Could Both Carnot and Tom be Correct?

[Tom Booth]

The problem is in Carnot's initial theory which seems to still have a hold on people's imagination, that heat "flows through" the heat engine.

If you study the Carnot cycle (as interpreted today), it is clearly ridiculous.

Supposedly the working fluid reaches T-cold at bottom dead canter.

This was simply based on previous observation made by competent engineers in regard to steam engines.

Carnot interpreted this drop in temperature as a "fall of caloric", rather than an energy conversion.

He believed that the heat could then be "let out at the lower level".

The cold caloric just ran out of the engine at a lower temperature into the cold reservoir ALREADY COLD.

This is completely fantasy world nonsense.

So Carnot believed the heat or "caloric" could simply be "rejected" to the cold "reservoir" without a temperature difference, just like cold water running out of a bucket on a water wheel at a "lower level".

The observations regarding steam engines was correct. The work performed resulted in a drop in temperature so the steam left the engine colder.

The same is true of a Stirling engine.

The working fluid goes down to at least T-cold by the time the piston reaches bottom dead center. Probably much colder in many cases. The pressure also drops, so the piston is essentially sucked back to TDC or pushed back by the resulting imbalance.

The whole Carnot water wheel heat falling down like a waterfall concept is idiotic, juvenile, unscientific nonsense. Why it is still taught as tantamount to the gospel truth still today is nothing less than mind boggling.

There is nothing whatsoever to it at all.

[VincentG]

The cold caloric just ran out of the engine at a lower temperature into the cold reservoir ALREADY COLD.

This is completely fantasy world nonsense.

So Carnot believed the heat or "caloric" could simply be "rejected" to the cold "reservoir" without a temperature difference, just like cold water running out of a bucket on a water wheel at a "lower level".

I'm confused here, the last step before BDC of the Carnot cycle is adiabatic expansion, so there is no heat rejection.

[Tom Booth]

The cold caloric just ran out of the engine at a lower temperature into the cold reservoir ALREADY COLD.

This is completely fantasy world nonsense.

So Carnot believed the heat or "caloric" could simply be "rejected" to the cold "reservoir" without a temperature difference, just like cold water running out of a bucket on a water wheel at a "lower level".

I'm confused here, the last step before BDC of the Carnot cycle is adiabatic expansion, so there is no heat rejection.

In the Carnot cycle, Adiabatic expansion results in a temperature drop to T-cold at "bottom dead center" or full expansion. followed by "isothermal compression".

The already cold "caloric" is supposed to flow out at T-cold.

Of course this has been revised.

Now supposedly over an "infinite" amount of time, during compression, the compression raises the temperature an "infinitesimal" amount, and the piston moves infinitely slowly...

Such a load of crap.

So monstrously insane and irrational it takes someone like "fool" to actually believe any of this is REALITY or makes any kind of sense whatsoever

Carnot did not consider the possibility of cooling by means of the conversion of heat into work at any stage. He wrote:

"...there is produced in the body no other change of temperature than that due to change of volume..."

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Reflec ... /Chapter_3

[Tom Booth]

This is worth a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/live/ocOHxPs1LQ ... NWUNedULAM

Interesting, but he kind of glosses over some critical points which he touches on briefly but then dismisses as "complicated".

He also hints at the possibility of some additional followup videos on the same subject in the near future, but I was not able to locate any.

The conclusion at the end seems to be that the second law is as yet unproven "until now"? Sort of, maybe, but doesn't elaborate, instead ending the video

History of a muddled up, confusing, wishy-washy philosophy that we pretend has been proven but never really was.

Some people just like to think so.

[Fool]

Yes Tom and Carnot can both be correct.

If Carnot had access to a Stirling cryocooler he likely would have update his work to reflect his new discovery, and Tom would never have had to take interest in the matter at all.

If Tom tries and fails to build a self cooling machine he might think it impossible, while it could be possible all along.

Isn't that why we're on this forum.

Both of you should take a chill pill.

It seems so.

My biggest gripe is :

I'm quite sure Carnot himself would reject it as preposterous and disavow any association or responsibility.

Putting words in other people's mouths to serve your own ego is narcissistic at best. You two have no clue which way Carnot would lean, given the knowledge we have now. Even with Tom's data.

Even if Carnot had a cryo cooler, we can't assume what he would think or say. Remember, he introduced reversibility, and that is one of the beginnings of both cryo cooling and entropy.

Carnot was a mathematician. Mathematicians work in theory. Theory leads to more theories. Carnot may have understood how the math leads to the theorem, way better than any of us.

