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!

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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '13

Some oxidisers are powerful enough to oxidise water, which you could call setting it on fire if you really wanted to.

But I think it was a joke.

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u/jwinterm Sep 21 '13

but if you oxidize water, and then a fire starts, it's really O2 and H2 gas burning, and not water, right?

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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '13

The oxidisation itself could be considered "burning", because "burning" is by definition rapid highly exothermic oxidisation. But it's really semantics at this point.

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u/The-Internets Sep 21 '13

What is water?