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?

Question

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?

In: 3

Answer 1

You can. You can use almost whatever you want. So why don’t we?

The heat used to boil the water isn’t lost in the process. That energy comes out to do useful work in the heat engine. In fact, in the rankine cycle, the high heat of vaporization actually improves efficiency.