Who I am
Chapter 1
In this note I will try to explain who I am, and what the fortunate circumstances were, scientific and technological, that allowed me to write and publish in two languages this electronic book “Unfinished Book on the Energy of the Environment” and “Libro Incompiuto sull’Energia dell’Ambiente”.
I was born in 1941 and I graduated in physics at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome.
I began to have deep doubts about the second principle of thermodynamics theory, starting from the second year of my university studies. It was not merely a dislike of this theory, which on the contrary fascinated me, but I thought the formulation of this theory was in profound contradiction with the Scientific Method for Classical Physics that I was taught.
As is known, the Scientific Method requires that different general criteria be respected when analysing a Classical physics problem.
First of all, in Physics we only consider phenomena that occur. On the contrary, the Second Principle of Thermodynamics has its foundation in an axiom related to something that should not exist, since it forbids man to build a certain thermal engine.
For example, the axiom expressed in 1903 by the great scientist Max Planck (1858-1947) is the following:
“It is impossible to build a machine that working in one cycle, it is able to produce another effect than that of the extraction of heat from a source (of heat – Ed.) and the production of an equivalent amount of work.”
To this first contradiction a second one was added: I was also taught that the logical-mathematical elaboration of the axiom allows us to deduce a Principle that should represent the behaviour of natural thermal phenomena: the well-known Principle of the Increase of Entropy.
This seemed to me a paradoxical anomaly, as the axiom refers to the technological capabilities of Man, and so I wondered how it was possible for an axiom that forbids Man to build a thermal engine may give rise to a Principle of Nature.
These doubts tormented me far beyond the period of university studies, and led me to look for a physical system capable of contradicting the axiom.
Fortunately, one of the subjects of the degree course was Earth-Physics.
Several years later, around 1975, when I was already working as a Qualified Physical Expert (safety against radiation exposures) for a State body, rereading the old notes of Earth Physics I had an idea or, better to say, an intuition that promised to make me realize the ambition of realizing a physical system that contradicted the axiom.
This idea came to me by re-reading the chapter on the saturated vapor tension of the mist droplets.
Chapter 2
As is known to all meteorologists, the vapor pressure determined by a drop of water is not constant, but at the same temperature depends on the radius of curvature of the drop.
The smaller this radius is, the larger the saturation vapor voltage is determined. This phenomenon is at the origin of an instability of the dimensions of the tiny water droplets that form the fog.
In fact, the increase in saturated vapor tension of a drop of water determined by its radius of curvature, compared to that determined by a flat surface of water present in the same environment, determines greater evaporation of water from the surface of the drop. This loss of contents of the drops decreases their radius and, with an avalanche effect, increases the evaporation rate.
The result is that the droplets tend to become smaller and smaller with ever increasing speed as they evaporate.
Intuition suggested that the opposite must also be true.
In fact, consulting a famous text of Physical Chemistry on the subject, I realized that my intuition was right: if the radius of curvature instead of being convex (as for a drop) is concave (like a meniscus), then the saturated vapor voltage decreases as the convex curvature radius decreases.
It is at this point that another intuition took hold of my mind: the vapor captured by the meniscuses, instead of decreasing the underlying liquid water content (as happens for a drop), would tend to increase it. But contrary to what happens for a drop, this increase can no longer determine a variation of the concave radius of curvature, because the captured vapor molecules immediately flow into the mass of water below the meniscus.
So, while the meniscus captures the water vapor eventually present in the surrounding environment, its curvature radius tends to remain constant.
I had therefore found a kind of trap, which seemed to be able to capture, even at a constant and uniform temperature, any water molecules in the vapor phase present in its immediate vicinity.
The problem remained of how to create a large concave water surface. In fact, to have a significant operation as a steam trap, it seemed necessary to dramatically increase the concave surface exposed to the steam.
