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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We’re still using steam to generate electricity because for many applications, we don’t have anything better than steam to spin those turbines. The same steam can be used to spin many turbines before its energy is depleted enough to be of little use.
Mostly because we havn’t really found any other effective ways to generate electricity in large amounts. Not only that, you also have to remember that we have been using steam to generate power, electrical or otherwise, for the better part of 2 centuries.
That is 2 centuries of research going into making that process as efficient as possible. Even if we found a new means of generating energy that has the potential to replace steam, we would have to do decades of research before it even begins to approach the amount of research done into making steam as efficient as it is.
Even if we found a way that has the potential to replace steam, we would still have to do decades of work to remotely catch it up to where steam is now. Unless it supercedes steam so massively that this research isn’t necessary, we’re not likely to have it replace steam anytime soon.
Because you can convert fuel into electricity by using water. Heat the water, steam builds up pressure and moves electric motors and generates electrical power that can be used. We have a lot of fuel, and have been refining this way of doing it for a very long time.
You may be confusing steam turbines and steam engines. Steam engines, invented in 1700, used to power trains and boats, but that’s not at all what we use to generate electricity. A steam turbine, invented in 1884, uses high pressure steam to spin an electric generator. So we’re not spinning generators with steam engines the way a steam engine would spin train wheels.
There is simply no other efficient way to turn heat into electricity unless you do it with a steam turbine. And most means to make electricity first produce heat (burning coal, burning gas, nuclear fission, etc), and this heat then needs to be converted into electricity. There isn’t really a device that you can heat up and it would produce electricity. I mean, there is, the thermoelectric generator or Peltier module, but it’s not nearly as efficient as just using a steam turbine, because it needs a temperature *gradient* (one side needs to be colder than the other) while steam can just be really hot and not care about gradients.
this is like asking why do we still use our mouth to feed ourselves when we can directly inject things into the bloodstream.
It’s about EFFICIENCY and COST!
In Austria and Norway, electricity is primarily produced with hydroelectric plants, which use water in liquid form only.
Neither do Wind/Photovoltaic use steam, and Solarthermal electric plants which use hot steam lost the race to PV recently.
Steam turbines are a marvel of high tech that cover a wide range of scenarios and got a boost from new materials that further increased efficiency after been optimized for more than a century.
Why do we still use Fingers after inventing brain scanners? Because they are still bad and we built our environment for finger interaction already.
You can explode nuclear bomb in internal combustion engine but we don’t have material strong enough to withstand the blast no matter
Most gas plants use the exhaust gases to move a turbine first, and then use the remaining hot gas to convert water to steam. Doesn’t work well for oil/coal plants as the impurities foul the turbines.
Pure Water is lovely. Non-corrosive, has a huge heat capacity and we’ve got loads of it. Plus it has a low boiling point and expands like crazy when turning to steam.
If anyone knows of a better, cheaper solution please tell me. There might be a billion dollars in it for you.
If you can come up with a better and cheaper option that water, then do name it.
The reason we use water, and by the looks of it are planning to get power from fusion power with turning water in to steam is that it is so easy.
Here is the thing. Energy is not just electricity. If I lift a pint to the air I add potential energy to it. If I let go of it it drops to the ground, but no electricity is made.
Steam is a really good way of taking thermal energy, and turning that in to kinetic energy thanks to steam expanding in volume and that expansion used to turn a generator.
The thing is that just adding heat to something doesn’t make electricity. You need a method to change one energy to another via a medium.
Electricity is made by pushing forcing electrons to move, and this in turns causes a chain reaction in the conductor where electrons travel through it and potential goes to the opposite direction.
With solar panels, it is the radiation from sun that basically “kicks” the electron across a insulator so it has to travel through the whole circuit. While generators move or move through magnetic fields which then forces the electrons to move, meaning that outside of the generator they are being pulled on one end and out from the other.
There is no reason that we must use water. You can use methane, or other low boiling point substances. These been suggested as alternative means of extracting energy from small thermal gradients like between ocean surface and underwater. The thing is that… We go LOTS of water on this planet.
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