Comment on Turbine go brrrr

expatriado@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• nomecks@lemmy.wtf ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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  • chickenf622@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Got any sources on that? I would love to learn about some new tech in electricity generation.

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    • silver@das-eck.haus ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      One facility opened in China a couple weeks ago. I can’t find the article that I read from the other day but this should give you some info

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    • fartographer@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Spinny spin-spin extinguisher

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    • Morphit@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      A good video on it dropped recently: youtube.com/watch?v=M55XzxjmON0

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  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Unfortunately, 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.

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      • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        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.

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  • Bluewing@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    At some point you are going to need steam to spin a turbine to generate enough energy to compress the CO2.

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    • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      But that’s part of the bootstrapping process. The same way you need power to run the crucibles in a PV factory or to lift the wind turbine part by crane.

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    • nomecks@lemmy.wtf ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Solar panels? Wind?

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• SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Helios is trying to build a fusion reactor that harvests the energy through electro magnetic induction.

  youtu.be/HlNfP3iywvI

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  • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    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.

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  • nightlily@leminal.space ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Feels like putting the cart before the horse there.

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