Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Discussion on Stirling or "hot air" engines (all types)
Tom Booth
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Tom Booth »

I believe this is the double two stage turbine without any condenser or load, still, there is already ice forming within the turbine.

https://youtu.be/c5NzHvGxTss

This was five years ago, which seems like the more recent developments are somehow less advanced ?

One of Jerimiah's comments says:
. It usually takes high pressure to have vapor freeze from decompression. We got it to freeze at only 14 psi with a temperature of over 140 degrees f.
I'm not sure, but I am guessing 14 psi above atmosphere?

I'm not sure, but apparently this turbine is being driven by compressed air ?
Tom Booth
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Tom Booth »

It seems this was low pressure "cold steam" driving the turbine ?

The second stage turbine providing the vacuum rather than a condenser/ice bath

Still, producing a 100°f drop in temperature at the turbine.

It is a bit frustrating that the circumstances and actual details of this test are not more clearly outlined.

It does seem to suggest your open to atmosphere exhaust might be possible... Though in this case the input is not atmospheric air, but apparently low pressure steam (?).

Anyway, I'd like to see for myself.
Jack
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Jack »

What you're proposing in the previous post should work easily. It's basically the same thing Jeremiah is doing.
Except the temperature difference is in a different range.

On Patreon he has more recent videos of this system. And yeah, he seems to be going backwards, or at least is testing things in an order I don't follow.

His latest video, just a few days old, is him starting up a big version of the heated tank and condensor setup.

I don't know how deeply you investigated the turbine, but it has a few quirks in the way it works. One of them is the centrifugal head pressure it creates due to the centrifugal forces. At speed the fluid is flung outwards and creates a pressure ring around the outside. This squeezes the inflow of new fluid when it gets high enough.
Jeremiah wants to use that pressure to make a self regulating generator. So it doesn't go into a free spin and destroy itself.

The idea makes sense, but it is very counter productive to efficiency. Because the outer edge is where most of the power is made with these. This is where the fluid should be coming in at high speed to power the turbine, but in stead it's being held back by this pressure.

He also means to pump back the water from the condensor to the heated tank every once in a while to refill it and call it a closed loop.

I didn't agree with all of this and started thinking in a different direction. Because his way wastes a lot of heat I would like my setup to only draw the heat that it can turn into work output. No more, ideally.
And I'd like it to be a real closed loop system so there can't be any pressure difference between the hot and cold side. Jeremiah, even when he's using a vacuum system, still has a difference in water vapor pressure between hot and cold.

Maybe I should make some more drawings of what I have in mind and start a separate thread. My head is overflowing with ideas on this. I think the turbine itself is a genius piece of equipment.
Jack
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Jack »

Tom Booth wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2024 6:37 am It seems this was low pressure "cold steam" driving the turbine ?

The second stage turbine providing the vacuum rather than a condenser/ice bath

Still, producing a 100°f drop in temperature at the turbine.

It is a bit frustrating that the circumstances and actual details of this test are not more clearly outlined.

It does seem to suggest your open to atmosphere exhaust might be possible... Though in this case the input is not atmospheric air, but apparently low pressure steam (?).

Anyway, I'd like to see for myself.
Yeah me too hehe

He's used a few things in the past, including compressed air with a venturi sucking in extra water vapor. It's not always clear what he's using now and why.
I don't like the secrecy around it. I've asked him many things, but barely get a straight answer.
Jack
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Jack »

Tom Booth wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2024 5:44 am Compress_20240602_080527_7386.jpg
What you're suggesting here is called a cryophorus.
Tom Booth
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Tom Booth »

The intro blurb in the previous video says "compressed humid air" is supply to the turbine.

This is, I think, similar to this phenomenon:

https://youtu.be/2hYQtB4QkEY

But as Jeremiah commented, this normally requires high pressure. A shop compressor that big as in this video is probably at least 125 or 150 psi, possibly 200.

But with the turbine they get a similar result with a mere 14 psi !

That is basically air cycle refrigeration. Refrigeration by taking out "work" with an expansion engine or turbine

https://www.grimsby.ac.uk/documents/frp ... search.pdf

The cooling effect should be more pronounced with an additional load on the turbine(s).

Also, the ice formation could be avoided by using dry air. This would allow temperature drop into the cryogenic range without ice damaging the turbine

At some point though, you'll start to condense CO2 and dry ice can become a problem.

Also heat of compression is generated while compressing the air, nearly all of the heat of compression is recoverable.
Tom Booth
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Tom Booth »

Personally, Paul here seems to know what he's talking about.

https://youtu.be/f4UmvPLmV40

In this interview he mentions ienergysuoply (Jeremiah) as a partner he was working with, which makes me tend to think Paul may have been Jerimiah's partner that died, but whatever the case he seems to not be commenting or putting out any new videos in the past few years.

Anyway, you may get something from the interview, though the constant interruptions by the interviewer are annoying.
Tom Booth
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Tom Booth »

What Jeremiah says near the begining of this video about the importance of the pump to create a vacuum in the turbine to greatly increase the efficiency of the turbine also sounds very similar to what you are proposing, using the pump as a kind of replacement for a cold condenser.

https://youtu.be/hm8m_0rzyMo
Fool
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Fool »

The phase change engines usually run on the Rankin Cycle, steam engine. The original steam engines ran from the vacuum side of it. The water phase diagram, steam tables, are used to design those systems.

