Always seen this Elon Musk guy name around but I never had time to take in much about him.
Had some spare time during my late night and read about stuff. I realise his name keeps coming up in stuff that cross my mind. One was the space x programme. Discovered today he is getting into my field.
In one of my lectures, I cover pressure-temperature relationships. You can manipulate pressures and temperatures to create phase changes for refrigerants.
An example I use is the CPU coolers that has some form of a refrigerant in the pipes and the changes in temperatures allow for a phase change to absorb and dissipate heat energy.
An in class experiment is we full a glass chamber with water and pull a vaccume on it. The drop in pressure allows the water to boil at room temp.
In the early stages of my bachelor's degree we covered multi stage flash distillation. You have a mixture of liquids, you can drop the pressure to meet the vapor pressure of each liquid and successfully remove it in its gaseous form from the mixture. The thing about it is, creating vaccume is energy-intensive. What if we can use phase change of a material to create enough vaccume pressure to boil off a liquid.
The thought crossed my mind of having two cylindrical chambers connected to each other with a rod and moveable piston. With one on top the other and the piston at rest at the bottom of each you have a refrigerant on top the piston in the top chamber. The bottom chamber is open to atmospheric pressure at the top and sealed at the underneath.
You have enough of the refrigerant mass at the top of the piston in the refrigerant chamber in its gaseous for to generate a particular pressure where it can almost flash into a liquid if you drop the temperature much.
You have a liquid at the bottom of the water chamber and you need to add heat to it for it to change phase.
What if you can find a way to remove the heat energy from the gaseous refrigerant and put it in the water. As you remove heat the gas contracts and the water expands and so do the respective chambers. You allow the process to continue the gaseous refrigerant eventually turns to a liquid taking up a fixed space as you have created enough pressure where the gas can condenstae at room temp or near room temp. The contracted and now liquid refrirgerant mass exerts suction force in the chamber underneath causing the liquids boling point to be near or equal to ambient temp and it flashes in to a gas filling the chamber it is in and everything is balanced.
But we have a problem here, the refrigerant is not only pulling vaccume on the water, its in a sealed chamber where its creating vaccume on the other side of the piston in the refrigerant chamber. Also, we cannot repeat the process.
So we have another system. This one where the water enters the top of the water chamber and the bottom is open to the atmosphere. The refrigerant is at the bottom of the piston in this one.
You have a channel connecting the bottom of one refrigerant chamber to the top of the next and another connecting the top of that one to the bottom of this one. This way you can let refrigerant in to create pressure under the piston in the first chamber forcing it up. The second system is at rest and the refrigerant is in its liquid form. The liquid expands upon entry into the chamber because the low pressure and temperature favors its flashing into gas. The more heat you apply to it, the more it expands. You have valves at the end of the connecting tubes. You open the valve to let enough liquid refrigerant into the refrigerant chamber in the first system to generate force against the piston also compressing the refrigerant on top. When the process is complete you lock the valves and start the process in the second system.
What you end up with is water vapor under the piston in the water chamber. You have a liquid refrigerant on top the piston in the refrigerant chamber and a gaseous refrigerant under it.
System number two, you have the bottom of the water chamber open to atmospheric pressure, the top of the piston with a volume of liquid water, the top of the refrigerant chamber has gaseous refrigerant and under the piston, liquid refrigerant.
Opening and closing valves will allow refrigerant flow under pressure.
Changes in volume and phase can generate negative and positive pressure. It doesn't happen as I described it but the gradual process takes place at the same time in each.
You are removing heat from a gaseous refrigerant mass and applying it to a liquid water mass and heat a small volume of liquid refrigerant that expands and balances the piston in the refrigerant chamber. The gaseous refrigerant contracting and changing phase to a liquid generates vaccume in the water chamber and the liquid refrigerant mass introduced on the next side eliminates it going into vaccume and maintains a positive pressure against it so all the energy goes towards creating vaccume for the evaporation of the water.
Water is the only substance on the face of the earth that exists in all 3 phases. Pure water vapor can either be compressed or simply cooled by ambient temp changes or temp differences with minor pressure changes and you get 100% clean water.
Energy consumption, low.
Fuel source, heat.
Availability, unlimited and in abundance.
Environmental impact, nil.
No system is 100% efficient. Heat is abundant and free, all we have to do is remove it from where we don't need it and introduce it into the system. Can you think of anywhere or any application where we need to get rid of heat?
Heat transported by a highly conductive liquid in tubes, a liquid metal maybe? Heat absorbed and rejected by increased surface area to volume ratio like fins we use in air condition systems.
We addressing air conditioning and we addressing pure water availability.
In theory, the system seems plausible and I'm not sure if there is something I'm overlooking. A facebook friend said maybe I can run it by the tuner community for critique in case there is something I overlooked.
I thought up this while at the hospital. Not sure what tesla has to offer but this is what I mocked up.
Something to also add, the simplicity of underground storage for the cooler water. Just a couple feet under the surface temperature is almost constant. In miami we visited a parts supplier and his rooms were cooled by nothing but a ducting passed through an underground radiator type system..
A system in a local company designed by a director (areospace engineer) has an underground 40000 gallon water storage facility with ozone generators to keep it clean.
The difference in temps over there alone is almost 20 degrees between outside on the asphalt and in the shade. Most days I get like 30 in the shade and over 70 degrees on the asphalt outside.
If you pumping heat underground you will eventually raise the temps depending on the amount and the rate. What you can do to aid in dissipation is, again, increase surface area to volume ratio by adding fins in the walls and channels to move water from within the mass to the exteriors. As simple as circulating for taking up heat can result in differences in surface height and facilitate flow.
Or simply pass the heat loaded water through a radiator before return to underground. The two things that will affect the rate of heat exchange and it's ability is the difference in temps between the ambient and the water as well as the rate of flow of the ambient across the heat exchange medium.
And again, more free heat that needs somewhere to go.
