Jonathan,
With a Carnot cycle/heatpump combination you cannot reach > 100%.
But.. OF course the second law only holds for such simple processes.
We have nano particles that can double the frequencies of photon
standing waves due to mode suppression.
The main problem is that historically physics is built upon ideal
processes that nowhere exist.
The second problem is that we have different layers of energy in
physics. Nuclear physics violates Carnot laws as e.g. fusion reduces the
entropy. So its a matter of engineering to harvest excess energy and to
define a better law.
A better definition would be that the energy you can gain from a closed
system is limited.
J.W.
On 14.06.2024 11:37, Jonathan Berry wrote:
Hi, so I have this year become quite convinced that I have found flaws
in Carnot's concepts and how it has been used and how it makes the
second law able to be broken.
It is based on the following truths:
1. Carnot heat engine efficiency is NOT related to input energy (the
thermal potential) but to *total* thermal energy on the hot side and
as such it is meaningless and the true efficiency possible relative to
the invested energy is 100%. Consider an environment where everything
is 300 Kelvin and we heat up a reservoir from 300 to 400 Kelvin the
invested energy in 1/4th of the total energy in the reservoir and the
Carnot efficiency is 25%. If we have the cold side at absolute Zero
Kelvin 100% of the energy can be used and Carnot's equation tells us
it is 100%! And if everything is at 1 Billion degrees and we heat up
the reservoir 100 degrees hotter than anything else the Carnot
efficiency drops to 0.00001% and again only 0.00001% of the total
thermal energy in the 1,000,000,100 Kelvin reservoir is our input
energy! https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/carnot-efficiency
2. If we use the ideal gas law (PV=nRT) to calculate the increase in
pressure of a gas between these 3 temp ranges we find that in each
case the 100 degree Kelvin temp rise creates the EXACT SAME PRESSURE
INCREASE (from 0 to 100K, 300 to 400K, 1B to 1B+100K) and therefore if
the same force is placed on a piston and equal amount of thermal
energy will be converted into mechanical energy from the same amount
of invested energy. This includes in the Carnot heat engine
efficiency is meant to be just 0.00001%. So for our 100 Kelvin of
thermal energy invested we get the same energy out regardless of the
offset temp even though the Carnot efficiency changes WILDLY!
3. The energy we have not input (the ambient thermal energy in the
reservoir) can be ignored much as can the energy stored in the matter
as e=mc2, this is both because we didn't invest it, it isn't lost (it
remains in the reservoir) and because it's percentage of the total
energy become insignificant if the reservoir is being actively heated
as the thermal energy is being actively used. So not only is it
relevant it is also over time a tiny and truly insignificant amount of
energy as something runs over hours let alone months, years or decades
the amount of input energy dwarfs the tiny initial thermal ambient energy.
4. If the efficiency of a heat engine in relation to the heat energy
invested to run it can reach 100% of the input energy in theory (A
Carnot ideal heat engine) then the fact that heatpumps have a COP of
easily 5 but can do as high as 30 in literature but even that is not
the max and won't include the simultaneous "waste" cooling which a
heat engine can also use! But the point is if a heat engine can
always have a max theoretical efficiency of 100% and a real world
efficiency of 60% or higher and heat pumps produce 5 to 30 times more
heat than if that energy was directly converted to heat... Then we
have first off no basis to explain the efficiency of heat pumps as
"reverse Carnot cycle" but also this means that the efficiency of one
is NOT the reciprocal of the other, a heat pump is not more efficient
over a temp range where ideal heat engines are inefficient as their
efficiency is always 100%!
