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What's a technology that was cooler in its older iterations? (pawb.social)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

481 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't mean BETTER. That's a different conversation. I mean cooler.

An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.

If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.

That's just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's why I'm hoping that hydrogen ICE become a thing instead of going to full electric.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It won't. Hydrogen has terrible efficiency even when fuel cells are in the pipeline. Putting it in an ICE only makes it worse. It'll have some racing applications, but that's it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You have any sources for this? A quick glance at wikipedia says that hydrogen ICE has about the same energy efficiency as gasoline, if the engine is properly tuned.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yes, that's correct. Fuel cell efficiency is over 60%. The best gasoline ICE is around 50%, and hydrogen isn't going to be much better.

The problem becomes especially apparent when you stack the end to end efficiency together. Grid -> battery for battery EVs, and grid -> electrolysis -> fuel cell for hydrogen. There's a couple of different ways to run these numbers (are you using 120VAC or 240VAC or DC, for example), but when using like-for-like comparisons as much as you can, batteries tend to win at efficiency by a lot. Running hydrogen through an ICE is only going to make its biggest flaw even worse.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f0d42f16639a745affd633e/t/613226c869673e5e75509ffb/1630676682830/Why-Battery-Electric-Vehicles-Beat-Hydrogen-Electric-Vehicles.jpeg

Edit: there is a recent breakthrough in fuel cell efficiency that might put it on par with batteries. Note that even if it works in production cars, a fuel cell would be turning an electric motor, not an ICE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISuUlc8widc