Soon I resolved this problem: if two glass cylinders are immersed in water, the surface tension sucks the meniscus up along the contact line of the two cylinders (the cylinder generatrix).
The smaller the diameter of the glass cylinders, the smaller the concave curvature radius, the higher the meniscus rises.
Therefore, to have a large surface of water with a small concave radius of curvature, it is sufficient to immerse a large number of glass cylinders in mutual contact in water; they must have very small dimensions – the smallest diameter obtainable.
At that point, the composition of the experiment to be carried out to test the Second Principle of Thermodynamics axiom became obvious to me.
I had to create a container that could be hermetically sealed, in the bottom of which to introduce a volume of water that would have taken on a flat surface.
A vapor-saturated atmosphere would have been created within the closed volume, whose vapor pressure would have been determined by the fact that the liquid surface was flat.
Then I had to introduce inside this closed volume a container open at the top (like a glass or a dewar) raised in elevation with respect to the liquid with a flat surface.
Inside this dewar I had to introduce a large number of very small diameter glass cylinders in mutual contact with each other; all as shown in the following figure.
The operation I expected was the following:
Since the glass is hygroscopic, the glass cylinders would have captured, sooner or later, some small amounts of water and, slowly, meniscuses would be formed along the various generators of the glass cylinders in mutual contact.
These meniscuses would then begin to capture water vapor from the closed volume, and the excess liquid would have slipped along the generatrices, moving towards the inside of the dewar e accumulating at the base of the meniscuses.
A second flat surface would then be formed, but at a higher piezometric level and smaller than that initially introduced inside the closed volume.
If this operation had occurred, then with the passing of time the quantity of water with a flat surface present at the upper piezometric level would have had to increase and, correspondingly, decrease in the lower piezometric level.
For glass cylinders I used small-diameter glass fibers to recovering them from fiber optic cables used in ophthalmology, while for the container I used a hermetically sealed glass jar with a volume of about 300 ml.
At that point, the problem remained of keeping the whole system at a constant temperature.
Not having a thermostat available, I decided to try the experiment anyway, enclosing everything inside a closet full of books.
I hadn’t made a scientifically meaningful experiment, but I had no other choice.
On the other hand, the temperature changes in the device would have happened slowly, and this (given also the small dimensions of the container) could reasonably determine a situation very similar to that obtainable using a thermostat.
After many months of waiting, when I finally opened the closet, I discovered that the device had behaved according to my expectations, indeed more: all the liquid had concentrated within the dewar, and the bottom of the hermetic glass container had become dry !
The water had gone alone against the force of gravity, thanks only to temperature.
Chapter 3
It was at this point that my doubts about the Second Principle of Thermodynamics proved to be well founded, although I certainly couldn’t expect my experiment to be considered by other physicists.
In fact, the temperature had not remained constant, but from my point of view the result I had obtained stimulated me to continue in the search for other more significant ways of demonstrating the error of that Principle.
Many years passed without much of significance, but during my studies in Physics I had another doubt or, better to say, another intuition concerning Carnot’s theorem:
I was not convinced that the efficiency of the Carnot cycle could have the same value when the gas performs the Carnot cycle near the critical temperature.
So I was looking in the libraries of Rome for documentation on real gases to do this kind of verification.
Chapter 4
One day, around the 1980s, I was lucky: I found a publication concerning the thermodynamic properties of Argon – a rare gas often used in scientific experiments and instruments.
The title was: “Thermodynamic Properties of Argon From the Triple Point to 300 K at Pressures to 1000 Atmospheres” – NSRDS –NBS-27.
It was a publication of exceptional level, for the time (1969), in that it not only reported the thermodynamic properties of Argon in the form of tables, but the authors had succeeded in realizing an equation of state of algebraic type for that gas, which represented in a very accurate way its real thermodynamic properties, even near the Critical Point – an aspect that was very important for the purposes I set myself.
Furthermore, the authors had succeeded in realizing algebraic equations also for the derived functions, such as Internal Energy, Entropy etc.
