The only examples we have of a long coal-seam fire consume the material "quickly" advancing at around 70ft per year. But I doubt that a coal-seam fire is responsible. Sure, the cool factor always is a nice thing lol. It seems more plausible (and cool) to me that the Generator is the second of a two-stage process. At the depth we're talking for geothermal, the surface could be -200ºc and it wouldn't mater. I doubt it has 3-4km of depth, but the entire shaft doesn't need to have it, only the water pipes. We don't actually know how deep is the hole, and when the workers start tossing shit into there and trying to see the bottom they cannot. Remember, you have the biting cold from above working against you. You'd have to drill down a lot farther to get to the temperatures required if you want to use geothermal energy for that. Other areas around the world have even higher temperatures, such as in iceland where they can almost reach 350+✬. The thing is, would geothermal heat alone account for the temperatures needed to create superheated steam?ĭepends on pressure of course, but there are geothermal wells and layers above 200✬ in the US, which should be enough. At the end, the steam pressure is simply too much for the pipes and the generator, and it blows. This wears the machinery quickly and the generator cannot sustain that level of work and pressure for much time, with pumps breaking and pipes blowing. Overdrive could simply be the engineers bypassing whatever safety measures they have and working the macinery to it's absolute limit. They work at a rated capacity to maximize both power and durability. Machinery rarely (if ever) works at absolute maximum capacity because it breaks incredibly quickly (many engines/machines have to be escentially rebuilt after being forced to absolute maximum capacity, examples being plane and ship engines). Overdrive doesn't need to be anything fancy. When you upgrade the generator you increase it's pumping capabilities (more water -> more steam -> more heating), maybe even "drill" a bit deeper (or gain access to deeper pipes that the original generator couldn't pump to due to a lack of power) and in doing so also increase the amount of exhaust heat that can be recovered (since you burn even more coal). Superheating and other heat recovery could be built in into the generator itself to recover as much energy from the coal powering the pumps as possible. So you could easily pump it down to the geothermal layer, the water boils and then return that steam and distribute around the city. Water seems ubiquitous in the city (what with never needing to worry about it). It then condenses back into wet steam, and then liquid water, which is fed back into the Generator to repeat the cycle.Ĭouldn't it just be geothermal energy that is extracted and distributed trough the city with the generator escentially being a giant, coal-powered pump and distribution system? As it's cooled, it turns back into saturated steam, which is used for heating and sterilization. Theoretically, it could also be (and likely is in the setting) used as an additional layer of building insulation against the oppressing cold.įirst, the superheated steam is used for work and insulation. It also makes it suitable for storage, making it ideal for use in Automatons. The value of superheated steam in these applications is its ability to release tremendous quantities of internal energy yet remain above the condensation temperature of water vapor at the pressures at which reaction turbines and reciprocating piston engines operate.īecause it's an insulator, this makes it suitable for transport over distances, allowing it to reach all parts of a growing City. Superheated steam's greatest value lies in its tremendous internal energy that can be used for kinetic reaction through mechanical expansion against turbine blades and reciprocating pistons, that produces rotary motion of a shaft. Saturated steam has a much higher wall heat transfer coefficient. This is because superheated steam has the same heat transfer coefficient of air, making it an insulator - a poor conductor of heat. Superheated steam is also not useful for heating, but it has more energy and can do more work) than saturated steam, but the heat content is much less useful.
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