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Most electricity is produced by burning coal heating up water and sending it through a turbine. The efficiency is limited by the maximum the carnot cycle can gi
by sprash 7y ago
Most electricity is produced by burning coal heating up water and sending it through a turbine. The efficiency is limited by the maximum the carnot cycle can give you. In general less than 60%. Still not as bad as 10%, sure. But if you get your energy with solar cells we could get into regions where the efficiencies are comparable. All Fisher-Tropsch needs is heat and using solar you have plenty of that.
- redisman 7y agoSo when you argue for your point, electricity for the process comes from solar but when you argue against someone elses point it comes from coal?
- sprash 7y agoAll I'm saying is, when talking about efficiency the electricity source should be considered as well. Besides that efficiency is not the right metric to ask for here. Environmental impact is the important metric. Destroying existing infrastructure, destroying vast ecosystems in Chile to mine Lithium, enslaving Africans to mine Cobalt, use lots of energy to purify silicon for solar cells, building a more distributed power grid, installing charging stations everywhere. All of this has environmental impact. If you can make synthetic fuel with solar power in some desert (Nevada is big enough), you can keep all the old stuff and still be able to save the planet.