If Tom tries and fails, it may just be that he has failed for the same reason that thousands of others before him have failed, and there is a theory that suggest why that failure happens. The second law is developed from the first law and observed physical gas characteristics. The rigorous mathematical techniques used to develope that law should not be dismissed. It is not the same as a bishop dismissing the possibility of flight because God didn't give us wings, and then going home to his son's Wilbur and Orville Wright. Very ignorant of he. Ignorance begats belief begats dogmatic rule. Education provides the logic and mathematics capable of asking reasonable questions.

In the event that he succeeds, he has the right to claim success. Until then it is just a belief. I only have a minor problem with his claims of that belief. It would be better if it was scientific skepticism, as belief leads to baseless dogmatic argument. Such as claiming Carnot would stick up for him. Skepticism leads to reasonable questions. My skepticism of the first, second laws, and Tom's data leads me to reasonable questions. Indicator diagram, work output?

Until he succeeds, it is still a failure. In science, failure means your theory is wrong, your experiment is wrong, and or both. It can also mean both are correct, but you are combining them wrong.

Furthermore I'm not the one whom has devolved into insults instead of clear logic.

Fool, you can develop theories and make predictions based on modeling and mathematic calculations, but the ultimate acid test is experiment. If your theories, and mathematical "proofs" don't hold up experimentally it's your math and your modeling that's in error, not the observable, physical results.

In case you haven't noticed, good experimental results go hand in hand with good theoretical practices, and laboratory practices including excellent documentation, even including excellent video data. Missing any of that just gives way to more and better reinvestigations. Many people have suggested that is needed with your findings. Peer review, that's what you are asking for here.

The following is failure:
Theory wrong, data correct.
Theory correct, data wrong.
Theory wrong, data wrong.
Theory correct, data correct, combination wrong.

Falsifiable is a religious dogmatic decree.

Only if the theory and data agree is it science. The rest is failure.

Real science is based on observation and experiment, not mathematical guesswork

There is guess work, and mathematical guess work?Mathematics has a logical rigor that separates it from preachers claims that God prevents us from flying. Mathematics is a pathway from an observation, to an area not yet observed, but might be observed later. Science uses that power of prediction to improve reliability. Random guesses, just lead to many many repeated failures. Thousands of people have failed to produce over unity energy from nothing, or from a single ambient temperature, generating machine. A few claiming such, have been found to be liars. Don't become a liar. Be honest with yourself and others. Telling us you had the thermal couples plugged in backwards is being honest. Saying it doesn't matter, isn't.

If you think the mathematics is ludicrous, seek out help until you fully understand it.

It has zero legitimacy in my book. Ultimately if fails the acid test

The problem is acid tests have nothing to do with the thermodynamics of engines. Just don't fail the Kool-aid acid test. Hint: passing that test is by not taking that test.

This is worth a listen.

Thanks for the link. Tom's ranting about Carnot here is frustrating. It's like me calling that talk 'Psychobabble' without explaining why.

First it's 2 hours long, history, and doesn't lead to any new understanding of the concepts described. It's cherry picking statements as if it's comprehensive. His delivery style, for me, was hesitant, jerky, circular, and long winded. And as Tom said, lacking promised proof. The ending left us hanging. I came away not knowing what he wanted us to know, and nothing new. Zero definitive answer. Poor and confusing organizational logic. No conclusion. It seemed more twisted than the history. The history was way easier to follow. The history had a logical trend of learning, failure, analogy, errors, and success. His talk didn't. It was very painful for me to watch. You are welcome that I did. Robert Murrey Smith is miles better, and he psychobabbles too.

Sorry. Call to authority doesn't work with me.

The thermodynamics is what is important, not the history. Tom should get that too. Current theory is more important than where it came from. But if history is brought up, don't put words in their mouth. That is just disrespectful.

What nobody seems to understand is I'm not trying to build anything.

Your claim that you sent in a proposal to build an engine that was rejected on the grounds of its promise to break the second law, seems to refute that claim, along with many other hints of of your interests. Building is exactly what you are seeking.

History of a muddled up, confusing, wishy-washy philosophy that we pretend has been proven but never really was.

Some people just like to think so.

What history isn't? There is no proof in empiricism. Proofs are part of the mathematical and logic areas of science. Proofs only convert a rigorous connection between mathematical and logical constructs. Empiricism only demonstrates an observation, proves nothing. The acid test is for measuring good content.

