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I'm curious if there could be any advantages/disadvantages to using a different, heavier liquid for pumped storage other than water. My physics knowledge is qui
by baron816 9y ago
I'm curious if there could be any advantages/disadvantages to using a different, heavier liquid for pumped storage other than water. My physics knowledge is quite poor, but intuitively, wouldn't using something like mercury or iodine create more pressure going down, thus generating more energy by volume, thus requiring less volume, thus making it more practical to use a tower? Surely someone's looked into this.
- samsari 9y agoI think that would work, but the challenge would be in finding a denser liquid than water in quantities that would make it useful - and cost effective.
- thmsths 9y agoAnd safe. Imagine the disaster if that mercury tower started leaking.
- fny 9y agoWater is freely available. In the examples mentioned, there's typically a natural reservoir (a lake) or man-made reservoir (a retention pond) that's used. You might get a slight boost from using sea water (density of 1027 vs 1000), but I feel like the salinity might wear your equipment faster. Also, heavy metals like mercury and iodine very are expensive compared to water. And once you start talking about using metals for storage, it might be worth exploiting state changes instead.[0] [0]: http://www.ambri.com/ http://www.ambri.com/
- grondilu 9y ago> using something like mercury you really don't want to do that.