This disclosure is of an apparatus that is intended to convert some of the ambient temperature heat energy of the atmosphere into mechanical energy. First off let me tell you that the books say that it can't be done. They said it 160 years ago and they still say it today. They even have a label fo it. They call it Perpetual motion of the Second kind or ( PMM2 ). It is very different than Perpetual motion of the First kind or ( PMM1 ). That first kind is a machine that would create energy out of nothing, like gravity wheels or trying to use permanent magnets to some how deliver more energy than you use to make it happen. I do not believe that the first kind is possible. I believe in mathmatics and that alone tells me that if you start with nothing then you end up with nothing. Or zero plus zero = zero.
Now perpetual motion of the second kind or ( PMM2 ) is very different. Thats where you can start with heat energy from the atmosphere and try to convert some of it into another form of energy. Over the years I've been told that it can't be done by everyone from physics professors to Thermodynamics engineers. All of these people have memorized the book so that they can recite it to you like an Actor does a script. I put almost all of these people in one category because they use the same old arguments right out of the same old books. All except one man who came up with somthing original out of his own mind. His name is Philip Morrison and he is an astro physicist. He gave me the following example.
He said that converting atmospheric heat would be like going to the bottom of an ocean with a hydraulic motor and expecting all that pressure to power the motor. He said that you can't use that pressure because there is no place for it to go. Now his statement is absolutely correct but I say it is not quite the same thing. In such an analogy I have to say that I am not wanting to convert the pressure of the water. I am wanting to convert the water it'self into mechanical energy and if I could do that then more water would run in to take it's place. Now you can't convert water it'self into mechanical energy but you CAN convert heat into mechanical energy and if you do then more heat will flow in to take it's place.
Now I want to point out that this apparatus ( like all others ) will have losses and keeping these losses to the very minimum is paramount. Thats why I have never tryed to build it. It could be built by NASA or some orginazation like that. But before getting into losses I want to explain the concept it'self. Let's use an Air Conditioner to gather and consentrate the ambient temperature heat of the atmosphere. Now let's feed that heat into a backwards Air conditioner ( Heat engine ). I called it a backwards Air conditioner because it operates on the same kind of refrigerant as the forward Air conditioner. Now in reality the Air conditioner can not really work backwards as an Engine because it has no liquid feed pump, so let's give it one and let's install a drive shaft between the two units so that the engine side can power the Air conditioner side. For the sake of making a sketch let's put the Air conditioner compressor on the left end of the shaft and the engine on the right end.
Please understand that there are two seperate refrigerant systems here. The gas of the Air conditioner side does not go into the engine side. But it DOES transfer it's heat to the other side through a heat exchanger. Let's call that Heat exchanger ( B ) and position it above the two units in the center of the page.
Now the engine side powers the Air conditioner compressor which delivers five horsepower of heat for one horsepower of mechanical energy. Now that is a fact and sounds really great but it's not so great because when all that heat goes back down hill to the ambient temperature atmosphere from which it came it can not produce more than the one horsepower of mechanical energy that caused it to happen in the first place. The best way to see that is to first see the Air conditioner using one horsepower of mechanical energy to deliver the five horsepower of heat. Then imagine that five horsepower of heat going right back down through that Air conditioner to where it came from paying back that one horsepower of mechanical energy. Now, not only is there no gain but we have those losses that I warned you about.
So do we give up like those people before us or do we keep looking for an answer because we know that this is not like PMM1. We do have somthing to start with so we keep at it and some day WHAMMO, We see the light. Not only does this Air conditioner have a hot side but it has a cold side too. That means that we can use that cold side to create a cold reservoir that is colder than the ambient temperature air so that the heat on the heat engine side can travel
FURTHER DOWN HILL THAN WHERE THE WORK OF COMPRESSION BEGAN AT AMBIENT TEMPERATURE AT THE COMPRESSOR IN PUSHING IT UP HILL and we do this at NO EXTRA COST because this cold side is already there. We can let the Air conditioner take some of it's input heat from the engine exhaust gas and then go and pick up the rest from the atmosphere. All we need to do is make another heat exchanger so that the liquid refrigerant of the Air conditioner can absorb heat out of the engines expanded gas and then route it back to the atmospheric heat exchanger to absorb additional heat from the atmosphere before returning to the compressor for the next cycle.
If making a sketch let's put that heat exchanger on the bottom and we'll call it Heat exchanger ( C ). Now we should also see that when we absorbed heat from the exhausted engine gas then that caused that gas to condense so that the liquid feed pump can send the liquid back up to heat exchanger ( B ) to be boiled again by the heat comming from the left side. Let's draw a little feed pump right on the shaft so we can see that action. Also we should sketch a Heat exchanger on the left side of the compressor where we absorb heat from the atmosphere after we pick up some heat from the engine exhausted gas and label it Heat exchanger ( A ).
