpunk-lite 😔
We don’t even deserve that much credit. We’re still mostly wearing the same clothes that we wore in the 70s…
Hey now, we could also use this technology breakthrough to move water from a low elevation to a higher one.
Now here’s an idea - we boil the water to turn turbines, and then have the steam collect and pool in an upper chamber before running through another turbine into the first boiling chamber below?
I’m talking about pumped hydro power. It’s all the excitement of using water to turn turbines(as it’s released to gravity), but none of the boiling.
Oh, I understood - your comment g actually triggered a curiosity in me as to why we don’t combine the two methods (boiling and falling) to “double-dip” on electricity production.
I’m sure there are plenty of practical reasons why not, but I genuinely don’t know.
Well if you remember from school, energy is defined as the capacity to do work. And if the rising steam does the work of turning a turbine, it’ll have a lot less kinetic energy left afterwards and won’t rise nearly as far.
steam rises, maybe we could boil water and then condense it at a higher elevation.
