• VindictiveJudge
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      210 months ago

      Sure, but someone else was wanting to use the motorcycle engine as a generator. I feel like this is more practical since you don’t need to figure out how to get more fuel. Not that I have any idea what to do with a generator in that time period either way.

      • @[email protected]
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        510 months ago

        You can use a windmill, waterwheel, or animals to turn a generator. The real problem would be getting a magnet and enough purified copper. Most people do not realize how complicated and interdependent our society is. No person is an island and no invention is either.

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        With a diesel engine you could fuel it with biodiesel made from cooking oil, sodium hydroxide(an impure solution likely sufficient for our purposes could be obtained from wood ash, this was normally used in soap making) and methanol(obtainable by distillation and used as early as ancient egypt)

        Also certain non diesel engines can run on ethanol, including some motorcycles made for brasilian market that can run on E100 that is 94.7% ethanol (rest is water) so fuel for that engine could be distilled with medieval technology

    • @Dkarma
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      110 months ago

      Some dude in India made one to spin his shawarma in like 400 ad wtf u talking about

      • @[email protected]
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        110 months ago

        power requirements of spinning a shawarma and doing useful work is quite different. Would be very interested to learn more about this ancient indian steam engine if you gave some links. But if it’s anything like the ancient greek aeolipile that has real world measured efficiency of as low as 0.0128 (theoretically 1%), it isnt really useful