"Dyson sphere? Boooring. Every type 1 baby species always comes up with the same idea, ‘hey lets just surround a star with mirrors and directly harvest the energy! What could possibly go wrong?’ Besides the fact your 80% of the way towards turning the star into a fucking bomb (don’t ask how we found that out), its basic ass vanilla shit.
Look, you don’t progress to a type three civilization by being uncreative hacks. Screw efficiency, the universe is our canvas and this is our art. No, we translocate entire water world planets and ice comets bigger than most moons using manufactured wormholes, hurl them into a designated star and use the steam produced to turn billions of giant turbines locked in orbit around the star. We then convert the mechanical energy to electromagnetic radiation pulses more powerful than neutron star pulsars and reflect them to nearby populated systems with mirrors. Take notes, monkeys."
This almost gave me conniptions
I don’t know why this is constantly criticized as a method of energy capture. Liquids allow for maximum surface area contact, creating more efficient heat transfer from the irradiated rods.
Armchair nuclear physicists should release an improved model before being so critical of the most effective and reliable method of energy generation we currently have.
I don’t think it’s a criticism? It’s more about highlighting the slight absurdity of super-high tech power generation still using the same method that has been used since the very start of electricity generation. A turbine spun by evaporated water.
Hey now, sometimes it’s a turbine spun by falling water!
Easy there future man… One life-changing generation method per century
What about a turbine spun by the convection of evaporation from a large body of water being pulled toward a dry landmass?
That’s madness
I’d not that it’s criticized, it’s just kinda funny that everything comes back to steam engines
Steam engines are the crabs of power generation.
Oh for sure. It’s like a desire path or evolution’s crab in that way. I think I just misunderstood people’s criticisms as belittlement of the process without them understanding why it’s still the standard.
Fair enough, I’m sure people DO criticize it but it’s mostly a joke.
On a side note, are there any theoretical energy sources that DON’T involve steam? I’m not well-versed
On the nuclear side there are also alpha voltaics, beta voltaics and gamma voltaics that take radiation and generate electricity. Alpha rely on alpha particles ionizing usually a gas, Beta voltaics rely on beta particles which are electron or positron emissions and gamma voltaics take photons in the gamma region and use them to excite electrons to generate electricity.
Overall though heating water is significantly easier to do, more efficient, and more robust
Solar (photovoltaics), wind turbines, and hydroelectric are a few non-steam energy sources in use.
As for theoretical sources, some of the pulsed-power fusion concepts use the electromagnetic pulse from fusion to directly induce electrical power. But none of these have been demonstrated yet.
There’s also natural gas turbines
Excluding things that still involve moving fluid through a turbine or piston engine mechanically driving a dynamo or alternator while simply swapping out the steam for another fluid (too obvious), here’s all the ones I could find:
- batteries
- fuel cells
- photovoltaics
- piezoelectrics (which the other reply already mentioned)
- thermoelectrics (specifically, the Seebeck effect)
- photon-intermediate direct energy conversion (PIDEC)
- magnetohydrodynamic generators
Also not well versed, but last time I saw this topic come up, someone mentioned towers that wiggle in the wind and generate energy via the wiggles, apparently interacting with liquid at no point.
edit: Also maybe this YouTuber’s creation? https://youtu.be/BSxK5VagSb8
Yup. There are reed-like wind capture devices that generate piezoelectricity from compression. The same technology is being implemented in some nations to capture pressure energy on roadways and paths.
Ah yes, the next solar frickin’ roadways. No this isn’t implemented on any scale and it’s right next to perpetuum mobile’s in terms of magical thinking needed.
Dave is that you? 😏
That makes sense.
Besides that, does solar power use steam? I would assume not, at least not directly.
Photovoltaics do not. But here are solar powered steam generators
Thermo-electrochemical cycles.
The idea is simple: the favorability of a chemical reaction is a function of temperature, some reactions are more favorable at high temperatures, some at lower. For electrochemical reactions (e.g. batteries) this means a change in voltage at different temperatures. Some reactions have higher voltages, some lower. By choosing a pair of redox reactions such that the direction of charge transfer can be reversed within a specified temperature envelope, one can create a thermal engine that directly converts heat to electrical energy without requiring a turbine.
There’s lots of research on this, sometimes called the ‘omnivorous’ flow battery.
Oh, there are many. I was referring specifically to finding a more efficient way to convert the heat from irradiated rods to electrical energy.
I mean it does seem kinda weird that running a heat engine to run a generator is more efficient than using a thermoelectric generator with no mechanical inbetween step.
Diagram please?
The problem that I see is that unless that magic semiconductor is 100% efficient, turning all the heat energy into electrical energy, then there’s gonna be some left over, and things are gonna get too hot too fast too furious. So you’ll need to cool the thing, or part of it, maybe similar to a TEG using the Seebeck or Peltier effect?
I have a few of these kicking around somewhere. They work, just not super efficient, at all, with current technology.
My point is I feel like no matter what you’re gonna need extra parts to cool the thing. Water pumps etc etc. Why not just use steam? 🤷♂️
Edit: nice diagram though!
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where does hotty water go. If hotty water always hot can we always use the same water
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are there no reactors that convert particle interactions into photons and capture it with photovoltaics?
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Also, water is an amazing coolant. At the molecular level its hydrogen bonding contributes to a bulk property called heat capacity that ends up much higher than most other substances, meaning it can soak up a ton of energy per unit volume (and later release that energy, e.g. into a turbine). And there’s even more of that heat capacity in the phase transition from liquid to steam and back. It’s crazy good.
