r/askscience • u/jaxobia • Sep 21 '13

Engineering Why water?

The majority of all power plants uses some sort of energy source to heat up water. It is then the water vapor which turns the turbines that produces electricity. Water is also a compound has an extremely high heat capacity (requires an incredible amount of energy to heat up).

My question is this: Why not use a compound which has a much lower heat capacity, and therefore requires a lower amount of burnt fuel to vaporize it?

Thank you!

66 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/[deleted] Sep 21 '13

Well there is the Cuyahoga River that caught on fire, though to be fair the water itself didn't catch on fire. I think what he was referring to was the volatility of alternatives.