exchemist

90% is bullshit, unless you count utilisation of waste heat in industrial processes. Shipboard steam turbines can’t compete with diesel, which is why they are no longer used on ships, since fuel became expensive after the Yom Kippur war in the 1970s. There is something wrong with those numbers. A huge supercritical turbine installation can get over 50% I think, from memory, but you can’t install that on a ship.

This is not correct. Almost no ships today are steam powered, of any size. The only exceptions are nuclear submarines and LNG carriers, many of which are steam turbine driven in order to run on boil-off gas from the cargo. Virtually all other ships are diesel and have been for decades. Diesels are a lot more efficient than turbines, hence their dominance. A modern large 2-stroke low speed engine, of the types used in container ships and tankers, can get to 50%thermal efficiency: http://marineengineering.co.za/lectures/technical-information/motor-docs/sulzer-rta-series.pdf In powergen applications the combined cycle (gas turbine with exhaust used to raise steam for a steam turbine, often running on the same shaft) can get close to 60%. But you can’t run a gas turbine on residual fuel oil, so these are not used in ships. There are indeed some gas turbines on military ships, usually combined with diesel engines, but navies burn gasoil, not RFO, to avoid the associated hassle of dealing with it. (I used to work in the oil industry on lubricants for the marine and power sector.)

Wot dis?

What hydrogen pressure gradient? And no, it does not follow that that any of this can overcome the electrostatic repulsion between protons or deuterons.

Agreed about Earnshaw’s theorem. But the nuclei are “trapped” - though in an admittedly looser, time averaged sense. I’m not sure the OP meant “trapped” in the sense of classically stationary. Trapped can mean in motion but unable to escape, after all.

To be fair, the nuclei of atoms bound by a chemical bond could be said to be trapped by the electrostatic field of the electron orbitals, couldn’t they? Yes but you are making the mistake of thinking the permittivity, in the region between one deuteron and the next, will not be that of free space. As I said before, these SDMs exhibit a very high bulk permittivity because of their molecular structure (the way dipoles can align). Such measurements take place perpendicular to the plates of the capacitor, or your needle tip and the plate. At the atomic level the permittivity in the plane of the plate, which is what determines the repulsion between adjacent deuterons, remains essentially that of free space, modified by whatever electron density remains between them. No element of the SDM dipoles penetrates that space and so the extra stability they confer on the ions is due to an attractive electrostatic force perpendicular to the plate, not parallel to it. So your calculation, which assumes the bulk SDM value for the permittivity between deuterons, is using the wrong number and will give you the wrong answer.

That's how Jebel Ali desalination plant worked, when I lived in Dubai in the 1980s, using waste heat from Jebel Ali power station.

Except it would mean doubling the pipe network and would create a lot of extra costs for locations far from the ocean. And the waste water would still need treatment of course. So in fact, not such a great idea when you stop and think about it.

How do you account for observed cosmic ray muon lifetimes?

Look up mathematical combinations.

I'm not a solid state physicist but I think you are making the mistake of thinking the +ve charges are brought closer together on the +ve plate of a charged capacitor. It is the electrons which are partially removed, surely, to create the net +ve charge? The nuclei do not move. An SDM will simply allow more electrons to be removed, by the stabilisation of the +ve ions that arises from the alignment towards them of the -ve end of the dipoles in the dielectric. Even if you were able, somehow, make the ions flow freely through the +ve conductor material, I would expect this stabilisation will be maximised when the +ve ions are closely aligned with the dipole ends. This would be at normal interatomic separations.

I've only read it quickly but at first glance I think it is a mistake to the think the high permittivity of these SDM materials alters the permittivity of space at subatomic distances, when it is only a macroscopic, bulk property, arising from the polarisation of the dipoles in the nanotubes, or whatever. Once you to get down to the atomic level, the applicable value of ε will still be that of free space, surely?

But you are not using muon catalysis, are you?

That’s interesting. Mind you, 32C is not very warm for a heater. Though I suppose you could use with a heat pump to jack it up to 50C or so.

If something is toxic it plainly is not inert. However silver sulphide is pretty insoluble in water and I wouldn’t expect saline solution to be different. But if there any other metals around you could set up an electrochemical cell with metallic silver. It sounds like a risky idea to me.

This reads like a variant of the “cold fusion” idea - which went nowhere. The Coulomb barrier is too high and too thick for tunnelling of vibrational modes. I presume no experiments have been done to test the idea.

The operation of differentiation results in a derivative. d/dx (x²) represents the operation of differentiating x² and the result, 2x, is the derivative.

The vent in a central heating system involves a long pipe up with a U shape at the top. The hot water does not percolate up this pipe, so the water surface exposed to the atmosphere is at ambient. It is also a very small surface. Combining these factors, the evaporative loss from it will be practically nil. You can reduce it even more by arranging the vent to come from the bottom of the vessel, where the coldest water is. The only important thing is that there is a vent, so that expansion can be accommodated without stressing the vessel.

The evaporation issue can be fixed by the simple expedient of closing the container, provided a suitable expansion vent is incorporated, as in any domestic heating system. Water has a high specific heat, so can absorb a lot of heat with only modest rise in temperature. You will struggle to find many readily available materials with a higher specific heat than this. If you use oil you will get a higher temperature for a given amount of heat stored, because its specific heat is lower. At what temperature do you want the stored heat to be delivered?

Hmm. For some reason, neurological reference frames come to mind.

I suppose you realise that "Prove me wrong" has been the cry of the crank, down the ages. 🙄 It's not up to us to prove you wrong. It's up to you to show your theory has advantages over the current model. But I'm losing interest in you rapidly now.

OK that's fine if you don't want to say your age. But I repeat, atoms only vibrate when bound to something else by a bond that allows motion about a central position. In such cases the vibration frequency is determined by the characteristics of the bond, which is in turn determined by molecular QM. Free atoms don't vibrate. There is no Hz of the atom. String theory is something else entirely - and by the way it isn't really even a proper theory so far, as it makes no testable predictions.

But surely for any given value of x, y has a defined value, doesn't it?

If you want to study electrons in atoms you need quantum theory, not string theory. I highly recommend quantum theory, once you can do calculus. I studied molecular quantum mechanics as part of my chemistry degree and it was the best thing I ever did. Atoms constantly vibrate if they are in a chemically bound state, because there is always some energy (zero point energy) in the bonding. If they are not bound, e.g. in a monatomic gas such as argon or helium, they do not vibrate. By the way, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you?

Try the internet. But I too don't see how it can help to have a picture of atoms. String theory is not concerned with the motion of atoms. All you need for that is simple kinetic theory - and some QM if they are bound by chemical bonds.