Re: Conversion of solar energy in a mechanical form?


Metzger writes:
Your device purports, and correct me if I'm wrong, to effectively sort
molecules into molecules of high kinetic energy and low kinetic
energy, does it not?
So, lets say this was possible. You could then place your device in
the middle of a chamber filled with a gas, and end up with a higher
temperature at one side of the chamber than the other, could you not?
You could then run a heat engine off of the resulting temperature
difference. This would seem to violate the second law of
thermodynamics, so it should raise certain suspicions.

My device doesn't sort the gas molecules by their kinetic energy. The gas
molecules are sorted according to the orientation of their speed vectors.
The responsible of this discrimination is the geometry of the conical hole.

Logajan writes:
Because your mechanism isn't expending any energy, yet would allow two
halves of an otherwise closed container of gas to move to unequal
densities, your device appears to increase the energy available to do
useful work. That appears to be a fundamental violation of the laws of
thermodynamics as I understand them.

The conical holes in the *** metal break the symmetry between the face
where are located the small openings of the holes and the face where are
located the large openings of the holes. This dissymmetry breaks also the
thermodynamic equilibrium. This device made of a *** metal drilled by
conical nano-holes is a dissipative system. A dissipative system is a
thermodynamically open system which is operating far from thermodynamic
equilibrium in an environment with which it exchanges energy, matter and/or
entropy. The selective movement of gas molecules through the conical holes
from the small openings to the large openings is the manifestation of an
exchange of energy and entropy between the device and the gas in contact.

Metzger writes:
My suspicion is that if you properly account for all the real
interaction that take place, your device will not work as expected.
However, if it does work as expected, you should be prepared to
explain why it does not violate the second law of thermodynamics...

Logajan writes:
There are a host of possible reasons your simulation is yielding
incorrect results. Perhaps the volume, density, or energy distributions
of the ensemble of particles used for the two sides differ in ways you
haven't noticed. (I presume your runs were of equal length time.) Or
perhaps your test for wall collisions and subsequent bounce trajectories
is incorrect. (Also, I suspect a 2 dimensional model would suffice rather
than a 3 dimensional one.)
If the simulation is not too long and you are willing to allow it to be
publicly reviewed, I'd be happy to review it with you on this forum. If
not, I can understand.

For another purpose, I have made a software with Visual Basic. This software
named Pyramide.exe simulates the comportment of gas molecules in a
pyramidal hole with an alone opening on its square base. This simulation is
very simple: the trajectory of each gas molecule in the three dimensional
structure is determined one after one. The simulation is realistic only in
the case when the dimensions of the hole are smaller than the mean free path
of gas molecules. With this condition, a gas molecule which enters in the
cavity could have a shock or more on the four solid planes without contact
another gas molecule. The shocks of gas molecules on solid planes are
supposed elastic. After each contact of molecule on solid, the software
calculates the new trajectory of molecule and the exchanged impulses until
the gas molecule leaves the hole by the square opening.

The errors of the software are avoided by two processes. The geometrical
process verifies the absence of abnormal trajectories (for example, a
trajectory passing through a solid plane of the cavity). The physical
process surveys the stability of the speed modulus of gas molecule between
entry and exit of the hole (the shocks are elastic so the speed modulus of
molecules must be constant).

I have modified this software for the test of a pyramidal hole with two
openings. The software now named 'Pyra_2.exe' is adjusted for the test of
the following geometry:
- depth of the hole: 55550 nm
- length of the side of the square large entry: 500 nm,
- length of the side of the square small opening: 50 nm,
- distance between large and small openings: 50000 nm.

In this case, the gas molecules enter in the hole by the large square
opening. The software calculates the position of each shock on solid plane
and the new orientation of the speed vector. The only difference with the
original software is when the gas molecules reach the level of small
opening. I have added an instruction which breaks the algorithm when a
molecule reaches the small opening: a new molecule is injected in the large
opening and the variable s which normally counts the errors counts now the
molecules reaching the small opening.

I allow the review of the software on this forum.

The software Pyra_2.exe is available here:
http://simulation.servehttp.com
in the folder Pyramidal hole.

The folder contains also others files:
- Pyramide.hlp is a detailed presentation of the original software
Pyramide.exe (in French),
- Vbrun300.dll and Cmdialog.vbx are necessary files for the working of
the software Pyra_2.exe,
- Screen_1 to Screen_4 are image files which show the successive windows
of the software when it is running.

If you want test the software, follow the steps:
- launch the software Pyra_2.exe,
- on the first window, click on the button Suite,
- on the second window, input the data e = 500, p = 55550, n = 100000 then
click on the button 'Suite',
- on the third window, click on the button Lancement.

After that, the simulation is running. The important result of the
simulation is the counter s which shows the amount of molecules reaching
the small opening.

[Your humble moderator is coming late to this party, but I agree with Perry and
James. First, this will not work because it is a Maxwell's Daemon device,
which would violate the second law of thermodynamics if it worked as described.
It does not matter that some geometric "symmetry" is "broken"

[Second, your software is yielding erroneous results because you are not
building a full or complete model. In order to build a model of the
two-chamber closed system that James and Perry are discussing, you most
certainly must model, not just particles and their interactions with your
boundry, but the interactions of the particles themselves. Without that, your
model has no proper measure of temperature, density, or pressure, and is
completely invalid. I understand why you don't want to do this-- it is
computationally intentional. Nevertheless, it is necessary.

[There are other subtler errors of modelling once that's taken care of, but
that one is a bright red flag of model invalidity. -- JSN]


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