Or if it's cold enough in comparison to the earth constant, you could make a farm of 30ft sterling engines, one side exposed to the open, one side buried to the constant geothermal temp. If big enough, it wouldn't matter how slow the pistons "fired", there should be enough inertia on a piston that big to at least make a phone call.

I love these kick arounds of how to steal energy. One of my favorite topics.

I still don't know why we haven't installed giant hamster wheels in the lines for unemployment and welfare offices. THAT is a huge waste of energy that we could be getting at least a trickle back on.

 

Or if it's cold enough in comparison to the earth constant, you could make a farm of 30ft sterling engines, one side exposed to the open, one side buried to the constant geothermal temp..

I do not think the real thermal solution will come from temperature difference - sure - we could do that now with a large array of seebeck devices..

I believe the solution lies with actually harvesting the thermal energy directly and converting this to electrical energy.. This conversion process would result in a drop in the temperature of the harvester - this drop would result in the harvester 'attracting' heat with greater efficiency.

Even at temperatures < 0 C, there is still a HUGE quantity of thermal energy in gas, and much more in water.. Take sea water, pump it through a 'harvester' which causes the output water to be (say) 10C lower than the input water, the energy difference per volume passed through the harvester would be huge - and this would be taken out as electrical energy......
............... Except that I dont know how to do this.. Even at a theoretical level.. I have looked at tapping induced potentials from magnetic particles (which is how I think the Floyd Sweet VTA may have worked, if it did indeed work) - I have looked at monolayer films with piezo or other materials lining the inside of a collection 'chamber', which responded and 'harvested' energy from molecular (thermal / brownian) impacts - But the ageragate energy is the sum of random impacts, and requires rectification / charge storage / delivery for each molecular impact.. Beyond my capabilities even at a theoretical level..

I also love playing with 'crazy' ideas.. But some of these ideas may be more useful than just as entertainment..

'Einstien's refrigerator' is an example of one .. A patent (US Patent 1,781,541 Nov 11 1930) granted to Einstien and Szilard and assigned to Electrolux, which was 'sat on' all these years.. The technology in this patent can effectively convert heat to cooling, and does not require a pump or CFC's (If this design had become the standard, we would not have had the Ozone layer hole!)..
This invention is waiting to be exploited.. With todays high temperatures (particularly in cities) and the demand for cooling / air conditioning, and the environmental cost of the power these consume, it is time to take this design and convert it to use heat available 'outside', and produce cooling 'inside' without any power being required... I have presented this idea to my (past) sponsors - but no one is interested!

 

Einstein and Szilard's magnetically pumped refrigerator was too noisy to live with - at least according to the accounts of it I have come across. It was lots less dangerous than the H2S refrigerators of the day, though. I have been around an old GE monitor top that cooled with hydrogen sulfide, and just the faintest odor of it could be detected. I have read of families being suffocated when the seals failed on one of those monsters.

Not all Einstein's ideas were great - look up articles on the wing he designed for the German Air Force (did they call it the Luftwaffe back then?) in WWI.

Solar power may pull us through yet. Anything to get rid of acid rain and all those heavy metals coming out of coal plant stacks. Not to mention the poor life expectancy of coal miners.

 

Einstein and Szilard's magnetically pumped refrigerator was too noisy to live with - at least according to the accounts of it I have come across..

Perhaps there were more than one refrigerator designs / patents (?).. The patent I saw had no magnetic components at all - 'pumping' was done purely by convection, with the nature of the chemicals chosen providing the flow.. An example was using butane as the refrigerant, amonia as the water-soluble inert gas, and water. Stratification occurs with the liquid butane floating on the water / amonia mixture - the introduction of heat causes the amonia to seperate from the water and is part of the 'pumping' mechanism.

Agreed - not everything Einstien came up with was perfect.. I think he perhaps was wrong about a lot of things.. And I am no expert on refrigerators! - But the patent I have seen looks elegant in its simplicity - and looks (at least) worthy of investigation..

To me, it looks like all that is required is a source of heat applied to the generator (#29 in the patent diagrams) and the exit from this (#36), and a convection driven cooling path (#12) which is taken to a heat sink (perhaps underground in the case of a large air-conditioning system)..

But, as I have said - I am no expert .. The above may be baloney!

 

It was lots less dangerous than the H2S refrigerators of the day, though. I have been around an old GE monitor top that cooled with hydrogen sulfide, and just the faintest odor of it could be detected. I have read of families being suffocated when the seals failed on one of those monsters.
.

I have heard that it was the death of a family from a leaky refrigerator which inspired Einstein and Szilard to invent their refrigerator.

 

Oops, the refrigerator design I referred to was one they did in Germany in 1934, patented with AEG.

 

Oops, the refrigerator design I referred to was one they did in Germany in 1934, patented with AEG.

Hmm.. This is a bit worrying.. Having invented a refrigerator which did not need a pump, in 1930 - Why another design using a pump in 1934? .. Perhaps there is a flaw in the concept of the 1930 design..
.. Or perhaps they wanted to make money from both Electrolux and AEG.. (?!)

 

The flaw might the the explosively flammable nature of the butane. There are so-called kerosene reefers available that use a kerosene heater to vaporise ammonia, which condenses to pull heat out of the insulated box. When one of those leaks, you leave holding your nose. When a butane/ammonia unit leaks, you leave at high velocity and in pieces.

 

There are also propane fired ammonia boiler refers. They are quite common in RVs.

 

Hi i have done such thing you say with fly wheel but it didn't work and hardly i am looking fr it to be possible and unfortunately i could not do it yet hope one it be possible for me then put all my information for others.
good luck media

 

Maybe you could bullet point the experiment, step by step point us to where you think the energy is at each bullet?

I agree with Dave, that the energy is only being stored. If you are correct, than you could power a system off a battery and replenish itself, making it last for longer. Is this what you are thinking?

You also said "There is no load on the system just to a battery", but if you consider a nearly empty rechargeable battery, it is a load.

One of my primary reasons to disagree, is that if it were possible somebody would be a billionaire by now because of it

I once speculated on similar lines with driving a system unstable and storing it into a battery, but I was largely overlooking dissipative losses.

 

Wow sorry all, I am new to the forum and made my post after reading only the first page. I didn't realize there were 13 more to read before posting!

::Runs from this thread::

 

Wow sorry all, I am new to the forum and made my post after reading only the first page. I didn't realize there were 13 more to read before posting!

::Runs from this thread::

No problems. Welcome to All About Circuits.

Dave