5. Carnot also argued that all ideal heat engines operating between
the same 2 thermal potentials must have the same efficiency and if
some had higher or lower efficiencies the lower efficiency then the
second law could be broken as the more efficient one can drive the
less efficient one as a higher COP heatpump (lower thermal equivalent
of lenz law drag on a generator) and this could create a perpetual
motion machine, well first off he was assuming that the smaller the
thermal difference the lower the heat engine efficiency which we now
know is always 100%, but if it was like he thought his
arguments breaks down when we put either 2 or more heat engines in
series (each heat engine is over a smaller thermal potential and would
have a lower efficiency) or 2 or more heat pumps cascaded can have a
huge COP (10, 20, 30 or maybe even higher, not that more than 2-3 is
needed) and an arbitrarily high thermal potential between the hot and
cold side.
6. While a Heat pump COP of 3 might be enough to drive a heat engine
running (based on real world heat engine efficiencies) to close the
loop, the following can be considered, firstly a COP 5 heatpump is
quiet available but the cooling COP (EER) is going to be similar but a
little lower, say 4.7 or so, well as the heat engine needs a hot and
cold side the colder than ambient cold is just as useful (depending on
the heat engine technology and we can offset the whole experiment if
we like) and as such a COP of 5 becomes closer to a combined COP/EER
of 10, and also the rated COP is running hard out 100% of rated power,
when running at lower power the COP of a commercial heatpump can be
higher (double or better!) and go to a COP of 10 anyway which would
not be a COP/EER of 20 when we consider both sides. Next the
compressed gas is just let to expand but expanding gases can be used
to drive pneumatic motors, when this has been used to lower the load
on the compressor the compressors load is reduced by up to 90% when
air was the refrigerant! It might be lower for systems using gasses
that undergo a phase change but a 50% reduction would again double the
COP again! As such while heat engines that operate at 50-60% are not
unreasonable the COP can be so high that even if the heat engine
efficiency was 10% it should be possible to make this work, any way
you do the math there is AMPLY room between the high COP's of
potentially cascaded heatpumps (allowing high temp differences over
any temp range) and the real-world efficiencies of heat engines to
have, even after every type of loss, loop the system, and remember as
100% of the excess heat (thermal potential over and above the cold
side which is below ambient) can be in theory be converted even a heat
pump with a COP of 1 with an EER on the cold side of 1, that's a
combined value of 2 and so with a truly ideal but theoretically
possible heat engine even a heat pump with a hot side COP of 1 (which
ignores it's theoretically 100% efficiency as a resistive load also)
could have twice as much mechanical energy output than input!
Carnot efficiency is, well it's the wrong word, if I have a hydro dam
that is half full and I fill it up with water and then let the water
out and with 100% efficiency convert the energy to electrical power
but when the damn gets half empty I stop it, then does that mean my
exceptional generator has only a 50% efficiency?! No! It has 100%
efficiency and for some reason or another I left water in the Damn,
same with Carnot, you leave thermal energy that was always in the
reservoir, but that shouldn't be conflated with efficiency! If I
have a generator that is 100% Efficient but the Copper and Steel it is
made with could offer Galvanic energy as a battery if allowed to,
should we subtract that energy that it could offer us to lower the
efficiency rating of the generator??? Clearly that would be absurd!
So Carnot Efficiency has been presented to tell us several things,
that low grade heat cannot be converted to other forms as efficiently
to other forms of energy compared to higher grade heat, however even
if functionally this is often true in practice Carnot's Efficiency
(η=1−TC/TH) tells us no such thing and as such it's possible in theory
to find better ways, I would also note that pressure increase is
linear with temperature difference and as such I suspect in theory
that the efficiency of a heat engine (akin to a Stirling Engine) could
operate with the same efficiency over any temperature even if the
engineering might be unrealistic/complicated.
It also doesn't tell us that heat pumps must have a higher COP over
smaller temperature difference (and the reasons this seems to be so
might be due to other factors such as sizing of tubing and radiators
which are known to have huge impacts on efficiency) as their COP is
not a result of Carnot Efficiency or Reverse Carnot Efficiency.
