Converting Room Temperature into Electrical Energy

Hi Shyam,

If you read my posts carefully, I only mentioned the "perpetual motion machine" name because syphrum said I was proposing to build one. I, most certainly, am not building one. I'm not one of those people.

I'll have to admit, I don't know much about quantum physics so some of your discussions, though interesting, are beyond me. You've made me realize that there's a lot of things (lots and lots of things!) that I don't know.

Dear Vulcan

It is all right if you do not understand quantum physics. Most of the nano optical materials are now quantum dots or material with 100s of atoms missing inside. You can also call it a material with space within material structure. Space acts as a key to Photons to trap it in space. You can trap many as there is space for them and then they combine the energy.

"you cannot use the power generated by the Stirling engine to create the cold source!."

If I read his post correctly, I understand that he was going to use the already cool basement air as the heat sink. At least where I live the basements are always cool even in the hottest days of summer. Now if the temp gradient between attic and basement is large enough and can both be reached by the engine, I don't know. Now, just as you stated, the engine will heat the basement; one could argue that heating the basement while venting the main floor would be worse than nothing. However introducing a little bit of heat to the basement in the (where I live) humid summer could be good to reduce the ammount of water that condences on the cement floor and walls.

I don't think this would be a type of perpetual machine as long as the earth around the basement can sink the heat from the engine and the sun can continue to heat the attic to supply the hot source. Again, if it will work as desired? I don't know. But afterall the main point of a project like this is the hobby of making an engine...

Generating CO2 will have a winter on earth a real cold source for long.

Are you postulating that mankind will survive long enough to see any global cooling that may follow global warming? Or proposing an alternate theory?

Fyz

No one can be sure of anything here. Small motion in earth fragments will shake everything. We may also live millions of years. Who knows!

Now that we have a source of heat on the roof and a cold sink in the cellar we may well have a usable system where a Stirling engine or a Rakine turbine could be useful.

Two matters I would like to point out thru the day the cold cellar will warm up reducing the efficiency of the plant and some provision must be made to allow it cool overnight.

If the object is to cool the living room some of the power generated should be used for a heat exchange system to cool the living room using the cold sink of the cellar which of course reduces the efficiency of the heat engine but will increase the overall efficiency of the system (perhaps the thermal capacity of the cellar could be increased by installing a large water tank and having some battery storage so that this could be cooled overnight via a heat exchanger radiating heat away to a hopefully clear sky.

Have you considered the cost of all this installation, if you could obtain your power from an electricity main you would save a great deal of money

Among three processes Convection, Conduction and Radiation, I will prefer the last one. Now that we get only 10000nm or 0.124eV peat at 300K, we can use 10 such Phonons resulting into 1 photon of 1000nm or 1.24eV just enough to kick out electrons. This is possible in Quantum dots.

I am also thinking to kick a paddle wheel of a nano generator using these 1.24eV phonons to get the nano generator working. I am pretty sure these process will work if not today than tomorrow and people will look back at concepts.

Reason for looking for this type of power source is that it does not require external woring and temperature difference is not in use for thermal energy flow. What we can do is to use some thermal reflectors if we need more such radiation.

Now that the concepts are visiualize, we can discuss these.

Do you suggest converting ambient heat into electrical energy without using a temperature gradient? As in a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

Some people, including academics, seriously entertain the idea that the 2nd law may not have a solid foundation as generally assumed. After all, it is a purely empirical law that has no direct connection to any other theory in science (statistical mechanics is a mathematical tool, not a theory). Violating the 1st law of thermodynamics involves the creation of energy from nothing, or destruction of energy into nothing. In comparison, violating the 2nd law sounds less outrageous since it "merely" involves the reorganization of energy that already exists (along with a corresponding reduction of entropy). An interesting idea, even if on the fringes of "respectable" science.

Anyone interested in discussions about 2nd law violation should have a look at the Yahoo group devoted to this topic:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Maxwells_Demon/

In any case, apparently no one has verifiably succeeded at a true (macroscopic) 2nd law violation (perpetuum mobile of the second kind). Any suggestions on how to implement this?

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

Plank's black body radiation is dependent on the temperature of the radiator and its emissivity and nothing else. All we have to do is to eat awy that Photon in Quantum dot. This will cool the matereal as it will become an internal stored energy.

Sorry Shyam, if you could use the heat to create a useful amount of power, it would merely lower the temperature of the room and you would have to make up the equivalent amount of energy to heat the room plus losses. Probably there will always be more efficient ways to generate electricity. Remember, no free lunch, no free lunch, no free lunch.

