The "Ice Bomb" thermal engine

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, Tom Booth said:

Thanks for taking the time to explain your point of view, which I don't necessarily totally disagree with.

But in the economy of energy, we have the conservation of energy: "Energy can never be created or destroyed it can only change form."

Putting that in economic tems, if I start out with US dollars and convert that to euros. I no longer have any dollars. The dollars are gone, and now I'm now carrying euros.

If I then convert the Euros to Yen, well those original dollars are nowhere to be found, so if I then convert some of those Yen into British pounds and the rest back into dollars, it wouldn't really be accurate to say that I converted my dollars into British pounds would it?

Really, have I even converted "some" of my dollars into pounds?

No, I converted my Yen into pounds.

I just think it is important when conceptualizing these things to keep in mind that HEAT is not a physical thing that "flows into" and then "flows out of" any kind of heat engine, and that energy itself is basically just an accounting.

It creates a picture in the mind where what goes in, must all be coming out the other side, but that is not the case. What went in, the ambient heat is already long gone right from the start.

Heat is DEFINED as a flow: the energy that flows between bodies that are at different temperatures. 

[Tom Booth]

3 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Heat is DEFINED as a flow: the energy that flows between bodies that are at different temperatures. 

Agreed.

So when we have "chemical potential energy in liquid water" sitting there. Is that a flow?

Where do you see any heat?

No flow, no heat. Is that not correct?

 

[exchemist]

11 minutes ago, Tom Booth said:

Agreed.

So when we have "chemical potential energy in liquid water" sitting there. Is that a flow?

Where do you see any heat?

No flow, no heat. Is that not correct?

 

I suggest you re-read what I have written about chemical potential energy. Nowhere have I suggested it is heat, because it obviously is not. Energy is converted from one form to another in the processes we have been discussing. I even drew a diagram with arrows. 

What are you hung up on? I am totally mystified.    

[Tom Booth]

32 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I suggest you re-read what I have written about chemical potential energy. Nowhere have I suggested it is heat, because it obviously is not. Energy is converted from one form to another in the processes we have been discussing. I even drew a diagram with arrows. 

What are you hung up on? I am totally mystified.    

I don't think I'm hung up on anything. I think maybe you might be though.

I just said that the engine does not convert "ambient heat" into work.

It converts "chemical potential energy in liquid water" into work.

I don't think it can be factually stated that the distinction makes no difference.

To say that it converts "ambient heat" into work implies some continuity or causative connection between the ambient heat and the work, but I question if that is actually a fact. The energy represented by chemical potential energy could have come into existence by any number of possible means. A hot plate-(electricity), direct sunlight, agitation of the water with a paddle, a coal fire, the water could have cooled down from a higher temperature as it shot up from a hot springs-(geothermal), etc. etc.

Once heat is bound up as chemical potential energy, there is no longer any "flow", no causal force passing through like a river.

The "ambient heat" that may have been taken in is not the same heat, if any, that might, (or might not) be released when the ice expands and lifts a weight in the process.

Ice as it freezes and expands exerts a force of some 100,000 pounds per square inch. apparently. Crystalizing ice could power a piston, six inches in diameter, to lift a weight of some two million pounds or so, if that is really the case.

I'm not convinced it can be assumed that there is necessarily an equivalence there, between the ambient heat that went in and the work that could be taken out.

 

 

Edited May 12, 2021 by Tom Booth

[exchemist]

20 minutes ago, Tom Booth said:

I don't think I'm hung up on anything. I think maybe you might be though.

I just said that the engine does not convert "ambient heat" into work.

It converts "chemical potential energy in liquid water" into work.

I don't think it can be factually stated that the distinction makes no difference.

To say that it converts "ambient heat" into work implies some continuity or causative connection between the ambient heat and the work, but I question if that is actually a fact. The energy represented by chemical potential energy could have come into existence by any number of possible means. A hot plate-(electricity), direct sunlight, agitation of the water with a paddle, a coal fire, the water could have cooled down from a higher temperature as it shot up from a hot springs-(geothermal), etc. etc.

Once heat is bound up as chemical potential energy, there is no longer any "flow", no causal force passing through like a river.

The "ambient heat" that may have been taken in is not the same heat, if any, that might, (or might not) be released when the ice expands and lifts a weight in the process.

Ice as it freezes and expands exerts a force of some 100,000 pounds per square inch. apparently. Crystalizing ice could power a piston, six inches in diameter, to lift a weight of some two million pounds or so, if that is really the case.

I'm not convinced it can be assumed that there is necessarily an equivalence there, between the ambient heat that went in and the work that could be taken out.

 

 

Work is Fd, force times distance. To calculate the work done, you need to know not just the force but the distance through which it is applied. Do not run away with the notion that you can get limitless power from the expansion of ice. The bigger the load, the smaller the distance through which it will be lifted. Ice is not incompressible. The work it does will be finite - and small compared to the latent heat released.  

But to be honest I think I am wasting my time now. At every turn, it seems, you generate another bogus complication, to evade acceptance of what I and others here have been telling you. I think you are determined to hold onto this daft notion of Tesla's, as you have these past 9 years, (I now discover you were posting on the same topic, in another forum I belong to, back in 2012) and that you are impervious to reason. 

Thanks for the "ice engine", though. I shall add it to my list of the more memorable crank attempts to get round the laws of thermodynamics, along with the Japanese infra-red photovoltaic in the box and the German surface tension one, which took weeks to unscramble. The common feature of all of them is to devise a scenario that is just complicated enough to exceed its proponent's powers of analysis - and hey presto, the laws of thermodynamics have been broken and free energy is available for all.  Not.