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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers

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To: koan who wrote (8149)	3/18/2006 5:19:18 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) of 78416

One to resolve is the Gibbs Paradox which is the basis for thermodynamics of systems. I am not sure what the paradox even is but it has something to do with the way entropy or the degree of disorganization or heat of a system, i.e. a gas container, is calculated. For some reason the physicist has to consider that the average position and velocity of each atom in a gas has to be calculated or accounted for to predict the behaviour of the system as conditions change. I suppose the way in which it changes on the average as pressure and T changes does add up to a factor. Gibbs resolution of this problem by taking into account quanta of energy states was the tour de force he called statistical mechanics. It layed the ground work for all subsequent investigations into chemical thermodynamics and a better understanding of spectra of radiation we call black body radiation or the relations of temperature (intensity of radiation), color (frequency of radiated energy) and heat (total caloric output sensed at various interfaces) radiated from hot bodies. Carnot's theory of how a heat engine must work as in a common gas combustion engine or even a steam engine by E=1-Tc/Th is perhaps easier for the laymen to understand but it bears on the same problem, that of the behaviour of gases under stress of heat and pressure and laws of cooling equilibrium. If we understand the challenge of Carnot best it would seem that the goal of getting to a 75% or better efficiency for an expansive engine of heat, or an air-fuel-combustion engine has been laid out for us. We acheive a meagre 19 to 24% at best with our auto engines but it is precisely that engine that Carnot thought could be somehow cycled to get 75% efficiency. The problem is heat equilibrium. To get to that state of use of work, then the engine might melt. To try to use the waste heat it seems that evacuation is impossible and thus heat would build up wastefully or attempts at mechanical usage migh suffer from losses. Hybrid engines appear to the only useful solution, as to try to get ever more pressure from the expanding gases is fraught with mechanical and evacuative difficulty. The Scotch triple expansion steam piston engine or the design of a steam turbine in ever expanding blade surface area towards the exhaust is the way steam can be harnessed to an extent that way to approach 48% efficiency. No corresponding attempt to do that with combustion has ever been tried except to try to raise the outlet temperature somewhat or lower its pressure of exit. Could a mechanical engine be devised to use the waste heat of a combustion engine, even if its outlet temperature was near the same heat as the combustion itself? In a combustion engine engineers think of its efficiency the seemingly the reverse of the Carnot formula above. There fuel usage efficiency is spoken of as MaxEff=(Tcold/Thot). (there are other drains such as friction and wasted heat), but this is 'combustion efficiency' we are speaking of for now, not pure mechanical usage efficiency) But this ratio could only be near 1 if the engine had no cooling system! Which of course is impossible at most (any) combustion temps. And we would still lose 33.33% of the created fuel power in waste heat out the exhaust! EC<:-}

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