If you are looking of ways to save electrical energy you need to look at the appliances that pull the most power in the first place. That's where its easiest to make a difference.

Here's and idea I have bee playing with for a while. One of the biggest power consumers in a hose is a clothes dryer. Typically they use 2,4 Kw. Now as was pointed out by Vulcan, in warmish climate the temperature in the roof cavity can be relatively high. With some minor modification you could use this hot air as the drying medium rather than using electric energy to head ambient air. You could easily reduce the power consumption by 2 Kw as all you need to do is rotate the clothes drum and move the hot air. That translates to 7.2 Mj of solar energy for every hour you run a clothes dryer.

If you look at the cost of generating that much energy directly by some sort of exotic technology its going to be very expensive and complicated. Always remember the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) rule and look for the easiest solution before reinventing the wheel.

The Dryer idea is a good one!

It really has me thinking about it and variations of it as like heating the air in a cheap, "doesn't have to be very efficent" solar collector. If I had a spare dryer I could explore these things ... Hmmmmmmm.

Of course the clothes could also be hung outside to dry..... but I am a dryer guy, not a clothesline guy.

Can you all pop on this one. We have lots of room temperature thermal energy all around us and why not get it pumped into electrons to eject them under multiple phonon interaction and charge a battery to use it for ever. Perhaps a quantum dot will di it and also a closed Carbon nano tube mayl do it. Any idea?

If I am not mistaken, that technology already exists but the exact physics of it escapes me at the moment. Effiong

Physics parts of the quantun dots is very simple.

Have a crystal structure with nm cavities. This you can say that you trap some air bubbles in a molten liquid from which gas will excape after solidification. There may be many other wasys to make them.

Now these rat holes get filled from free electrons from atoms atound them in same way they are om the surface of the material.

A solid medium you can think a something like two walls and all free electrons find themselves as standing wave forced which makes then to get quantized into energy levels of their own. However, for the cavties the electrons extend wavefunction into the cavity as exponential decay function of electromagnetic wave and it is linked to the structure of the atoms that vibrate due to temperature. Now if any photon that can enter the cavity will not be able to escape as it finds as if it is in an end to end joined optical fiber. Then more photons get in the cavity. These photons in the visinity of the atomic field at the walls of the cavity can combine the energy and group together. This is called multi photon interaction in the quantum dot. Now that new photon is of higher energy and enough to break the barrier of the quantum dot, it escapes the rat hole and becomes free. You get multiple times energy by this means. This is how you get Blue violet or UV LEDs.

Very interesting Shyam!

Happy New Year to all!

Regarding the suggestion of violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics by using quantum dots to convert ambient (uniform temperature) heat into useful electricity:

This idea is suggested to work via the absorption of room-temperature blackbody photons (near infra-red spectrum). I agree that this part of the process should occur. But since the quantum dot also exists at room-temperature, it radiates blackbody photons back into the environment. Furthermore, the rates of photon absorption and emission are both directly proportional to the dot's surface area, and should therefor exactly balance each other. Assuming the 1st law of thermodynamics (conservation of total energy) applies, this leaves no excess energy to be converted into useful (low entropy) electricity. This is how the "mainstream" refutation would go. But should we confidently assume that quantum dots absorb and emit blackbody at the same rate? Perhaps some here-to-fore unknown quantum effect changes this balance? Many 2nd law violation proponents think success will come via a quantum effect.

A nice description. And it's not just the classical viewpoint. What you've expressed is almost exactly Thomson formulation of the second law - and that formulation (regarding systems that start in equilibrium) holds mathematically in the general (including quantum) case.

The upshot is that, although negative dissipation is possible under QM, the amount of energy that can be derived from this is strictly finite - and determined by the initial (non-equilibrium) conditions. Beyond that point, classical thermodynamic limits apply.

Fyz

I agree that only part of the energy entering through the surface area will get converted into energy. However, we can make our tiny system to survive on heat food. If we consume any energy that generates heat can also be let out of reuse.

In our body system we have this cycle as ATP and ADP proties. The adenine tri phosphate is fromed from adenine di phosphate using energy and then the reverse process generates energy. It is a chemical energy battery of our system. If we use small colony of living cells and trigger this chemical process then we can get back stored energy or can store energy. Bodu uses the energy for muscle pulling and heating the body. Power house of the cell is Mitochondria.

