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Could heat in air be used as a source of energy?

Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 8:00 pm
by Isaac
To day was humid as hell, in Austin and I wondered if the thick hot air contained energy.

I looked it up and apparently heat IS energy. That’s cool! Can you convert hot air into electricity?

Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 8:08 pm
by Topher
No! We want to maintain our current supply of blondes!!

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 12:44 am
by MD-2389
Google geothermal power. Question answered. :)

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 1:29 am
by Ferno
he said heat in air, MD.

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 5:16 am
by Kilarin
heat, from any source, can only be used to generate power when you have a temperature differential. So yes, hot air could be used to generate electricity, but only if you had someplace much colder nearby.

Which means, NO, atmospheric heat is not very practical for generating electricity because it takes more energy to create a temperature differential than you get back out of it.

The reason geothermal DOES work is that the surface of the earth is much COOLER than the hot pockets deep underneath.

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 6:12 am
by snoopy
Kilarin said it. You need a temperature differential in order to be able to harness the energy in heat.

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 10:59 am
by Canuck
Heat exchangers work by using the hot stale air from your house to pre heat the cold fresh incoming air. In Summer you can hook up a pump to your geothermal system, or air conditioning to cool the incoming air.

Another Heat exchanger system uses humidity and air movement to cool incoming Summer air, (Swamp Cooler effect to nTh degree)
http://www.advancedbuildings.org/main_t ... y_heat.htm

Ok I used to mess with rooftops for a living too.

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 11:18 am
by snoopy
Canuck is right, in that you can do a little bit with the temperature differences between inside and outside, but you can't get much out of it- hardly enough to generate a decent amount of electricity with. A lot of systems use pressure to produce power, and heat is used to produce the pressure differential. Think of heat as kind of the \"waste energy\" in the world. Any perfect system will produce absolutely no heat, and an inefficient will produce lots of heat. Once you dump heat into the air really can't get much of the energy back. (For example, a common car engine runs at under 70% efficiency- that means that almost 1/3 of the energy in the gasoline turns into heat and is just wasted.)

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 11:44 am
by Palzon
Maybe the hot air in this thread could power the dbb.

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 11:52 am
by Kilarin
Palzon wrote:Maybe the hot air in this thread could power the dbb.
You haven't been paying attention. To harness the energy you would need to have a temperature differential, and that means you would have to find a dbb thread that WASN'T hot air. :)

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 12:03 pm
by Aggressor Prime
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the laws of thermodynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics

-ccb056

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 4:31 pm
by Top Wop
^^^ I was going to mention that, but look at the person who started the thread. The gray mass above the shoulders is lacking.

Re:

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 5:24 pm
by MD-2389
Ferno wrote:he said heat in air, MD.
Thank you, Captain Obvious! I was referring to the PRINCIPLE involved. [foamy]Jackass![/foamy]

:P

Re:

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 6:46 pm
by Isaac
Top Wop wrote:^^^ I was going to mention that, but look at the person who started the thread. The gray mass above the shoulders is lacking.
x2

I draw naked people at school. Sometimes an apple... counting things sucks.

Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 6:16 am
by Mobius
Temperature differential is a valid means of generating power. I know for a fact that a hospital of the shores of one of the great lakes uses such a system leveraging the extremely cold water deep in the lake.

In theory, you could build multi-Megawatt ocean-based facilities - but in practice, the hardware takes too much of a beating in the sea. Fiords or something might work better?

Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 8:53 am
by Duper
inversly, a good deal of energy is spent to remove that energy from warm, humid air in HVAC systems. Oddly, water is the most effcient means of doing this.

Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 12:01 pm
by ccb056
If you want energy, the two best methods are either nuclear or petroleum. Both very viable, safe, and abundant.

Could heat in air be used as a source of energy

Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 7:01 am
by rijruna1
ever hear of 'stirling engines'? oh btw car engines rate about 24% but a stirling engine rates about 70%. but then how would i know? iv only built one is why & did a stack of research of em
cheers
rij

Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 7:11 am
by Kilarin
rijruna1 wrote:ever hear of 'stirling engines'?
Stirling engines are cool, but they also require a temperature differential.

TANSTAAFL

Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 12:06 pm
by ccb056
a good sterling engine will operate using either nuclear or petroleum power

Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 3:13 pm
by Isaac
so after reading this, it looks like i'll have to invent magic first

Re:

Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 12:55 pm
by MD-2389
Isaac wrote:so after reading this, it looks like i'll have to invent magic first
Bah, I'm sure Merlin is hanging around here somewhere. ;)