Tesla's Ambient Heat Engine Theory - Right or Wrong ?

[vasik041]

There appears to be no compressor

We have free "compressor" - gravity

Also there is no indication of any means of power output.

there is a "turbine" near reservoir top on right side

yes, picture is not perfect

[pix]

What constitutes "the output of a heatpump" ?

Heat, right ?

But Tesla was not proposing running an engine on the output of a heat pump. Rather he was proposing running an engine on Ambient heat. Ambient heat does not have to be created or "pumped" it is just there.

Sorry, but every Heat Pump COP>1 is because it draws energy from AMBIENT Air.
Every low temperature boiling liquid, like commonly used refrigerants will exchange energy from surrounding air through evaporator coils.
If, for example at given compressor suction pressure refrigerant still boils at - 30 degC, it will exchange energy from surrounding air at -10 degC.
It is a matter of temperature difference of evaporating refrigerant and surrounding AMBIENT medium- air, ground or water.


Cheers,
Pix

[pix]

you can build something like this

Nothing new under the Sun :-)
Every ORC system will do better. Let's take a look at his one, for example:
http://matteranenergy.us/animation.html


Cheers,
pix

[Tom Booth]

We have free "compressor" - gravity
there is a "turbine" near reservoir top on right side

yes, picture is not perfect

OK, the question on my mind then is; if it were that simple, why hasn't it been done and in use long ago generating free power for everyone already?

The same question could be asked regarding my own, or Tesla's version of the idea, which is, as far as I can figure, a heat engine driving a heat-pump of some kind which delivers the "fuel" (heat) to run the heat engine, or rather, in actual fact, I believe that Tesla's idea was to use the heat-pump or refrigeration system to throw off excess heat from the heat-sink, the ambient heat being a given free for the taking.

He said: "Heat, though following certain general laws of mechanics, like a fluid, is not such; it is energy which may be converted into other forms of energy as it passes from a high to a low level...   If the process of heat transformation were absolutely perfect, no heat at all would arrive at the low level, since all of it would be converted into other forms of energy...  We would thus produce, by expending initially a certain amount of work to create a sink for the heat ... to flow in, a condition enabling us to get any amount of energy without further effort.  This would be an ideal way of obtaining motive power.  We do not know of any such absolutely perfect process of heat-conversion, and consequently some heat will generally reach the low level, ... necessitating continuous pumping out.  But evidently there will be less to pump out than flows in, or, in other words, less energy will be needed to maintain the initial condition than is developed by the fall, and this is to say that some energy will be gained from the medium.  What is not converted in flowing down can just be raised up with its own energy, and what is converted is clear gain. Thus the virtue of the principle I have discovered resides wholly in the conversion of the energy on the downward flow."

The whole idea being to create and maintain an artificial heat sink or "cold hole" for the sake of having a temperature differential to run a heat engine. As the heat being extracted from the "cold hole" can be easily reclaimed and used as Tesla claimed: "What is not converted in flowing down can just be raised up with its own energy"

This all seems relatively simple and straightforward to me. Yet since Tesla wrote his paper, scouring the internet for the past several years I haven't come across a single instance of anyone actually attempting to build any such device.

I suspect one of the main reasons is that it is perceived to be an impossibility in the mind of many and so there has been a reluctance to invest any time, money or effort in something that is clearly a violation of the second law of thermodynamics (in the opinion of many).

"The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1915), chapter 4

I do tend to think though that Tesla had it slightly wrong.

Pumping the heat out of a "cold hole" and raising it back up and depositing it at a higher temperature is looking at it backwards. It is difficult and IMO unnecessary.

The heat pump rather should fist concentrate and use the heat from the atmosphere first, dump any excess, the cold is what's left over. It would be, IMO, easier to remove the excess heat while it is already at a higher than ambient temperature rather than attempt to remove it from the "cold hole" directly. Use the heat as much as possible dump the excess and then simply deposit the cold into the cold hole.

In that way you are removing the excess heat BEFORE it gets into the "cold hole" rather than after.

I don't think that the second law even applies where a physical substance, like air molecules, are moving through the system. Warm air being compressed to concentrate and remove/convert the heat therein to another form of energy, the cold spent air then being exhausted.

I think of it this way: Imagine a heat engine is a gasoline engine. Air molecules are like little cans of gasoline. The sun fills these little gas cans with fuel.

I see no problem with an engine running some kind of pump to deliver cans of fuel to itself and then discarding the empty cans. I don't think anyone would argue that such a thing is an impossibility.

[DaS Energy]

First rule of inventing is forget what you have been taught for they are wrong. Do what your own eyes tell you and you will get it right.

With regard to the doomsayers, making a piston slide up and down a pipe is so simple, yet it took many a million of years before man did so!