It could be helpful to those working on longitudinal wave Seebeck or other similar devices to compile a listing of actual devices which convert ambient heat to electricity. What is the highest electrical output reported so far?
This listing would not include the MEMS devices which convert mechanical vibration, although at some point mechanical and thermal do merge. Here is a start - from 2012 - the output is visible light from an LED Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from Thermal Energy of the Environment | | | | Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from Thermal Energy o... The energy of ionic thermal motion presents universally, which is as high as 4 kJ\bullet kg-1\bullet K-1 in aque... | | | There is known phenomenon in physics called the "longitudinal spin Seebeck effect". The leading paper seems to be from Uchida : Observation of longitudinal spin-Seebeck effect in magnetic insulators Appl. Phys. Lett. 97, 172505 (2010); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3507386 The carrier of spin for this effect is the magnon. There is pronounced heat transfer but no violation of the Laws of Thermodynamics. This is not exactly the same thing as the so-called scalar wave, which is high on the bogosity index. Seehttps://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scalar_wave The lore in alternative energy going back to Tesla involves the scalar wave. Sometimes this wave can manifest as having a temperature gradient and has been called "cold electricity" but it is a mistake to conflate the two main concepts: the scalar wave and the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect - although there does seem to be plenty of overlap. Then -- we start to bridge the gap between standard physics and crank free energy inventors with ANE. The "anomalous Nernst effect" (ANE) is a thermo-magnetic effect that describes the the interplay between heat, spin, and charge in magnets and coils. Compared to the standard Seebeck effect, the ANE reputedly has higher-efficiency, leading to energy-harvesting devices which can convert ambient heat directly into electrical current in a longitudinal vector. In fact, ANE and LSSE are probably different aspects of the same phenomenon. This post is intended simply to put these terms out there for future reference, since there are already devices out there which convert tiny amounts of ambient heat into tiny amounts of electrical current. The big challenge - as always with any device rooted in QM, is quite simple. Does it SCALE-UP ?
