DEC vs Thermal Conversion Efficiency

Thermal conversion is capped by the Carnot limit; direct conversion is not, because it never thermalizes the energy it collects.

Two ceilings

A steam plant's efficiency is bounded by the Carnot limit between its steam and its cold sink, and real plants land well below it. Direct energy conversion faces a different ceiling: how completely the collector geometry and biasing can decelerate and capture the incoming charged particles. It is limited by engineering of fields and electrodes, not by a temperature ratio.

Why the water story follows the conversion path

The cooling water a plant needs is proportional to the heat it must reject, which is the energy it fails to convert plus, for a steam plant, the entire rejected fraction. When most of the energy is converted electrically rather than thermally, the rejected heat that needs cooling shrinks dramatically, and with it the water.

Being careful with numbers

• The burner is a simulation study; conversion efficiency is a design target, not a measured result
• Even at the target, some energy becomes residual heat and must be cooled
• The frozen neutron fraction, 5.44%, is a floor on non-charged energy that always deposits as heat

The defensible statement

We do not claim the burner beats thermodynamics. We claim it uses a conversion mechanism that is not Carnot-bounded, so a larger share of energy becomes electricity and a smaller share becomes heat that needs water to reject. That shift, from thermal to direct conversion, is the whole basis of the water advantage.