calling Maxwell's Daemon

[Omnibus]

@nul-points,

I'd be curious to see your reaction to what's going on above will be and whether you will report it to Stefan. Are you going to put me on par with these same disruptive elements again?

[nul-points]

the small cells I have totally respond to heat as well as pressure,(apply more pressure you get more heat,or apply more heat you get more pressure)..I believe it has to do with compressing the substructure but this does not account for how magnets seem to avoid these variances'

hi shylo

cell operation usually involves some level of chemical activity (avoiding the whole 'contact-potential/chemical' debate here).
  any chemical activity is subject to the relationship between Temperature, Pressure and Volume in which the chemical mix is situated

what you're most likely seeing is that by forcing one (or two) of these three parameters to change it's possible to affect the other(s).
  the rate or state of the chemical activity may be affected as a result

in our area of interest (voltage cells), the usual variable which might be under our control is temperature.
  however, physical movement of the internal structure can also improve chemical mix and reduce ion path distances to improve performance - but then, as you say, you're providing additional external energy to achieve this

i see you were asking about some aspects of the Vasilescu-Karpen battery.

my French isn't great, but i get the gist, in the 'power from ambient' PDF, that VK found that he could generate voltage if he used two fairly unreactive electrodes of the same metal(eg, platinum), with different size or thickness, and with water as the electrolyte.
  he recognised this as a 'concentration' type cell.
  if he replaced the platinum electrodes with gold then the voltage increased slightly.
  he replaced the water with air and could still generate (reduced) voltage - but if he removed the air the voltage disappeared.
  so the most active cell operation obviously relies on transport of ions  between the electrodes.
  his research was directed towards finding combinations of electrodes and electrolyte(s) which didn't consume the electrode metals.
  the battery in the museum which is still operational after 60 years uses very pure sulphuric acid as the electrolyte

i prefer to experiment with more easily obtained, and non-hazardous, chemicals as electrolytes in my DIY cell described here in this thread - hence i use starch and honey.
  also i'm currently using different metals for my electrodes, so my cell is related to the family of galvanic rather than concentration types

if you haven't already started a thread on your cell experiments, why not get something going?

as you can see from my list of threads above, there seems to be a growing body of evidence that it's possible to generate excess electricity using ambient heat, based on variations of voltage cell techniques.
  all the threads listed use quite different approaches, so there is plenty of room for individual contribution to knowledge in this field.
  it's a co-operative rather than competitive investigation of some fundamental mechanism which has been denied and/or avoided by 'mainstream' science due to insistence that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is an inherent mechanism of universal physics (which it's evidently not)

keep up the investigations!


@Omni
i've made it clear what is my attitude to thread-disruption

anyone who can stay within my guidelines of keeping posts on-topic (either positive, or constructive criticism) and civil doesn't need moderation here

my on-going communication with Stefan about disruption in general, and here in particular, will remain private unless one of us chooses to make it known

[nul-points]

It would have been interesting to measure the temperature dependence of the emf of an unattached battery and see if that regression curve you're showing of the voltage-time is non-trivial. If it is, as I suspect it is, then the ambient temperature differences as a source of the effect will be eliminated.

so, Omni,
  while we're waiting for the data to accumulate on the additional voltage-time test on an unattached and unused cell, here's the opportunity for you to explain what you had in mind

let's identify the relevant outcome states:-

a) the data shows no correlation between temperature and terminal voltage
  i) the o/c terminal voltage trend is increasing with time
  ii) the o/c terminal voltage trend is not increasing with time

b) the data does show correlation between temperature and terminal voltage
  i) the o/c terminal voltage trend is increasing with time
  ii) the o/c terminal voltage trend is not increasing with time

ok - so those are the 4 pertinent outcomes
  for the benefit of our readers:

- to which of these 4 outcomes were you referring above? ("...If it is, as i suspect it is...")

- if your intuition proves correct about that outcome, what do you think we'll have learnt as a result, about the system under test?

looking forward to hearing your answers to these two questions

thanks
sandy

[Omnibus]

@nul-point,

If the variation of the emf with temperature is what is expected to be and in both cases (attached and unattached cell) a raising voltage-time trend is observed then we should look more carefully into the unattached cell to see what is causing it to self-charge just by sitting in the lab, unattended. We don't even need to bother with the cell with the attached additional schematics to it.

If it is, however, seen that the emf variation with the temperature when cell is attached does not correlate with that dependence of the unattached cell, that would be even more interesting even if in both cases (attached and unattached cell) the voltage goes up in time. In that case not only we have to study what causes the voltage increase in time of the unattached cell but also why the cell connected to the schematic exhibits that anomalous temperature dependence.

Of course, the really interesting case would be if the unattached cell not only demonstrates a different emf-temperature dependence but also that same unattached cell performs as any known cell would -- its voltage-time culre sloping down to lower emf -- while the attached cell reproduces the behavior you are reporting.

Now, of course, I'd like to know more about your view of the possible mechanism underlyng your findings, if real, as well as discuss what we've learned form the test but before that I'd like to see the result from the parallel experiment. That's more systematic, I think.

[nul-points]

@Omni

ok, so if i interpret your answer correctly, your 1st para relates to outcome b-i)
(unattached cell voltage correlates with temp & voltage-time shows rising trend)

your second para relates to outcome a-i)
(unattached cell voltage does not correlate with temp but voltage-time still shows rising trend)

your third para relates to outcome a-ii)
(unattached cell voltage does not correlate with temp & voltage-time does not show rising trend)

interestingly, you don't comment on the possibility of outcome b-ii)
(unattached cell voltage still correlates with temp but voltage-time doesn't show rising trend)

i only have a few days data so far for the unattached cell, so it's too early yet to start drawing any conclusions
  (also, i accidentally flexed the cell foil when attempting to make a reading in the second 24hr period, which will have disturbed the state of the cell somewhat, so allowance will need to made for the system to settle again before resuming interpretation of subsequent readings)


what i find interesting about your intended interpretation of my upcoming test data is that you expect to be able to draw conclusions about a cell-system's behaviour independently from its on-load state (ie. "...We don't even need to bother with the cell with the attached additional schematics to it.")

while i agree that there are some useful things to observe about the unattached cell itself (eg. we might expect some degree of temperature-dependence in the off-load voltage, or observe a self-discharge rate, say), the electrochemical activity of operational cells is so much bound up with the internal transport of ions caused by changes in electrode charge, due to electron transport in the external circuit, that i'm surprised you're suggesting an individual component-based, rather than holistic, approach towards understanding this self-sustaining behaviour of the cells


anyway, whatever the eventual outcome of my additional tests, i feel that there will be more features of interest to learn about this particular corner of our energy investigations

at the moment, all i can do is report the data which shows a trend of steady increase in on-load battery voltage of my DIY cells and a high degree of thermal coefficient and correlation with ambient temperature - so i think it's safe to say that excess electrical energy in this system will have been converted, to a large extent, from some aspect of environmental heat

i also think it's significant that many other threads are now, or have previously been, reporting similar behaviour of cells, even when the actual cell construction can be quite different between them all

interesting days!