The idea of entropy, of the constant and irreversible winding down of the universe, was introduced with the second law of thermodynamics. This law is based on an observation of James Watt's steam machine, which was the only technological utilization of thermal energy available at the time. According to the current views of thermodynamics, there is no antidote to entropy. Once expended, energy is said to be lost forever in that giant heat sink, which we imagine the vast reaches of the universe to be.One of the great minds of this century, an outsider to established science, has recognized the folly of this view and coined a term for the antidote. He calls it syntropy. In his book Cosmography, R. Buckminster Fuller writes: "The reader will discover that the inexorable course of the gradual running down of the energy of the universe - that is, entropy - is only part of the picture. Entropy has a complementary phase, which we designated syntropy".
I wrote these words and quoted Fuller in 1993, in an article titled
A New
Beginning For Thermodynamics. At the time, I had my share of
opposition, together with some appreciative comments. But few physicists
seemed ready to question the unconditional validity of the second law of
thermodynamics at the time. It was and perhaps still is one of the
untouchable principles - almost a holy cow of physics.
Now, a decade and a half later, it seems that some researchers have hit upon a way to circumvent the law, to reverse that inexorable tendency of heat to disperse from a warm place to a cooler one.
Ammonia Butane Ambient Heat Motor - David Matos de Matos.
Heat
pumps have been available for quite some time. They are used in
refrigerators, air conditioners and environmental heating applications.
They can extract between three and four times more heat from an
environmental source than the equivalent of electricity needed to
produce heat in a resistance heater. Their coefficient of
performance is therefore said to be about three to four. Even
though they are more efficient than electricity in heating, so far no
one has been able to close the cycle and use the heat thus generated to
again produce the driving force for the heat pump with some power left
over to do other work.
But this seems destined to change. David Matos de Matos from Angola has designed a system that can do work with compression only. He proposes to do away with the expansion valve found in fridges and air conditioners to more efficiently utilize the cycle and run a motor or turbine with the continuously pressurized working fluid. His description of a proposed two-cycle ammonia and butane compression-only motor with expansionless phase change and heat recovery is available in this blog post: Compression only heat engines - Plus phase change
Matos says the efficiency of this engine could be much increased by incorporating the Hydristor, a variable vane hydraulic pump and motor developed by Tom Kasmer, into his design. The Hydristor operates by converting shaft rotation and power into hydraulic pressure and flow, and/or the reverse. It can seamlessly merge several flows of hydraulic power with a shaft rotation.
Kasmer proposes to use the Hydristor to replace the transmission in conventional vehicles. It could be retrofitted in cars, trucks and motorcycles without much trouble and would increase the efficiency of transmission tremendously as well as use breaking energy regeneratively.
But another use Kasmer has in mind is incorporation of the hydristor in a heat pump cycle, where he says it could increase efficiency to the point of allowing the closing of the circle. One could use the accumulated heat in a stirling engine which in turn could drive a generator and produce sufficient electricity to run the heat pump with power to spare:
- - -
(from PESWiki)
Another capability is the Hydristor heat pump/generator. This Hydristor package will use Freon type technology which currently returns 300% of the input electrical power in the form of low grade environmental solar and geothermal heat. The Hydristor will raise the return from 3 times to fully ten times. The energy harvested from the air, water or ground will be sent to an available Stirling engine which converts 40% of the applied heat energy at 300 degrees F into direct shaft horsepower. The Stirling shaft now drives an electrical generator to create 3.5 Kw output per 1 Kw input. The last step is to 'pull the wall plug' and quickly plug the output into the input and the system is self sustaining with useable energy left over. You now have 'free energy' with true Zero emissions.A Hydristor heat pump/generator can be configured as a stand alone water condenser/refrigerator-freezer and electrical source sited out in the middle of deserts or anywhere moderately temperate harvesting the Sun's heat to operate and separately harvesting moisture from the 'rivers of moisture' everywhere on Earth. A very big number of crises can be immediately solved by this simple and lowly pump.
The heat pump is theoretical but the engineering is sound. Taking the example of conventional heat pump operation, a gain of 3 times is easily achieved, called a 'coefficient of performance' or COP. In plain language, if you input ONE Kw of electrical energy to the electric motor driving a conventional Freon heat pump, you can 'harvest' or 'capture' the low grade (temperature) heat equivalent in BTUs in the amount of 3 Kw for a gain of energy.
Simply put, one Kw of electricity diverts 3 Kw of heat from the air or water, said heat put there by the Sun, or geothermal from the Earth's core.
