Non-Electric Ice Production in The Desert

dragonfly Jafe · Post by **dragonfly Jafe** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 7:47 pm

Ugly Dougly wrote:A guy showed me a gizmo that he called Maxwell's Demon. Air was blown in one end and exited in two places. In the first place, the air was hot, and in other place it was cold. What was that?

A vortex

pretty cool stuff

google it

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:32 am

dragonfly Jafe wrote:
Ugly Dougly wrote:A guy showed me a gizmo that he called Maxwell's Demon. Air was blown in one end and exited in two places. In the first place, the air was hot, and in other place it was cold. What was that?
A vortex

pretty cool stuff

google it

http://www.thevortexbarandgrill.com/TheVortex/index.htm
Thanks, that solves all our energy problems.

dragonfly Jafe · Post by **dragonfly Jafe** » Sun Jun 03, 2007 11:56 am

that must have been the "hot" version

here is a link; http://www.arizonavortex.com/vortex-tub ... 4335132511

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 6:25 am

I'd REALLY like to locate the device that makes those big dust devils on the playa....I've looked for four years, to no avail. Bet it's cool, though.

LeChatNoir · Post by **LeChatNoir** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 7:12 am

I've heard they hide it in the man.

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 8:56 am

Is this vortex stuff a joke?
It would explain the theories of exhaust design I am hearing from two separate sources.

Zhust · Post by **Zhust** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:35 am

gyre wrote:Is this vortex stuff a joke?
It would explain the theories of exhaust design I am hearing from two separate sources.

I basically learned about this from the Wikipedia page, so bear with any errors in my understanding:

The "thought experiment" is Maxwell's Demon: a little demon measures the kinetic energy of an approaching gas molecule and opens and closes a door between two adjacent cells, sorting the molecules into "higher-than-average" and "lower-than-average" energies. Temperature is average kinetic energy, so the "higher" side would get hotter and the "lower" side would get cooler.

According to the second law of thermodynamics, if you were to make a device to replace the demon, the power to operate it must necessarily be more than the power you could derive from the temperature change. The challenge is: prove why this is so, or disprove the second law.

That said, a similar-seeming device is the vortex device. As I understand it, you pump in compressed air which swirls into a vortex in one direction in a tube. I guess higher-temperature gas tends to swirl to the outside so there's a nozzle that lets the outer gases escape. The remaining "inner" vortex bounces back and exits out a nozzle at the other end of the tube. The result is that compressed air comes in, and hot air goes out one side and cold air out the other.

It is a real, working device, and it is a "Maxwell demon" so to speak because it sorts gas molecules by their kinetic energy. However, it takes a lot of energy to compress gas -- so much so that practical tubes are less efficient than compressor-based refrigerators. Despite that, it is useful for specific applications -- for instance, it delivers cold temperature to a relatively small area which is impossible to do with compressor-based refrigerators.

BReilly · Post by **BReilly** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 11:14 pm

Burner virgin this year, and had a thought about which chemicals to use for cooling, like they have for packs and what not. This wouldn't be for constant refrigeration, but to get a drink cold or something. Here's the link I found--I'm no chemist, so any suggestions on it I'd appreciate.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=506880

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 12:36 am

Jay, that's interesting because the new exhaust design seems to revolve around preventing the stratification of gases.
I've spoken with the patent holder and one other person and they won't give me enough detail, but they both agree that our science about exhaust flow is fundamentally wrong.
I think they have both figured out the same thing.

The nsa has a 2500 watt supercomputer that is about six inches square.
I wonder if they have some interesting tricks for cooling it?
It is intended as a portable device.