Burning things for heat is never going away as long as humans are around, there’s always going to be someone “off-grid” which means you’re more than likely gonna be burning something for cooking and warmth (ie heat)
I love induction hobs, electric cars & planes, xenon spacecraft and all that, but even if we get to interstellar travel, there’s going to be a frontier where people are going to be using the lowest maintenance, easiest way to generate immediate heat, even if it’s from solar/fusion powered hydrogen or ethanol generators. It’s just a lot easier to store and release small but much larger than instantaneous generation amounts of energy as flammable substances than in batteries or pumped storage or whatever else.
If we don’t get to interstellar travel, I expect we’ll still have the same in remote regions on earth/our solar system.
Very good point, but oxygen is very abundant and you’ll more than likely already have oxygen generators with a level of redundancy, or be in an atmosphere with oxygen.
Also for load balancing you could constantly be splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, then react them back into water when you need a large amount of energy at once as an alternative to electrical batteries which degrades less over time, if heat is all you want at least.
All I’m saying is there’s so many applications that we’re never going to get to a level of 0.
If your water splitters are running, you should really just use the electricity they’re on to generate heat. Fire is especially dangerous in enclosed spaces.
Also for load balancing you could constantly be splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, then react them back into water when you need a large amount of energy at once as an alternative to electrical batteries which degrades less over time, if heat is all you want at least.
Some kind of combustion with oxidiser built in might always have an application. Chemical rocket boosters maybe? (Hydrogen specifically can also be turned back into electricity with like 80% efficiency in a fuel cell, FYI, although it’s sooo hard to store)
I suppose there might be The Martian-esque edge cases as well, where more complex, controlled chemical reactions are temporarily impractical, but like in the book and movie that’s highly unsustainable and you’ll die if you’re stuck doing it for long.
Burning things for heat is never going away as long as humans are around, there’s always going to be someone “off-grid” which means you’re more than likely gonna be burning something for cooking and warmth (ie heat)
You don’t think humans will ever, even theoretically, reach a point where there is no need to burn things for heat?
Nope.
I love induction hobs, electric cars & planes, xenon spacecraft and all that, but even if we get to interstellar travel, there’s going to be a frontier where people are going to be using the lowest maintenance, easiest way to generate immediate heat, even if it’s from solar/fusion powered hydrogen or ethanol generators. It’s just a lot easier to store and release small but much larger than instantaneous generation amounts of energy as flammable substances than in batteries or pumped storage or whatever else.
If we don’t get to interstellar travel, I expect we’ll still have the same in remote regions on earth/our solar system.
Burning random stuff for heat requires cheap, abundant oxygen, though.
Very good point, but oxygen is very abundant and you’ll more than likely already have oxygen generators with a level of redundancy, or be in an atmosphere with oxygen.
Also for load balancing you could constantly be splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, then react them back into water when you need a large amount of energy at once as an alternative to electrical batteries which degrades less over time, if heat is all you want at least.
All I’m saying is there’s so many applications that we’re never going to get to a level of 0.
If your water splitters are running, you should really just use the electricity they’re on to generate heat. Fire is especially dangerous in enclosed spaces.
Some kind of combustion with oxidiser built in might always have an application. Chemical rocket boosters maybe? (Hydrogen specifically can also be turned back into electricity with like 80% efficiency in a fuel cell, FYI, although it’s sooo hard to store)
I suppose there might be The Martian-esque edge cases as well, where more complex, controlled chemical reactions are temporarily impractical, but like in the book and movie that’s highly unsustainable and you’ll die if you’re stuck doing it for long.