Just did some maths on the energy in a small gas bottle ... crazy.
A Campingaz R907 (only 2.75 KG) can fill my fairly large 10kWh Lithium battery setup, even taking into account a 25% loss through the generator.
Fossil fuels FTW!
Discussion
Surprised me by an order of magnitude.
Can you please share the math? 🙏
I know that thermal efficiency of gas turbines/engines is something like ~30%.
Also they probably produce 230V AC, converting it to battery (~50DC) would add 10% loss for every conversion. This is good to keep in mind, but it's not directly affecting the comparsion. Because yes, fossils have higher energy density then any batteries we have.
Theoretical limit for internal combustion engine is effective of 46%.
In real life applications, where heat loss and other imperfections occurs it's more like 35%.
Here is excelent explanation: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/98992
Yep, I need to tidy it up and redo some bits as the AI slave slopped some bits up.
Energy density matters!
(I'm not convinced your generator is 75% efficient, though. 25% would be more typical.)
It also requires 9.85kg of Oxygen to burn. Still much denser than a battery and you don't have to include it for terrestrial applications, but that energy density isn't the whole story.
coal and charcoal are the most dense energy sources when oxygen is freely available, and charcoal is the best because it has already had the sulfur and nitrates driven out of it in teh process of producing it
i think gas has a big advantage though because especially methane is the closest to ideal for a 1:1 ratio of output CO2 and H2O so its combustion is very efficient
the main losses in these generators is waste heat, a water cooling system that heats useful hot water would probably push your ratio up a lot
you could go even further by capturing the H2O and CO2 and separating them and feeding one to your indoor garden and the other into the water supply, and the heat that is transferred out of the water condenser can be used to heat water or warm the air
and this all is based on the efficiencies of a piston driven ICE
i had a vivid experience of how much heat is wasted in electricity generation when i was in Romania some years back, being spattered with the condensed water coming out of the cooling tower of a power plant, i was like "there is so much energy going to waste here that i'm being rained on".
in bulgaria, they redirect that waste heat to distributing it to the commieblocks in nearby suburbs to run hot water systems and steam-driven heating radiators. the efficiency of bulgarian (and probably there is other places in eastern europe that do this) power generation is probably the highest in the world, and their primary fuel is coal. and they generate so much electricity that they sell it to most of their neighbours
More like 25% loss to be fair (bad AI!) still surprising though.