It doesn't explain why heat pumps have a COP much above 1 and why that
isn't a violation of the second law and as it isn't because of Carnot
Efficiency then there is no reason a heat engine can't output more
mechanical energy from a heat pumps thermal outputs than drives the
heat pump, and the heat engine is not barred from being 100% efficient
(which if the COP of a heat pump is 30 that means 30 times more
mechanical energ out than in) and the COP of the heat pump is not
explained as a reversal of Carnot Efficiency as the
Efficiency relative to input is 100%, but if it were somehow related
to Carnot "pueudo-Efficiency" it would be that the hotter the ambient
the higher COP the heat pump and not about the difference between the
hot and cold side as we have established that has no impact on any
underlying efficiency calculation, in part because the ideal gas law
is linear, though maybe with phase changes higher COP can be achieved,
but again even if a heat pump's COP were higher at low temp
differences you can cascade them to make an arbitrarily large temp
differences at arbitrarily high COP, seemingly a COP of 60 should be
possible maybe higher, I can document a COP 30 from scientific papers
and also a COP of 20 from another and again they don't include the
cold side and likely weren't recovering energy stored and generally
wasted from the pressurized refrigerant which typically just goes
through a valve.
The second law is really Philosophy masquerading as Physics, the
Philosophy of "there is no free lunch" and yet both the philosophy and
its embodiment in Physics is contracted by logic and evidence at least
under the correct conditions.
I would also note that there was an LED that MIT made that created
cooling and output 230% more energy:
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-create-230-percent-efficient-led-bulbs-5890719
So the second law is dead and a lot of Physicists don't truly believe
in it (Sabine Hossenfelder for one) and it's better to pull the
plaster off because when we do we can make heatpumps that power
houses, power cars potentially!
It is clear to me as it can be that my argument is conclusive, it
isn't flawed and I'm not misunderstanding Carnot's work or how it has
been interpreted or how he used it or how it has been interpreted by
the world over the past 200 years since 1824.
Also while it might be said that Carnot's Theory wasn't really trying
to address the input and that it's merely been "misunderstood" it is
clear that from many sources the arguments I have debunks many
conclusions that have been held of what Carnot's work implies, indeed
I asked an LLM just to double check the conclusions that are normally
drawn and they are what I have busted above.
So if no one can point out some massive flaw which I don't believe
exists, then it seems the value to the world from this being
recognized could be significant.
And so I think a peer reviewed paper should be written and I might as
well start off here.
So let me know what you think.
Any agreements? Disagreements? Want to help me write this like a
paper? Do you have any tips on getting this published or who I could
take it to?
Should we just ignore massive errors in Physics that cost the world
immeasurably and let things continue???
Should possible discoveries be ignored without even trying to see if
they make sense?
Do you understand?
Can you disprove this?
Thanks,
Jonathan
Imagine the following.
We have a hot reservoir, we put a piston to it and the gas becomes
hot, when it becomes hot enough we allow the piston to move thereby
letting the gas expand and become cooler and we get mechanical energy
output, if the only warmth was absorbed by the gas then the gas could
have actually have expanded to the point of having no more heat than
the cold side and as such we could do without a cold side almost!
Nevertheless let's assume it's a bit warm, we let it touch the cold
side and then the gas cools off and a force is developed and finally
we let it collapse the Pison, more energy and again it's hot, more
energy goes into the cold side until it's as cold and compressed as it
will get.
Note, another way to look at the Efficiency of a heat engine is not to
consider the total thermal energy in the thermal reservoir, but to
consider how far the thermal energy that does move, well how far IT
falls. However while we might come to the conclusion that the
energy going from 400 Kelvin to 300 Kelvin is only spanning 1/4 of the
total distance it could go, we must realize than it we put the same
amount of energy in at zero Kelvin and raised int to 100 Kelvin it
would have the same distance to fall and would be the same investment
of energy, so that it has the same distance to fall as in the example
with a Carnot Efficiency of 100% means that with respect to the energy
added we have the same efficiency of conversion.
--
Jürg Wyttenbach
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