Using that complete documentation, I was able to write computerized programs (written in GW-BASIC language) with which I could calculate how the efficiency of ideal thermodynamic cycles (such as the Carnot cycle, the Stirling cycle and the Ericsson cycle) varied depending on their position in the Pressure-Volume plane.
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
The programs calculated the efficiency of the cycles in numerical way, according to the Principle, and compared it with the theoretical efficiency established by the Second Principle of Thermodynamics.
For the Stirling and Ericsson ideal cycles, it was necessary to imagine the use of perfect heat recuperators, as these ideal thermodynamic cycles can be closed only with the use of such an ideal device.
In order to introduce these perfect heat recovery systems into computerized programs, I had to develop appropriate theorems.
It took me several years to process this.
I gathered the results around 1985-86, and they were very surprising.
As far as the Carnot cycle is concerned, the calculations confirmed the constancy of the ideal efficiency, at the same operating temperatures, wherever this cycle was positioned, according to the current theory, even near the critical temperature (contrary to my intuition).
Fig. 6
This was also confirmed for the Stirling cycle with perfect heat recuperator.
Fig. 7
The Ericsson cycle with perfect heat recuperator was an exception. When this cycle took place at low pressures and at temperatures decidedly higher than those of the Critical Temperature, the numerically calculated efficiency was within the values foreseen by the current theory concerning the Second Principle of Thermodynamics.
When instead the cycle took place at pressures close to those of the critical point, and at temperatures slightly higher than the Critical one, the trend of the efficiency of the Ericsson cycle differed considerably from the theoretical one, reaching, in some cases, values approximately double compared to the theoretical ones.
Fig. 8
Needlessly I searched for errors, both in computerized programs and in the theorems. There was nothing to do: the results were those and, very important, they were based not on a theorem (Carnot’s theorem), but on the First Principle of Thermodynamics, and were not related to an imaginary gas, like the perfect gas taken into consideration by the theory, but to a real gas.
Moreover – something of extreme importance for me – the Ericsson cycle that presented the maximum efficiency was reversible !!
It was thus that I realized that if there was a reversible cycle of Ericsson that had an efficiency greater than that of the Carnot cycle, then what Carnot’s theorem forbade became possible: one could imagine constructing, ideally, a combination of these two machines, one opposed to the other, to form an engine capable of fully exploiting heat, transforming it into mechanic work – what can be defined as a Perfect Thermodynamic Engine (PTE), forbidden by the fundamental axiom of thermodynamics.
But further computerized calculations based on NBS-27 and my theorems, made me discover an even more shocking reality: there was a pair of adjacent ERICSSON cycles, which, once appropriately opposed, could constitute the aforementioned PTE.
Chapter 5
This was very different from the ideal construction mentioned above, consisting of a Carnot cycle and an Ericsson cycle.
In fact the Carnot cycle is an ideal (or imaginary) cycle while the two above Ericsson cycles are achievable.
It became so clear (at least for me) that the ideal construction of Carnot’s theorem, which is based on two machines operating in reciprocal opposition and prohibits its overall functioning to form an PTE, instead of being impossible, it is the only one able to guarantee the conception of a complex engine capable of fully exploiting absorbed heat, transforming it into mechanic work.
This was true for me, as the calculations showed the falsity of the axiom that was the basis of the theory concerning the Second Principle of Thermodynamics.
Therefore I had not only found a device that violated the Second Principle of Thermodynamics, but I had discovered a method to fully convert heat into useful work.
This method consists in contrasting two systems with different efficiency between two operating pressures: what the Carnot theorem prohibits.
It was then that I decided to file a patent application in Italy entitled:
“Method of conversion of thermal energy into work and resulting converter”.
The patent application bears the number 4756687 and was presented by me on January 26th 1987.
