Okay guys, i want to run a bad idea by you. If it sounds like it might not be a bad idea i'll actually draw pictures. But i want to run it by you first so you can point out "uhh, you forgot a basic concept in physics" and i can forget about this idea quick.
So i was thinking about using centrifugal force to create an energy efficient heat pump.
If you spin something hard enough, it effectively changes the G forces of objects in the spin. So if we spin something really fast, we can simulate much higher gravity than earth.
So imagine a long single tube, curled up into a radiator at each end, and then we put a partial vacuum in the tube and some kind of fluid like water(or vapor) and then spin the tube to force it into a liquid phase and change the ease of temperature migration.
By controlling the speed of the spin at each side, we could control where the fluid wants to evaporate from and deposit onto.
And because it's an action that's stored in the form of a spin, it can be sped up to that and held at that speed without much extra force.
they already do it that way in romania
Glorious Romania
You don't get energy for free.
If you are circulating the radiator coolant into and out-of the the compressor unit, you are releasing angular momentum when coolant leaves the compressor and forcing yourself to add angular momentum when you add coolant to the compressor.
So you are constantly going need to add torque to this spinning unit.
Also, the point of a radiator is to allow heat to transfer between the contents and the ambient air. If your radiator is spinning violently, you're still going to need to force air over it. That's going to add more friction to your spinning unit.
I'm not a big student of fluid dynamics, but fluids also really like to expand to fill the space they occupy. A quick google says, yes, applying more gravitational force to a mass of air will increase the pressure. But that's an open system that, on earth, is 10,000 km in vertical space. In a closed loop that's at most a few centimeters in dimensions, I'm not certain what kinds of forces you'd need to generate a strong gradient in pressure in such an extremely small space.
Also, I suspect you'd be constrained to using unmixed coolants in the unit, because the centrifuging action would just separate any mixed coolants anyways. That could have consequences for your options in terms of coolant, if you can't use mixed coolants that contain fire-moronants, and therefore have to use an innately inert or low-reactive gas.
What are you actually trying to accomplish with a scheme like this? What is the benefit you think you're going to realize? Because I'm really not seeing it, other than "conservation of angular momentum," which, as I covered, isn't really working to your benefit as long as you are circulating the coolant.
The coolant doesn't actually circulate inside of the system. It stays fluid in place in the deepest parts of the centrifuges. The coolant doesn't even move as a gas. Like, technically there are atoms moving all the time, but it's like, the coolant evaporates from the evaporator centrifuge, increasing the vapor density in the gas phase part of the pipe, and then that increases the available vapor to condense out of the pipe and onto the condenser centrifuge, the atoms in the fluid part of the system slowly migrate back over to the evaporator centrifuge, but just it being added to the mass of fluid that is being forced with centrifugal force into the other side of the unit, there is more fluid inside of the evaporator centrifuge and that provides the needed fluid to evaporate and continue the cycle.
We just have to put energy into the thing to get it up to speed and then basically all it's doing is fighting gravity, but it's stuck in a fixed state with respect to itself as it spins.
What i am essentially doing here is storing energy in a gravity field that i can make arbitrarily strong. I don't have to use energy to evaporate the coolant, i can just let the non-spinning part of the system be how the gas phase moves. The moment the atoms leave the centrifuges, they will evaporate.
>a gravity field
No you're not.
Nothing you are doing has anything to do with gravity (other than gravity always existing).
Centrifugal force is not gravity.
We measure acceleration in units of "G" because it's convenient to compare things to gravity. Just like it's convenient to compare things to football fields. But no one is out there like, "Wow, I can't believe this dude has 3 football pitches on his residential property. He must really love football!"
>The coolant doesn't actually circulate inside of the system.
>technically there are atoms moving all the time
So which is it? The coolant is either moving and circulating, or it isn't moving and circulating. And if it isn't moving or circulating, then it's not doing any work, dumbass.
It doesn't matter if "there is always some coolant in the condenser, and always some coolant in the radiator." The entire point of a heat pump is to "move thermal energy from one location to another location, in the opposite direction entropy wants to move it." If you are doing that, you are moving shit from one place to another place.
If you really believe you can have a heat pump without moving and circulating coolant, then I invite you to make the thing out of solid copper. Copper has great thermal conductivity after all, and it's guaranteed not to waste energy moving and circulating.
So you just swap out the scroll compressor for a centrifugal pump? That should be possible but non reason why it would be more efficient
No scroll compressor in romania
try it,
you wanna spin a heat pipe so fast that the water vapor condenses, do it, but be carful that the tube does not rip apart centrifugal force can tear metal at slow speeds.
I expect diminishing returns, the force applied on the contents of the centrifuge is asymptotic, x&y being distance from axel and rotation speed.
get your hand wet and shake it dry, do it again but spin your arm dry time is similar. While acceleration is different I originally assumed that f=ma at all scales but tiny shit is wild yo.
Listen, there are already centrifugal compressor-driven heat pumps.
Like, here is a quick ms paint drawing of the basic concept. I drew this with both centrifuges the same size, but everything about this system is in the speed and size and amount of coolant inside of the tube. By increasing the radius of the centrifuge, you increase the G forces and change the evaporation and condensation point of the fluid in that part of the tube.
With no added bells or whistles to change the amount of fluid in the tube, or the speed of the centrifuges, or the ability to independently control the speeds of the centrifuges, you would need to carefully design the size of each side to achieve a specific heat flow. But it would only take about as much energy to run as a fan once it gets up to speed because the whole thing is in mostly a fixed state.
Silly me. Picrel.
I was thinking of just using water as the coolant btw. That's actually why it really needs to be a partial vacuum in there.
I want this thing to be buildable by randos in the middle of no where, so i didn't want to use a better coolant than water, but if you did use a different coolant, things would be radically easier, lol.
Ok, so we've got this assembly which is spinning around a heavy arm with a bunch of piping and stuff and we're doing things with phase transitions... Ok. So how are we using this thing to accomplish any useful work?
I can kinda see. But large spining air tight tube with concentric heat exchanger as home appliance is an engineering disaster. The rising hot vapor going towards the center and dropping cold liquid spinning outward also exchange heat to each other due to traveling in the same pipe, reducing efficiency because not all heat is tranfered to and from outside with the heat exchanger.
What youve essentially created is tesla turbine powered heat pump, and you made the tubine blade the housing, the reservior, the 2 heat exchangers and the pipe going back and forth, and hope the bearing can take all that mass and housing won't crack and delivers a ring of death.