This is the first comprehensive history of the steam engine in fifty years. It follows the development of reciprocating steam engines, from their earliest forms to the beginning of the twentieth century when they were replaced by steam turbines.

"The Most Powerful Idea in the World argues that the very notion of intellectual property drove not only the invention of the steam engine but also the entire Industrial Revolution." -- Back cover.

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While hydrogen is emerging as a clean alternative automotive fuel and energy storage medium, there are still numerous challenges to implementation, such as the economy of hydrogen production and deployment, expensive storage materials, energy intensive compression or liquefaction processes, and limited trial applications. Synthetic ammonia production, on the other hand, has been available on an industrial scale for nearly a century. Ammonia is one of the most-traded commodities globally and the second most-produced synthetic chemical after sulfuric acid. As an energy carrier, it enables effective hydrogen storage in chemical form by binding hydrogen atoms to atmospheric nitrogen. While ammonia as a fuel is still in its infancy, its unique properties render it as a potentially viable candidate for decarbonizing the automotive industry. Yet, lack of regulation and standards for automotive applications, technology readiness, and reliance on natural gas for both hydrogen feedstocks to generate the ammonia and facilitate hydrogen and nitrogen conversion into liquid ammonia add extra uncertainty to use scenarios. Unsettled Issues Concerning the Use of Green Ammonia Fuel in Ground Vehicles brings together collected knowledge on current and future prospects for the application of ammonia in ground vehicles, including the technological and regulatory challenges for this new type of clean fuel. Click here to access the full SAE EDGETM Research Report portfolio. https://doi.org/10.4271/EPR2021003

How capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy—but rather superior control of subordinate labour. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today. Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the burning heart of capital and demonstrates, in unprecedented depth, that turning down the heat will mean a radical overthrow of the current economic order.