Heat-to-electricity conversion ... ah... a recurrent problem in many alternative-energy concepts.
IF the present MAHG 2.0 results hold or improve, currently a COP greater than 5 is seen, then the quandary presents itself - how do you convert that excess heat, and the very small delta-T back into electricity, at a Carnot efficinecy of greater than 20% - in order to self-power. This level of performance is adequate to self-power if other technology can be "borrowed". Fortunately, the most obvious conversion modality for a situation where the energy has an acoustic frequency component involves **thermoacoutics.** It is not really all that complicated and some top-notch labs are currently showing good results. The term "Stirling-Acoustic" is often used, althouh there is no reason to confuse this situation with the original "Stirling" concept- as now the conversion modality is becoming more like a linear transducer (i.e. loudspeaker) and less like a regular stirling, which probably will not work efficiently with that low Delta-T. Whereas acoustic implementaion will probably acutally beneift from the low (330 K ) tube temperature as the P/V effects are capable of inclusion with an alteration of the MAHG tube. LANL claims 30% Carnot efficiency now. The original expired LANL patent can be seen here: http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US04599551__ here is the main link for the project: http://www.lanl.gov/mst/engine/ and here is the important but not-expired patent at: http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05892293__ which is the Macrosonix patent, and clearly not all that distinguishable from the older and expired LANL patent. Its validity has is therfore suspect, in light of prior art, but has not been challenged AFAIK. Anyway, thermo-acoustics is definitely the easiest path to self-power for the MAHG. First however, one needs to fashion the MAHG tube itself into the form of a **bellows,** such as the Slyphon “Seamless Metal Bellows” but formed with an "active" metal sputter coating on the inside of a "springy tube... for instance a beryllium copper bellows would be perfect, which is also becomes the anode. We dispense with the water circuit and air cool the tube to 300K. Tungsten is now used in MAHG. A vaild question remains - is the effect limited to W ? As I posted earlier, the results of fuel-cell experiments seem to indicate that a Pd-Ru alloy approx 50/50 is superior - either sputtered or electroplated, but FCs are not the same beast as the Langmuir torch - despite some hidden similarities - and that level of "refinement" is all part of the tedious process of protoype engineering, following a proof-of-concept which can use tungsten. Additionally - with thermoacoutics, it might easily be possible to capitalize on the Alfven-effect - which is a thermoacoustic resonance effect at low frequency... not that we need another synergy, but why turn it down? It is all very exiciting and bursting with the promise of the real "holy grail" of advancing technology - free-energy through ZPE coherence. Jones
