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ICE vehicles turn less than 35% of their energy consumption into productive work. The rest is waste heat. That's the main reason transitioning to pure EVs must
by greenthrow 3y ago
ICE vehicles turn less than 35% of their energy consumption into productive work. The rest is waste heat. That's the main reason transitioning to pure EVs must happen.
- PeterisP 3y agoThat's an inherent limitation of heat engines - if you burn the same thing in a power plant, then you could get 45% instead of 35%, but you can't possibly convert, say, 80% of burned fossil fuel into productive work.
- danans 3y ago> if you burn the same thing in a power plant, then you could get 45% instead of 35%, but you can't possibly convert, say, 80% of burned fossil fuel into productive work. Not 80%, but combined cycle gas turbines regularly achieve up to 60% steady state efficiency. There is research into ammonia fueled turbines that supposedly achieve even higher efficiency.
- robotresearcher 3y agoAnd Combined Heat and Power plants get up to 75% by using some of the heat.
- cm2187 3y agoI really don’t see the point of that calculation. It’s like saying that the wind turbine only captures 5% (number made up) of the energy of the wind going through it.
- robotresearcher 3y agoIf you had to pay for the wind you might be very interested in that ratio.
- cm2187 3y agoNot if there is nothing I can do about this ratio. It's a theoretical unaccessible energy that doesn't mean anything.
- greenthrow 3y agoThen you didn't read the article. The whole point is can the UK meet all of its energy needs with solar and wind. That includes transportation energy. The comment I was responding to was wondering how to reduce the energy needs. A big part of it is by drastically increasing the efficiency of transportation by moving from ICE to BEV.