There are 4 main losses in the conventional heat pump technology. First there is the efficiency of the existing pump technology. Second is the significant loss of mechanical work energy associated with the expansion of the Freon. Last is the molecular friction of the Freon molecules rushing through the expansion valve (a tiny hole in a disk) at supersonic speeds. There is also an impediment to variable operation of the pump to allow for source and load requirements which change because the existing pump is fixed displacement. The system is cycled on and off to adjust for variable conditions. This is like driving your car using either a pedal to the floor or lifting your foot off the pedal and varying the proportion of that on/off gas pedal to maintain 30 Mph in city driving. Talk about inefficiency and very bad gas mileage.
The Hydristor heat pump technology addresses all 4 of these issues. First, the pump efficiency of the Hydristor is significantly better than the old way. Second, the Hydristor has 4 individually variable chambers and chamber one is the Freon pump. The compressed Freon is sent to the 'hot' heat exchanger which transfers the heat to a Stirling engine where 40% of the BTUs are converted to rotating shaft horsepower. Most of the heat is removed from the Freon but the system pressure is the same throughout this section. Instead of sending the cooled Freon at the full system pressure to the expansion valve, it is instead sent to Hydristor chamber 2. The Freon is held inside the Hydristor and each of chambers 2,3 and 4 expand as the hydristor rotates, turning the expansion of the Freon directly into hydraulic motor torque which is directly applied to the common rotor so that the energy needed from the electrically driven motor is directly reduced by the expansion motor torque. Since there is no significant Freon molecular friction due to the absent expansion valve, that loss is also eliminated. The Hydristor's ability to individually vary the rotational displacement of the 4 chambers means no starting and stopping. The 4 chambers are individually adjusted by the control system so that the optimum performance is achieved.
My experience, training both as a scientist and practicing engineer and my 'gut feel' tell me that I will see a 3-4 fold improvement in the COP of the Hydristor Freon cycle resulting in an energy gain of at least 10 times the input electrical energy. The last part of the Hydristor Freon generator is to add an electrical generator to the Stirling output shaft and create an electrical output.
To recap, one Kw of external power will harvest 10 Kw of heat equivalent energy and the Stirling will transform that energy into 4 Kw of mechanical shaft power driving the output generator which in turn generates 3.5 Kw of electrical power. Once started, the plug to the power company is pulled and the output is quickly plugged into the input to make the Hydristor system self sustaining with some energy left over to do work. The end result of the Hydristor freon generator is to harness the Sun's daily heat influx and harvest it from the air or water temperature 24/7 to create a continuous power source requiring no fuel and making absolutely zero emissions.
An array of the hydristor heat exchangers located several hundred yards offshore deep enough to be insulated from violent storms will drive a localized community power grid and will also absorb the excess heat in the Oceans and lakes which are driving the horrible weather and storms. This will have a double whammy effect by enabling the shutdown of existing air burning generation, long line transmission and nuclear generation.
A note about nuclear generation is that it does contribute to global warming because of the huge amounts of cooling water discharged directly into the environment. In the words of Dr. Phil, 'what are they thinking?'
The Hydristor heat pump has another convenient feature. The 'cold' exchanger is very cold, like -40. This will condense huge amounts of water directly from the air. The Earth is covered by moving air currents which are also 'rivers of moisture' This is true everywhere it is above freezing. This distilled water provides an absolutely pure source of water in any locality and for free! Large arrays of such Hydristor systems could be established to irrigate farmland and provide municipal water sources. If you dry the air out in an area, the air will automatically move more moist air in to replace it.
Both Matos and Kasmer are still at the stage of early engineering and no
one has built such a system yet, but it does appear that with a
combination of smart technologies the coefficient of performance of heat
concentrating systems could be increased sufficiently to allow stand-alone
operation in a motor and generator application. The aim is to use
environmental heat that is abundantly available and sufficiently
concentrate it where electric output becomes feasible.
The technology is not exotic. Heat exchangers and their parts are available off-the-shelf. With the addition of Kasmer's invention, who knows whether we might not gain energy independence in an entirely unexpected way.
Would such a motor violate the Second Law?
I believe not. As I wrote in that article on thermodynamics more than a decade ago,
It seems that things went wrong when we were trying to imagine a closed system. That is something achievable only in theory. Because every system existing within this universe is in constant and continuous exchange with the rest of the universe. And how this universe is made, what it consists of and how it functions, we have not even remotely begun to understand.
Links:
Thermoenergetics - David Matos de Matos proposes to create a worldwide conscience for innovative and serious debate about the Laws of Physics and new propositions. Energetics and the Maximum Power Principles, the Onsager reciprocal relations and Thermoeconomics are propositions that should be discussed.
Tom Kasmer's Hydristor page on PESWiki
The Synergetics Collaborative brings together a diverse group of people interested in Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics in workshops, symposia, seminars, pow-wows, and other meetings to educate and support research and understanding of Synergetics, its methods and principles.