Steam Heating in Atlanta

You could put you corn burning stove outside in the summer and use it to heat thermionic cells and use the current produced to drive other thermionic cells and fan(s) to cool the house.

I have no idea what the efficiency would be like and you would probably want to protect the generator cells from overheating. I don't know what kind of temperatures they can withstand.

Gordie.

Overheat protection: Perhaps you could use closed loop system (Water, anti-freeze, ect.) to heat the thermionic cells. You could control the temp easier and with more accuracy. I had plans from "Popular Mechanics" years ago for an independant fire box/building. It took 6' logs. You only had to reload about once every couple weeks. The heat was piped in to the building. It would be neat to apply this strategy using corn as the fuel source.

I once raised this issue of using "reverse peltier effect" (thermionic) to generate power with a mate in Brisbane and he showed me a test unit he had made using Aluminuim box tube and Peltier modules. It worked but the efficiency was lousy. The company he works for are researching heat storage and conversion technologies including outlandish ideas from outside sources, it is all very interesting to watch. They have used various stirling engines and turbines etc., but have not yet found a killer application. For cooling (and heating for that matter) the heat pump is very hard to beat, the only problem being the conversions from heat to mechanical energy needed to run it. Wind power and a large liquid reciever could be worth a go, maintaining the pressure differential to evaporate all the liquid is the biggest problem I see in this approach.

The opportunities seem huge, don't they? Without really thinking about it seriously, I'd guess that the waste heat generated by the average 2 cars in a US family could pretty well heat a small home in most locations. In dollar terms: $200/ month in gasoline, of which 80% is wasted... so $160 per month in heat value... about enough for a small house. (Ridiculously rough calculation, but it points up the potential. Granted, there are huge hurdles to jump in recovering that heat loss -- but it would certainly be interesting to try.)

Typical idealized Carnot efficiency of 40% seems low, doesn't it? Was Carnot really right? Solar cell efficiency seems amazingly low. Intuitively, it seems that we can't be that far away from being able to do these energy conversions much more efficiently. I wonder, for instance, if 1 trillion USD were put into solar cell research, could we quickly develop cells that are 75% efficient? (Or lower efficiency but very low cost, and easy to apply over larger areas: solar generating house paint, for instance.)

Pursuing the "hydrogen economy" seems insane to me, given the huge hurdles in producing, storing, and distributing hydrogen. Why not work harder on technologies without so many obvious hurdles?

Consider the fact that we have many bright people (like Brian Greene) talking, seriously (!!??) about the possibility of creating a new universe by first creating a small black hole, right here on earth. Amazing things can be done. If only we could conquer some of the more mundane things, like sustainable energy supplies.

Actually, a considerable amount of heat is recovered already, if you consider the lowered, wintertime house space heating demand in cities, relative to suburbs and rural areas, as a result of emitted heat and other air pollution.

I'm going to wait for CORNSTOVES to weigh in on this one!

I am also looking for electrical generator which can be used with biomass or coal gasifier. Please let me know if you have got any source for supply.

If you need details of coal gasifier, please write to me.

Regards

Kapoor