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Since we should keep the oil in the ground that current thermal engines uses, the energy input will be from a different source when we change from burning oil t
by belorn 4y ago
Since we should keep the oil in the ground that current thermal engines uses, the energy input will be from a different source when we change from burning oil to electrical engines. The primary energy input should be from the wind, sun, elevated water, nuclear bonds and geothermal.
The change from 30-40% efficient engines to 90+% efficient engines is if we burn the oil in a power plant. It is an improvement, but not a sufficient big one compared to actually keeping the oil in the ground.
- ben_w 4y agoYou basically can't get 90% efficiency from burning oil in a power plant. E = 1 - Cold/Hot, where cold ≈ 300 K and hot ≈ 1300 K (gasoline-air fire), giving theoretical maximum efficiency of 77%. In practice much lower, what I've seen is just over 60% even in the best combined cycle power plants. If you use some really high temperature chemistry, you can get to 5260 K from dicyanoacetylene in oxygen, which is 95%, but not gasoline. And dicyanoacetylene is a bit explody.