Solid State Heat Engines ? ?

Interesting. I'll see if I can meet him. The article doesn't make its operation completely clear to me.

Although solar energy conversion is thought to be low (30% and less) that is really not the problem. Cost is. If I could paint my house and roof with a low efficiency, (10%) cheap (paint cost plus $5000 increment for solar), I'd be happy as a clam.

Here's some more pie in the sky from MIT

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/20057/?nlid=805

Sound like the principle of a thermocouple, a voltage developed by heats effect on dissimilar materials. I do remember a different system that uses heat, solid state that worked using the effect on a particular material. It was on a programme broadcast by the ABC, called towards 2000. It was put forward as a system to recover the heat loss in turbine condensers. The principle was based on the materials memory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_memory_alloy

The design was an endless spring that was stretched between two rollers, with the bottom length place in hot water, this caused the stretch spring to revert back to its memory shape further stretching the exposed top, which was cooled, this action caused the rollers it was mounted on to rotate, feeding new stretch spring into the hot water, so continuing the cycle. Hope find this solid state interesting.

Regards JD.

Has anyone heard from Mr. Johnson re: Jtec? I had waited patiently for a couple of years and finally wrote him recently. I am waiting for his reply. Have any other thermoelectric breakthroughs come to your attention? I am interested in converting waste heat from my cloud and servers to electricity. Any input would be appreciated. G

"Has anyone heard from Mr. Johnson re: Jtec? I had waited patiently for a couple of years and finally wrote him recently. I am waiting for his reply."

G: You may have a loooong wait. Mr. L. Johnson is routinely posting various and sundry pseudo-scientific devices on his web sites in the hopes that someone will be sufficiently interested to invest some money to further develop the idea.

Somewhat similar to Steorn's magnetic motor that generates more energy than is consumed in running it!

The Second Law of Thermodynamics as well as the others hasn't been repealed yet.

I suspected as much. What improvements have you seen in thermo that are commercially available? G

"Thermo" is pretty well fixed and improvements in the Phyics of it are available on line at MIT.

Most of the touted 'green' applications of heat devices are substituting on form of energy for another. A genuinely NEW source of energy that is non-polluting, low cost, and readily available is yet to be found or invented. Smoke & Mirrors abound.