3 ms·
Steam turbine plus a conventional generator is vastly more efficient than thermocouples - 30-40% for steam versus <5% for thermocouples. I suspect they are als
by avian 12y ago
Steam turbine plus a conventional generator is vastly more efficient than thermocouples - 30-40% for steam versus <5% for thermocouples.
I suspect they are also much, much cheaper when you are talking about powers in the hundreds-of-megawatts range. I don't have specific data at hand to back that though. I never heard of any grid-level power generation being done with thermocouples.
- anigbrowl 12y agoThat is in line with general impression. I just find it really weird that after all the high-tech nuclear stuff is working the next stage is an old-fashioned water boiler like on a steam engine of hundreds of years ago. (Well, obviously these turbines are not old-fashioned or simple boilers, but you know what I mean.) It just baffles me that we don't have a way of efficiently generating electrical current directly from particle radiation, eg through pressure fluctuations in a magnetic field, instead of through heat transfer.
- DennisP 12y agoThe reason we'll need turbines for the first generation of fusion reactors is that most of their energy is released as neutrons. Some more advanced fuels release most of their energy as fast-moving charged particles, which would let us generate electricity more directly.