Solar Dreams: a history of solar energy (1878 - 2025)
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25: A Pause
October, 1891
Canicattini Bagni, Sicily
Klaus sat in his office with a pen in his hand, pondering how to get hydrogen to increase the efficiency of the Stirling engines (perhaps it could be made locally using electrolysis?) for an air liquefaction setup. Orders from the Leopoldina, which irked him as it slowed his progress on the electrification project for the town. An idea was forming in his mind when he was startled by an urgent knock on his door.
- Vieni dentro - He said in a passable Italian. In came a scrawny looking man, panting like and clearly tired.
- Messaggio urgente. - The man responded, also in a passable Italian. He handed Klaus an envelope with Klara's wax seal. Klaus in turn gave the man some coins and sent him on his way.
He broke the seal and began reading. The handwriting was shaky, as was her grammatical structure.
"Love,
I am not well. I was heckled off the podium during my exposition on the Phoenician-Greek commerce. I couldn't handle it and I completely forgot the rest of it. All the work I've done for a year has been wasted, and the dread is eating me up. Please come, I need you here with me.
Your Klara."
He read it for a second time. It was unusual, to say the least. And if Klara felt that it was urgent, then it was. And so he mounted on his safety bicycle and hit the road towards his home on the outskirts of Syracuse. It was a downhill trip, which took less than ninety minutes. He didn't waste time greeting anyone as he went inside the house, upstairs and to the bedroom. Klara laid there, sobbing still. He hugged her as he hugged during the time after her father's death, and she in turn hugged him back. Objectively, it wasn't the end of the world, just a bad day.
But it was the day that couldn't be anything but perfect for Klara, and it was ruined by a heckler. For her it was as important as the demonstration at the Leopoldina was for him, all those years ago. No words were needed, not when they've gone through so much together. It took almost an hour before she spoke, her voice calm but exhausted.
- All I could understand was something about her child. - She said.
- The heckler? - Klaus asked, only realising how dumb he was - You don't have any contact with kids.
- I know... I recognized the heckler. I bumped into her a few times in the past. Now I think she was following me.
- A stalker? - Klaus asked, worried.
- No, she had a sales stand near the library. I bought some fruit from her a few times. She always looked so sad.
- How worried are you?
- A bit. She was barred from entering the library for life, and was jailed shortly afterwards... but why would she heckle me about kids? I've never worked near them.
- Maybe she's just a crazy lady. But still, I don't want to be alone for the next weeks.
- Well... I don't think you've ever seen the results of your husband's work, have you?
- Oh. Now that you've mentioned, no I haven't.
- How about you stay with me? Maybe you can help me in test a theory.
- Really? What are you trying to prove.
- The walls of my office are pretty thick. I want to prove if they're soundproof.
She looked blankly at him, before slapping him when she understood.
- We'll start our research tomorrow. - She said, smiling.
... The renewed interest for Stirling engines that the Solar industry demanded resulted in a rapid exhaustion of the direct improvements that could be achieved with the technological developments of the late XIX century. A Stirling engine built in 1888 was a completely different creature to one built in 1890, and the performance and effectiveness were worlds apart.
And yet, the actual efficiency of Stirling engines was limited by the working fluid. Air was workable and produced 25% efficiency, but ideal gas equations suggested an efficiency close to 50%, and it was clear that it wasn't the best option. It would take years for the adoption of hydrogen as the working fluid of choice, which reached 40% efficiency.
In the meantime, the demand for these engines continued to increase among solar applications and its derivatives. Solar cryonics and Hess Arrays were already viable by the time hydrogen became the standard working fluid. Its adoption was the breakthrough that ensured it would be one of the defining technologies of the XX century.
Canicattini Bagni, Sicily
Klaus sat in his office with a pen in his hand, pondering how to get hydrogen to increase the efficiency of the Stirling engines (perhaps it could be made locally using electrolysis?) for an air liquefaction setup. Orders from the Leopoldina, which irked him as it slowed his progress on the electrification project for the town. An idea was forming in his mind when he was startled by an urgent knock on his door.
- Vieni dentro - He said in a passable Italian. In came a scrawny looking man, panting like and clearly tired.
- Messaggio urgente. - The man responded, also in a passable Italian. He handed Klaus an envelope with Klara's wax seal. Klaus in turn gave the man some coins and sent him on his way.