Knowing how things are going in the case of such patents, I expected that the patent certificate would not be granted, and that my application would be rejected with the usual specious reasoning, that is, it violated the principle of conservation of energy. Instead, contrary to my pessimistic expectation, the patent certificate was granted to me.
The patent certificate n. 1206242 was granted on April 14th 1989.
Chapter 6
Meanwhile, there were two scientific events concerning the energy problem that were important from my point of view.
The first event occurred towards the end of September 1988. The “New China” Agency reported shocking news (as for physics): a Chinese scientist had invented, built and put into operation a machine capable of “producing a small electric current exploiting only the ambient temperature.”
Fig. 9
This news was reported on October 7th 1999 by the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, relegated to page 11, as if it were an event of secondary importance.
Through the Italian Foreign Trade Office, I managed to obtain a copy of the publication of the Scientist: Dr. Xu Yelin.
His work consisted, in practice, of the Perfect Thermodynamic Engine forbidden by the Second Principle of Thermodynamics: a thermodynamic engine of the second kind.
Fig. 10
This event contrasted sharply with announcement published a few mounts earlier in the January 1988 issue of the Italian Scientific Magazine “Sapere”.
In this issue, the Magazine publishes on page 4 an Announcement entitled “Perpetual motions and assimilated”.
In the preamble of the Announcement, the information is given that the magazine frequently receives projects and theories related to various inventions, or techniques concerning particularly (to be noted !) Perpetual Motion Engines !
To the authors of all these requests for publication, present and future, the Magazine responds by publishing, and making its own (to be noted), the Resolution adopted in 1775 (one thousand seven hundred seventy-five) by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris.
Since it is easy to trace this text on the net, I only report the first proposition:
“The Academy has approved this year the resolution not to examine any solution of problems on the following topics: the duplication of the cube, the trisection of the angle, the quadrature of circle or any engine to show the perpetual motion…”
Another very important event occurred on March 23, 1989, when Martin Fleishmann (respected British academic in electrochemistry) and the American chemist Staley Pons announced, with a simple press conference, the discovery of a new physical phenomenon capable of producing nuclear fusion at room temperature.
After these events I decided to confront one of the professors of physics considered by many to be one of the leading experts in Second Principle of Thermodynamics.
Fortunately, I was familiar with him for being my tutor for my degree in physics.
I submitted to this professor both a copy of Yelin’s publication and the results of my calculations based on the NBS-27 publication, and I waited for him to examine these documents.
When I met him again, I found that he was against both documents I had given him. About the publication of Xu Yelin, he didn’t even want to discuss it, arguing (without making any justification) that that study could not represent an experimentum crucis for the Second Principle of Thermodynamics.
He also proved himself against my numerical calculations, although, unlike the previous argument, he justified the rejection with a series of extremely generic arguments, which finally left me completely unsatisfied.
Chapter 7
Then I convinced myself that it was necessary to expose the two works mentioned above to other scholars, and the only way to do this was to publish a book.
In order to make the exposure more complete, I began to find the original memoirs of the two Founding Fathers of the heat theory: the British physicists William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin (1024-1907) and the German physicist Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (1822-1888), published in scientific journals in the second half of the 1800s.
In one of these memoirs due to Clausius – one of the most important, published in 1854 – I noticed a logical error in Clausius’ reasoning concerning the demonstration of his famous and homonymous Integral.
It took me about three years to summarize my arguments so that they were decently presentable as a book.
At that point I started to send the text written in Italian to qualified national scientific publishers.
I received only negative feedbacks, accompanied by reports written by anonymous experts, who justified the rejection with laughable reasons.
They were the Auditors, who, on behalf of the Editor, exercised the procedure of the so-called “Peer Reviewing Procedure” regarding my book. So I learned that if a scientific text does not pass this procedure, not only is it not published by qualified scientific publishers, but even if it was published by other publishers, it would not be considered by any scientist.
It was 1993 and it was then that I decided to “force the issue”.
