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Whoa, long topic!

Aloha, Charlie.

So i'm interested in your concept. i'd only heard a scrap of it when i wrote the part Erich kindly provided. i've had the time to think about what you've been saying and i've decided you're not considering capturing IR photons on an antenna, but using a "somewhat" comparable technique to tap into thermal energy at the molecular level. First off, there's no reason i can see that that should violate any law of thermodynamics. The energy your device would extract is "paid for" by the cooling of the ambient, correct?

Agreed that could be a larger pool of energy than ambient IR photons, but still not sure how much is there. eg the enthalpy of a kg of CO2 at 15 degC is 450 kJoules. (i had that one handy) To round it off, that's about a cu meter of CO2. If one of your devices extracted (i think you mentioned) 100 watts (100 J/sec) from a cu m of eg. CO2 at eg. 100% effic.(can't think of any "losses"?) then the entire enthalpy content of that cu. m will be reduced in eg. one minute by only 6 kJoules, correct? About 1.33%, or roughly 3.8 degC. Would need a bit of a "reverse heat sink" and ambient air or water handler i suppose. Minor problem though.

So do you have evidence that buckyballs can act as diodes? Would they be better that tubes? cause i see that a lab in Japan has fabricated a dense "pile rug" type of arrangement of CNT's standing straight up off the substrate, all spaced out and everything. Check the image at Xintek http://www.xintek.com/products/materials/aligned-cnts.html Not exactly what you need but..... ?


Good luck. wink

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Apologies to Xintek, they're not a Japanese company but located in N Carolina. I'd seen a similar product from a Japanese firm before, mixed them up.

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It dosen't violate the first law which is entirely reasnable to me. 1L is that energy never appears from nowhere or disappears into nowhere. The second Law is more complicated, that heat can only be turned into work by steam engine like machines with a firebox (hot) and condenser (cold). The heat taken as work dosen't reach the condenser but some of the heat does ( a higher fraction as the temperature difference is smaller)and becomes waste heat at an intermediate temperature. The diode array works with small electrical / thermal fluctuations at a nominally uniform temperature where the parts that, in fluctuation, create electrical power remove heat from the diode array and the electrical power is aggregated from a shifting half of many small sites (diodes) and removed in electrical form which is conducted away to be used as electrical power beyond the diode array. Energy is not created or destroyed here.

An scholarly treatment of the Second Law for both advocates and opponents is at: http://www.mdpi.net/entropy/papers/e6010001.pdf

The Xyntek product looks like coconut covered cookies. They are unnecessarily large. Because of their uniformaty they could be used as a master in electron beam lithographic pattern printers. Buckyballs are good as parts because they are of uniform electrical properties, size, and shape. I expect them to work well as non semiconductor anodes which quickly absorb electrons that leave the semiconductor cathode.

There will be a lot of interest in how much air has to flow through heat exchangers in various applications.

A non pressurized tank of solid CO2 at -78 C or less needs a diode array with enough cooling ability to keep the tank cold as heat leaks through the insulation. I expect diode arrays with due care to be reliable enough for this application. One reliability issue is assuring that the diode array can always export the electrical power it produces when refrigerating. There should be an emergency resistive dissipator that turns the electricity into heat if the general power network fails.

Aloha, Charlie

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Ok agreed your proposal appears to violate the second law, but I think only on the macro scale. Wouldn't it be true that at a micro scale, eg. the scale of an individual one of your diodes, the second law is still obeyed is it not?

I note a key phrase from the article you've referenced. "But the internal energy E can be decrease without any decrease of the free energy at nonzero temperature T > 0 if the entropy S decreases at the same time. As this anecdote shows, in defending the second law, one must be careful not to implicitly assume it, but this is often not as easy at it looks. As recounted by Callender, even luminaries such as Szilard - in his analysis of a mechanical Maxwell demon - fell prey to such circular reasoning. "

Which I choose to interpret as saying something along the lines of "If a machine extracts energy from a system which exhibits no apparent delta T, it is still not a violation of second law provided an entropy balance in maintained." So, see above, no reason entropy balance cannot be maintained, right?

Further,your reference, discussing "systematic reductions in total entropy" "Such systematic reductions are possible if Brownian motion is not quite chaotic or could be made ordered under equilibrium conditions."

Is that the proposed source of the energy into which your system should tap?

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I'll identify your paragraph breaks as being lines 4,10,14, and 17.

Re lines 1-3, A macro violation of 2LT is built from micro conditions.

If 2LT dosen't apply to micro conditions than obedience is meaningless. If the microstates fluctuate so that they can be treated as temporary carnot cycles that obey 2LT and have a collective result that violates 2LT than 2LT is violated at the macro level. Having an increasing understanding of the Universe is important and so is finding clear ways to discribe it. Let's think about how to replace 2LT with something true on the micro and macro levels.