He broke the seal and began reading. The handwriting was shaky, as was her grammatical structure.
"Love,
I am not well. I was heckled off the podium during my exposition on the Phoenician-Greek commerce. I couldn't handle it and I completely forgot the rest of it. All the work I've done for a year has been wasted, and the dread is eating me up. Please come, I need you here with me.
Your Klara."
He read it for a second time. It was unusual, to say the least. And if Klara felt that it was urgent, then it was. And so he mounted on his safety bicycle and hit the road towards his home on the outskirts of Syracuse. It was a downhill trip, which took less than ninety minutes. He didn't waste time greeting anyone as he went inside the house, upstairs and to the bedroom. Klara laid there, sobbing still. He hugged her as he hugged during the time after her father's death, and she in turn hugged him back. Objectively, it wasn't the end of the world, just a bad day.
But it was the day that couldn't be anything but perfect for Klara, and it was ruined by a heckler. For her it was as important as the demonstration at the Leopoldina was for him, all those years ago. No words were needed, not when they've gone through so much together. It took almost an hour before she spoke, her voice calm but exhausted.
- All I could understand was something about her child. - She said.
- The heckler? - Klaus asked, only realising how dumb he was - You don't have any contact with kids.
- I know... I recognized the heckler. I bumped into her a few times in the past. Now I think she was following me.
- A stalker? - Klaus asked, worried.
- No, she had a sales stand near the library. I bought some fruit from her a few times. She always looked so sad.
- How worried are you?
- A bit. She was barred from entering the library for life, and was jailed shortly afterwards... but why would she heckle me about kids? I've never worked near them.
- Maybe she's just a crazy lady. But still, I don't want to be alone for the next weeks.
- Well... I don't think you've ever seen the results of your husband's work, have you?
- Oh. Now that you've mentioned, no I haven't.
- How about you stay with me? Maybe you can help me in test a theory.
- Really? What are you trying to prove.
- The walls of my office are pretty thick. I want to prove if they're soundproof.
She looked blankly at him, before slapping him when she understood.
- We'll start our research tomorrow. - She said, smiling.
... The renewed interest for Stirling engines that the Solar industry demanded resulted in a rapid exhaustion of the direct improvements that could be achieved with the technological developments of the late XIX century. A Stirling engine built in 1888 was a completely different creature to one built in 1890, and the performance and effectiveness were worlds apart.
And yet, the actual efficiency of Stirling engines was limited by the working fluid. Air was workable and produced 25% efficiency, but ideal gas equations suggested an efficiency close to 50%, and it was clear that it wasn't the best option. It would take years for the adoption of hydrogen as the working fluid of choice, which reached 40% efficiency.
In the meantime, the demand for these engines continued to increase among solar applications and its derivatives. Solar cryonics and Hess Arrays were already viable by the time hydrogen became the standard working fluid. Its adoption was the breakthrough that ensured it would be one of the defining technologies of the XX century.
Well you came back, I hope you are doing well BTW, but let's get on with it
Wait x3...oh no, oh f..... please don't let my cynical side to be true. I don't want to imagine what happened...oh dear...moving on...
Ok, for something that would create less depressing thoughts...well, there would some advancement in term in Sterling's engine efficiency and perhaps by the end of the decade, they would achieve something that Philips were only capable of in 1950s IOTL. (Then again that could be me being very optimistic to balanced to very pessimistic side of me in regards to this)
The mine operator were up to no good aren't they, since the cynical part of me that say the women didn't even given any compensation for what stems from basically their negligence (or even cruelty)
As the design first appeared in the 1830s, it should be in the Public Domain by now. Which is very good for this timeline.
Thanks, I've been dealing with the fallout of a business failure and thus I don't have much time to write or think about writing. However, I'm steadily receiving more work and getting back up. I'm quite good at what I do.
As for the spoilers, let's just say that Klaus' story will go to unexpected places.
The option that most readily comes to mind is not electrolysis, but thermolysis (directly cooking steam to well over 2000 celsius to crack it into hydrogen and oxygen), or perhaps something like the Water Gas Shift reaction (hot metal + carbon monoxide + steam = hydrogen and CO2--much lower temperature requirements, but will require some coal or gas as feedstock). More recent research has found potential catalysts for low-temperature thermolysis, but that might be beyond the abilities of the late 19th century to figure out (unless they stumble on it by accident).