I founded a publishing house and published the book in Italian at my expense with the title “Riflessioni sulla Potenza Motrice del Calore Ambientale – e sulle macchine idonee a sviluppare questa Potenza” (Reflections on the Motive Power of the Environmental Heat – and on the engines suitable for developing this power).
The title was deliberately provocative, in that it recalled the famous title of the booklet published in 1824 by Léonard Sadi Carnot.
The first thing I did was to send a free copy to all university libraries in Italy.
When, after a few years, I was forced to close down the publishing house, about 300 copies of the book had been distributed (sold and/or donated).
In the meantime, I worked to promote my ideas, and as a result of this I was invited to present my thesis on the Second Principle of Thermodynamics in informative conferences, to which scientists and professors also participated and assisted.
Chapter 8
In 2000 there was another scientific event related to the issue in question: an “online” Chinese scientific magazine published a second memoir of Xu Yelin, in which he described another diode that performed a function similar to the diode made in 1988, since it converted the environmental thermal energy directly into electricity.
However, while the diode built in 1988 was a pneumatic vacuum diode, the one designed in 2000 consisted of a solid state diode, built according to integrated circuit technology.
Fig.11
I was informed of this event around 2003-2004. This second memoir of Xu Yelin is written only in Chinese, but probably was discovered in western countries because it presents a summary in English which reads as follows:
“The Experiment and Analysis on Nonbias Diode
Xu Yelin
(Institute of Biophysics , Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing，100101)
Abstract “A nonbias diode is such a diode that can perform single direction conductivity without any bias current or voltage. Because of the thermal motion of the conductive electrons in a conductor and semiconductor, when both ends of the nonbias diode are connected with a wire, a continuous and steady direct current which can drive load will flow through the wire. It has now reached performances of 100 mV and 0.1 μA. The voltage has already reached its peak whereas the current still has a great potentiality to be increased. The nonbias diode therefore has a wide application prospect. This paper introduces the manufacturing method, the measurement results of the performances, the analysis on the working principle and the analysis on the energy of the nonbias diode. The energy of nonbias diode is a result of an effective application of the natural cycle.”
Subsequently, thanks to another report, we tracked down the ten patent applications on this new type of device deposited in various nations by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Chapter 9
Even long after the closure of my publishing house I continued my dissemination work and, among other things, summarized the essential contents of my study on the Second Principle of Thermodynamics in the introductory report of the conference:
“Controversie su Termodinamica e Vita” (Disputes over Thermodynamics and Life)
Vincenzo Valenzi, the organizer of the conference, also promoted the publication of my report (translated into English) on the website of CIFA-ICEF (Comite International de Recerche et d’Etude de Facteurs de l’Ambiance).
Therefore, the aforementioned report of mine is on the website www.cifafondation.org under the button CIFA News (no. 44, Jan-Jun 2011) with the title “Reflections on the Second Principle of Thermodynamics”.
On the occasion of that conference, I distributed for free to all the scientists present in the room a Compact Disk containing my introductory report and other support files.
I was hoping to solicit some kind of reaction; that conditions could be created to establish a discussion on the subject, but nothing of the kind occurred.
The only participant who took some initiative had already expressed himself negatively on my approach and subsequently continued to maintain his opposition.
The result of all this effort was nothing at all: no one believed that my numerical calculations were right, but above all (and far more serious) no one seemed to take seriously the reporting that Xu Yelin had succeeded in conceiving and building two devices able to violate the fundamental axiom of the Second Principle of Thermodynamics.
However, this negative experience had at least two positive effects.
The first was that I realized that the verification of my numerical calculations was very difficult to replicate: whoever wanted to do it, would have to critically examine too many concepts.
First, he should have examined the theorems I developed specifically in relation to the ideal Carnot cycle and to the ideal Stirling and Ericsson cycles with perfect heat recuperator.
