Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum diode array nanotech abundant clean energy

It doesn't matter how you want to implement it. Whatever you do, there exists a microscopic description of it which also describes the noise. You can't use the noise as a ''black box'' in which you can hide entropy.

A hammer can do more work in driving nails over its life than the energy used to create the hammer. Otherwise there would be no savings in energy by using tools. A highly ordered state where all the diodes are facing the same way can be established which can impress more order on random electrical power than the accompanying deterioration of the order of the diodes.

Aloha, Charlie

Dear Charlie,
Your open-source attitude is refreshing, Especially after my conversations with Rodney Cox of Borealis. He is quite mercenary with his plans for an energy hungry world to pay top dollar for his power chips.

After reviewing your technology page I was wondering:

Is that 50% of carnot efficiency?

What is the estimated cost....$/Khr......if your arrays were in mass production?

And, What are your thoughts about the quantum tunneling technology of the Borealis chips?


Thanks for your attention,


Erich J. Knight
Shenandoah Gardens
1047 Dave Berry Rd.
McGaheysville, VA 22840
(540) 289-9750

The diode array is not Carnot cycle limited; it works where the Carnot fficiency would be zero. 50% is for realistic devices with losses after using Johnson Noise as a random open band radio power intermediary in converting heat according to its absolute temperature into intermittant D.C. power which is aggregated by parallel conststantly aligned diodes.

I have heard a little of the Borealis chips. They are apparently small gap thermonic devices. They do not believe that my device will work.

Aloha, Charlie

I didn't answer two of Eriche's questions.

Power from the diode array should be cheap. They may last a million hours ( 113 years ). A Killowatt chip may cost a dollar ( 2005 $ ). If cheap energy is generally adopted, all goods will take less effort to obtain in a great virtuous circle fed by imaginative application. For example, metals may be picked off the deep seabed cheaply.

Quantum effects may lead to better thermonic anodes and cathodes.

Aloha, Charlie

Wow, now I see ........no delta T....

No meso scale delta T. There is irrepressible nanometer scale delta T. We can use it and not loose it.

Aloha, Charlie

I ran to edit after the above to clarify that a diode array producing electrical power will also produce cooling which accross a thermal resistor is delta T. There is little thermal resistance between the parts of a diode array so this cooling appears as a lower operating temperature as heat is absorbed if most of the temperature drop is in the heat exchanger supplying the diode array or a deliberate restriction on the heat supply is set up as, for example, where an insulated box becomes a refrigerator. The intermediaries work under these conditions according to the absolute temperature squared.

Diversity is cheap.

Aloha Charlie

Dear Charlie:
I sent Rodney Cox of Borealis your site asking for his opinion, here's his reply:


Erich

These guys are talking of thousands of watts per square inch.

There is simply no way to move that much heat on or off such a device.

As for generating 50 nanowatts of power, that is scientifically interesting but not very useful.

It would take 20 million of the 50 nanowatt devices to make a watt of power.

Keep sending me this stuff.

We like to look at everything.

rtc


At 06:55 PM 7/26/2005, Shengar@aol.com wrote:

Dear Rodney:

Thought you would appreciate the low cost and easy fabrication of that graphite hydrogen storagesystem, and it seems it development may be quick enough for your car.

I've read that Ballard power estimates the total well to wheel efficiency for their fuel cell cars at 27%, compared to internal combustion's 17%. At 80% of carnot ,and your motors, yours must be at least 40%, do you have an estimate?

Also, you better hope this diode approach doesn't work. They talk that the costs of a Kilowatt chip may be a dollar and last a million hours ( 113 years ).

Diode Array


Erich J. Knight

I used to claum a killowatt / cm2 at 10 nm spacung between the buckyballs for 10^12 diodes / cm2 but backed off to 100 watts / cm2 / 35 nm spacing / 10^11 diodes / cm2. 35 nm spacing gives the reverse bias depletion zone room to grow. I don't know how big the reverse bias depletion zone will be. A little bit of crowding may pay off because a lot of inefficient diodes beats a lot fewer very efficient diodes. Bringing a hundred watts / cm2 of heat to the diodes is hard enough. Making diodes by the billions by sprinkeling buckyballs seems to me cheap and easy. Nature has no guile so the simple coherence of having all the diodes right side up for consistant algnment and metalized into massive parallel is enough to rectify and aggregate the Johnson Noise.

It probably was Mr. Cox who asked me to convince him in a short statement that my device would work (I can look that up)... My last computer ate all its email...

Dr. Crowe at VDI will look up a diode array patch with a lot of small anodes for me when he returns from vacation ~Aug 1.

Aloha, Charlie

I e-mailed Virginia Diode for their thoughts, here's the reply:

Hello Erich,

Frankly, we have no association with Mr. Brown and do not have any faith in his proposed concept. Personally, I believe he has the physics all wrong. I saw from your email that the patent was dated thirty years ago. Thats's a long time. I imagine that if this really worked we would have known by now.

I have asked Mr. Brown to stop using our company name and information in his correspondence with respect to this technology.

Regards,
Tom Crowe, President
Virginia Diodes, Inc.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: admin@readyhosting.com [mailto:admin@readyhosting.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 10:53 PM
> To: VDIRFQ@virginiadiodes.com
> Subject: Product Information Request
>

> ***
> Name: Erich J. Knight
> Company: Shenandoah Gardens

> Comments:
>
> Dear Sirs:
>
> What is your opinion on the viability of this radical technology proposed by
> Charles M. Brown:
>
>

I just opened an email from Dr. Crowe reminding me that he dosn't endorse the diode array in this application. He dosen't want his employees bothered with it it. Please don't contact him or his company. He with everyone else will hear about it if / when a power prototype is shown at a media conference.

