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People have been building dams for a long, long time to harness gravity as a source of energy.
striphe said:Ok, it looks like i misunderstood what you meant by gravity as a source of energy.
Could you go into a little more detail so that we are on the same page.
D H said:People have been building dams for a long, long time to harness gravity as a source of energy.
D H said:What do you think powers hydroelectric generators? The immediate source of energy power is the kinetic energy in the flowing water. That kinetic energy results from the gravitational potential energy difference between the top of the dam and the bottom of the turbine.
Nothing lasts forever. The Sun will burn itself out eventually, and the Earth (if it exists) will cool to the background radiation temperature. Before that, the Sun will pass through a red giant phase that may engulf the Earth. Before that, the Sun's ever increasing output will result in the oceans evaporating away. Plate tectonics may stop before that, so even before the oceans disappear the Earth will be a flat, barren landscape.RonL said:Is the Earth's rain cycle considered a perpetual event ?? I would think it is.
D H said:What do you think powers hydroelectric generators?
D H said:The immediate source of energy power is the kinetic energy in the flowing water.
D H said:That kinetic energy results from the gravitational potential energy difference between the top of the dam and the bottom of the turbine.
That is akin to arguing that petroleum products and coal are not sources of energy because something else expended energy to convert biological wastes into oil and coal.stewartcs said:However, the potential energy stored in a particle of water didn't come from gravity, it came from the work done on it to get it to the top of the dam. Something must have expended energy to put the water particle at the top of the dam, that something wasn't gravity.
D H said:Nothing lasts forever. The Sun will burn itself out eventually, and the Earth (if it exists) will cool to the background radiation temperature. Before that, the Sun will pass through a red giant phase that may engulf the Earth. Before that, the Sun's ever increasing output will result in the oceans evaporating away. Plate tectonics may stop before that, so even before the oceans disappear the Earth will be a flat, barren landscape.
All of this is terribly off-topic. So let's get back on topic.
striphe said:So I guess we are back at part B of the hypothesis.
striphe said:If I break the hypothesis into two parts:
(a) A contained body of gas that is within a field of gravity will have differing temperature differing locations within the body.
(b)These differing temperatures can be utilised to by heat engine, to convert heat energy into other forms.
What environment? By saying that you are making this a non-isolated system. Once you do that you have to account for energy and entropy transfer with the external environment.striphe said:The bottom of the columns reach the same temperature as the environment.
D H said:Which hypothesis? This one?
You haven't specified how you are going to utilize this temperature difference. No matter how you do it, you will not be violating the laws of thermodynamics (which includes conservation of energy). Let's look at your two column system (posts 23 & 23). Suppose you have two isolated columns containing gases, each a couple of kilometers high. Fill one with hydrogen, the other with xenon, such that at the bottom of each column the pressure is 1 atmosphere and the temperature is 300 K. Note: The column of xenon can't be all that tall because xenon has a very low specific heat and therefore the temperature gradient will be phenomenally steep 61.96 K/km with g=9.81 m/s2 throughout. (The temperature gradient in the hydrogen column will only be 0.6858 K/km).
With this, the temperatures at the top of the 2 km towers will differ by 122.55 K. Not a huge difference, but any difference will suffice for a heat engine. So, let's "break the seal" at the top of the columns to take advantage of this difference. We'll be transferring heat from the top of the hydrogen column to the top of the xenon column, stealing some of that transferred heat in the form of useful energy. What's going to happen in the columns? Simple: The lapse rates will no longer be adiabatic. The hydrogen column will have a super-adiabatic lapse rate while the xenon column will have a sub-adiabatic lapse rate. Eventually the two columns will stabilize with equal temperatures at the tops of the columns. Our heat engine of course will become worthless at this point.
Before this happens, let's see if we can take advantage of what is happening at the bottoms of the columns. The xenon column will be warmer at the bottom than will the hydrogen column. So, let's break the seal there as well and install another heat engine. Have we got a perpetual motion machine? Nope. Eventually we'll get equal temperatures at the top and the bottom as well. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch in thermodynamics.
Another what if game: Let's force the bottoms to have a common temperature of 300 K, forever. Now we can draw energy at the top of the column, forever. Is this a perpetual motion device? Nope. That forcing at the bottom requires an energy input, and this energy input will be greater than the amount of energy we can draw out at the top. So once again, no free lunch.
striphe said:The principle of all these hypothetical devises are based on the seeming overlook (at least what I've seen) by thermodynamics to consider that a temperature differences will arise in a body of gas under the force of gravity or simulated gravity (centrifugal force).
Yes way. It's called "lapse rate" (google that term). Here is a plot of the dry and moist adiabatic lapse rates:klimatos said:Could you cite a source for this development of temperature differences in a parcel of gas at equilibrium under the influence of gravity as it sole outside force. Differences in density: yes. Differences in temperature: no way.
Since you are the one making the extraordinary claim, striphe, the burden of proof falls upon you to prove that such a device would allow a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. You are assuming that the gases in these columns will follow adiabatic conditions. They won't. You are forcing conditions to be other than adiabatic, so the temperature profile will be something other than adiabatic.striphe said:Although its easy enough to say we won't get a free lunch, as the second law doesn't allow for free lunches. It seems excessively difficult to explain how such is true in with these hypothetical devises.
D H said:Yes way. It's called "lapse rate" (google that term). Here is a plot of the dry and moist adiabatic lapse rates:
striphe said:klimatos, my support of the temperature difference is based on the understanding that, if molecular collisions were the only way heat was being transferred within a body of gas, then particles moving down speed up and particles moving up slow down; resulting in a temperature gradient. But heat energy can be transferred through em radiation which wouldn't be affected by such a force in classical physics.
I consider it plausible that the em radiation may even out the temperature in a closed body of gas.
striphe said:As D H has given quantitative calculations as to the temperature difference within a closed and static body of gas and that he is the most senior member of the forum posting on this thread; it gives me a lot of confidence that the temperature difference does arise.
Smacal1072 said:I didn't read the whole thing, but I believe they resolve the paradox by showing that the coldest atoms in the maxwell-boltzmann distribution don't have enough energy to travel far up the tube, so that while all the atoms lose energy as they travel upwards, by shedding the coldest atoms, the temperature in fact doesn't change as we move upwards in the tube.
Smacal1072 said:Hi klimatos,
I absolutely agree with you - However, the paper I mentioned doesn't deal with gases at NTP, it only discusses an apparent paradox involving ideal gases.
jarednjames said:Gonna stick my neck out here, but I was under the impression ideal gases don't exist? So any paradox doesn't either?
klimatos said:Jared, I think you're just having fun!
You have this exactly backwards. The adiabatic lapse rate is a direct consequence of the second law of thermodynamics. A lapse rate that deviates from the adiabatic lapse rate is a phenomena of moving air.klimatos said:As a retired professor of atmospheric sciences, I am familiar with lapse rates. I referred to a closed system at equilibrium. Adiabatic lapse rates are phenomena of moving air--not an equilibrium situation. The normal atmospheric lapse rate is an artifact of the Earth's heat budget. It would not exist without an outside source of energy--the Sun.
striphe said:If there is less particles at the lower pressure end, each gas particle has to be moving faster for the temperature be the same throughout the body. Can someone explain how this would be so?