7 ms·
The article mentions that they heat the sand to 500°C, which is not possible with water (well, at least not without turning into steam along the way).
by decimalenough 1y ago
The article mentions that they heat the sand to 500°C, which is not possible with water (well, at least not without turning into steam along the way).
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoTo be pedantic, yes you can but you'd need to pressurize it to uuhh... According to this calculator [0], you can get water to 370 degrees C if the pressure is 207 atmospheres, which is about the pressure of the ocean two kilometers deep. [0] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-vapor-saturation-pressure-d_599.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-vapor-saturation-pr...
- nick49488171 1y agoHow many kiloton of TNT equivalent?
- grues-dinner 1y agoWell, if you say the energy stored is the 100MWh from the headline figure, and say you can arrange release every joule of all at once by flashing high-pressure water to steam at 1 atm that's about 0.1kT. So quite a bang - allegedly this is 200lb, so about the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDgvar7ON54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDgvar7ON54
- killingtime74 1y agoInterestingly that's also about the pressure of gas in scuba tanks. Can't imagine how much energy to pressurize water to that
- trhway 1y agoDue to incompressibility of liquids, pressurizing a liquid is very cheap energy-wise - orders of magnitude cheaper than pressurizing a gas. The issue is that pressurized liquid also requires correspondingly strong and expensive vessels and pipes.
- sfn42 1y agoYou don't need to pressurize it. You just put it in a tank and apply heat, the water evaporates and creates pressure. Like a pressure cooker.