Creating power out of thin air

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Seebeck effect, huge amounts of energy from small temperature differences

You cannot get energy out of metals responding differently to
the same temperature. To make use of the electricity, i.e.
produce a current from your voltage, you have to close the
circuit, i.e. make the two metals "meet again" at a second
junction and there you will produce the same voltage in exactly
the opposite direction. Voltages cancel => no current. Sorry.

If there is a temperature difference, the voltages don't cancel
any more, you can get a current i.e. get electrical energy.

There are limitations to creating "huge amounts" of energy by
utilizing small Temperature differences. All the existing
devices and inventions, that are quoted in the article are
about producing small amounts of energy, just enough e.g. for
the very low power needs of some sensor doing measurments and
radioing the data to some nearby relay station.

What is the limitation? When utilizing a temperature difference
to produce mechanical or electrical energy, only a small amount
of the heat is converted, but most of the heat just flows from
the hotter to the colder reservoir, thereby decreasing the
temperature difference. The upper limit for the efficiency of
such a process is defined by the temperature difference divided
by the absolute temperature. So if we are at room temperature
(300 Kelvin) and we want to make use of a small temperature
difference of, say, 1 Kelvin, we find that we can use at best
0,33% of the energy stored in the hotter reservoir, the rest
of the energy is lost.

> If you heated one square meter of the material to 100 degrees
> Celsius, or the boiling point of water, the material could
> absorb 1.2 kilojoules of heat energy. Converting 5 percent of
> that heat to electricity would give you enough energy to
> power a car, Surany asserted.

I beg your pardon, but if we take a car with a 44kW motor, this
could be powered by 5 percent of 1.2 kJ for 1.5 milliseconds.
(OK, make that 15 milliseconds if you assume that the motor is
run only at 10 percent of its maximum power.)
In fact 1.2 kilojoules is not awfully much. I is the amount of
energy that is absorbed by 4 ccm of water if you heat it from
room temperature to boiling point.

And then there is this talk about "artificial energy state
inside the molecular structure" induced by "nuclear fusion".
I'm sorry, but this is rather diffuse.
Having an effect that links nuclear processes and processes
the molecular structure is an extraordinary claim, which needs
extraordinary proof. I.e. to prove that this effect really
exists, one would employ the scrutiny of the scientific
community, i.e. the ability to reproduce the effect by
different scientific work groups and scientific peer review,
not just some claims about some "undisclosed" materials.
(Just remember the cold fusion craze from 1989...)

Posted by: WRatzkaMR   Posted on: 11/03/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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