The Hot Pepper

there are shit loads of problems assiciated with harnessing low temperature waste heat in prett much all applications. the steel industry has probably pushed the issue of waste heat the farthest... but they still emit huge amounts of heat.

it becomes prohibitively difficult/expensive and inefficient the smaller the temperature delta in any heat engine. this is a general rule that is not 100% true in 100% of cases, but it is generally so.

you CAN compress low density air to make a rankin cycle heat engine work well, but compressing the air costs you energy though. there is a shitload of insanely smart people working on waste heat recovery. its a very interesting area. getting back to cars... its simply not feasable because the exhaust gas is like 140f. any additional equipment will likely result in damaging fuel economy owing to weight... keep in mind also that there is shitloads of water vapor in the exhaust gs stream... if y...

if you cool the exhaust gas further, you will condense water inside what ever system you are proposing.

probably the most promising heat based energy recovery system im aware of is some advanced thermometric system. ive seen a proposals form some German company suggesting that the recovered electricity could be used in the cars low voltage system, powering interior lighting... MABY head lights, but i seriously doubt it.

they were getting like 14 watts of recovered with...

thermoelectric. not thermometric. wtf is thermometric.

this is for more like... forced induction. say instead of a radiator you had a turbine (steam turbo). have a condenser coil at the cool end and then run that back into the engine

OR drive a steam piston for additional power as well

its not hot enough. steam engines... the good ones, operate at high pressures. 100+psi. the steam is springy. the hotter and higher the pressure, the more energy is in this spring.

my car only runs at like 15 psi. just enough to keep it from boiling with the correct coolant.

you can only extract a little bit of energy from such low temp steam. probably less than 1hp. not to mention the weight and added complexity.

http://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/SH-42_15.jpg This is the slingshot water distiller. It recycles waste heat to add about 30 percent more efficency IIRC.

yea i saw a video about that thing on amazon prime.

its basically a vapor compression distiller. i dont know the details, but its just like regenerative rankin cycle steam turbines.... kinda.

the steam gets heated above the vaporization temp such that the waste heat coming out of the heat exchanger is still hot enough to boil water...so its sent back to the boiling vessel.

its a very good approach to distillation and is used estensivly in industry, though n...

I still like after burners.

Great for tailgaters.

hmm...

in Alaska it's not waste heat if you're blowing it into the cab through the defrost vent

7 billion waste heat batteries, welcome to the wastrix

that was the dumbist shit in the matrix.

human bodies for heat engines? how f**king stupid can you get.

a super athletic male can output only like 1000 btuh.

human metabolism and digestion is shitty as well... we shit out far more potential energy than we consume. the stupid ass aliens would be better off burning what ever food they were feeding the matrix people.

that movie was f**king dumb as shit.

and why wouldn't the aliens just use geothermal or nuclear energy? the earths core is to remain molten for like another billion years. and there are millions of lbs of uranium dissolved into sea water. billions of lbs of more u238 if they used breeder reactors.

who ever the f**k thought that was plausible is a f**kwit of the highest order.