Heat Pump / Refrigeration. Can same overunity concept apply to Eletronics???

[larsth]

In mechanical engineering your typical quality heat pump / refrigeration unit is over unity in respect to the physical work put in.

Mechanical Work + Ambient Energy(Heat, fluid as exchange medium)   = Output Energy(Heat, fluid as exchange medium)

No violation of conservation of energy but more energy put out than in.
Note the extraction of ambient energy results in observed cooling

Can one not use this to create a self sustaining loop?
My understanding is that efficiency losses would be too high from a thermal/mechanical system..carnot efficiency etc.

Has or could a similar concept be made using electronics? Electric mediums are far more efficient.

E in   + E ambient (Electric/Magnetic transfer medium)        =  E out (Electric/Magnetic transfer medium)

E out (Electric/Magnetic transfer medium) - E in - E losses  =  Extracted useful electrical energy

Is it out there?

[joegatt]

Firstly, you're right about efficiency. I believe the conversion efficiency of heat engines like the stirling engine is about 30 percent. Electrically, using present day thermo-converters this actually gets much worse, though there is plenty of research going on to improve this. A recent patent by Lonnie Johnson suggests that a big step forward has already been achieved.

Secondly, entropy is an important part of the picture. The sum of the entropy inside and outside the heated area must tend towards a higher value. The amount of "order" being provided to the system by collecting the heat in one place is more than made up for by the amount of "disorder" brought about by releasing the driving energy from its source.  Clearly such a requirement can never be self-running.

What is interesting, is that the larger part of domestic energy consumption is used for heating and that even with present day technology, we can do more to benefit from heat pumps.  Already there are commercial water heaters that use the same heat pump principles as air conditioners.  Some manufacturers have even got round to keeping the system efficient when the ambient temperature outside is very low.

I predict that if the next generation of solid state electronic heat pumps reach the predicted level of performance (close to the theoretical maximum) we will have super efficient electric kettles for the summer that can provide the user with a cool breeze.

Regards
Joseph

[joegatt]

I was pondering the advantage of using a heat pump to heat the hot chamber of a stirling engine, and may have stumbled on the proof why the stirling engine efficiency can never exceed one third.

Given that the efficiency of electric motors is easily over 90 percent, no one would normally consider using electric heating for the hot end of a stirling engine. But what if you would heat it using a heat pump?  Better still, what if you use the heat pump to both heat the hot end and cool the cool end of the machine?

The diagram included shows this schematically. A and B are two well insulated heat reservoirs. The heat pump transfers heat from B to A, while the stirling engine runs on the heat as it travels down the temperature gradient from A to B. After some time a steady state is reached where the temperature of each reservoir is constant. When this happens the amount of heat Q being pumped by the heat pump equals the amount of heat Q passing through the stirling engine. Now, we know from experience that the amount of heat Q transferred by the heat pump can, at best, be three times the driving energy. (If it has to work against a high temperature difference, this value can be much less). So for the principle of conservation of energy to hold true, the mechanical output of the stirling engine can only be one third of the heat flowing through.

Regards
Joseph

[lancaIV]

www.io.com/~frg      :  MEMS-TAR = electron-pump
when you want to analogize then read and think about the Torribio Bellocq-publications,
"virtually use" the     www.larbombas.pt/    ( real commercial available !) heatpump  ,optimize the
performance of the e-pump-motor with a softdriver
 and "virtually use an" efficient heat-engine ,
at least calculate by yourself which C.O.P.-relations you will need for each energie-transformation to
get your wished overunity-effect !

Best trial success
CdL 

[franklin1990]

           So mechanical energy has the big  role in any heat pumps.
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