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boiling water again (quokk.au)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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boiling water again
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[–] 17 points 7 months ago (1 child)

We've gotten really, really good at extracting energy from steam, steam turbines can be incredibly efficient, I can't recall exact figures but Wikipedia cites 90% as the top end.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago*

    True, but that's just one part of the process, and it's not comparing to the initial energy in the source fuel.

    If nothing else, there's an absolute efficiency limit from Carnot's theorem, but in reality it's much lower, even for the most modern and efficient gas plants, the limit seems to be ~60%, and for nuclear or coal, it's even lower at around 30-40%.

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