Quantum dot is a space and not material. It is a field of near by electrons and atoms and without any material in itself. Hence, no molecular vibration gets associated with quatum dot. Plank's radiation is an average effect mixed with statistical processes and quantum defects causing any difference was not computed by the inventor.

Even if Black hole is hot, it will not emit black body radiation.

Ok. Just some random thoughts/food for thought:

A voltage is created when a different electric potential exists between two points and how might we do that with phonons?

Well my first thought is that just assuming you could energize electrons to move .. by "bumping" them somehow with phonons, what stops them from simply moving or getting "bumped" back? Are we talking about the need for a variation of Maxwell's Demon here?

To Charge a battery, you need a circuit. What would complete the circuit? If we keep "removing" electrons from an area, it becomes increasingly positively charged .. making it harder and harder to remove more electrons.

In hot weather it would be nice to use some of that room temperature heat. If we are heating the room though because our comfort requires that, then it doesn't seem that we would want to convert some of that (paid for) heat to another form of energy even if we could do it very efficiently.

So far, all methods of converting one form of energy into another require a delta E, whether the delta is an elevation difference, pressure difference, temperature difference, field difference etc etc. In other words something goes from a higher potential energy state to a lower state, and we grab as much of the difference as we can to use in some form. Where would our difference be here?

We aren't able to pump electrons in to higher energy orbits, or dislodge them because we need the appropriate discrete packets of energy (quanta) to do so. The phonons don't have even anywhere near the minimum energy required so we apparently can't use an analog of the photoelectric effect. The "multiple phonon interaction" implies we could somehow combine any two masses moving at say 1 m/s and end up with a combined mass moving faster than that. However if we consider waves, then if the timing or the frequencies are different we can get an interference pattern where we have regions of reinforcement and regions of cancellation or destruction. But I don't know how to relate this to the question at hand, or even if it has any relevance at all. The problem with ambient thermal energy is that it is a statistical summing of a very large number of randomly moving atoms and molecules in the air or similarly random "vibrations" of atoms and molecules in the solid entities in the room... again I feel the need to summon Maxwell's Demon.

Suppose for a moment we could extract energy from a room temperature environment how much will it cost us to do it, how much can we expect to get, and what exactly will we do with it (since I don't think it would rival Hoover Dam) ... But hey, if we could extract enough then we would have invented a "perpetual motion air conditioner" and we wouldn't need to do anything with the power except run a fan to spread all that cool air around. If we built a big enough unit outside, we could cool the yard and sell the power back to the utility company, earning enough to retire comfortably! If its economically doable on a small scale, nothing would stop it from being scaled up or just installed redundantly to make a larger unit.

This is everyman's dream though to somehow use "free" and everpresent energy so the thoughts won't end here.

"The more I learn, the more I realize how ignorant I am"

Phonons are vibrations with the atomic link in solids. In liquid and gases, this becomes kinetic energy and physical motion. Phonons once escape the atom become IR Photons. That is what you get as Plank's radiation from a blackbody at temperature. Electrons can not remain in excited state for long and they need minimum binding energy to interact with Photons. However multiple Phonons can make the electrons to exit the solid metal as it happen in thermionic emission on heating the filament of a bulb. Here you can see both IR and electrons coming out in metals. Remember that only so called free electrons with their quatized energy levels of the metal as a whole get out and not those are in bound state with the atoms as their energy levels are too much negative. In metals thus you have two sets of energy bands having quantum states, one from the bound states with atoms and one that of the free electrons within the metal. These free electrons can not bump out the surface unless we apply some extra energy to it as surface acts like extra energy wall to keep the electrons within the structure. Escaping electron will make the metal positively charged which pulls it back inside the metal.

"In metals thus you have two sets of energy bands having quantum states, one from the bound states with atoms and one that of the free electrons within the metal. These free electrons can not bump out the surface unless we apply some extra energy to it as surface acts like extra energy wall to keep the electrons within the structure. Escaping electron will make the metal positively charged which pulls it back inside the metal."

The statement above reminds me of a 2nd law violation claim involving spontaneous electron emission from a metal (generation of macroscopic electrical current driven by ambient heat). I have always wondered what electronics adepts think about it. I haven't heard of a definitive replication of the claim, but I can't figure out why it shouldn't work.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0311/0311104.pdf

By the way, I changed the Maxwells_Demon Yahoo group settings so that anyone can now read the messages archive (I am one of the group's moderators). If 2nd law violation ideas interest you, check out the group and my list of links in the Links folder (see "Links suggested by Leo C.").

