ELI5• Why you cannot use methanol or even ammonia inbpower plants instead of water. water takes more energy to boil and thus requires more coal burnt. You can condense the methanol by passing it through a waterbody of some sort so it doesn’t get lost in the atmosphere like steam does?
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Water is what is used to transfer the energy from furnace to the turbine&generator.
The more energy you can store in the water, the better it is. Water comes in at 40C degrees and leaves the furnace at about 600 C or more. That’s the effort they put into make water to carry as much energy as possible.
If they want to ever replace water, they would use something that stores even more energy while it boils.
The reason for using water is that it’s free and it’s enough to carry the energy. We wish to have something as cheap as water that does boil higher. Unfortunately you need a molecule that’s pure, like pure water. You can’t use compounds,mixes, oil, metals or whatever, because at those temperatures they will clog the pipes with residues, or corrode something. Steam is incredibly neutral toward the equipment, at least, relatively to the temperatures and speeds. Pure enough water doesn’t leave any trace behind when evaporates, and does not age, because it’s just pure water. Because it does not react with things around it, it does not expire.
So, it’s just a fortunate case that something as cheap as pure water is also this good at the job. Maybe not the absolute best, but very close to it.
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