I've actually been doing this off and on for about three years, but said nothing on vortex because I thought there would be little interest. And yes, Jones, it does work. There are a few counter-intuitive effects I've observed in playing around with it.
First, non-polar fluids work far better than polar fluids. I've mostly used a commercial solvent called naphtha BT67, which is a mixture of alkanes with a boiling point of 67 C. Water, acetone, and various alcohols don't work worth a damn, at least so far. Then, as it turns out, you don't want the "boiler" section to be just a conductive pot. You need a thin dielectric layer between the metal pot and the working fluid. Don't ask me why, it just works a lot better this way. As it evaporates, the naphtha leaves a negative charge in the boiler, and becomes positively charged itself. It works much better if the the pipe section is made of a non-polar material. IOW, glass doesn't work very well. I've been using polyethylene tubing, which won't take much heat, but if you were to become serious about this you would want Teflon or silicone tubing. The condensing section can be a metal container with no insulation, and of course you want lots of fins for heat dissipation. Obviously, this design needs substantial modification to make useful current. I've done no measurements as to the heat to electricity conversion efficiency, so I couldn't really tell you if there could be a useful device based on these observations M. _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!