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Maxwells_Demon/

There are few more complex surface effects that also take place and one need to know what exactly is happening there. One of them is tribo-electricity which may cause such a high voltage that you can have a gas discharge on surphase leading to electron ejection, UV generation or even x-ray generation. This happens only in insulators, particularly in polycrystaline material with moisture entry on the surface or trapped gases in such structure. Heat makes them escape. In metals oxides of the element are often insulators and one can see same effect in small quantity. Some structure may almost behave impulse reproducible and good for repeated use for x-ray generation simply by heat and has been commercially used. We often do degasing of the metal chamber when we work at very high vacuum levels. Thin films of such complex surfaces can show some magic results that are not the property of the bulk. A company called Amptek sells x-ray generator based on temperature pulsing. www.amptek.com/

Similar to bi-metal activity, a nm scale bimetal structure formation can also be engineered. Hence, heat can show some of the effects otherwise not easily produced by other means.

Photodiode and photocell give one way traffic for electrons. You can then charge the battery or capacitor.

Whilst you can sort of cheat the second law of thermodynamics on a microscopic level to date nobody has ever demonstrated that it can be bypassed at a macro level. There was a thread a short wile ago where we discussed the apparent random nature of the movement of individual molecules within a gas an whether this energy could be extracted. Somebody provided a link to a program that could be use to watch what happened to an individual particle and you could indeed see its random motion. However if you increased the mass of this particle to any sort of useful size the motion ceases because the randomness averages out to zero.

"I am also thinking to kick a paddle wheel of a nano generator using these 1.24eV phonons to get the nano generator working."

While you can get photons to cause a deflection of a paddle there are some problems here. Many people will have seen the evacuated chamber with a device in it that is constricted of paddles that are white on one side and black on the other. The theory is that photons impacting the light side will be reflected producing no net gain. The photons impacting the black side however will be absorbed and hence impart rotation on the device. The device dose indeed rotate, but closer inspection reveals that it is rotating in the opposite direction than that predicted. The rotation turns out to be caused not by photons impacting on the device but rather heating of the small amount or air remaining in the chamber.

To successfully demonstrate that photons do indeed have mass requires a vacuum close to that of space and the light intensity of a laser. While people have postulated that huge solar sails could be used to propel space craft this is in the vacuum of space and the sails cover several square kilometers, not a few square millimeters. The other problem is producing and maintaining the vacuum needed and would undoubtedly consume many times as much energy than could be retrieved.

It basically all comes down to entropy or the measure of disorder within a system. Entropy will always increase till there is no more disorder or uneven localized distributions of energy and matter. No variation in energy levels means entropy has reached a maximum for that system and no further work can be done within that system regardless of the level of energy within it.

In a sort of way a reverse cycle air conditioner is on a micro level exploiting the background level of energy in the air by extracting heat from a clod environment and reradiating it in a warmer environment but this requires energy to do and on a macro level we still don't get something for nothing.

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a free lunch, I wish there were, but to date everybody that has tried to get energy from nowhere has failed abysmally.

Hi Masu

You wrote "Whilst you can sort of cheat the second law of thermodynamics on a microscopic level..." My prejudice is that this is one of the laws that is most consistent on a small scale, and that closer examination will always show that the statement should have been that "you can appear locally to cheat the second law of thermodynamics".

I'm not certain that this remains true on a very large scale (universe-sized) where gravitation and G.R. may eventually cause the law to be reversed, but this may only be because this is an area about which I don't know enough...

Fyz

Solar power is the only external energy source that gives us free lunch on earth. Learn more about it and you can generate more free lunch.

Look for "Archimedes Submerged."

He had/has a proposed "Bubble Pump Trompe" to compress air, which could then be used to drive a generator.

Hey folks,

When this thread was started I was certain that it wouldn't work but I suddenly remembered hearing about somebody that was doing some research and had figured out how to actually violate the second law of thermodynamics. Anyway I did a search and found this paper. I haven't read it all yet but thought it was worth posting so others could read it while I was.

http://rsc.anu.edu.au/~evans/papers/selectnewsreportsFT.pdf

If anybody wishes to dig deeper here is a link to the results of my search.

http://www.google.com.au/search?as_q=violation+ANU&hl=en&num=10&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=law+of+thermodynamics&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images

What dose everybody think now, should I start eating my words?