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

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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] 1 points 1 month 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 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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