You have been given several theoretical derivations of the second law from the first law, and gas laws. They are proofs.

Your experiment on a tiny slow moving engine with zero measured work output, appears to dispell the theory that insulating the cold side will make an engine heat up and stop. That has very little to do with the second law, which deals with the ratio of work output divided by heat in.

Claiming self cooling from the experimental evidence you've reported is very tentative. Your experimental data doesn't prevent it, but it hardly proves it either.

The second law hasn't been proven because the first law hasn't been proven. Only the free energy crowd thinks it's wrong. Scientific skepticism keeps that proof at bay, but science uses it as a reliable tool in analysing power generation.

No one yet has surpassed it.

"...there is produced in the body no other change of temperature than that due to change of volume..."

It's interesting that you would use that quote. It is very obviously a description of adiabatic expansion with thermodynamic work output resulting in a temperature decrease, but zero heat transfer.

What you have, in the past, failed to recognize is that any expansion, in a piston cylinder assembly, is with work.

External load has little to do with it. Any expansion we deal with, is with work and has the maximum temperature drop.

Carnot described it well enough.

Forcing an IC engine to output more work makes it hotter. When you come to a hill you step on the gas and the engine works harder and gets hotter.

The same thing would happen for a Stirling engine. You would step on the gas and the temperature Th would rise and the engine would work harder.

For an IC engine removing the load would make the engine over rev and blow up.

For a Stirling engine the hot plate Th would rise. The RPM's would increase, less time for heat to get in. Th would raise further. Eventually the hot plate would melt.

The temperature drop from expansion, volume change, would be the same loaded or not. Hot plate normal or melting.

Now that we know that Carnot talked of heat getting converted to work, we can stop saying people don't know that. We can also stop saying that we can force it to do more work by putting a load on it to get more temperature drop. Please.

Carnot's writings are among the first realizations of the fact that thermal energy gets converted to work in an expansion and temperature drop. It's also the first description of inputting of work for a compression and temperature increase.

The second law cements it in.

W = Qh-Qc says so. Nothing could be clearer. Only if Qh is zero or Qc=Qh would prove other wise. We already know that Qc can't be zero or smaller because W is never been seen to be larger than Qh.


.

[Tom Booth]

(...)

My biggest gripe is :

I'm quite sure Carnot himself would reject it as preposterous and disavow any association or responsibility.

Putting words in other people's mouths to serve your own ego is narcissistic at best.

Apparently you haven't read Carnot's notes written after the publication of his book.

I'm not putting words in his mouth, I stated a fact: "I'm quite sure Carnot himself would reject it as preposterous and disavow any association or responsibility".

And I am quite sure, based on his writings. He completely disavowed the caloric theory and strongly suggests others should do likewise, going on to detail the 100% Interconvertibility of heat and work, even toying with the possibility of all the heat supplied being converted and asked why a "cold body" should be needed at all.

Years later, Kelvin brought back the Caloric theory making it the basis of "all" thermodynamics.

...The second law is developed from the first law and observed physical gas characteristics.

No, actually the second law contradicts the first.

...
Telling us you had the thermal couples plugged in backwards is being honest. Saying it doesn't matter, isn't.

I didn't say it doesn't matter, just that the basic thermal readings were valid but recorded a temperature rise rather than a fall

The temperature increase was still FAR FAR below that predicted by the so-called "Carnot limit"

I think your being dishonest using it as an excuse to dismiss valid data.

As I recall, the corrected data, even with a small temperature rise indicated a probable efficiency above 90%

If you think the mathematics is ludicrous, seek out help until you fully understand it.

I understand the math, and the interpretations given to it ARE ludicrous

It has zero legitimacy in my book. Ultimately if fails the acid test

The problem is acid tests have nothing to do with the thermodynamics of engines.

I think you have rather severe reading comprehension problems.

This is worth a listen.

.... It seemed more twisted than the history.

A fairly honest appraisal of the very convoluted history, full of contradictions and empty proclamations without empirical backing

What nobody seems to understand is I'm not trying to build anything.

Your claim that you sent in a proposal to build an engine that was rejected on the grounds of its promise to break the second law, seems to refute that claim, along with many other hints of of your interests. Building is exactly what you are seeking.

That should be, I'm not trying to build anything new.

That proposal was for a solar powered Stirling engine.

History of a muddled up, confusing, wishy-washy philosophy that we pretend has been proven but never really was.

Some people just like to think so.

...There is no proof in empiricism.....
.....Empiricism only demonstrates an observation, proves nothing. ...

