this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (4 children)

It was interesting realizing that a lot of our power is still, at its core, a steam engine

[–] [email protected] 37 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

We discovered a banger like 400 years ago and have held on tight until right about now with wind/solar/hydro.

Still going to be using them geothermal/fission/fusion for at least another 100 years though.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Hydro is just more dense steam, wind is less dense steam, it's steam engines all the way!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

The only really new kinds are thermocouples (mostly garbage) and solar panels (poor efficiency, but abundant fuel).

Some fusion might end up using magnet pumping, which is basically just a plasma powered piston.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Don't skip the betavoltaic battery, (or the brand-name: Betacel), which turns beta-radiation directly into electricity. They used them in the 70s to power pacemakers, since batteries were kinda shit back then, and implanting Prometium into people is just too epic not to do.

Nowadays we have tritium-decay betavoltaic batteries, on satellites, buried or underwater sensors and probably some too secret military stuff.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

Ooo, good call.

There's also radioisotope piezoelectric generators, where the electrons are caught by a cantilever and then released in regular pulses. An electron waterwheel if you will.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

The best solar panels are getting at or above the efficiency of converting nuclear heat to electricity (about 1/3) so they probably shouldn’t get that poor efficiency label.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago

Some cells are getting 47%, which is ridiculous for a generator! The theoretical maximum efficiency for solar cell from the sun as it appears in the sky is about 68%, so that's pretty good!

However, how expensive is that cell going to be? How much maintenance does it need, and how fragile is the system once deployed? It's very obvious that PV efficiency has beed skyrocketing recently, and I don't thinks it's stopping soon, but a commercial PV panel available today is just breaking 20% efficiency. Luckily, sunshine is quite abundant.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago

Not OP. I guess it depends on the frame of reference. Comparing to other inefficient methods it might seem OK :)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 16 hours ago

More like a steam turbine (which is way cooler cause it's like a jet engine). Steam engine makes me think of a piston engine like on a train.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago

Mechanical engineers fist pumping after finding out their entire profession is not yet obsolete

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Seems to be just photovoltaics and spinny things.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

There's also fuel cells, where fuel is not burned to create steam to move something, but combined with oxygen in a different way (the end products still being the same) so the electrons shuttled around during this reaction can be utilised as electricity. Think of combustion as oxidation of your fuel, the oxidation meaning that you (among other things) move electrons from the fuel to oxygen. In combustion, unfortunately you can't access the electrons directly, as they are always stuck in the chemical bonds of the molecules, that's why we take the detour via heat/mechanical - the steam engine. The fuel cell now separates fuel and oxygen, and thus divides the combustion reaction into two parts that happen at opposite sides of the cell. Those sides are divided by a membrane that does not allow the electrons to transfer across, so they need to take a detour through an electric circuit, in which we can harvest them as electrical power.

I always found it really fascinating that fuel cells are the only other technology than solar where the electrons we use as electrical power are more or less directly generated as opposed to the detour via a generator. Unfortunately, fuel cells are still a very niche technique.