Insulating the cold side

[Fool]

Stirlings have the potential to use less fuel than a peltier.

[Fool]

A goal is to combine a power generator with a fuel source. Gaseous and liquid fuels are relatively straight forward but need to be transported. Solid fuels seem more difficult to self regulate and feed, but often close at hand in remote areas and often waste products.

A self feeding and regulating burner that operates hot enough, but not too hot, to burn cleanly and not overheat an engine that may have variable power demands, is as important as a reliable efficient inexpensive engine and generator.

Materials to withstand heat and insulate or conduct, heat are just as important.

Those things are what led me here. Tom's experiments with them are, at times, quite creative. His insulating the cold side, he will eventually find out, is a time wasting diversion. Proper instrumentation and lab practice are needed for this discovery. He seems to drag others into his Carnot bashing den of lies, and fallacious promises of greater things.

Repeating his materials experiments would be a far more productive endeavor.

[Tom Booth]

...Tom's experiments .... ....His insulating the cold side, he will eventually find out, is a time wasting diversion. ...

Just your single minded, pre-programmed chat bot circuitry talking.

Insulating the cold side and related experiments that help sort out the true nature of heat and how heat engines really operate, helping untangle 150 years of confusion on the subject are a crucial and significant step forward.

The debate regarding, is heat a fluid that goes THROUGH the engine or energy that is CONVERTED so does not pass through, a debate that began, no doubt before Kelvin and Tesla's brought it into greater focus with Tesla's proposal for a practical application, or something in between that is partly converted and partly flows through has never been settled.

If it had been, I never would have found it necessary to do any of these experiments

Recently VincentG has posted a few videos detailing the whole convoluted and confused history and how the problem or issue has never been resolved, until, he thinks, now, maybe, in his new book on the subject. Ha ha ..

But those videos mostly just retrace a lot of the research I did back around 2010 forward.

Nobody had ever demonstrated anything experimentally in the past 150 years. It was all just opinions and debate and philosophical wrangling with nothing conclusive.

So, I've found it necessary to return to the basic fundamentals and carry out these basic common sense experiments to answer the question, does heat go through the engine like Carnot, Kelvin and others assumed,.. or can all the heat be converted so No heat passes through as Tesla imagined, or does Some heat go through but not all as the modern still unproven compromise suggests.

Well, my results suggest that Tesla was mostly correct. As Joule proved experimentally, heat and mechanical "work" are fully interconvertible, one into the other, and heat is simply another form of energy as most of modern science already recognized.

Thermodynamics, generally, is a crystal castle in the clouds, built up upon dreams and philosophical musings without foundation, without grounding in empirical science.

The experimental demonstration that a heat engine CAN operate without "rejecting" heat to a "cold reservoir" is something someone should have thought to do 150 years ago, saving me the trouble.

Sorry if that brings down the house of cards that has been your life long occupation or whatever, but I've had enough of mystic musings and philosophic dreaming.

I need concrete answers in order to build actual physical engines that actually run and have a practical use.

[VincentG]

Repeating his materials experiments would be a far more productive endeavor.

I've recently developed a pancake LTD style displacer that, while only .5" thick, easily maintains over a 500 degree F delta between top and bottom. I'll post it soon along with a ~120cc pancake displacer chamber that has performance rivaling my epoxy chamber, but at much higher temperatures. I've already recorded over 5 in/Hg guage vacuum at modest temperatures.

It should help a little in measuring the actual heat rejected to the cold side, though I still think it will be incredibly hard to ensure more heat flows into the gas than through the body of the engine.

Recently VincentG has posted a few videos detailing the whole convoluted and confused history and how the problem or issue has never been resolved, until, he thinks, now, maybe, in his new book on the subject. Ha ha ..

Kind of the point in posting those. It is very hard to get two agreeable definitions to the 2nd law.

[Fool]

The second law has several meanings. They all agree.

[Tom Booth]

... Carnot ...