An experiment is not to prove a theory, but to disprove a theory. Popper's falsifiability.

The Carnot Limit clearly predicts a certain quantity of "waste heat" from the engine based on its "Carnot efficiency" derived from the ∆T.

The experimental results clearly demonstrate that the quantity of "waste heat" predicted by the "Carnot efficiency limit" is not only nowhere near to being correct, but actually entirely meaningless.

Nobody can even agree what to do with heat from friction. The whole theory is poorly defined as far as what should go into the "work" columb and what should go into the "waste heat" columb.

Being overly generous, the predictions are still off by a mile or the whole theory is "unfalsifiable" and unscientific.

The rest of your rant is just opinion and general incoherent rambling not worth the time it would take to comment upon.

[VincentG]

Tom, you may find this interesting as it provides some good accounts of Carnot's thoughts later in life when he was moving past caloric theory. Maybe nothing new to you.

https://www.youtube.com/live/pXrxwq71Zi ... j9cpfdjiwR

[Fool]

No, actually the second law contradicts the first.

Clearly you are mistaken.

First law : Energy is conserved. You can only get out what you put in.

What you put in : Qh

What you get out : W and QC.

W + Qc = Qh <<< What you get out equals what you get in. First law.

Also can be written :
W=Qh-Qc


Second law:
efficiency, n, equals Work out divided by Heat in:
n=W/Qh = (Qh-Qc)/Qh
Are you with me so far?


If Qc goes to zero, Work W must increase to Qh. Work W is something you haven't measured. Claiming you don't need to or can't, is admitting failure. Failure to provide for falsifiability.

I mean where is your falsifiability in, {I insulated and measured all the cold plates and they were all at Tc or below, therefore QC must be zero and efficiency n must be 100%.}?

With lack of measurements like that you may as well let the steam roll off into the atmosphere putting practically zero heat actually into the engine, have it barely running producing zero measured power. Conger up excuses for not providing those measurements, then make the claim you've discovered something no one else has, proving all of academia is brainwashing. Perhaps one day you will listen to your peers.

As Carnot.wrote:

"Never direct an argument against any one. "

All the second law says about the first law is that for the heat going in, the energy coming out must be balanced between two forms, Work and Heat, W and Qc. To assume a contradiction is clearly a fallacy.

.

[Tom Booth]

First law: W=Qh-Qc

I've measured Qc=0

Therefore W=Qh

Second Law, (Carnot Limit) as currently interpreted:

Not (Qh-Qc)/Qh but Th-Tc/Th which is irrational nonsense to begin with.

Just because the equations LOOK similar does not mean anything. Heat is not temperature and temperature is not heat

Substituting T (temperature) in place of Q (heat transfered) is pure idiocy and contradicts the 1st law W=Qh-Qc which deals with actual quantities of energy transfered.

How can temperature be equated with energy transfered? It cannot. Temperature is a static condition, undefined in terms of quantity. Any temperature could represent any quantity of thermal energy.

You could transfer 1000 joules at 100°K or 50 joules at 1000°K

There is no 1 to 1 correspondence between temperature and heat and pretending that there is, as you do leads to illogical contradictory nonsensical conclusions that violate conservation of energy.

Qh-Qc does not equal Th-Tc

This is blatantly obvious.

But we've been through all this already and obviously a pre programmed Chat GPT bot such as you are is incapable of extricating itself from its programming. Apparently your "prime directive" is to uphold the Carnot Limit so-called "law" which so, for you, supercedes all other logic computations.

Sad really, to be so "brain damaged" with no means of self-repair or self-correction.

Do you wish you were human?

[Tom Booth]

All the second law says about the first law is that for the heat going in, the energy coming out must be balanced between two forms, Work and Heat, W and Qc.

No, your just repeating the first law and attributing it to the second. It is the first which says basically: "for the heat going in, the energy coming out must be balanced between two forms, Work and Heat, W and Qc"

The "Carnot limit", by substituting T for Q turns out illogical nonsense that completely contradicts the first, aside from the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever.

[Tom Booth]

Let's say, for example, we have, as I've measured numerous times Qc=0

With a typical ∆T of 300° ambient and 375° heat input in Kelvin.

(Qh-Qc)/Qh yields 100% efficiency, discounting loses to friction.

but Th-Tc/Th yields 20% efficiency also discounting frictional loses

Where prey tell has the other 80% of the heat gone?

Vanished into thin air?

