SLR_ZA t1_iulmsij wrote
Reply to comment by TheNoobsauce1337 in Engineering question: With today's material sciences, why don't ocean liners use pressurized steam to power electric engines? by [deleted]
No, it's possible to boil the water to make steam
It is impossible to recover nearly as much energy from that that steam as it would take to boil it.
It's not a 'today's technology' thing it's a law of thermodynamics thing.
Water is not a source of energy, it is a medium of energy transfer.
Every kg of water at boiling point being converted to steam takes say 2133 kJ of energy.
You cannot then power a generator with that steam and get more than 2133 kJ of energy out of it. Your actual efficiency of a steam generator is 10-40%
So now you have 2133 x 0.4 = 853 kJ of electric energy.
So you take 20% to the boiler and you have 170 kJ of energy. Which is not enough to boil a kg of water.
Even if you had an impossible 100% efficiency boiler, steam system, turbine and battery system you'd never be able to pull even 1 kJ out without decreasing your steam volume.
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