Timeline for Lowest tech to generate electricity with mirror solar thermal tower
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 20, 2021 at 8:51 | vote | accept | Mark | ||
| Jul 17, 2021 at 18:55 | comment | added | MolbOrg | @LorenPechtel Diamonds(more like XV century tech), saphire, ruby, some more regular stone like basalt, diabase could have been used to make draw plates and alike. Routing 10MW without 1-6-10-35kV that would be a real challenge and having proper electrical equipment would be a real challenge, or wires have to be one inch rods to begin with and that can be cast easily(as swords were cast in stone form(reusable), mass production of swords). What guys really lack back then is knowledge and proper approaches to increase it, and motivation. Hydraulics and some reservouar at tophill may be the way. | |
| Jul 17, 2021 at 14:28 | comment | added | Zeiss Ikon | @LorenPechtel Yet the ancients did make copper wire, albeit not in multi-kilometer lengths (they didn't need that much). They used steel dies. Yes, there was steel in the Bronze Age, but the knowledge to make it reliably didn't yet exist (at least in the West); what they had was meteoric in origin. Brass can be annealed soft enough to draw wire, too, so the copper needn't be of modern conductor grade. And Newcomen's "engine" wasn't a mechanical engine, it was a water pump. Watt attached a crank and made the valves automatic, not to mention made it run on pressure rather than vacuum. | |
| Jul 17, 2021 at 4:39 | comment | added | Loren Pechtel | @GrumpyYoungMan Yup, this is the limiting factor. Every piece of technology needed existed (except for the knowledge of what bits to put together) but the manufacturing wasn't up to making any large scale systems. Two issues come immediately to mind: Bronze age copper wasn't pure enough for drawing wire, and how do you draw wire with bronze age tech, anyway? | |
| Jul 17, 2021 at 0:18 | comment | added | MolbOrg | @GrumpyYoungMan tolerances - I would say that it part of "if they know what they do" as 3 plate method and some other technics as path to precision were inseparable part of what made industrial revolution possible, what allowed it to progress. By itself it isn't something complex, as sequence of actions - it just needs to realise it is the way to do certain things, which come from necessity and practice and demand for those things. Clocks is quite demanding for precision, so... Well as required precision for steam engines, pistons and cylinders isn't that great | |
| Jul 16, 2021 at 21:37 | comment | added | GrumpyYoungMan | Newcomen's steam engine was only ~20 HP and had poor efficiency, IIRC. Seems unclear that bronze age machining tech is going to get the cylinder tolerances and high pressure lines necessary to get to 10 kHP or greater steam engines. | |
| Jul 16, 2021 at 20:47 | comment | added | John | Heron built a steam engine but it was never more than a toy. He saw the capability however and wrote about it. But it was very very different than a Watts steam engine. the real problem was the slave you used to stoke the fire could produce more torque than Herons engine. | |
| Jul 16, 2021 at 19:59 | comment | added | Alexander | Major tech limitation here would be not just any wire, but "magnet wire" - uniformly think enameled wire. Producing enough of this wire to for "10.000's horsepower" motors would be a huge undertaking in preindustrial age. | |
| Jul 16, 2021 at 19:27 | history | edited | Zeiss Ikon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Add bottom line and time frame.
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| Jul 16, 2021 at 19:14 | history | answered | Zeiss Ikon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |