Tom Booth

And earlier, didn't someone say that there was "less heat" to be removed from the freezer for some reason? Not sure what your trying to say here exactly. By low pressure gaseous refrigerant, you mean the refrigerant in the expansion tubes where heat is removed from the freezer? Do you know how a refrigerator works? The refrigerant that just picked up all that heat is compressed to a high pressure and high heat in the condenser in the back of the refrigerator. It's only "waste heat" to a refrigerator. Still quite suitable to run a heat engine when so conveniently concentrated in one place. It's only of no use to a refrigeration system. The "Work term"? You'll need to break that down or explain what you mean. Work, in the sense of "WORK" in thermodynamics, goes out of the freezer as the ice swells and does "work" lifting a weight or turning a wheel for a generator or whatever. But some additional heat is inevitably going to need to be removed from the freezer from time to time. That "waste heat" can be recovered from the condenser with a heat engine. If you think that can't be done because it's waste heat, well, it's only waste heat if it goes to waste. Right? The condenser on a fridge gets plenty hot to run a heat engine. And it could be designed to get a lot hotter, without actually getting hotter, because the heat engine would also turn THAT HEAT into "work" as well and in the process help keep the coils and therefore also the refrigerator colder.

Well, that's the Crux of the issue isn't it. The ice engine though, is, so to speak "charged" by melting the ice, outside the freezer, with Ambient heat in the atmosphere. And, it's also, with the ratchet system, possible to gain back some energy as the weight is lowered back down. Put back into the freezer, energy is returned in two ways. 1) as the ice forms lifting the weight and 2) the heat pulled out of the ice is concentrated as high grade heat: Now, I'm not sure exactly how all that adds up, but the different forms of energy that can be harvested with this odd ball arrangement just seems to keep adding up. And for the most part, once the freezer is cold, by being careful about how we take the engine in and out, it could stay pretty cold for some time without needing to run at all. While the ice engine is running continuously. Now a refrigerator compressor, as we all know, has to work pretty hard and draws quite a few amps. But one way to lighten the load on the compressor is to cool the condenser tubes, shown above. Keeping them relatively cool, by drawing off the heat, makes compressing the refrigerant much easier and more effective. What better way to draw off the heat than by using it to also run a heat engine. If we're going to draw all that heat out of the ice, of necessity, to run the ice engine, though it primarily produces power by being charged with freely available ambient heat. Now that we have got that heat, highly concentrated in one place, why throw it away? But a better arrangement of the condenser coils would be to spiral them in a tight loop on the heat input side of our heat engine.

Thanks for sticking your neck out. I realize full well this is controversial, though some just say "It's not an open system, so the 2nd law doesn't apply." I'm not a Tesla junky either, mostly the only thing I ever read of his was the one article I happened across while researching how Stirling engines work and whatnot. I'm not a scientist, just an engine mechanic. Small gasoline engines mostly, worked in a lot of shops tearing down and rebuilding and repairing plain old ordinary engines. Lawn mowers, chain saws, rototillers, that sort of thing. I got interested in Stirling engines mostly just as a hobby, but also in a practical way. Anyway, what you suggest above seems like too much to hope for at this point. But thanks anyway.

I haven't lost interest, I just had to make a trip out to the store. I'm interested in what you may have written, but never saw it. Anyway, thanks for the support. I'm honestly not trying to prove anything. But, even if I was "speculating" about some phenomenon. Isn't speculation just a synonym for theorizing? Isn't formulating a theory -> speculation, supposed to be part of scientific inquiry. Last time I checked it was. Observe, form a theory, make a prediction about the outcome of an experiment, do the experiment, modify the theory based on the results, etc. etc. Without speculation, where is the science?

"It just ran faster, better and longer." I counted the revolutions per minute. Timed the length of the run compared with other runs without insulation, "better" is subjective opinion about an observation, but not what I'd call speculation.

It was not a "speculation". It was an observation. A conclusion based on experimental evidence. The conclusion could be supported by additional evidence if not for the discussion being closed. My opinion or interpretation of an experimental observation is not "speculation" IMO. And all are welcome to disagree and prove my conclusion wrong or sadly mistaken. Or just ignore the evidence. Somehow, with my limited understanding, I see a sheet of 1/2 inch thick styrofoam insulation and think, probably that is not going to serve as a heat sink. It's an insulator. It prevents heat flow, or it's supposed to.

I see. Natural ice engine. Clever. I didn't miss the post, but I didn't make the connection. I was imagining some Tibetan monks in the himalayas working some kind of primitive literal engine of some sort. I can't quite imagine how a diagram beats out a video, demonstrating the actual experiment exactly as it happened in photo-real detail along with my description and availability to answer any questions. These model engines only cost about $30. I would love for anyone to repeat the experiments, and I'd even foot the bill. Send them the engines. If I'm somehow doing something wrong or overlooking something, someone else might figure it out. I was actually just testing a new piston I had made out of JB weld epoxy, to try to eliminate heat transfer through the piston, with the engine running on ice. At the start of that experiment, the surface of the ice was wet and slippery. I put the engine on and ran it for a while. Came back and tried to pick it up and it was stuck to the ice. I had to forcefully break the engine loose from the ice. Completely flabbergasted, I then started "experimenting". Put the engine back in place on the now wet again and slippery ice. Came back in about 5 minutes and the engine was stuck again. The ice re-froze to the bottom of the engine. I broke the engine loose from the ice and replaced it four times, then the fifth time I decided I should record this on video. I was afraid this time it wouldn't happen. But after another five minutes the engine was "stuck" to the ice again, and I got that on video. I took another cup of ice out of the freezer to show what the engine was running on to start with. This is not the kind of result I'd expect if the engine was actively transferring heat to the sink. The room temperature was normal. Approximately 70°F The cup of ice was simply insulated with as much insulation as I could find laying around the house and shop, including some towels and blankets. A video may be "a crap way of communicating experiments" but how exactly does it hurt? I read the rules about posting videos. I didn't post and run leaving just a video. And I don't see how a video of an experiment is not relevant to an experiment. But OK. I came across this video, where the same sort of thing appears to happen. Don't know this guy, never met him. A slightly different model of engine, and not insulated at all. But watch carefully. At first the engine is slipping around on the wet, partly melted ice. He keeps needing to reposition the engine to keep it centered. After a while he picks up the engine and the block of ice comes up with it, no longer sliding around apparently. Adhesion? Like a suction cup, because the ice was wet? Possibly. But in my experiment I checked for this. The engine was frozen to the ice. Frozen hard. And when I finally got it broken loose, the bottom was dry-cold not wet and slippery. The video I took was after this happened repeatedly. This guy's video cannot be embedded, but this is the link. https://youtu.be/L6Jmdve1JK8

No. In the first experiment I performed, running the engine on a cup of hot water. The entire engine was covered with insulation, so only the mouth of the cup containing the hot water contacted the bottom of the engine. Someone suggested that partially insulating the bottom plate (hot side) might have effectively increased the temperature difference by retaining more heat at the bottom. So I tried again with the bottom mostly exposed and just the top (cold sink side) insulated. It made no difference. In both instances the engine ran at higher RPM and more energetically than with the "sink" (top cold plate) exposed to ambient air. More interesting in some ways was that with the engine running on ice, and the ice kept well insulated. The partly melted ice re-froze repeatedly after the engine ran for about five minutes. But last time I tried posting the video of the experiments, the discussion was locked, and the moderator said not to start another topic on that subject.

That seems unlikely If true, it makes no sense to insulate the attic. It just makes heat go up through the roof that much faster.

That's the point Tesla tried to make exactly, if I understand your meaning. The heat sink is the load.

That's the problem really. I think I must genuinely believe Tesla made a valid point in his 1900 article about his "Self Acting Engine". I've gone too far down that rabbit hole to turn back. Every experiment I've tried so far to prove his contention wrong has only proven him right, as far as I'm able to assertion. Running my Stirling heat engine without a heat sink, for example. It just ran faster, better and longer.

I must have missed that. not in this thread is it? What's these "natural ice engines". Never heard of that before, I don't think. Google returns nothing on "natural ice engine".

The night sky? https://www.fieldstudyoftheworld.com/persian-ice-house-how-make-ice-desert/

Right, only because the energy is provided by freezing in a freezer, the heat can be gotten for free, by just thawing the ice with ambient heat, perhaps, with some heat also contributed by the freezer. The freezer is a heat pump, or functions in exactly the same way. The hot condenser pipes on the back of the fridge provide us back the same heat previously removed from the water. If careful about removing the engine from the freezer for thawing out, most of the cold in the freezer can be retained. I was shooting for more like around 20 kilograms. For that the container might need to be slightly stronger than your average plastic ice tray.

Ice, though relatively solid, is also rather elastic, subject to deformation. Particularly at temperatures near the melting point, i.e. while freezing. I don't anticipate making an engine for this ice box experiment out of titanium. I can see in my freezer compartment that a thin wall plastic ice tray is quite sufficient to direct the expansion of the ice upward in one direction. As I said, it's debatable and likely depends on the rigidity of the containment vessel, but I personally don't believe that even the pressure transmitted through a six inch steel plate is without effect, or less than instantaneous. But it's largely a moot point IMO. Of more relevance is that heat taken away to produce power output must be added back to complete the cycle of freezing and thawing. That, will ultimately be the final word on the subject.

Welcome back! Just been trying to establish what goes on in this theoretical ice power engine, stage by stage, throughout the freezing and thawing, lifting and lowering. Energy flow, etc. And answer the question, can this engine be viewed as just an ordinary heat engine. Can we use standard formulas, equations, PV diagrams etc. to model it's behavior. I've been thinking about how removing heat can result in positive work output. Removing heat might bring the water molecules (which are otherwise repelling each other to some degree), close enough together that some other more powerful intermolecular force results in a rearrangement into a crystal like formation. The energy to do the lifting then, comes from this intermolecular force.

Atmospheric pressure is omnidirectional. Equal all around Therefore the containment vesel only needs to withstand the added pressure of the 50 lb weight. Not atmospheric pressure Even a rather substantial steel container would not withstand the pressure if the outside atmosphere were removed from all but the top.

Water could be frozen in a paper cup. But not if atmospheric pressure was removed from all sides but the top.

Sorry 793.8 lb. A cube has 6 sides. It's debatable if the pressure on the sides and bottom of the vessel can be discounted, but I don't think so. It may depend on the rigidity of the container holding the ice.

Here, we are carrying out a (thought) experiment where Ice is formed in a sealed engine cylinder under a 50 lb weight. Not typical vacuum conditions. The difference made by 50 lb weight (or whatever could fit in the freezer in this experiment) is relatively insignificant (1/1600th of a degree C or 0.000625 C) when compared with the 800lb of atmospheric pressure IMO ____________ Looking back, launching into the bit about industrial liquefaction of gases with expansion turbines was probably not the way to make a point, as it is a little known process, very counter intuitive and sounds like complete BS.

The gist is, atmospheric pressure on a 3x3 inch sample of ice at 1 atmosphere is approximately 800 lb. Take that away and the ice would not melt in a vacuum is my prediction. So I don't think it has been established that atmospheric pressure is insignificant. I apologize for admittedly, thinking out loud. A number of posts were merged as additional thoughts came to mind and posts accumulated without response. You also made many valid points. I just can't see, at this juncture that atmospheric pressure can be or should be ignored.

I'd like to do the ice bomb experiment using a clear high pressure acrylic chamber instead of cast iron, and video tape the "explosion" with an ultra high speed camera. See what's REALLY going on in there. Maybe instead of an explosion it is actually a kind of implosion, and all the destruction is just due to concussion waves or who knows. I'm a little puzzled that often in these experiments ALL the cast iron fragments are just there, easy to find, all in one place, not scattered all over. Maybe implosion, initially, followed by explosion. At any rate extreme cold also makes cast iron very brittle and much easier to break, so how great really is this apparent explosive force of ice, if it is even really ice at all?

This guy is lifting a mere 500 ponds. We need to add another 300 lbs. I don't think even those relatively compact weights could fit. The freezer could accommodate maybe at most, a 50 lb block of cast iron or something. Unless I get a bigger freezer. An ice chest model maybe, but my kitchen refrigerator ice box is not big enough to hold anywhere near the equivalent weight of the 1 ATM on a cup of water. Insignificant? After watching several "Ice Bomb" videos's I'm begining to question something else. One would expect, I think, to find a ball of ice amongst the cast iron fragments let behind by the ice bomb. Like a big hailstone or something, or at least fragments. I did some more research and found this: https://labdemos.physics.sunysb.edu/i.-thermodynamics/i4.-changes-of-state/ice_bomb The text reads: A big cloud of vapor? In the video's no ice remnants are ever displayed. So I'm wondering if the dramatic results are due to ice formation at all. Maybe, instead, due to the build up of pressure the water never freezes but instead reaches the triple point and sublimates directly into vapor, which, presumably, would have an even greater expansion force than ice. I don't think that would necessarily nullify the freezer box thought experiment, but, it certainly changes things a bit. The big "ice bomb" explosion may have nothing to do with the formation or great power of ice at all.

