Every damn power plant is a glorified steam engine
same shit every day, on god
Submitted 5 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/38ae5d88-8e7e-45c6-9be1-95556d1bb1c8.png
Comments
HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
hades@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
Except solar. And wind. And hydro.
OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Some solar is also boiling water
xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Expect for solar, it’s all just flowy stuff through spinny stuff: wind, water, steam. GRAAAAAAAAAA
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
And wind.
wind is just the effects of premade steam
JakenVeina@midwest.social 1 hour ago
I dunno if “power plant” quite fits for solar and wind. Definitely for Hydro, though.
magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 4 hours ago
We’re living in a steampunk world after all
Cethin@lemmy.zip 30 minutes ago
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.
Slovene@feddit.nl 4 hours ago
I’m a steampunk girl
In a steampunk world
It’s not a big big thing if you steam me
mossberg590@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Readily available, low boiling point, non corrosive (relatively), and ecologically safe. What more do you want?
MutantTailThing@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Also a ridiculously high heat capacity. It does make sense.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Molten salt. Lower pressure, higher efficiency, and I believe less reactive in the event of an uh-oh.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
Why don’t we just pipe our water all the way out to the sun and pipe the steam back to earth.
TachyonTele@piefed.social 4 hours ago
That’s silly.
Clouds would knock the pipes down.Wilco@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
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.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
Then we have to get rid of the clouds
markz@suppo.fi 3 hours ago
How long is that gonna take? A few decades?
-Sam Altman, when he hears about this
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 29 minutes ago
Don’t worry, once we set it up we’ll have a consistent supply.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
Couple of years maybe … maybe longer
treadful@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
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.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
i imagine filling any sized pipe to 1au would use most of the water on earth.
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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.
hperrin@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
Because it would cool down on the way back.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
We just have to pipe it faster
socsa@piefed.social 4 hours ago
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.
pennomi@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I really like this concept, wonder how viable it really is though.
theneverfox@pawb.social 3 hours ago
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
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 1 hour ago
Maybe it’s based on this: en.wikipedia.org/…/Magnetohydrodynamic_generator
finitebanjo@piefed.world 3 hours ago
This plasma. Does it contain any water vapor?
Fuck_u_spez_@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
It’s boiling water all the way down.
Seriously though, it’s over 100,000,000° so probably not.
Stowaway@midwest.social 2 hours ago
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
OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Which one? My first impression is that ignoring all the energy in neutrons should be pretty inefficient
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 2 hours ago
SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
I wonder if nuclear would get more traction If it was pitched as enhanced steam power instead
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
“It’s a blockchain of an highly enhanced hydrogen process. Thanks to its quantum mechanism it manages to increase the energy output by a ton.”
Just tell that to investors and they’ll gobble it up.
zarathustra0@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I wonder how fast we could get a steam engine to go if we stuck the a suitably shaped non-critical amount of plutonium in the firebox.
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 9 minutes ago
Nuclear Powered Steam Locomotives
Pros:
- Looks cool as hell.
- Only needs to be refuled every 25 years.
- It’s a steam locomotive.
- It’s a steam locomotive.
- Did I mention it’s a steam locomotive?
Cons:
- Have to replace the fireman with a nuclear engineer.
- Still have to stop to grease bearings and take on water periodically.
- Hazardous radioactive materials.
Pros clearly outweigh the cons. What are we waiting for?
Zwiebel@feddit.org 4 hours ago
And replace the pistons with a turbine…
ArcaneGadget@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
As fast as it will roll down a hill. A non-critical mass of plutonium isn’t going to produce any significant heat for the boiler.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
if we stuck a suitably shaped non-critical amount of plutonium in the firebox.
Non-critical? There isn’t much energy released from natural decay compared to criticality. We created things like this to power space probes like the Voyager I and II craft. 4.5kg of this Plutonium created about 2500w of thermal energy the the beginning of its life and the power declines from there.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 2 hours ago
Hilariously this was a plot point I read recently. Isambard Kingdom Brunel replaced the firebox with some poorly shielded uranium, but the initial locomotive that was to demonstrate the technology was sabotaged and exploded, killing his parents.
This same book also had a fictional mad inventor who created a part newt-human hybrid named Victoria with womanly assets if you catch my drift, who upon failing to educate it he sent to a brothel because he couldn’t stand to “dispose of it” but when the princess and heir to the throne Elizabeth went missing, the newt-human hybrid Victoria was installed on the throne to prevent a constitutional crisis. And this is all events that occurred in the first 2 pages, so I’m not even spoiling anything!
spoilers for ending of the story *Victoria* in *A Steampunk Trilogy*
To spoil where the Queen to be Victoria was so well hidden that she couldn’t be found, she was in fact working in the newt-human hybrid Victoria’s room at the brothel! Seriously bonkers stories in that book!
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 hours ago
We live in a Steampunk world.
Deconceptualist@leminal.space 1 hour ago
Hey now, we could also use this technology breakthrough to move water from a low elevation to a higher one.
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 19 minutes ago
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?
robot_dog_with_gun@hexbear.net 59 minutes ago
steam rises, maybe we could boil water and then condense it at a higher elevation.
chgxvjh@hexbear.net 1 hour ago
They beFactorio fusion generator
TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 56 minutes ago
Is this a new Factorio unit? I haven’t played in a few years
chgxvjh@hexbear.net 34 minutes ago
Yes, from the DLC.
Lussy@hexbear.net 1 hour ago
Water: kubrick-stare
FaceDeer@fedia.io 4 hours ago
Just pipe the electroplasma directly into the workstations. Sure, sometimes this results in dangerous overloads during adverse conditions, but that's what the Cordry rocks are for.
Carl@hexbear.net 4 hours ago
Can electroplasma be used to spin a turbine? Asking for a friend.
melfie@lemy.lol 3 hours ago
Dihydrogen monoxide is potent greenhouse gas that has caused many deaths, and we should stop using it to generate power.
Silic0n_Alph4@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
While tragic, those losses were necessary sacrifices for the continued success of the dihydrogen monoxide industry.
Let’s gloss over how the average human being now consists of 60% dihydrogen monoxide, though.
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 4 hours ago
Well, you can apparently also use supercritical carbon dioxide.
That might be fun.
But you’re basically still boiling something to make it spin a magnet.
wiccan2@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Before we can even try to crack fusion, we need to clear out the last of the 2000s pop bands and their videographers.
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
Fusion releases a daughter particle and a neutron. Thr daughter particle is much larger and will deposit its energy back into the plasma, the neutron will travel much further until it hits a collector outside the chamber, heating it up, which will heat water. You don’t get to decide which direction the neutron goes, so you have to build this absorber around the entire thing.
compostgoblin@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
Steam makes the magnet go spinny
SeeMarkFly@lemmy.ml 3 hours ago
It’s dangerous to boil anything else.
Kefla@hexbear.net 1 hour ago
You’ll take my boiling titanium from my extremely hot dead hands
nexguy@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Are these going to be just…kettles for the U.K.?
hperrin@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
How else you gonna turn hot into spark? Turning it into move first is super easy.
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 2 hours ago
To be fair it is still the easiest way to do it. If you have a fuel source that could last basically forever and a closed circuit where you can reuse the same water infinitely as well, why not?
atlasraven@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
You put a copper wire wrapped around high energy plasma and you get…direct voltage right on the line.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 1 second ago
Why don’t they just use an induction stove, are they stupid?