Banned yet again!

[Low-Q]

Tom,


Have you done any calculations on this?


I think, if the heat pump removes heat from a cold hole, the lower the temperature is in the cold hole the harder it is for the pump to run. The (after a while) very high pressure in the heated side of the pump will fight back on the pump so much you'll probably need much input work to run it.


So I have a suggestion: Have you seen the thread "Alternative expansion valve on heat pumps" at physicsforums.com?
I suggest that if the expansion valve is a rotating gerotor which is powered by the pressure, it can deliver parts of the invested energy back into the pump motor in order to increase the efficiency.


Vidar

[Tom Booth]

Tom,


Have you done any calculations on this?

No, not specifically,

The basic idea is running a heat engine between the ambient heat and the inside of an "ice box".

If the engine is converting the heat passing into the engine, then only some fraction of the heat is getting into the inside of the ice box through the engine, so to keep the ice box cold, the heat pump should only have to run intermittently, like any ordinary ice box or freezer. This is of course just a basic outline of Tesla's theory. Until someone actually tries such a set up, I would be reluctant to simply dismiss it off hand as "impossible".

The problem as I see it is that most conventional freezers have a very high starting torque while a heat engine generally has rather low torque.

What I think I might try using "off the shelf" components would be a conventional freezer, a conventional Stirling engine, batteries and an inverter.

First run the freezer on utility power till it is good and cold. Then start up the Stirling "running on ice" that is, running on the temperature difference between the ambient and the cold inside the freezer. Let the Stirling run a small generator to charger a battery. Connect an inverter to the battery and plug the freezer into the inverter.

The freezer should be as well insulated as possible. Probably better insulated than an off the shelf freezer, but adding extra insulation is not difficult.

Inverters are very efficient these days. have load sensing so they do not draw power unless there is a load and can deliver several times their rated output for heavy start up loads like a compressor.

If the engine then is REALLY running on the AMBIENT HEAT and converting it into electricity to charge the battery and little heat is getting into the freezer. That is, if the engine is running on the unlimited supply of ambient heat rather than "using up the cold" in the freezer, then I would think that such a set up would have no problem maintaining the charge on the batteries and probably also supporting some additional outside load, like powering some lights or appliances.

I'm thinking also that some ultra-capacitors might be better for storing energy than conventional lead acid batteries.

I think, if the heat pump removes heat from a cold hole, the lower the temperature is in the cold hole the harder it is for the pump to run. The (after a while) very high pressure in the heated side of the pump will fight back on the pump so much you'll probably need much input work to run it.

I don't really see this as a problem, at least not in the set up described here.

What I might try to do though is, if possible, rout the condenser coils of the freezer to the hot (ambient) side of the heat engine. These coils will be HOTTER than ambient while the freezer is running. Therefore the heat engine will gain some additional power (heat on its hot side) while the freezer is running. So the heat being removed from the freezer would supply some of the power for its own removal. Or as Tesla suggested - be "lifted up" out of the "cold hole" by its own energy.

So I have a suggestion: Have you seen the thread "Alternative expansion valve on heat pumps" at physicsforums.com?
I suggest that if the expansion valve is a rotating gerotor which is powered by the pressure, it can deliver parts of the invested energy back into the pump motor in order to increase the efficiency.

That might be another way of "bootstrapping" such a system but would require a more exotic and possibly more effective cooling system, possibly an "air cycle" system which produces a much greater temperature difference than a conventional freezer. Air cycle systems are generally considered "inefficient", for conventional cooling, primarily because the cold produced is far too extreme for most cooling purposes, (like minus 150 F) and produce a lot of "waste heat" as well (like 400 F) other than cryogenics and the like, but might be just the ticket for this application especially if the "waste" heat produced is also utilized.

About the Air Cycle System:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:MYccl5UojGYJ:www.grimsby.ac.uk/documents/defra/tech-aircycle.pdf+air+cycle+system+cryogenics&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjSyJpE2y6_gKnK2TwlYx3bjo7BcxGYj8hJJOte7tM2ORDY-gQISWoPGrfA_VpUr_T3_FiR93z63Z-Kc0MvW1no05swUETUSAAiHGEtcFCBU4GdUIjXWYaTFKTJVTesVVp4BiBg&sig=AHIEtbSlsRQt5F6kkM6RPl-6_zSZ_ZbTqg

I'm not dismissing your idea of bootstrapping the system to reclaim some energy, it is a good one, but I don't see a build up of heat as a problem, any excess heat  is simply dumped back to ambient as any conventional freezer would do. Some could be used to intermittently boost the power of the heat engine while the freezer is running.

[Tom Booth]

The second law of thermodynamics in conjuction with Carnot's theorm provides adequate explanation for why such a scheme cannot work. Take the time to understand why and stop wasting time with such pipe dreams

I believe the direct conversion of heat to electricity, leaving a "cold hole" as in nantenna technology proves Carnot and the Second Law wrong, even if it has only been demonstrated on a nano-scale. Wrong is wrong. Time has shown that what can be done on a nano-scale can be done on a macro-scale as well in other departments in time.

Your opinion has been noted, but does not curb my enthusiasm.

The so-called Second "Law" is IMO, no more than a working hypothesis that may hold true in most circumstances but is by no means absolute.

[Tom Booth]

If you had read my comments thoroughly I have already mentioned that nano scale devices may allow quantum tunneling of electrons to break 2LOT.

This is because this law it is actually only a statistical probability, but one that has only vanishingly small chance of being broken at normal scales.

a nantenna, apparently, has been demonstrated to work, apparently, reliably and repeatably. This to me does not seem like "only a vanishingly small chance". So far it may be just a tiny microchip, but there is nothing "chance" about it.

From what little I've read about it apparently the type of high frequency ac current produced is difficult to utilize and so far has just been burned up with a resistor or some such. There doesn't seem to be much information available about it but it does seem that it works and produces a "cold hole" in the ambient and outputs electricity. Even if the electricity cannot be utilized the COLD produced is real enough and constitutes a temperature difference created in the ambient.

Perhaps it would be possible to put thousands of these chips together to create a "heat sink" to run a heat engine on ambient heat even if the electricity from the chips themselves remained useless the temperature difference produced could be valuable on more than a nano-scale.

If you agree that  the 2LOT CAN be broken on a micro scale then I see no reason for your insistence that anyone abandon all hope that it might also be broken on a macro-scale with some ingenuity and application of what is proven or known.