I'm hesitant to discard atmospheric pressure as a factor. Equal and opposite or not. During expansion as ice freezes, there is no temperature change. So heat/energy is involved in the transformation, but solids and liquids have forms of energy to draw on other than heat. When gas is liquefied through an expansion turbine the heat previously removed by compression cannot return. Nor can ambient heat return, as the turbine housing is kept cold and insulated, but the gas does work powering the load on the turbine so looses energy and liquefies. Where did the energy to do the work to turn the turbine come from? Molecular "spin" or something? The point is, NOT external heat/energy. The gas is forced to do work in thermal isolation. And no one has answered the question about, can we thaw out the ice in a vacuum? We are all aware, I should think, that at typical ambient temperatures, water, subject to a vacuum freezes. So, after some thought, I'm hazarding a guess that no, we can't. So, whats left, the weight of whatever was lifted, other than atmosphere, pressure pressing down, if sufficiently strong, might provide energy to produce the transformation, but that is already at a balance, practically speaking, we don't want to add more weight, so we are back to atmospheric pressure. No matter how long we leave the ice in ambient heat, while in a vacuum, it will not utilize the heat for effecting the transformation from solid to liquid. So that atmospheric pressure, I think, is not insignificant. Remove the atmospheric pressure and the ice cannot melt. Bring it back, and the ice melts. A predictable result, if atmospheric pressure is the source of energy effecting the transformation, along with the weight that was lifted. So rather than the atmospheric pressure being insignificant, on the contrary, it can be demonstrated experimentally that the ambient heat is a relatively insignificant part of the process. The work done by the atmosphere is not "tiny". Isolated as a variable. Vacuum vs. no vacuum. Will melt, won't melt. If our freezer box size engine contained about a cup of water, to make calculation easy say cube 3 inches on each side, at 15psi atmospheric pressure on all sides could account for as much as roughly 800+ lbs. The weight of say four people up to 200 lb each. That many people could hardly fit in my ice box.

I'm trying to work this out on paper, to figure out what might actually happen through the cycle where the "ice engine" in (and out of) the freezer has a ratchet, so does work in both directions. First heat is removed, the ice swells and lifts or pushes whatever mechanism doing work. Pretty straightforward. Where I'm getting hung up is when the machine is removed from the freezer and the ice melts and returns to a liquid. Atmospheric pressure contributes to the reduction in volume, which also winds the ratchet doing additional work. The temperature of the ice, doesn't actually change during this phase, right? The volume is being reduced as the ice melts, but work is also being performed, so... The ice is being worked on by the atmosphere? Or the ice itself is doing work to wind the ratchet? The heat taken in is converted to work? Or not? Is it possible to draw up some sort of PV or Entropy diagram of this? At this point the heat/work/pressure starts getting muddled up and I'm not quite able to make sense of it. I question wether or not the heat that melts the ice actually ever does any external work. True the ice takes in heat which is used to rearrange it's molecular structure, but that is internal energy storage not work. When heat is taken away and the ice is formed, what does the work exactly? Maybe it could be thought of as, heat entering the liquid H2O is like weakening a spring, allowing it to be compressed. Then when the heat is taken away, the spring gets back it's strength and expands. Take heat away and that releases the spring. But where exactly is the energy for the spring to do work come from when it gets back it's strength due to the oppressive heat having been removed. In other words, where does the spring strength actually come from. Not the heat, because the heat is what took away it's strength. Now I'm thinking about Nitinol. Does H2O have a kind of "shape memory". Some types of memory metal can be trained to work both ways. That is, it takes on a shape, both when heated and when cooled, so can be made to do work to run a heat engine either way or both. After all that rambling, I'd say, tentatively, I guess, maybe. As the ice is melting. Sort of, but then again, would the volume of the H2O be reduced as it melts, without atmospheric pressure? Can we set this up in a vacuum? And if the temperature is constant, as the H2O changes state from ice to water, is the heat really doing any work, or is it all used to just "weaken" the structure of the ice so it collapses under the weight of atmospheric pressure, so atmospheric pressure is actually doing all the external "useful work" not the heat.