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Thermoelectric Generators for Electricity!


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Howdy!  Thanks for a great game!

 

Please consider adding Thermoelectric Generators to the game.  These generators exist in real life, and rely on thermocouples.

A thermocouple is created by taking wires of different metals, joining them at the ends, and making a temperature difference between the ends.

For example, take a copper ore wire, and an iron ore wire, each the same length.  Connect the wires at both ends.  Put one end of the thermocouple in or near a heat source.  Put the other end near a cooling source.  Electric current results from this setup.

Here's some references for the setup:

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple#Power_production

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator#Uses

My experience with thermocouples suggests they are massively inefficient, less than 5% efficiency for translating heat to electricity. (based on amount of energy needed to create heat necessary to generate viable electrical output)  They can be used as a means of determining how much heat is being generated based on the electrical output created, which is why they are, in my experience, used in refineries to monitor extreme temperatures.  We have a thermoelectric generator in the game Steam Turbine literally converts the heat in steam into electrical energy, so literal thermo to electric.

5 hours ago, Flydo said:

I don't test, is it really unusable as all people tell it?

It is "usable", but inferior to just cooking oil into natgas. You need really high temperature steam to run it and it cools it down very fast. You pretty much need to build it near an encased volcano. Unless you use obvious exploits.

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