It’s been more than 200 years since the widespread implementation of the steam engine.
Why is this still the most prevalent means of producing electricity? With things like fusion reactors, why is it so hard to convert the thermal energy into electrical energy?
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You guys are mostly missing the fact that water-to-steam and back is nearly 99% efficiency, it is also linear to a point and predictable so that we have tables to describe it. So, for every BTU of nat gas you burn to make steam, 99% of it is retained. Steam will also carry more BTUs more efficiently than water and is self motive at pressure so that you don’t need to further waste energy to pump it around. There are geothermal processes out there using isopentane instead of water, to basically do the same thing, but it is highly volatile.
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