Extracting electrical power from Brownian motion with ratcheted micromotors

[The Amazing Idiot]

free energy: please "chew and digest" idea

Hi, I am new to this board.. but I've read enough about the nut-theories pertaining to "Vacuum energy", macro-quantum teleportation, and many out there ideas..

I do have an idea, that does pertain to "free energy", but before I am debunked.. let's go over what my basic principles.

Brownian motion: The idea that heat makes atoms/molecules move randomly around. The hotter an object is, the more "random" the internal motion the object has. Be aware, that brownian motion is bounded if the material is a solid to a defined shape.

Motors: Devices that spin in 'novel' ways. If an electric motor, you can apply electricity to spin the gear, or spin the gear to provide electricty flow.

My interesting idea is, instead of some unprovable free energy via cold fusion, is instead a better thermocouple. If you constructed very small motors, ratcheted them, so the gear can only go one direction, and then lead them through a combining circuit, could you not create a heat-based energy transfer system? Current thermocouples use a sort of reverse Peltier effect to derive electricty (As the Voyager 2 probe). If you keep one side cold and the other side hot, you can take a small amount of current flow.

Perhaps the tech isn't advanced enough to create mini-motors. As a more large scale idea, is to have a wall of fans. Air's going to hit them somehow.. If you have them scattered over a surface, some will move, while others do not.

The best thought about this is you could attach these devices to heatsinks. The heat itself would provide power back to the system, though not at 100% efficency. That (effiency) would have to be measured. Hopefully, it would approach 100%, due to deriving energy from heat.

Approaching this idea and sending forth to interested minds. No nuts need posting.

 

[Chronos]

How do you propose to extract energy from anything that is already at ground state energy levels? Explain how that does not violate the laws of thermodynamics. It sounds like you came here to demonstrate your skills as a pottery magician.

 

[The Amazing Idiot]

Heh.. "Science Adviser". Ouch.

How do you propose to extract energy from anything that is already at ground state energy levels? Explain how that does not violate the laws of thermodynamics. It sounds like you came here to demonstrate your skills as a pottery magician.

Ground state, eh? I call that absolute zero. Anything higher has energy by motion of particles due to brownian motion. And about breaking the law that doesn't quite work, it lowers the effective temperature of the system and converts it to electrical energy.. or is that too complex for you?

 

[russ_watters]

Welcome aboard.

Not a bad idea, but Brownian motion occurs on the molecular scale - I could see it working (maybe) for nano-machines, but when you start talking about things like a fan, it quickly averages out to zero.

 

[arivero]

Your idea sounds as a variant of Maxwell's demon, a typical exersixe of thermodinamic books.

 

[chronon]

Yes, they're a Maxwell's demon type devices. They need rectifiers of some sort (ratchet, diode etc). The rectifier is at the same temperature as the rest of the device, and so will exhibit random behaviour due to the thermal motion of its molecules. This means that it will sometimes behave in the 'wrong' way (e.g. a ratchet will jiggle about and sometimes slip backwards). This will cancel out the effect.

 

[KonradKorzenowski]

but what if you could create many of these "motors" then combine them to a large more productive machine then make many more of those and so on and so on.