Aloha, Charlie

Charlie, re: --The original materials specified in the patent have been superseded by C60 carbon buckyballs as anodes on an N type InSb (semiconductor) substrate.--

Did you file a patent application for this?

Charlie, do you know about these?:

1) http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee293a/
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee293a/DocumA.html
Note Chapter 10 "Radio Noise" - "Skipped" (Just my luck!)

2) United States Patent Application 20030183268
Kind Code A1
Shanefield, Daniel Jay October 2, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Device for conversion of environmental thermal energy into direct current electricity


Abstract
Nearly-random electron motion in the primary wire of a transformer is amplified by that transformer, and the varying peaks of voltage drive some current pulses through a rectifying diode. These pulses charge a capacitor, and that charge can provide electrical energy through output wires, to do useful work elsewhere.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventors: Shanefield, Daniel Jay; (Princeton, NJ)
Correspondence Name and Address: Daniel J. Shanefield
119 Jefferson Road
Princeton
NJ
08540-3373
US
Link
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars...DN/200 30183268

3) United States Patent Application 20030192582
Kind Code A1
Guevara, Hector October 16, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thermal electric generator


Abstract
The Thermal Electric Generator (TEG) includes a high efficiency multi-layer semiconductor device adapted to enable heat, over a wide temperature range, to be converted into useful power. This is not a simple solar panel. The "heat" referred to here can be from radiation or any other convection or conduction source. One important aspect is that the TEG not only works in a "solar" environment, but is more particularly adapted to recover energy from heat generated by electronic components and circuits, mechanical rotating equipment and machinery, waste energy, furnaces, geothermal, etc. This heat comes in the form of released electrons, thus, the invention is based on the concept of fluctuation voltages and the conversion of the same into useful energy, which translates into an increased efficiency of over 50% compared to the peak existing efficiency (i.e., 16%) of existing solar panels


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventors: Guevara, Hector; (Bohemia, NY)
Link
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=%22Guevara%2C+Hector%22.IN.&OS=IN/

Why would not you guyz rather made gold coins from lead?

e s

I don't want our civilization to be bound and gagged by excess patents and copyrights. I am mostly interested in a balance between proper attribution of ideas and the need for all ideas to be available for synergetic combination.

One claim on my patent makes allowance for new materials. Furthermore, I have discussed upgrading to buckyballs over the web enough to render it unpatentable.

I would like Dr. Crowe's help and do not want him to claim that there is no evidence of the diode array working so I sent him another copy of the test results. The first copy was sent years ago without acknowlegment.

Aloha, Charlie

Here's a little psychology 101 - if it's free folks will think it's worth what they pay for it - nothing.

OTOH...well, you get my point.

FWIW, I think it IS worth something and I wish you and Shanefield - who is certainly no dummy - well.

The sharp increase in quality of life due to inventions should be passed on to general civilization. There is no need for a rich cohort to charge what the market thinks it should bear and trickle down back the wealth it gains for such a service. Such an arrangement is enough to drive some theorists into advocating highly progressive taxation. Naturally, the cohort musters its lobbyists to sully such people. It is more elegant to rush the diode array, for example, to the transparent commodity stage. The diode array can power ego massaging / life enhancing robots for those who want them.

Meanwhile, many physicists would rather believe that time ceases in order to protect the universe from boredom when entropic greyness conquers all while refusing to believe that guileless mechanisms will capture tiny random thermal opportunities.

With cheap energy we can turn lead into gold - or not - if extracting useful materials from the ocean is more expedient.

I'll drop Shanefield a postcard.

Aloha, Charlie

Please let me back off from going too far. I think that a high but not crippling introductory price of a new invention can justified to support intense start up growth. Management should quickly develop an idea of future demand and anticipate it within a reasonable range that won't starve success or flood bad applications. A low price will attract users and fend off intruders. A high price will support expansion and new application development. Avoiding ostentation will allow money to go to better uses.

Aloha, Charlie

lengould Posted: Aug 2 2005, 04:11 AM


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Actually the concept is legitimate physics, well known as "Optical Rectena". It works on the principle of receiving light radiation with an array of (very tiny) antennae, just like microwaves or FM etc. Theoretically capable of sunlight conversion efficiencies in the 70%+ range with no doped crystals etc. like current photovoltaics. Being worked on fairly intensively in one or more US research labs, with some good progress reported. Biggest difficulty is building the tiny diode rectifiers required to convert the energy recieved on the antenna into dc electricity, because the required dimensions are a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than present semiconductor fabs are doing.

I can't believe, with how well known and published the concept is, that anyone might be granted a patent on it though

Here's a DARPA dicument from 2000
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/trans/energy/briefings/11itn.pdf

Is there agreement that an optical rectena designed for ambient thermal infra red will absorb heat directly from its environment? This agreement will force its subjects out of the Second Law paradigm. The Second Law is one of the largest paradigms in science. There may be many advantages to civilization in the new paradigm beyond the Second Law where heat can be completely recycled.

The diode array is different than an optical rectena. The diode array uses random electronic motions at frequencies much lower than ambient IR. Nevertheless the power density by area is higher than ambient IR for very small circuit elements. The diode array is simple in that it can use unregistered fabrication. The thinness of the embedded buckyball layer requires attention however.

Aloha, Charlie