Sir Regulus Lyonhart
Believe me, though I have a penchant for steampunk, nothing yet has convinced me that steam is the ideal power source. There are many reasons it is not.
It is inefficient (you need a boiler to power anything), it creates a whole mess of pollution (burning coal to heat the boiler), and it's quite dangerous (steam burns and explosions!).
While I know this probably would excite you all, it still doesn't change the fact that no matter how cool things from the steam age were, we should not revert back to steam as our main power source.
I think... we should turn to fuel cells!
biggrin The emission for fuel cells is water vapor, ex. kinda like steam but not superheated. It's clean, and eco-friendly. And hydrogen is cheaper and more abundant than coal or oil. =3
One thing you have not considered is that water once heated expands to three hundred times its volume and if combined with sufficient carbon can be ignited to great affect, steam era equipment has never ignited water vapor and thus lost a great deal of energy. There is a guy in Florida who makes cars that run on this principle. Nothing but water and spark plugs!
An also, how do you think Nuke power plants work?
