Steampunk Tech Without Fossil Fuels

[Tyneras]

How far and how capable can steampunk technology be if there are no fossil fuels available? Other sources of fuel, such as trees and animals, are available and known about but there is simply no coal or oil or natural gas deposits to exploit. The technology is already known, so no issues of advancing up the tech tree, just what can be done.

Establishing this allows me to build off it as a base. Its a larger universe where some worlds have fossil fuels and others do not.

Presume that electricity is a strict no-go. It simply cannot be harnessed in any useful way.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

How far and how capable can steampunk technology be if there are no fossil fuels available?

It doesn't really change what's possible, it just makes it really expensive.

[AlexanderHowl]

We do not have to rule out electricity because electricity just remains a curiosity without fossil fuels. On a world without fossil fuels, your technology depends on biofuels, which are sharply limited by the production of wood and alcohol. Without coal, it becomes incredibly difficult to create the quality of iron needed for TL5, which means that you would need a substitute. Bronze is the only acceptable substitute for iron in any real quality before TL7, which would require more copper and more tin in the world.

Without fossil fuels, a steampunk world requires around one hundred times the copper and tin as the Earth, which is within the realm of feasibility (for example, silver is much more common on the surface of the Earth than it is in the Main Belt, so the allocation of resources is obviously random in the Sol System). With bronze steampunk, you could develop a modest civilization that depended on biofuels for propulsion and solar, water, and wind for energy. Since the biofuels would sharply limit the available energy, the population would likely never exceed 1 billion people.

[mlangsdorf]

Charcoal apparently has roughly the same amount of energy per unit mass as coal, but a quarter of the specific density. Charcoal powered steam vehicles are possible, but will have to devote more space to bunkerage. For fixed machines and rail trains, that's not a big deal, but armored vehicles generally want to be as compact as possible. A charcoal powered ironclad ship is going to be slower and heavier, or have worse range, than a comparable coal powered ship.

The big issue is without coal you can't have coke. Your metallurgy is going to be worse. It might not make that big a difference, but overall, I think all of this cultur's machines would be more expensive for worse performance than comparable machines from our history.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Charcoal apparently has roughly the same amount of energy per unit mass as coal, but a quarter of the specific density. Charcoal powered steam vehicles are possible, but will have to devote more space to bunkerage.

Or you can compress it.

[whswhs]

(1) There's no reason to rule out electricity, because it's not an energy source (unless you have some really exotic technology for attracting and storing lightning!). It's a medium for transmitting energy, and a more effective one than hydraulics, pneumatics, or steam pipes, which in turn are more effective than belts or gears. The energy still has to be generated or collected; in our world, for example, the majority of electric long came, and I think still comes, from fossil fuel plants.

(2) The industrial revolution was already started when steam engines became practical as power sources. The dominant power source was more efficient water mills, with windmills as a secondary source (wind is both less energetic and less steady). In some places you could have tidal mills. You could perfectly well use them to power generators. Or you could use the belts and wheels or early factories, though you waste a lot more power than way.

(3) If you want to postulate a more geologically active world, you can envision steam power from geothermal sources as an option.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The energy still has to be generated or collected; in our world, for example, the majority of electric long came, and I think still comes, from fossil fuel plants.

Currently it's at 62%, which is the lowest it's ever been (18% renewables, 20% nuclear; nuclear is stable, renewables are increasing).

[Phil Masters]

Aesthetically (and I'm sorry, "steampunk" is an aesthetic, not a form of technology), steampunk pretty much depends on the presence of cheap, fairly compact thermal energy sources -- cheap enough to be used inefficiently, to work metals into big chunky contraptions with heavy construction and lots of rivets, and then to power them with external combustion engines.

So I'm not seeing this idea as working. The nearest you might come is a Frankensteinian biopunk world.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Or you can compress it.

Nice! Charcoal briquettes approach a specific density of 1, versus ~0.8 for coal. Though apparently you lose some energy density in the process - about 20% to 30% as far as I can tell.

It looks like a 40:60 mix of raw charcoal to briquettes gets you about 85% of the energy density of charcoal at 85% of the specific density, which is good enough. If needed, you can vary that depending on the application: fixed installations are going to want uncompressed charcoal because it's cheaper, armored vehicles would probably want 100% briquettes to reduce the size of the armor coverage.

[Dalillama]

If you plan to run an industrial revolution on charcoal, you best make sure you have access to really, really big forests.