Tesla's Ambient Heat Engine revisted

[VincentG]

An ICE uses a turbo or supercharger to trade some shaft or exhaust power for an even greater gain in specific output with extra fuel.

What would be the equivalent "supercharging" for a Stirling engine? Just a buffer pressure boost? Or something temperature related?

[Fool]

Super charging. Same thing. Getting more air and fuel into the burn chamber. The engine must be sized and designed to handle the extra heat, otherwise the extra heat just gets blown out the stack. Higher internal gas pressure is one design parameter that helps here. Don't know what increased buffer pressure would do. Nothing helpful if that is all that changes. Don't know, what the results of rasing both internal and buffer pressure verses just the internal pressure.

Buffer pressure does not add to engine output.

[VincentG]

I meant internal pressure and buffer pressure. How do you increase internal pressure without raising buffer pressure too?

[Tom Booth]

Nothing I've seen is more obviously faked than those garbage cooler unit videos. Nice try. There are scads of them too. The amazing thing is how many people those fraudulent videos seem to fool. Take a look at how uneven the coils develop frost and location of first frost. How little an amount "refrigerant" butane is used. How they expect us to believe it stays in there with such loose connections. Read the comments. The only thing worse is the number of "views". Perhaps one day people will get tired of seeing the same crap over and over by the same sinister people.

Watch the end of the following video, especially the last 5%. LOL

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb_bD4xTnwk

Well, I'm undecided, personally. Just because something can be faked doesn't necessarily mean that it is in all cases.

Sometimes the "sinister" ones are those who go to great lengths to make fake "fake" videos to discredit something that is actually real.

A refrigeration system can work with air alone, so the amount of butane is somewhat irrelevant.

Pressure of lighter fluid is minimal. Millions of people carry cigarete lighters around in their pockets without much worry about leaks or explosions. It phase changes to liquid easily in a household freezer and the gas can easily be contained in a common party balloon.

I did these experiments with lighter fluid a long time ago.

The balloon on the left contains the butane.

The one on the right, ordinary air for comparison.

The butane "contracts" markedly in the freezer phase changing to liquid. Then expands when taken out of the freezer.

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viewtopic.php?p=12920#p12920

Old fashion "Freon" was similarly an excellent low pressure refrigerant that was easily contained.

Not all refrigerants require high pressure.

Not that I necessarily "believe" any of the videos are real or not real, but so far, from the comments I've read, the reasons given for skepticism or disbelief are based on ignorance.

[Fool]

Skepticism born from fraudulent practices, isn't ignorance.

Belief/disbelief isn't part of science. A scientific experiment doesn't care what the experimenter believes. Beliefs cloud judgement. Beliefs can obfuscate scientific papers. Humans are fallible. They fall into the trap of beliefs, and even belief systems. Beware.

Meticulous and rigorous scientific practices improve reliability. Those demos have none of that. They are akin to magic tricks. And it shows. It's obvious. The cooling should start at the orifice point. They don't even have an acceptable orifice. Didn't make or install one.

You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. Your skepticism is appropriate in this instance. Your denial of the observed facts not so much. IOW it is far easier to fake one of those than to prove it can't or does, work. Not worth our time. No one, trying to prove it doesn't work, has claimed in surprise that it does work. Why would someone go to all the work of showing how it can be faked if it actually works. There is a similar demo of a motor generator combo showing how that doesn't work either.

[Tom Booth]

...They don't even have an acceptable orifice. Didn't make or install one.
...

Case in point.

Apparently you don't know much about refrigeration.

Anyway, I'm adding this to my projects list. The more of these little butane refrigerators
I see, the more convinced I am it can work.

[VincentG]

Tom can you unpack that? How would it work without an orifice?

[Tom Booth]

Tom can you unpack that? How would it work without an orifice?

I didn't say it would work "without an orifice".

Fool claimed:

They don't even have an acceptable orifice. Didn't make or install one.

Pretty obviously he doesn't recognize common refrigeration components, even while watching them being installed.

[VincentG]

I see, I haven't watched either.

[Tom Booth]

Is anyone familiar with these inline high pressure fuel pumps?

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Designed for cars with fuel injection. Up to 125 psi MAX.

Flow rate 135ltr/hr @ 3bar (35 gal/hr @ 45 psi)
Maximum pressure 8.5bar (125 psi)

Seems like more than enough pressure.

From what I read somewhere, uses a turbine pump rather than diaphragms. Designed for gasoline/diesel fuel so should not be harmed by butane I assume.

Since it is "inline" and presumably self priming, should be able to pull a vacuum. Not sure about that.

But for the price, seems like it might be worth a try.

[Fool]

That pump is not an orifice.

[Fool]

Well, I'm undecided, personally. Just because something can be faked doesn't necessarily mean that it is in all cases.

As James Randi said, of course, but, the explanation of how to fake it is probably more likely than the explanation that it works by magic.

[Tom Booth]

BTW if anyone is tempted (like me) to buy one of those tiny 30 watt football helmet size beer coolers for the compressor:

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Don't bother.

I was talking to the stock boy at Big Lots where they had some of these on sale, I said:

They couldn't say "Low noise compressor" unless it actually has a compressor right? Otherwise that would be false advertising."

He agreed, but assured me that if it wasn't what I wanted I could bring it back anyway.

Wrong.

Nothing inside but a tiny peltier module (as I had suspected), a little fan, heat sink and a control board.

Hopefully it at least has some kind of thermostatic control, but it doesn't look like it. Just two wires to the peltier module, and an on/off switch.

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Maybe I can still do something with it though. It is still just a 12 volt DC 30 watt (including fan) cooling module.

Are peltier modules more or less efficient than a vapor compression type heat pump?

[Tom Booth]

That pump is not an orifice.

Who said it was. I've obviously moved on to a different topic.

[Fool]

Duh!