Now let's think about this concept. It is a continuous cycle and maybe not be so easy to see both happenings. So let's break it down into two events. I'm going to use the second event first because you will remember it from high school science class. Thats where the teacher boiled a little bit of water in a metal can and then turned the fire off and put the cap on the can. Pretty soon the steam began to cool and condense and you saw the pressure of the atmosphere crush the can. Now thats the happening from the cold side of our Air conditioner. But there is also a hot side happening. To see that let's take that crushed can and turn the fire back on under it. As the water boils and turns to steam it strightens the can back out. In our case it will be backwards. That is, first we use heat to strighten the can out and then when the heat is removed we crush the can for free. That crushing action represents work that would have been thrown away before like steam engines did before they invented Condensers.
Now you don't have to be a genius to see that there is a double whammy here once this is explained to you. With heat energy you can have a double whammy that is not possible with electrical energy, mechanical energy or any other kind of energy. Now you say "But even the modern Condenser equipped steam turbine with it's double whammy is only about 40% efficient". Well you are absolutely correct, BUT what if that steam turbine could get it's heat by way of an Air conditioner ? Like five horsepower of heat for one horsepower of mechanical energy ? Thats five horsepower of heat at an efficiency of 40% is two horsepower of mechanical energy.
Now obviously we can't power a steam turbine with an Air conditioner because of the temperatures of the reservoirs that is required for water, so let's use somthing that boils at a lower temperature like the refrigerant in an Air conditioner and then build the backwards Air conditioner ( heat engine that runs on Refrigerant ). If you really understand the concept you will know that the only thing that could prevent this from working is if the losses are to great. I believe that with the heat insulations of today it can be made to work. By the way, that performance coefficient of five horsepower of heat for one of mechanical energy that I've been talking about is very conservitive. On a warm day it's between six and seven to one because it gets to make use of the frictional losses and even add the work of compression. No? Go ask any Refrigeration man or read the book.
Now that you have come this far I must explain that this vacuum or crushing action will not actually take place in our condenser like it does in a real world steam engine. The steam engine condenser cooling comes from river water or cooling towers and is way below the boiling point of water resulting in that vacuum. Now in our case we do not have the vacuum on the engine side but Mother Nature gave us somthing in exchange for that. She gave us excess pressure on the input to the compressor on the Air conditioner side and it amounts to much more than the 28.5 inches of vacuum found in steam turbine Condensers which is about 1.5 psia. We will not have that low 1.5 psia in our condenser we will have 14.7 psia which is not good but we will gain much more on the left side than we give up on the right side depending on what refrigerant we use.
You can look in a refrigeration book or the ASHRAE fundamentals handbook and see it. I especially like the pressure of R-410A. It shows that at a suction temperature of 40 degrees F. the R-410A has a pressure of 132 psia. and at a condensing temperature of 100 degrees it has a pressure of 331 psia. The compressor is pushing hot gas to heat exchanger ( B ) that transfers the heat to the refrigerant on the right side that powers the heat engine. So the back pressure on the compressor is 331 psia and the forward pressure then on the engine ( which is on the same shaft ) is also 331 psia. So they cancel each other out. This leaves 132 psia on the input to the compressor and one atmosphere on the output of the engine ( which again is the same shaft ). So 132 minus 14.7 leaves 117 psia over and above everything to do work at the output shaft.
Now that is NOT static pressure. Those figures that you are looking at are from actual refrigeration units in operation. The ASHRAE Engineers show how many BTUs are moved for one horsepower between those two temperature reservoirs. So in an abstract way of thinking you can visualize it backwards and know that instead of requiring one horsepower to compress, it would deliver MORE than one horsepower while being UN-compressed at the engine because the heat is going further down a temperature hill than where the work of compression began at ambient temperature to push it up hill. That of course is before losses.
I almost forgot to point out one other fact. Real world Steam turbine efficiencys are just ( Turbine only ) It does not include boiler losses which is substantial. Our apparatus will not waste that substantial amount of energy by blowing it into the atmosphere before the Engine even sees it like the Boilers of steam power plants do. And of course ours won't create acid rain or nuclear waste etc.
I can not say exactly how efficient this thing would be any more than Nikola Tesla could have predicted how much more efficient his three phase would be over single phase. But I do believe in my double whammy concept. Actually I can't take credit for this double whammy thing ( except for naming it ). It's been here ever since someone added the first Condenser to a steam engine.