It’s also super cheap and abundant. The main reason water isn’t the coolant for nearly everything is that it can be corrosive. Also steam can be quite dangerous due to all that energy it carries.
The heat of vaporization is also a huge negative of using water as you need to condense the water and then reboil it which wastes a bunch of energy
If we were a smarter species, we’d consistently use further heat exchange to use that waste heat for something else, like heating homes. The Blue Lagoon in Iceland uses it to heat a massive outdoor spa.
Not only that, but we’re harnessing the humble yet awesome power of phase-changing matter. The same phenomenon breaks mountains down to rubble, constantly chews apart our infrastructure, and keeps our homes and food cool. It makes a lot of sense to use that same phenomenon to do work.
Armchair nuclear physicists should release an improved model before being so critical
They would, but there are limited options for directly generating electricity. Outside of manipulating magnetic fields with kinetic motion, all we have are betavoltaics, photovoltaics, and thermocouples. And they’re all kind of awful in terms of efficiency. Even chlorophyll is awesome at converting air, light, and water, into… sugar, which then has to be oxidized (burned) to be useful.
There’s plenty of room for advancement in alternative energy for sure. My comment about critics was referring more to the method of capturing and converting irradiated rod heat to electricity. Water vapor is still the standard for a reason. It’s like being critical of a jet engine because it’s basically just a compressor.
I feel like the next big technological achievement will just be replacing water with some other fluid.
“Steam cycle? No, this is the much more advanced glycol cycle.”
It’s why photovoltaics are so cool. Direct electricity generation without having to spin magnets in circles like neanderthals.
Solar is no doubt the coolest.
Hydro and wind are also very neat, going directly from mechanical to electric via generator, without a steam-turbine.There is also a very cool fusion-category based on dynamic magnetic fields, that basically form a magnetic piston which expands directly due to the release of charged particles via fusion and then captures the energy from that moving electric field by slowing it back down and initiating the next compression.
A fully electric virtual piston engine in some sense, driven my fusion explosions and capturing straight into electricity.
Feels so much more modern than going highly advanced superconducting billion K fusion-reactor to heat to steam to turbine.Yes! That is super cool tech. If I remember correctly, only about half of the fusion reaction energy was produced as charged particles though. The other half was free neutrons which are notorious for not interacting with the EM field.
I love the idea, it is such a cool direct energy capture method, but it is inherently inefficient.
I’d love to be proved wrong. I did a quick search and couldn’t find the company I’m thinking of, so I’m going off memory.
Wait, how can this possibly not involve a turbine? Maybe there’s a semantics thing I’m missing or we disagree on, but what’s turning the kinetic energy into rotational mechanical energy to spin the generator if not a turbine? Or are you saying the turbine is incorporated, as in a turbine generator?
Just so we’re seeing the same picture:
The way I understood it, the system used electromagnets to create a magnetic containment field to drive the fuel together to create the fusion event. That same magnetic containment field would experience a force from the produced charged particles. That force would produce a current in the electromagnets. That current would be stored in capacitors as a voltage which would be used as the energy source for the next magnetic compression cycle. The excess energy stored in the capacitor after the compression would be ‘generated’ energy.
Yeah, not the right words. I intended to say no steam turbine.
Instead of turning energy into heat into turbinable fluid flow in form of steam, they directly use turbinable fluid flow.
The difference is really the lack of steps up to the turbine.Ahh gotcha, thanks for clarifying! And I agree, very cool stuff.
I swear those magnet spinners are so uncivilized.
Semiconductor gang rise up.
Molten Salt Generators are cool Solar power too.
That they are, but they’re still spinning magnets like our honorable ancestors did.
We already use different fluids for different power cycles, for example organic rankine cycles or just power cycles that use organic fluids are good for low temperature heat sources like low temp geothermals
The nice things about steam is you can get as much water as could want on earth, but something like ammonia which we used as a refrigerant for years would probably work well too and there’s planets with ammonia rich atmospheres.
The interesting thing is the cycles are fairly similar at a high level, you just run out in one direction for power and the opposite direction for cooling.
yeah but s t i n k y
That’s how you know you’ve got a leak. The reason they stopped using ammonia in the first refrigerators was because of they had a leak it would kill the entire household.
You mean like how refrigeration and heat pumps operate?
We could try Brawndo. It’s got electrolytes, which are great for making electrocity.
How do we go about “utilizing” the Brawndo?
I think methylene chloride is already used for lower temp vapor pressure generator.
This is an awful writing prompt but it’s funny in itself
They’re mostly like that ime
Some aren’t great but this one is really bad because it’s a complete story in itself
Pretty much the only direction to take this in is a rant from the human engineer
I feel like any rant would take away from the joke of the prompt
I hate this. So much.
I can’t let this slander against Josiah Willard Gibbs stand.
It doesn’t have to be steam. You can also use the generated energy to pump water up to a location of higher gravitational potential, then use that to spin turbines as it comes back down.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
Ah yes, liquid steam
Fantastic
But how do you get the energy to pump the water up stream
How are you generating that energy though? Oh yeah, steam. :panic:
Why don’t they just let the steam rise on its own? Are they stupid?
Well yes assuming your reactor creates heat, you need to convert that to mechanical energy to run a pump. A steam turbine is very efficient for that lol
Sometimes it’s wind or water, and photovoltaic panels don’t even use a dynamo. But classics sometimes are classics for a reason.
“gets” ? or “has” ?
he has to get it from the store because of other stuff the aliens did
“wait a second, what is the steam made of?”
“Tin. Why, what do you guys use?”
"Nevermind "