Furthermore, he would have had to critically examine computer programs written by me in symbolic GW-BASIC language, aimed at calculating the efficiency of the aforementioned ideal thermodynamic cycles.
From the point of view of physicists and scientists, all this effort did not seem justified. Each of them should have carried out these checks alone, since the book had not been submitted to the Peer Reviewing process currently in use.
On the other hand, these physicists and scientists had good reason to believe that somewhere in my reasoning and calculations there should be some mistake, since they had on their side the thermodynamic theory developed by Kelvin and Clausius in the second half of the 1800s.
It is true that an error of logic in the memoir of Clausius of 1954 was reported, but at the time of the publication (1993) I did not have the courage to “force the issue” on this aspect, which therefore remained exposed in an almost secondary and irrelevant way.
The second positive aspect was that I realized that the skepticism with which the two basic scientific works by Xu Yelin had been ignored was due to the same reason as above: scientists had on their side the dynamic heat theory developed by Clausius in 1854.
Chapter 10
In March 2013 a new important scientific event took place in the matter in question: Nexus New Times Magazine (Italian edition) disclosed another upsetting news concerning the Second Principle of Thermodynamics (in the international edition the issue is different).
The magazine’s column “SCIENCE NEWS” of that issue, edited by the Management, was titled “Quenco: A quantum energy converter” In the pages 49-50, the press release issued by the inventors was reported, to announce the imminent commercial launch of a thermal converter called “QUENCO”.
The announcement included the abstract from a patent application electronically filed 16th October 2012. The name QUENCO, given by the inventors to this device, is the acronym of “Quantum Energy Convertor”.
The published piece published of the magazine Nexus New Times, reported the sources of the news, it was the website KeelyNet.com, October 26th 2012; Quenco homepage, October 24th 2012
http://www.quentron.com.
The contents of that site (now disappeared from the network but partially reported in Appendix D) gave some information on the functioning principle of this device.
According to the Press release, the device would work thanks to the phenomenon of Quantum leap of electrons through an electrically insulating barrier interposed between two metals (the so-called “Tunnel effect”), provided it is of very small thickness, in the order of 1 nm (one nanometer).
Fig. 12
It is pointed out that even at ambient temperature, equal about to 20 °C or 293 K, there are free or almost free electrons, that thanks to the perennial agitation of molecules (see: Brownian motions), have kinetic energies equivalent to temperatures of even 600 K, equal to about 327 °C.
But it is known that these values depend on the nature of the surface layer of the metal.
Therefore, if on that side of the barrier that will become anode, a metal is put with low extraction work, and on the other side that will become cathode, a metal is put with high extraction work, at the same temperature, there will be many more electrons leaping from anode to cathode.
In analogy with the two devices conceived by Xu Yelin and the inventors of the Graphene cell, even the device QUENCO, based on a very thin barrier interposed between two conductors of different nature, is composed, in its general structure, of two opposing thermodynamic systems, in which one prevails over the other or, with improper terms, with different electronic emission “efficiency”.
That this is the general appearance of the device, can be proved considering that if both electrodes were made of the same metal, or if the device was such as to make the two opposing streams of electrons identical, it would no longer be possible to identify any working principle.
It seems evident that this device does not include a single heat source; if it worked according to the intentions of the inventors, there should be two sources of heat, at different temperatures; the first one should correspond to the Environment, with its variable temperature, the second, less hot, would appear spontaneously and consist of an area inside the device.
As for the heat flow necessary to supply the energy dissipated in the load resistor, it would be produced by this temperature difference and therefore it would come from the Environment and would be directed towards the aforementioned less hot interior zone.
So in fact only the source constituted by the Environment would provide the equivalent (in terms of heat) of the energy dissipated in the load resistor.
The described structure would be able to favour the quantum leap in one direction, with respect to the opposite direction.
In this way, the electrode in which the majority of electrons should converge, would acquire a negative electric charge, which would tend to slow down the arrival of further electrons.
