Comment by kragen
7 months ago
Steam engines predate the understanding of not just the crystalline structure of steel but even the basics of thermodynamics by quite a few decades.
7 months ago
Steam engines predate the understanding of not just the crystalline structure of steel but even the basics of thermodynamics by quite a few decades.
I don't consider that an equal comparison. Obviously an engineer can never be omniscient and know things nobody else knows either. They can, and should, have an understanding of what they work with based on available state of the art, though.
If the steam engine was invented after those discoveries about steel, I would certainly hope it would be factored into the design (and perhaps used to make those early steam engines less prone to exploding).
A lot of material science was developed to make cannons not explode - that them went into making steam engines possible. The early steam engines introduced their own needed study of efficiency-
Yes and they’re far less efficient and require far more maintenance than an equivalent electric or even diesel engine, where equivalent power is even possible
Steam engines currently power most of the world's electrical grid. The main reason for this is that, completely contrary to what you said, they are more efficient and more reliable than diesel engines. (Electric motors of course are not a heat engine at all and so are not comparable.)
Steam engines used to be very inefficient, in part because the underlying thermodynamic principles were not understood, but also because learning to build safe ones (largely a question of metallurgy) took a long time. Does that mean that designing them before those principles were known was "not engineering"? That seems like obvious nonsense to me.
Steam engines are thoroughly obsolete in the developed world where there are natural gas pipeline networks.
People quit building coal burning power plants in North America at the same time they quit burning nuclear power plants for the same reason. The power density difference between gas turbines and steam turbines is enough that the capital cost difference is huge. It would be hard to afford steam turbines if the heat was free.
Granted people have been building pulverized coal burning power plants in places like China where they'd have to run efficient power plants on super-expensive LNG. They thought in the 1970s it might be cheaper to gasify coal and burn it in a gas turbine but it's one of those technologies that "just doesn't work".
Nuclear isn't going to be affordable unless they can perfect something like
https://www.powermag.com/what-are-supercritical-co2-power-cy...
If you count the cost of the steam turbine plus the steam generators plus the civil works to enclose those, nuclear just can't be competitive.
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Why do you assume that the same doesn't apply to electric and diesel engines ?
We don’t have to assume, because we know. We can calculate and measure the efficiency of gasoline and diesel engines, and electric motors. We know that electric motors are highly efficient, and ICE engines are not.
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