In reply to David Roberson's message of Sun, 12 Aug 2012 19:29:28 -0400 (EDT): Hi, [snip] >I do not think there is any type of gas heating cycle available that does >better than the Carnot cycle in conversion from heat to mechanical energy. >There would be absolutely no way to hide this fact with a running motor with >load. The exhaust heat would be obvious. > >We should concentrate upon a mechanism that is efficient instead of the old >systems that we are familiar with. > The Carnot cycle depends on the temperature difference between high and low temps. Note however that a plasma temperature can momentarily be very high. If it contains particles produced by a fusion reaction that have MeV energies, then in theory the Carnot efficiency could be almost 100% (depending on how this energy is distributed). (Th-Tl)/Th could e.g. be 1E6eV-0.025eV/1E6eV = 0.999999975. This is of course somewhat nonsensical, but it help to keep the mind open. ;)
Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
