It turns out spinning things is really useful and boiling fluids is a convenient way to spin things.
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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It's still funny that so much boils down to steampunk with a fake mustache.
Wait, it's all steampunk?
Always has been.
boils down to
I see what you did there!
Not enough brass, though
"I'll try spinning! That's a good trick!"
I really like the concentrated solar systems that use molten salt, where rather than heating water directly, molten salt is heated and stored In large insulated tanks and tapped off to a heat exchanger to run the turbines, thus allowing power generation to match demand and continue at a constant rate even when light level very (such as at night).
One interesting idea is to use a concentrated solar system to run an Einstein–Szilard refrigerator, or some other absorption refrigerator cycle.
What are the tanks made of? "Molten salt" sounds like it would fuck up most materials
Various common steels with a bunch of insulation around it usually, sometimes with a thin coating. The potassium/sodium/calcium nitrate mixes that are used with concentrated solar systems operating in range between 200 C and 600 C. So like, yah you don’t want to touch it, but it’s not gonna do much to steel. It can be somewhat corrosive, but, this is fairly easily mitigated by design.
Molten salt for heat transfer and thermal storage is a pretty mature technology that goes way back before we started using it in concentrated solar systems.
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As a first guess, I would use glass fused to steel tanks. I would need to do a detailed look at material compatibility, talk to vendors, and run some bench scale studies before I moved forward with anything.
Source: am licensed engineer
Solar thermal is kinda obsolete I thought, now China is churning out PVs for pennies.
But t solar boiler can still be useful in some cases. Where heated water in "solar" on the roof is used immediately for shower etc.
Modern solar into a modern heat pump is gonna be more efficient than heating water. It's also more versatile and convenient, cause it maintains that efficiency when you pull power from the grid at night. And of course lets you use the power for other purposes.
I agree. But installing a waterboiler on a roof right above a shower is a lot simpler and probably still cheaper, for example in a camping hut situation, so off grid
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Solar thermal has some distinct advantages when you start talking about really big instillations. Especially when considering power storage, molten salt systems can store heat and allow the generators to keep working even at night. Much cheaper than batteries at very large scales.
Thermal solar systems are generally very efficient when the goal is heating something, not just generating power. So say, you want to run an ammonia plant without burning natural gas, or if you want to melt down metals for recycling. There are so many industrial applications where it’s a better way of doing it than using an electric heating element.
I mean it seems the more complex solution in deployment for sure, but its design could still have use in low heat industrial uses (sub 250°C, e.g. food prep, textile, sanitation etc.) where it is used heat -> heat rather than heat -> electricity -> heat. Maybe these replace thermal collectors eventually.
But that is not the point of this meme at all, just my thoughts.
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They can't keep getting away with this!!
why are there 2 people in suits?
The third guy was busy that day.
Mandatory clothing in our utopian solarpunk society of course
Stock assets to show scale, probably.
gotta dress up to visit the machine god
don't wanna insult the machine god with my shabby shoes. wear my fancy shoes.
Your machine god likes fancy shoes 😂 Embarrassing.
The generic suits depicted are sacrificial "meat candles". They do what they sound like, and everyone knows shoes just kinda get in the way and slow things down. Simple as. Power don't flow quite right without a few of these suits startin to sizzle just right, oughta have yer meat candles primed before ya start 'er up.
Fancy shoes! The things ya read on the Internet, by golly.
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It all boils down to steam....
This is old technology that is more expensive/complicated/maintenance-ey than PV. An economic falacy is that if you have oil/fossils you should use that instead of solar. It's always better to use cheapest energy. Export the fossils, import solar. It is more jobs to have solar as well, and in fact most of the deployment costs are local work/materials (wiring/support structures).
now hear me out. what if we just boiled water in it. why do we have to get all fucky with it.
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Everybody with a college course in Thermodynamics.
Punches below the belt. Right in the photovoltaics.
Yes, Everything, always turns back to mechanical enginnering.
carcinization but for steam engines instead of crabs
At least hydro and wind power are still safe from the boiling water...
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I wonder if we could kill 2 birds with one stone. Have parabolic solar panels that reflect unabsorbed light to boil water.
It would be a less efficient boiler (because the 'mirrors' would be much less reflective), and much more expensive (because solar panels -- especially custom-made curved ones -- are much more expensive than mirrors).
Overall, I suppose maybe you could come out ahead if you used very efficient solar panels for it, and that would let you generate slightly more watts per surface area used...
But we really don't need to optimize for surface area in 99% of cases. Almost everywhere solar power is used, space to install panels is abundant, and it would be much cheaper and more effective to just put one or the other of these solar collection methods over a slightly wider area if you want increased production. (And even then, most of the cases where production-per-surface-area is very important are on solar-powered vehicles, and these parabolic sun-tracking mirrors are impractical for use on a moving vehicle.)
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Spaceman meme
“It’s just boiling water?”
“Always has been”
With all the solar mirrors, won't we overhear the sun shooting all that light back?
there's a silencer on its gun, so we probably won't hear much.
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