Re line 5-6: I have trouble with this part. Nonfree nonthermal internal energy could be chemical energy.

Re lines 8-9: I recognized circular reasoning in discussion of rectifier currents when an author said that the second law required that the forward and reverse current had to be equal and then concluded it.

Re lines 10- 13: The diode array can refrigerate water without decreasing T when freezing it while exporting electrical power. This would violate 2LT and decrease entropy (entropy = uniformity). Entropy change has nothing to do with the total system's energy.

Re lines 15-16: Diodes order the motion of electricity. Johnson Noise is in micro chaotic equlibrium. Equlibrium has a constant macro resolution and fluctuating micro approximations.

Consistant alignment parallel electrical connection combines the micro diodes into a macro collective.

Aloha, Charlie

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Recently Ji Ung Lee of GE Global Research in New York fabricated a perfect diode from a C nanotube.
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/8/11 .

Perhaps this development can be extended to make an exploratory diode array. It would also extend the investigations of others. It can probably be done quickly and smoothly. It is not as ultimately
practical for large scale production as the C60 / n InSb diode array.

The C SWNT device requires a cathode termination, a + gate, an ? gate, and an anode termination. These can be fabricated as 4 parallel stripes. Hundreds of semiconducting C SWNTs can cross the support stripes like frets on a stringed musical instrument. Insulating NB nanotubes can separate the C nanotubes. There is a high series resistance on the present perfect diode. This feature is not needed in this application. A stabilizing capacitor can be added.

Aloha, Charlie

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Another analytical diode array prototype:

Many vertical [on a typical screen] N type InSb stripes on a substrate and below [on a horizontal device] many horizontal [on a typical screen] conductive carbon nanotubes:

N
t
y
p
e
Many rows of conductive carbon nanotubes
I
n
S
b

Each intersection is an n InSb Schottky anode diode. These diodes have a greater cross section than C60 buckyballs but the dispersion and embedding issues are avoided.

Aloha, Charlie

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I would appreciate being informed about solids as objects involved with room temperature Brownian motion. A C60 Buckyball is about 19^2 times as massive as a H2 molecule; An H2 molecule has a mean thermal speed of ~1,600 M/sec. Does a C60 Buckyball show any tendency to move at ~88 M/sec in a hard vacuum? If a pollen grain showns Brownian motion suspended in water will it also show motion amidst a small volume of dry pollen grains? I want to check theory with observation.

Aloha, Charlie

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Referring to earlier criticisms in this thread:
1] I believe that insulating embeddants can be found.
2] I don't see how a monolayer of widely dispersed C60 molecules will render the embedding agent a conductor.
3] Johnson noise is not the scattering of bias current. It is random original current.
4] Radioactivity was not under discussion; presenting false analogies does not make unrelated analogies false.

Plausibly the buckyballs can be dispersed with sonication transducers on the spincaster disk during spinup.

I would appreciate having other people propose solutions.

Aloha, Charlie

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A Chinese team at Shanghai Jiao Tong University built several demonstration electron tubes that escape the Second Law of Thermodynamics. They are eager to persue development.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0311/0311104.pdf nov 2003
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0509/0509111.pdf sept 2005

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A correspondent sent me further information when I sent him the links to the Chinese research:

I was aware of X. Fu's original paper (Energy Convrs. Mgmt. 22, 1-3
(1982); {and also of two rebuttals [Y. R. Wang, (Energy Convrs. Mgmt. 23,
185-191 (1983); and Y. Z. Wang (Energy Convrs. Mgmt. 26, 249-252; as well
as a paper that provides a general discussion of this and related issues
(K. Zhang and K. Zhang, Phys. Rev. A 46, 4598-4605 (1992)]}. But I was
unaware of X. Fu's and Z. Fu's more recent arXiv papers. The positive
experimental results reported in these arXiv papers, will, especially if
confirmed independently, of course overcome the earlier theoretical
rebuttals.

Aloha, Charlie

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Here is a new introduction to the diode array:

abundant cheap clean scalable reliable quiet nontoxic safe energy source


The Second Law of Thermodynamics becomes weaker at smaller volumes even though academia fiercely wants to hold 2LoT as a primary law. Academia rejected Maxwell's Demon and its non assertively delivered relative, Smoluchowski's trapdoor, when they were offered as escape from 2LoT. I think Smoluchowski's trapdoor will work but it is too cumbersome to be practical. Feynman's ratchet is inelegant.

2LoT is a drag on the endless conservation of energy in the Universe. Without 2LoT energy could be recycled from any form without loss. 2LoT leads to the heat death of the Universe. On earth, we are surrounded by moderate temperature heat that 2LoT supporters say can not be used because it is uniform. On a nanometer scale it is not uniform. I was introduced to this part of science by reading one of Isaac Asimov's books in 1964.

