I think I've found Maxwell's Demon, however the demon is quite large...

[Nabo00o]

Interesting but you didn't mention the two most important parameters. What was the height of the tube and what fluid or gas did you use? Also how could the temperature probe be affected by the ceiling if it was supposed to be inside the insulated tube? And finally, what was the accuracy of your thermometers?

And don't be so hasty with debunking it  . Only a fool would conclude final results after one test.

Hmm, if he used the well idea he talked about earlier it is many many meters.
Otherwise there might also be some holes in my theory about water's ability to do this, although I think I have heard mention of it in other situations. I would believe air could work better, but give less capacity, maybe.....

Actual temperature inversion means that air for example will create a very thin layer between hot and cold air which keeps them separated, but my idea doesn't exclusively rely on it....

Julian

[broli]

Hey Broli, yeah it has been a while, actually also a while since I have been on the forum.

First I think something like the insulator you proposed would work very well, as long as it is thin enough to allow some water or other fluid left inside.

Second, here is how I see it. If there were no buoyancy, then the temperature should have remained at whatever it was to begin with, and probably equally distributed all inside the volume.
When we then introduce heat exchangers like the coils, the temperature inside and outside should equal with enough time, so no gradients there.

Okey, to the confusion. With buoyancy, but 'without' the heat exchanger, the bottom would be colder then the otherwise average inside temperature, and this would also keep the inside temperature as a total conserved. But since we have a heat exchanger at the bottom, it will fight that change and keep the bottom at the outside temperature, given its heat conductive capacity is higher than the inside buoyancy forced temperature separation, which it probably is.....

So the bottom will stay at the outside temperature, but there should at the same time be created a gradient, and the top of that gradient must be at some value higher than the original temperature, because of the methods here used. At least I strongly believe so.


And from here it is a simple task of connecting the top high temperature of one tube to the bottom low temperature of the next tube, thus helping the heat to flow, and kinda works like connecting two or more batteries in series. If we want this heat to be transferred at a fast rate, something called a heat pipe would aid this process tremendously, but it is probably not cheap at a bigger scale than the one found in my laptop's cpu.

Also...... I have had some new ideas about this concept, partially inspired by the vortex tube.
Since gravity decides the power of buoyancy, what about replacing that force with centrifugal force, which can be much much higher....

Julian

That's a very good idea. The force can be easily made 10,000 time stronger than gravity. But it would be much more complex than the array solution. I believe lumen's experiment could be successful if the height was raised more and insulated better. This would give use a good constant as to the delta of temperate compared to acceleration of gravity. But like he suggested I believe it's small. If for instance it's 0.001°C per meter then we would need many kilometers  . But making it 10,000x bigger would result in perhaps 10°C per meter in radius. Which is much more interesting.

But to be honest this is the kind of research requiring some big funding.

[lumen]

Interesting but you didn't mention the two most important parameters. What was the height of the tube and what fluid or gas did you use? Also how could the temperature probe be affected by the ceiling if it was supposed to be inside the insulated tube? And finally, what was the accuracy of your thermometers?

And don't be so hasty with debunking it  . Only a fool would conclude final results after one test.

@Broli,

I was mostly trying to avoid all the details, but the test ran for about 3 months because I was so disappointed I just left it there and every time I went out to the shed, I would look at it.

The cooking thermometers are only accurate to one degree F, but they read exactly the same. In fact they were so well matched, I could unplug them from the thermocouple and swap them and they would still read the same, or the same difference.

The tube was built from full length 10 foot tubes, and I had a fill plug on one end. I originally started with warm water and shook it up to make everything equal at the start, and it was.

I did see about a two degree change with the top warmer shortly after starting and thought it was going to show some good results, but it just went down hill from there.

I also bought a vacuum gauge to mount on the tube to monitor the vacuum status but the test showed poor results and I never installed the gauge.

The gauge would have been important since I knew the starting vacuum was about 23in Hg using a refrigeration vac pump, but the final vacuum when I finally dismantled the device was zero.

So given that in the end the main insulator was missing, and that I have no way to know when it went dead, the final results are inconclusive.

I thought this is important since I don't want to discourage anyone from doing their own testing by showing the results are conclusive when they are not.

[Nabo00o]

@lumen
I am very glad that you actually built a test unit to see if it could work. It sounded very tempting and easy, but maybe it wasn't that simple 

In any case I should as well try to make a simple setup and see if it could register at least a little bit.
But yeah, this is one of those experiments primarily about proving a point, rather than doing something useful..., which again might be a bad goal.

@Broli
When I first thought of using rotation, I thought of a big wheel rotating with fluid inside, and somehow tap the temperature gradient inside it, but it would be very complex.
Then, what if we instead have a stationary wheel-shaped storage with fluid inside, where a single and simple propeller accelerates the fluid to very high speeds. It would be much easier to collect the heat from such a device, and in a way it resembles the vortex tube.

Julian

[broli]

@lumen
I am very glad that you actually built a test unit to see if it could work. It sounded very tempting and easy, but maybe it wasn't that simple 

In any case I should as well try to make a simple setup and see if it could register at least a little bit.
But yeah, this is one of those experiments primarily about proving a point, rather than doing something useful..., which again might be a bad goal.

@Broli
When I first thought of using rotation, I thought of a big wheel rotating with fluid inside, and somehow tap the temperature gradient inside it, but it would be very complex.
Then, what if we instead have a stationary wheel-shaped storage with fluid inside, where a single and simple propeller accelerates the fluid to very high speeds. It would be much easier to collect the heat from such a device, and in a way it resembles the vortex tube.

Julian

Julian, you're always one step ahead. In my head I had this monstrous device stacked, connected with others and filled with water. But your solution is much more elegant. It's funny I didn't even think about that seeing I built magnetic stirs to make water vortices.

This puts it back in the world of the garage tinkerer. Good thinking  .