Don’t go too hard on me, I’m a noob at this. But I’ve seen people powering small engines with dry ice so I was thinking… could it work on a larger scale
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Ok so the answer’s I’ve gotten boil down to “It can be done but there’s no way you’re in a situation where you have a massive supply of readily available dry ice for cheap”
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Yeah. It would be more efficient when larger, too. But, why? They’re cool novelties, but there’s no need for a hundred-horsepower novelty. Dry ice has to be made, and this costs a lot of energy, so such an engine wouldn’t be very useful for energy applications.
What you’re describing is basically a compressed air engine. People have done it with cars. The issue is range and refill time. You only get about 50 miles. Gas has been the go to fuel because it’s so energy dense, relatively cheap, and easy to transport.
There’s no reason a large engine couldn’t be powered by dry ice.
However, such an engine wouldn’t be energy efficient nor environmentally friendly.
This is due to the high energy costs of producing the dry ice. It takes a lot of energy to pressurize and cool CO2 to the point where it’s solid.
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