They’re rapidly being converted into generators to meet A.I.’s insatiable demand for electricity. Environmentalists call it a step backward.

Archived copy of the article

  • o8bepbua9@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    7 hours ago

    That’s true, it’s not as bad as I was originally thinking. However, there’s probably a reason traditional power plants never use jet engines for power production. According to this article, “But repurposed aircraft turbines tend to be less efficient and more polluting than engines designed for conventional gas-burning plants.”

    • sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 hours ago

      However, there’s probably a reason traditional power plants never use jet engines for power production.

      They don’t use used jet engines, no. But a gas for a gas power plant shares many engineering principles with jet engines, and often many shared parts.

      And generally, for stationary plants, the heat of the exhaust can be used to boil steam and get another cycle’s worth of work out of the heat, for even greater efficiency.