Repeating his materials experiments would be a far more productive endeavor.

Not sure why VincentG quoted that, but AFAIK Carnot never did any experiments with hot air or Stirling engines at all.

Infact he mentions in his posthumously published notes having heard rumors of such engines but seems to have doubts saying "if true..."

So, what Carnot experiments would you have me repeat using engines he didn't even believe existed, never mind experimented with?

As usual, fool, you are talking out of complete ignorance.

[VincentG]

Tom, I read that as repeating your (Tom Booth's) material experiments.

[Tom Booth]

Tom, I read that as repeating your (Tom Booth's) material experiments.

Could be I suppose. His post is addressed to no one. But that seems doubtful since he spends all his time belittling my experiments and sees no value in them, "a time wasting diversion".

He was criticizing my so-called "Carnot bashing", so, who knows what he's talking about. His lack of clarity in writing is only matched by his lack of comprehension in reading.

[Tom Booth]

I suppose he thinks I should repeat experiments like testing the conductivity of titanium?

Why repeat what's has already been determined?

Anyway, it's all related.

To determine if heat is passing through the working fluid and out to the "cold reservoir" other parts of the engine, displacer, chamber body, piston etc. need to be as non-heat conductive as possible.

Those "material experiments", if that's what he means are closely related to the "insulating the cold side" experiments and really have no other purpose.

If you have heat conducting through the metal of a tin can engine there is no point in trying to insulate the cold side as it would overheat due to heat conducted through the metal. Unless the metal is titanium perhaps.

[Tom Booth]

... I still think it will be incredibly hard to ensure more heat flows into the gas than through the body of the engine.
....

True.

Air itself is nearly the best possible insulation. Trapped air in Styrofoam and the like prevents convection but is mostly air.

About the only thing better is a vacuum, but pretty hard to contain anything with nothing as a barrier. The vacuum has to be contained by something.

Helium as a working fluid gives some advantage, being somewhat more conductive than air. Pressurization also increases heat conductivity of gases.

An insulation containing trapped bubbles of carbon dioxide might be useful if the CO2 could be prevented from leaking out.

Anyway, what is remarkable IMO is that I've gotten such low cold side temperature readings in spite of this difficulty in preventing heat being conducted through the sides of the engine as well as the displacer.

To me, that indicates some kind of active cooling effect happening that is contracting the inevitable heat creep.

[Fool]

To me, that indicates some kind of active cooling effect happening that is contracting the inevitable heat creep.

What you are implying is that you are getting more work output than Qh in.

[Tom Booth]

To me, that indicates some kind of active cooling effect happening that is contracting the inevitable heat creep.

What you are implying is that you are getting more work output than Qh in.

No, that's a straw man

Heat is being converted to work. That by itself results in a temperature reduction.

The work is then used to move or "pump" heat from the cold side to the warm side.

First the conversion of heat into work brings about a general reduction in temperature and the resulting work is used to move heat from the cold to the hot side which further reduces the temperature of the cold side but increases the temperature of the hot side.

There is no violation of conservation of energy.

Since the heat is being converted to work, rather that passing over to the cold side, it only requires a very slight heat pumping action to keep the cold side cold or even make it slightly colder while also transferring that heat over to the hot side.

Heat applied to run a Stirling engine can produce work. That work could be used to run a refrigerator. A Stirling engine not only converts heat but also has its own internal refrigeration, or doubles as a heat pump.

[sarimshaikh]

??????

[Fool]

There is no violation of conservation of energy.

So :
W=Qh-0
Qh=Qh-Qc
W=Qh-Qc
Qc is very tiny. 80%

If Work out is very tiny Qh will now also be very tiny. And that's what you have, very tiny work out. Zero measurements.

[Fool]

??????

LOL. Yes he's pretty much gone off the deep end with his cognitive dissonance. Welcome to our forum. I hope you have a cast iron gut so as you can stomach the tripe he serves.