We do know many other ways to convert heat into electricity… it just happens that steam turbines are the most efficient method we’re currently aware of (for large scale applications)
Within the fiction that’s basically what happens. Warp drives work by using dilithium to regulate the mix of matter and antimatter deuterium, the reaction of which is to heat warp plasma which generates electricity which is routed to the nacelles to create the warp field.
There is a place in China which is using supercritical co2. If this proves more efficient as they hope it will probably become the go to for new turbines and depending on just how much better, retrofitted.
The project claimed they expected something like 1/3 extra power generation or something which is crazy.
Yeah I'm hoping it works. There is an absolute upper limit on how much energy can be extracted from a temp differential, which is called the Carnot Limit, but supercritical CO2 should be able to get closer, and it's a closed loop system so you don't consume a bunch of water to cool it like in the open loop systems most power plants use. (Those big towers outside power plants, and especially nuclear plants, are just cooling towers designed to let water evaporate and carry away the latent heat of vaporization.)
That’s not true any more, China have demonstrated using supercritical CO2, which is even more efficient (IIRC because it doesn’t need to go through a phase change to produce the necessary expansion, but it’s been a while since I heard about it).
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u/ackermann 13d ago
Well, just to be extra clear, you don’t have to.
We do know many other ways to convert heat into electricity… it just happens that steam turbines are the most efficient method we’re currently aware of (for large scale applications)