On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 8:58 AM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 3:51 AM, Joshua Cude <[email protected]> wrote: > > No, you don't. Plenty of ICEs (outboards, motorcycles) run without >> batteries. Car engines would run without batteries too, unless they use >> some kind of electronic fault detection that shuts it down without a >> battery. But the spark doesn't need a battery. And even with a battery, >> it's still self-sustaining. It's not a valid point. >> > > It's a simple point -- some engines (many engines; most engines?) require > a secondary source of power to control the cycle. > No, any ICE can run without a battery (except for artificial fault detection), and a battery is not a secondary source of power. The battery holds the same amount of energy when you shut the engine down as it did when you started it. So, even if you want to think of the battery helping to control something, all the energy in the battery, beyond a short time after it's installed or recharged after you left the lights on, is put there from the engine. The engine supplies the power that controls it. That's self-sustaining buy any definition. Anyway, if it serves some purpose for you, that's fine, but I was asking if there was a system that uses an *external* *heat* source to control a source of heat. That's not it. If an ecat were to use a battery which was charged by the ecat, that would be self-sustaining too.
