Due to the prolific nature of these forums, poster aggression is advised.
Also, I wonder why coal-fired power plants remain "coal-fired" after they are up and running and producing electricity. It seems to me that once it is producing electricity, it could use that to heat the water for steam; rather than continue to burn coal. Of course, it would need the coal facility to get up and running, but once that is accomplished, and the electric heaters are online; shut it down. Seems that would be a lot "greener", less wasteful, and just as profitable - perhaps more so eventually.
What you have described there is a variation of a perpetual motion machine. The problem is, if you get it to work, you will violate the laws of thermodynamics, which no law-abiding being has been able to accomplish. In a thermoelectric plant, electricity is produced by converting mechanical motion into electricity. The mechanical motion is produced by expanding steam. Steam is produced by heating water. Heat is produced by burning fuel. You are converting the potential energy contained in the fuel into electric energy through those steps. Along the way, you also waste a lot of energy -- mostly because of escaping heat -- so you really end up with less energy than you started out with, but in a more useful form. Now, if you take the resulting energy and try to use it instead of the fuel at the beginning of the chain, you would need more energy than you actually have. You wouldn't be able to heat enough water and make enough steam to keep the system going. Theoretically, if you create a perfectly closed system with absolutely zero energy waste, you will have a perpetual motion machine of sorts, in which mechanical energy is converted to electricity which is then converted back to mechanical energy and so on and so on. However, all this self-contained machine could do is run itself. If you try to use some of the produced energy in any form -- even light -- you will introduce waste into the system and it will shut down.
This is assuming a ‘flat’, unmodified system. 1 gallon of steam expands to X volume; and will ; in current plants, turn X turbines at X revolutions and create X power. Alterations anywhere along the way would change the outcome; some significantly. Steam can be nozzled differently; producing more force per square inch. Turbines can be geared differently; allowing a smaller input to produce a larger output. The electricity itself can (IS)- after it is generated, be boosted via transformers to a higher voltage (or amperage, depending on the tansformer and use).
A coal-fired power plant does not require the same (or more, as you’ve suggested in your theoretical model) energy to operate as it produces; or it would never be able to service homes and industries outside the plant.
The power is stepped up greatly before being sent over the transmission lines to distribution stations.
Water can be heated (converted to steam) with electricity, on the same scale as the current coal-fired boilers, and a power plant can certainly produce more than enough electricity to accomplish this. It certainly doesn’t take MORE energy to heat water for steam than it does to supply an entire region with dependable electricity.
Well, first I have to remark that if it were possible to self-power a thermoelectric plant, we'd be doing it. Totally. The reason they are not is because it cannot be done.The reason it cannot be done is because a self-powered plant would be producing "free" energy, and there is no "free" energy. Energy has to come from somewhere.You can certainly make a more efficient power plant. But you cannot make a power plant that produces more energy than it consumes.Yes, it does. The amount of energy expended is always greater than the amount of energy gleaned. Always. In the case of coal-powered plants, the output is only about 40% of the input. Let's say it takes 1 unit of coal to produce 1 unit of electricity. That 1 unit of electricity has 60% less potential thermal energy that the 1 unit of coal. What a coal-burning plant does is transform the chemical energy locked up inside coal. You have one type of energy going in, and a much more useful type going out. But there is a net loss in the transaction. A power plant uses more energy than it produces. That is true of every power plant, no matter what kind of energy it consumes in order to produce electricity. This doesn't really matter to us, because what we're after is the electricity. But it does matter if you want to use electricity to produce more electricity. It can't be done. Or, believe me, we'd do it.You're not gaining any electricity by stepping up the voltage -- you're just pumping more of it into the grid. Like opening a valve in a water main -- you're not creating new water, just putting more into the pipe. The transformer does not create new electricity. In fact, you lose a little energy through heat and vibration.Well, yes it does take more energy to make all that steam. The amount of heat consumed by thermal plants is staggering.If your idea could work, why not do this: Use one power plant to power another. We could have, say, 1 coal burning plant somewhere, and use part of that plant's energy to run a second power plant, and then part of the second power plant's energy to power a third, and so on. We could power the entire world with one coal-burning plant. That would be sweet!
Ok.
Like a cold mist humidifier?
Well, we do have power plants that produce more energy than they consume,
No, we do not.Dude: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energyAnd: The second law of thermodynamics states that any closed-loop cycle can only convert a fraction of the heat produced during combustion into mechanical work. The rest of the heat, called waste heat, must be released into a cooler environment during the return portion of the cycle.This is true of any power-generating plant, even non-thermal plants, although non-thermal plants (wind, hydropower) are FAR more efficient.
You cannot go against the laws of physics.
Yet, at least.
there's no way to get that 100+% back to the beginning.
Are you now only talking about the generator? Or are you talking about the entire system? "Gains" made in the gear ratio, transformers, etc that I mentioned "equate" in the total system as energy. If you are now talking just about the generator; then I have nothing to say. Thats not my argument idea. I havent said, and wouldnt say that there is a such thing as a 100% efficient generator.
12v motor > turns shaft > spins generator producing 12v > 12v motor That's your "100%" electric system. (Although in reality even this would not be completely 100%) Now introduce a transmission between 12v motor and shaft with a 3:1 gear ratio. Gain
Introduce another transmission (again, 3:1) between the shaft and generator <---**edit Gain
Now introduce a buck and boost tranformer after the generator; before the 12v motor Gain
Throughout the history of technology, people have been fascinated with the possibility of a machine that would do useful work while requiring no energy input, or at least much less energy than conventional machines that burn fossil fuels, or use "natural" sources such as wind and water. Their goal is a machine that puts out more energy in the form of useful work than it takes in, a hypothetical device that they call an "over-unity" machine, because its energy efficiency would be greater than one. Sometimes this is loosely called a "perpetual motion machine" because if some of its output energy were used to provide the input energy, it could run forever and still put out some useful work. Needless to say, no one has achieved this goal. One might have thought people would give up this effort once scientists formulated and then understood the laws of thermodynamics, which tell us that energy is strictly conserved in any mechanical device, whatever its detailed construction, whether it be strictly mechanical, or electrical or magnetic, or whatever else you might conceive.
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