VincentG wrote: ↑Tue Oct 01, 2024 7:58 pm
I was just illustrating a different method of isolation that is easier to see or make obvious. With a displacer SEEMINGLY pushing air from side to side it APPEARS that the hot air is being transfered over to the cold side and vice-versa, so the idea that heat is "flowing through" appears to be obvious or a given, but that isn't really the case. Instead heat is being pushed or pumped from the cold side over to the hot side.
I was specifically referring to what seemed to be Tom suggesting that the displacer does not push air back and forth, but somehow it is just the heat being pumped that causes the movement of energy.
Take the power piston out of the equation and just look at the displacer. If both plates are room temperature, I don't think it can be argued that the displacer isn't just pushing the air back and forth.
Now add the delta T. Are you saying that the displacer alone is not responsible for pushing the air back and forth and that the heat is?
Can the chamber alone not drive a piston without the piston pumping extra heat into the cold side? I can provide proof that it can using what is essentially a repeating non-cyclical process.
Sorry for any misunderstanding. Of course the displacer pushes AIR back and forth or side to side.
What I said was " it APPEARS that the
HOT air is being transfered over to the cold side"
Emphasis on HOT.
As explained, or as I attempted to explain, the displacer and power piston work together in such a way that when the working fluid drops in temperature due to power output- losing energy the displacer simultaneously moves the
COLD or cooling air over to the cold side
With compression the gas is subject to "heat of compression" and the displacer
simultaneously moves the HOT air to the hot side.
So as the air gets hot, then cold, then hot again due to expansion/power output and cooling followed by contraction/compression with the motion of the power piston, the displacer shifts the air to the hot side when hot from heat of compression and back to the cold side when it is cold from power output and expansion.
The timing of these events, of course, is critical to the process.
So the displacer does not move hot air to the cold side or move cold air to the hot side, it moves the air to the cold side as, or after it does work and cools. Then during compression when the gas starts to get hot from the heat of compression the displacer shifts the gas back over to the hot side.
If the throw (or compression ratio) is high, then the cooling and heating from power output and compression, respectively, can be great enough that the gas is colder than the cold plate when on the cold side, so absorbs a little heat from the cold side, then with compression the gas may get hotter than the hot plate so there is a heat pumping action that continually tends to transfer heat in the opposite direction to its natural flow, concentrating the heat on the hot side.
But the heat does not flow backwards into the hot plate much, if any, because from there the gas is allowed to immediately expand for the power stroke and all that concentrated or collected heat goes towards expansion and power output.
Just as a side note:
IMO high compression has some effect that goes beyond "heat of compression".
Perhaps when the molecules are forced very close together they are subject to repulsion due to "spin" rather than ordinary collision.
Like two billiard balls spinning and slowly moving closer until they collide. Many "spinning" molecules forced together might "explode".
Otherwise, what is the advantage of high compression? You should only get back what you put in, but it seems clear that more power is derived from higher compression for some reason.