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Post by Pttg on Dec 15, 2016 22:51:06 GMT
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Post by wafflestoo on Dec 15, 2016 23:18:15 GMT
Oh that thing! I remember reading about it a few years ago when I was interested in Stirling cycle engines (I was interested to see if I could build a large-ish scale one to power a 19' boat). I see they've made a lot of progress which is quite encouraging.
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Post by shurugal on Dec 18, 2016 0:42:13 GMT
I don't understand why we don't have steam turbines. Our ships are already huge and massive, why can't we have a 10-ton steam turbine that will be half the size and twice the efficiency of a 100-ton thermocouple?
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Post by dragonkid11 on Dec 18, 2016 1:27:36 GMT
Because steam turbine required tons of water and....we can't carry all of the water?
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 18, 2016 1:42:21 GMT
Because steam turbine required tons of water and....we can't carry all of the water? Actually, even carrying a hundred tons of tons of water would be OK if we saved a hundred tons of radiator mass. |
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Post by beta on Dec 18, 2016 1:50:47 GMT
Stirling engines would be a great idea for nuclear reactors in space. Any new attempted design uses them. The main issue with them (for the current space program) is reliability - a thermocouple has a really hard time "breaking", where as a Stirling engine has moving parts, therefore will eventually fail without maintenance (as with a probe).
Don't have to use water/steam as your working fluid, there are many options.
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Post by shurugal on Dec 18, 2016 2:00:04 GMT
Because steam turbine required tons of water and....we can't carry all of the water? we already carry hektotons of radiators and kilotons of fuel. A dekaton or two of water is nothing. |
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Post by dragonkid11 on Dec 18, 2016 2:03:13 GMT
Because steam turbine required tons of water and....we can't carry all of the water? we already carry centatons of radiators and kilotons of fuel. A dekaton or two of water is nothing. I don't mean literally a few tons of water. I meant several dozens tons of water for power, EVERYDAY. It's just plain not viable to carry that much water unless you are going for super huge ship design. |
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Post by The Astronomer on Dec 18, 2016 2:13:05 GMT
Then use fluid to radiate heat generated?
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Post by shurugal on Dec 18, 2016 2:28:05 GMT
we already carry centatons of radiators and kilotons of fuel. A dekaton or two of water is nothing. I don't mean literally a few tons of water. I meant several dozens tons of water for power, EVERYDAY. It's just plain not viable to carry that much water unless you are going for super huge ship design. Why would it consume water? I didn't suggest it be open loop. I would ideally like to see a closed-loop steam turbine as the first stage, with a TEG on the condenser providing second-stage generation. I'd be surprised if we couldn't get thermal efficiencies around 60% Hell, while we're at it, let's throw a refrigeration pump onto the output side of the TEG to concentrate the remaining heat energy and pump up the temperature before we send it to the radiators, so make those even smaller while we're at it.  Boiler == reactor, condenser == "hot" side of a TEG. put the cold loop of a refrigerant pump against the cold side of the TEG and get that fucker down to 0k, drive the hot loop of the fridge pump to 1k short of the melting temp of amorphous carbon, and now not only are we sending less total thermal energy to the radiators, but we're doing it hotter than we ever could before, meaning we need much, much smaller radiators to reject our waste heat. |
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Post by The Astronomer on Dec 18, 2016 3:20:01 GMT
Anyways, this is travelling-WAVE not steam engine.
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 18, 2016 3:41:53 GMT
I meant several dozens tons of water for power, EVERYDAY. It's just plain not viable to carry that much water unless you are going for super huge ship design. Why would you ever build an open cycle reactor in space, unless it was for propulsion purposes? |
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Post by shurugal on Dec 18, 2016 4:06:22 GMT
Anyways, this is travelling-WAVE not steam engine. true, but since we're on about power sources other than TEG... |
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Post by argonbalt on Dec 18, 2016 19:28:28 GMT
Okay this just occurred to me, but what the hell is cooling our radiators? Is there even any fluid inside them? Or are they quite actually pure thermal solid state radiators?
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Post by coaxjack on Dec 18, 2016 19:53:40 GMT
The heat source is using a fluid that loops out through the radiators. If you look closely in the radiator editor screen you can see the little tubules that run through them on the lower part of the screen, like so:  in between the outer layers of the radiator. |
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