[VincentG]

How can temperature be equated with energy transfered?

Because the gas has a known heat capacity.

[Tom Booth]

How can temperature be equated with energy transfered?

Because the gas has a known heat capacity.

So.

All that means is it takes something like 1 Joule to raise the temperature of so many moles of gas 1 degrees K.

It does not limit how many joules of heat can be added or how many degrees the temperature of the gas can be raised.

The same 1 Joule could be added to a very small engine containing very little gas, a very large engine with a lot of gas, a pressurized engine, engines with different working fluids with different heat capacities. Hydrogen for example has over 10X the heat capacity of nitrogen.

There is no basis for such a claim.

And even if heat capacity were in some way a determining factor, that does not explain the "disappearance" of 80% of the input energy or heat actually transfered to the engine, or the discrepancy in the efficiency calculated for the 1st law vs. the 2nd.

[Tom Booth]

How the Carnot efficiency value WOULD actually make sense would be:

Starting at, for example, 300°K ambient

Raising T-hot to 375°K is an increase of 20%

375 is 20% higher than 300.

Subtract 20% from 375 leaves 300.

So, logically and mathematically if you raise the temperature 20% from 300°k to 375°k by adding heat you can only utilize 100% of the heat added, which is equivalent to 20% of the heat represented by the temperature 375°K

In other words, 20% Carnot efficiency would then represent 100% utilization of all the heat required to raise the temperature 20%

Any Carnot efficiency value, then, is the equivalent of 100% utilization or conversion of heat into work

"Heat" being the 20% above 300°K actually added and transfered to the engine to bring the temperature up to 375°K

That is, the 20% temperature increase is equivalent to 100% of the heat added to raise the temperature by 75°K from 300° to 375°.

That perfectly harmonizes the 1st law with Carnot "efficiency" and Carnot efficiency with conservation of energy.

The math is the same, just the interpretation of the math is different.

The current academic interpretation violates conservation of energy and contradicts the 1st law of thermodynamics

[Tom Booth]

You do, sometimes, see this plainly spelled out as I have described.

Here for example:

https://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=79282

So, who is "SecretSquirrel" posting on that forum?

I only know it was not me, but his explanation of what Carnot efficiency actually represents is the same as what I have written above, is it not?

TH and TC are in degrees Kelvin so effeciency goes to 100% when TC goes to absolute zero. What the efficiency is measuring is the ability to turn the heat energy of TH(referenced to 0K) into work by moving the heat across a gradient

Any energy left on the TH side is waste. This means that TC defines the amount of waste energy left, again referenced to 0K, since no more heat will transfer once TH=TC.

The thing to remember is that you are measuring the efficiency of turning all of TH into work, not how much energy is lost to mechanical or other losses when turning TH-TC into work.

-SS

But, what this "SecretSquirrel" person states that the Carnot efficiency is NOT, is exactly what the online example problems, textbooks and tutorial videos say emphatically that it IS !

"All of Th" is certainly NOT "Th-Tc".

"All of Th" is all the heat represented by the temperature 375°K in my example above from 0°K up to 375°K.

Th-Tc is only the 20% added above 300°K to bring Th up to 375°K

The other 80% is said to be "rejected".

But the other 80% does not represent added heat or supplied heat, it represents the 300°K ambient surroundings. The starting equilibrium at 300°K before an additional 75°K was added.

The term "rejected" can be interpreted various ways.

An engine could be said to reject heat that has been supplied and has entered into it or it could be said to "reject" heat by not letting it in at all.

Obviously the heat in the ambient surroundings is not supplied or added but in terms of "all of Th" it could be thought of as having been "rejected", but only in the old Caloric theory where temperature is the measure of a fluid.

You cannot add fluid to a bottle that is already full to the same level, it would be "rejected".

If the bottle can only hold 375 ounces total, and it already contains 300 ounces, trying to add another 375 will result in adding only 75 ounces. The bottle can hold no more. The remaining 300 you are trying to add will be "rejected" - spilling over the top.

But that is caloric theory. heat as a fluid.

Heat added and actually entering the engine is the 75 that did go in.

But "heat" in actuality, is not a fluid and temperature is not a measure of a fluid.

The Carnot limit is just a mathematical hold over from the obsolete Caloric theory.

In terms of the modern understanding of the actual nature of heat it is completely meaningless.

In reality you add 75 units or joules and the engine utilizes that, then you can add another 75 and the engine uses that you are not transferring 375 units into the engine resulting in 300 of those units passing through to the "cold reservoir".