This may be a blatantly obvious question but I've never heard about such a thing happening. Could this be possible in some way using a vacuum chamber to boil the water and spin a turbine?
[Physics] Since water boils at room temperature in a near vacuum, is it possible to use this to generate electricity in some way
electricityvacuumwater
Best Answer
Yes. If something is making water boil, then there must be a flow of heat. You can build a heat engine that extracts useful work (e.g., to generate electricity) from that heat flow.
Vacuum doesn't make water boil. Heat makes water boil.
When water boils, the vapor carries heat away. If you suddenly expose an open container of water to vacuum, two things will happen: (1) the water will start to boil, and (2) the water will get colder as it boils. When the water gets cold enough---maybe cold enough to freeze solid---the boiling will stop.
In order to continuously boil water, at any pressure, you must have a continuous supply of heat.
So, what you didn't ask was, would pulling vacuum on the outlet of a steam turbine improve its efficiency?
Well, here's the kicker: In large thermal power stations, that is what they actually do.
The working fluid in a large thermal power stations is de-mineralized water that flows in a closed loop. There is nothing but water in the loop (i.e., no air), so at the cold end of the turbines, where the temperature may be as low as the temperature of the cooling water that they draw from a nearby river, the pressure can be much less than atmospheric---almost vacuum.