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Was watching YouTube and somehow went down a steam engine rabbit hole. There's so much to say about steam engines but suffice it to say they are awesome, not lame. Heck, steam locomotives were still in use around the middle of the 20th century. Check out a steam engine power plant. They are epic machines in scale and frankly of spiritual significance to the human race. Steam is what took us from animals to beings with near unlimited power. Steam is fucking rad.

Oh and guess what, I saw this one YouTube video where they were talking about how awesome steam locomotives were because they can run on anything. Anything that burns anyways. You could even burn your W-2s to generate steam.

So I'm thinking if 0 is where we are now and 100 is mad max in what regime do gas/diesel powered generators beat steam? I estimate they only win in the 25-50 range and that's just because they're more efficient. In the 50-100 range you won't be able to buy any damn gas and in the 0-25 range steam is still infinitely cooler. Steam wins, (.75+.25×.4)% of the time, hands down, no arguments.

So I've decided to become a steam man. Like all men I've accomplished major jobs on automotive engines before but I don't know shit about steam engines.

Are there any fellow steam men here on poal? How you break into this? What about getting started with a steam powered electric generator?

Obligatory - yeah even nuclear uses steam. I mean the kind of thing where you burn coal/wood/w-2s to produce steam which then drives a spinny boy to produce the volts.

Was watching YouTube and somehow went down a steam engine rabbit hole. There's so much to say about steam engines but suffice it to say they are awesome, not lame. Heck, steam locomotives were still in use around the middle of the 20th century. Check out a steam engine power plant. They are epic machines in scale and frankly of spiritual significance to the human race. Steam is what took us from animals to beings with near unlimited power. Steam is fucking rad. Oh and guess what, I saw this one YouTube video where they were talking about how awesome steam locomotives were because they can run on anything. Anything that burns anyways. You could even burn your W-2s to generate steam. So I'm thinking if 0 is where we are now and 100 is mad max in what regime do gas/diesel powered generators beat steam? I estimate they only win in the 25-50 range and that's just because they're more efficient. In the 50-100 range you won't be able to buy any damn gas and in the 0-25 range steam is still infinitely cooler. Steam wins, (.75+.25×.4)% of the time, hands down, no arguments. So I've decided to become a steam man. Like all men I've accomplished major jobs on automotive engines before but I don't know shit about steam engines. Are there any fellow steam men here on poal? How you break into this? What about getting started with a steam powered electric generator? Obligatory - yeah even nuclear uses steam. I mean the kind of thing where you burn coal/wood/w-2s to produce steam which then drives a spinny boy to produce the volts.

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[–] • 1 pt

In a steam power plant, steam is fed into a system under vacuum of about 2psia to turn a turbine. After you extract work from the steam, it's fed into a condenser and turned back into water to be re-used. Some sort of cooling is necessary, either the big concrete towers you see venting vapor or river/lake water.

If you're just wanting to do it locally, a steam traction engine design could be used, and the flywheel would turn a generator. There should be quite a bit of information out there about how that works. You still need a big chunk of iron and the mechanics to turn the flywheel, as well as a generator head of some sort. Everything could be made locally by hand except for perhaps the copper wire and magnets.

[–] • 0 pt

to be reused

Or

You have a tank of water to be used so that in addition to energy production, you create clean water as a run off product.

[–] • 1 pt

There really is no runoff product in steam energy production unless you have more than enough steam. It takes a lot of energy to get water to the gas stage.

You could have secondary stage where you have water being made for drinking use, but your primary steam source is going to be driving whatever turbine you have, especially considering you probably won't be pulling a vacuum on the outlet. You're not going to want to reuse this water due to contamination in the process and lack of stabilizers for re-use.