I'm not sure that direct thermolysis is practical--for one thing the material requirements for process piping would be formidable, for another allegedly the sulfur-iodine cycle (which has the same net effect but a maximum process temperature of merely 850 C) is "too high temperature" for concentrating solar power, at least economical CSP. The same would surely be much more true of a 2000 C process.
Oh, the experimental setup alluded was a simple - and not particularly efficient - electrical hydrolysis where hydrogen is collected in the anode and oxygen in the cathode, which I vaguely recalled as an experiment in high school using some wiring and a battery.
It isn't intended as method to obtain industrial quantities of hydrogen for modern uses, but rather to quickly get enough of it to use as the working fluid on a few Stirling Engines to compare the difference in efficiencies with air-filled engines.
As for hydrogen ITL, I don't see any reason which would increase the demand for it, nor technical or economic pressures that would change its pace of development in comparison to OTL.
To add to this, CSP - which represents the preferred form of solar power in this world - will be limited in the amount of heat it can generate and use, but it should be very flexible in the temperatures it can reach using that heat.
Speaking of which, the next developments will focus on the different methods to tackle the intermittency problem. I may send both you some PMs with spoilers for the different methods, if you don't mind to be mildly spoiled.
Oh boy, a heat engine with hydrogen as a working fluid? That sounds very spicy. Spring a leak too close to the hot reservoir and you've got yourself a flamethrower. But it could gain fair popularity if they get the seals good enough. One thing I wonder is how often the hydrogen will need to be topped off- that stuff is notorious for gradually defusing out of any container you try to keep it in.
"Working Fluid" in this case means a gas at Normal Conditions initially. Not a mass large enough to make anything more than a single puff before turning into water.
I'm not particularly aware of the state of the art of gas sealing in 1890s (although hydrogen airships were made in this period). If it "good enough", then replacing the outgassing losses won't be a problem, as the hydrogen can be produced onsite even with an inefficient hydrolysis setup.
BTW, this week I'll buy a Leuchttrum 1917 notebook for this story. It should help me improve its quality.
Teaser 1: The Monsters of Atacama
Daily Coal Tonne Equivalent at minimum insolation, with the yearly equivalent of Anthracite and human figure to scale
(work in progress)
After making some experiments in Blender and some calculations, a mirror with a radius of 25 meters should produce the equivalent of 1 tonne of anthracite of energy during the Winter Solstice in Almonte.
The cube is the total yearly production of energy as anthracite.
(work in progress)
After making some experiments in Blender and some calculations, a mirror with a radius of 25 meters should produce the equivalent of 1 tonne of anthracite of energy during the Winter Solstice in Almonte.
The cube is the total yearly production of energy as anthracite.
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Turning those is sure to cause some accidents. The massive mechanisms needed to move them accurately are going to need a lot of care. But propably still less than coal mining
This timeline is definitely gonna see a lot less Zeppelin's in WW1 if you could just burn a hole straight through the dirigibles material.
I will say though, maybe I'm wrong because if you were able to weaponize it and give it a decent enough range it could also make trench warfare as we know it obsolete.
Like, imagine how horrifying it would be if you and your platoon came across a friendly trench and it's full of Vapourized Skeletons like Spiderman 1:
It's been established that even a early model of those could melt rocks. I don't think even bones could survive at temperatures like that.
Pretty sure you don't need to sneak up with it, it's basically reflecting a concentrated beam of sunlight, I bet the range on one would be enough that as long as you can see the enemy you can possibly hit them. I think aiming them would be the real issue as it'd probably take so long to turn around to new targets it would be destroyed before hand.
A single cannon can take one out and works just as well at night
Heck rifle bullets will seriously damage the mirrors so I doubt the utility of it as a weapon
Randy
They focus light on a point directly in front of them, not in a beam. If you built one to focus further away, the energy concentrated would drop significantly. It won't have a 'range' much past its own length. Further, focusing it down towards a target on the ground would be a colossal loss of sunlight.
This is a very silly idea. Maybe for April fools?
Well it's a silly idea... which pretty much guarantees SOMEONE is going to play around with it
(And that it will feature in several "breathless" mad-science/wild-eyed novels and newspaper articles at some point)
Randy