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Posted to uk.d-i-y
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OTish. New design Internal Combustion Engine
On 24/04/2014 20:01, wrote:
On Thursday, April 24, 2014 3:27:51 PM UTC+1, John Williamson wrote:
One way to make it green would be to install one of the small modular
reactors on site to generate the electricity, and pipe the water in.
I believe that the current method in common use, though, is to use heat
to crack methane, using fossil fuel to generate the heat required.
However you generate it, you're still using high price electricity to replace low cost oil, you've still got 1 or 2 lossy conversion steps, and the extra costs of generation mean consumed energy. It so doesnt add up.
Granted, but as it's not recommended to fit nuclear reactors into road
vehicles, it's a reasonably sensible way to transfer the power from the
reactor to the wheels. About the same efficiency overall as batteries,
but with less pollution as a by product.
An alternative is to use nuclear power to make hydrocarbon fuels from
water and CO2. The pilot project is using wind turbines, and needs money
to scale up as a proof of concept, but it does work and the heat cam
come from any source.
It won't be economic though, until either nuclear becomes much cheaper,
or fossil oil becomes much more expensive.
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Tciao for Now!
John.
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