Johnson noise is the heat driven random movement of electrical charges in a conductor. It is an electrical analog of Brownian motion, the heat driven random movement of fluid molecules or particles. Radio engineers work with Johnson noise as kTB watts delivered to a matched impedance within the radio spectrum. K= Boltzmann's constant, 1.38 x 10^-23, T=temperature in Kelvin, B= the radio bandwidth.

Diodes rectify A.C. electricity. This is a passive process where electrical current goes through a diode if headed in the right direction in relation to the materials of the diode and is blocked by the diode if the electricity is of the opposite polarity.

Johnson noise occurs within diodes. Diodes respond by releasing more current in the conductive direction. This is a small amount of power, 1 / 2, the rectification factor, times kTB times the efficiency. The unrestricted bandwidth of Johnson noise is ~1 THz so a 50 percent efficient diode should yield ~ 1 nanowatt.

The next step is to aggregate the net output of many diodes by joining many diodes into consistent alignment parallel. This will yield very low voltage so several balanced groups of diodes in parallel need to be connected in series.

The diodes need to be nanofabricated so the junction capacitance of each diode is low, preferably below a tenth of an atto farad, 10^-19 F, and to fit on a small chip by the billions. The diodes also need to be separated enough to hold off the reverse voltage from the half time reverse direction Johnson noise. Diodes less than 2 nanometers in diameter with a spacing of ~35 nanometers center to center in offset rows seem reasonable. This yields 10^11 diodes / sq. cm. There is no interconnect issue at the device level beyond having a cathode plane probably of n type InSb and the anodes meet a conductive layer. The anodes are the negative pole because the internal forward flowing current produces external reverse bias.

I filed for a U.S. patent in 1973. I was granted patent # 3,890,161 in 1975. The patent became open public art in 1992. Everyone can build them; no one may stop anyone else from also building them. This is a comfortable and acceptable situation for me.

In 1993, I commissioned the professional addition of conductive paste on the small face of an exotic but stock chip where 5,600 anodes are exposed, to bring all of the diodes into parallel. Ordinarily only one of the small Au / n GaAs diodes is connected. They are fabricated in a group as an expedient to not getting lost. Next the chip was immersed in purified vegetable oil for mesoscale temperature uniformity, and enclosed in a sheilding box in radio quiet eastern California for testing. They reported an output of ~50 millivolts across 50 K ohms @ 20 C. This is ~50 nanowatts, ~ 25 times the output of a completely efficient diode so the hypothesis is supported. An updated similar experiment is being prepared. Anyone is welcome according to the scientific method to perform independent experiments.

This is a fundamental solution to the energy problem. The device will absorb heat from its surroundings while producing an equal amount of electrical power. The electrical power will run civilization's machines and equipment. During this use, heat will be returned. No carbon burning is involved.

A secure supply of frozen food can be assured. Refrigerators can reliably work independently by dissipating the electrical power as heat outside the refrigerator, probably by a finned panel on the back. They will be quiet so people can keep them nearby. Food storage using refrigeration and/or nitrogen blanketing will be cheap.

Radios, lamps, clocks, video equipment, entertainmemnt devices, GPS locators and other small equipment will work anywhere in the word out of the box. Pumps, elevator motors, cement mixers, and other larger equipment can be crated with appropriate power supplies and installed anywhere. Communities can choose to set up local power sharing networks for larger projects.

Computers will not need heavy batteries. They will not overheat. They will not need power cords. They can run power hungry fast chips. Micro diode arrays can be dispersed among the computing transistors to eliminate power pins and crosstalk.

I want the diode array to quickly become a cheap commodity with a small mark up made by many people. A foundation for high level issues should be established.

Aloha, Charlie

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I was referred to this science paper:
Maxwell's Demon, rectifiers, and the Second Law: Computer simulation of Smoluchowski's trapdoor P.A.Skordos and W.H.Zurek Dec. 1991

http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0402665

pdf version: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-
mat/pdf/0402/0402665.pdf

The figures (illustrations) did not open for me.

I do not agree with the paper's conclusion that 2LoT is supported.

To simulate cooling of the trapdoor to see if the heat difference would
turn it into a pump the computer removed velocity from the door and returned an equivalent amount of energy to the particles. The simulation should be inspected to see if friction does the same thing. The solid pivots of the door, perhaps a hinge, have zero degrees of freedom and friction, due to partial stickiness, so the door should slow down at any temperature. The particles can afford a small transit burden.

In one run type all the particles were started on the far wall of the trapping side of the door and the door was closed. The receiving chamber should have kept its particles indefinitely. (another run type had all the particles started on the far wall of the loosing side).

Aloha, Charlie

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