Here is a Wikipedia page on.heat pipes:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe

Vacuum systems have low power to size ratios. James Watt discovered that, and engineers have never gone back. Lots of experimenters have, some of them learning in the process. There is an active power plant near Hawaii that uses the temperature difference in sea water to produce power. Surface warmer, deeper colder. I don't know how successful or powerful it is off the top of my head. "Free" input energy.
Tom Booth
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Tom Booth »

It seems Tesla didn't speak or write anymore publicly about his ambient heat engine after the article in 1900, but apparently kept working on it until around 1930 ?

I don't know any more than what he put in that article.

What seems interesting to me about compressed air is as the air is compressed there is the heat of compression that could be recovered and used towards running a Stirling engine.

Then there is the compressed air that can be used to drive air equipment, or whatever, partly re-expanded by ambient heat.

But the combination of re-expansion of the air with work output produces cold, that could also be used to run a Stirling engine.

And there is the output from the Stirling engine running on the temperature extremes produced by compressing and re-expanding the air.

Under most circumstances a heat pump is used for heating or cooling and the other product is thrown away.

But an air cycle system heat pump combined with a Stirling engine seems like a low hanging fruit that takes just a low tech compressor and a low tech Stirling engine, basically achieving Tesla's "Self-acting" ambient heat engine without the necessity for precision turbines that can operate at 250,000 RPM surpassing the speed of sound and other potential difficulties.

I think this guy may have just accomplished it with just an old Briggs and Stratton engine, a refrigeration expansion valve a compressor and some check valves and pipe.

https://youtu.be/CJcGqHqs4-Q
Fool
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Fool »

"What seems interesting to me about compressed air is as the air is compressed there is the heat of compression that could be recovered and used towards running a Stirling engine."

I'm curious how you plan to capture that energy for reuse? Do you plan to keep the back work low by capturing that energy at Tc? Or are you going to allow the captured energy to become a higher temperature severely increasing the back work? My guess is you are describing a no free lunch scenario. If you capture it at Tc it wouldn't be any different than ambient. If a higher T, work out will be lower.

Tesla, wrote his article during a time when the second law, and Entropy were being hotly debated and still unknown to most. He probably spent the rest of his life trying to figure out that his ambient cold hole scheme can't work. He was unsuccessful in building one. Entropy and the second law weren't completed until after Tesla died, and his and many others failures, have led to the laws acceptance by mainstream science. That and the additional study's that students perform even today.

If Tesla, and others, are right, where are the devices? Why can't we buy them today? I could really use free energy.
Jack
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Jack »

Tom Booth wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2024 9:04 am Personally, Paul here seems to know what he's talking about.

https://youtu.be/f4UmvPLmV40

In this interview he mentions ienergysuoply (Jeremiah) as a partner he was working with, which makes me tend to think Paul may have been Jerimiah's partner that died, but whatever the case he seems to not be commenting or putting out any new videos in the past few years.

Anyway, you may get something from the interview, though the constant interruptions by the interviewer are annoying.
No he's still alive. Recently started posting on Patreon again, claims he had a nervous breakdown.
Jeremiah's partner is in some obscure old videos somewhere. Older guy.
Tom Booth
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Tom Booth »

Fool wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2024 2:56 pm ...
If Tesla, and others, are right, where are the devices? Why can't we buy them today? I could really use free energy.
It's a wonder. You may have to visit the island nation of Vanuatu.

Maybe someone should ask Jeff Muller what happened to his perpetual air compressor.

I don't know, but it's hard for me to imagine Mr. Muller with his Briggs and Stratton was much of any threat to anyone as to justify government intervention, his imprisonment, take down of his business and confiscation of his "technology".

Then there is Paul Pantone, jailed in an insane asylum for refusing to say his Geet engine doesn't work.

The suppression horror stories seem virtually inexhaustible. To think it is all 100% just paranoia seems a bit naive IMO.
Jack
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Jack »

https://youtu.be/4cZdTqg8A5g?si=hTKnxo6kZ36nr0UN

This is Jeremiah's old partner with him
Jack
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Re: Tesla's "Ambient Heat Engine" Experiment

Post by Jack »

Tom Booth wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2024 4:33 pm
Fool wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2024 2:56 pm ...
If Tesla, and others, are right, where are the devices? Why can't we buy them today? I could really use free energy.
It's a wonder. You may have to visit the island nation of Vanuatu.

Maybe someone should ask Jeff Muller what happened to his perpetual air compressor.

I don't know, but it's hard for me to imagine Mr. Muller with his Briggs and Stratton was much of any threat to anyone as to justify government intervention, his imprisonment, take down of his business and confiscation of his "technology".

Then there is Paul Pantone, jailed in an insane asylum for refusing to say his Geet engine doesn't work.

The suppression horror stories seem virtually inexhaustible. To think it is all 100% just paranoia seems a bit naive IMO.
I'm not big into conspiracy theories and stuff, but there's a huge incentive to not have everyone be able to make their own energy at home. And too many coincidences.
I will never know the truth behind it all, but to stop trying just because nobody else has done it before and others have failed is not a valid reason for me.
Maybe that's my vanity or me thinking I'm smarter than everyone else. Maybe it's just chance that nobody made the exact right combinations before. I don't know. But, no offense fool, we have to try to keep our minds open here.
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