These electrons, therefore, “…lose speed (become colder) but gain potential energy (electric potential energy). Quenco is therefore a perfect realization of Maxwell’s devil and therefore, according to current thinking, violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, although, in reality it could only prove that Kelvin-Clausius interpretations were wrong.” [taken from the press release –Ed.].
According to the web page released on November 3th 2013 by Quenco (Quantum Energy Convertor) – Home, (see Appendix D), an output of about 1 A/cm2 at ambient temperature was immediately expected. But through the use of metals with lower extraction work, the achievement of 10000 A/cm2 was expected.
If these data were realized, by connecting a large number of these devises, to achieve a sufficiently high voltage, the electric engine of a naval engine could be fed.
One could thus accomplish what KELVIN considered impossible in his Note *contained on page 13 of his 1851 memoir:
“If this “axiom” be denied for all the temperatures, it would have to be admitted that a self-acting machine might be set to work and produce mechanical effect by cooling the sea or earth, with no limit but the total loss of heat from the earth and sea, or, in reality, from the whole material world.”
Chapter 11
On page 49 of that March 2013 issue of the Nexus New Times magazine (Italian Edition) already mentioned, the news was reported of an experiment, incredibly simple, that anyone can do to prove the violation of KELVIN’s axiom.
According to the news due to Philip Hardcastle dating back to October 22th 2012, it is about taking a thermionic tube (in the case in question, the pentode Philip E180F), and connect together with a conducting wire anode and grid n.3 (suppression grid) to realize the first electrode. The other electrode is the cathode of the tube. All other electrodes, according to HARDCASTLE, can be cut off.
The source reports that putting the pentode inside an oven, at the ends of the two electrodes not connected to a resistive load, an electrical voltage appears, which at the temperature of 500-550°C can reach the value of about 850 mV.
Instead, connecting the two electrodes to a load, the electric current would reach a few pA (pico Ampere) below 400°C, while at about 500 °C it can reach the values of a few μA (micro Ampere).
We see that the operating principle of this system is the same as Yelin’s non-bias vacuum diode. In effect, the pentode is under pneumatic vacuum; anode and third grid are made of metals with low electron emission coefficient; while the cathode has a high electron emission coefficient and/or a low work of electron extraction.
Moreover, since the pentode is contained inside the oven, each part takes the temperature of the oven itself and therefore internal voltage differences cannot be created between the metals.
The similarity with Yelin’s device is also evident in the operation: the cathode, thanks to the low electron emission coefficient materials of which it is composed, emits many more electrons for thermionic effect than anode and third grid, whereby the anode becomes positive and the anode negative.
The additional electrons shot by the cathode towards the anode, must overcome the contrary electric field which is spontaneously formed at the beginning, which tends to slow them down (what is equivalent to their cooling), exactly as it happens in Yelins’s diode and QUENCO converter.
If anode and cathode had the same properties of emission and reception of electrons, HARDCASTLE’s experiment could not succeed.
These two news items were much more important to me than those relating to the two Yelin devices.
Hardcastle’s experiment seems to be more important and significant, as regards the violation of axiom of the Second Principle of Thermodynamics, compared to the two of Xu Yelin, as it does not need to build anything, but simply to buy a thermionic tube that is available at a negligible price on the market.
Also the experiment concerning the QUENCO device seems to be much more important than those made by Xu Yelin.
In fact, the pneumatic vacuum diode made by Xu Yelin in 1998 can produce a very small electric current, the solid state one built in 2000 is rather complicated and difficult to build, while the QUENCO device consists of a simple electrically insulating barrier interposed between two electric current conductors.
These news, which in my opinion should have appeared on the front pages of all the newspapers and constitute the topic of opening of every newscast, remained, on the contrary, completely ignored.
Chapter 12
It was therefore in 2013 that I decided to intervene again on the subject, writing and publishing a second book – the present book.
By now I had identified the mistakes I had made in writing the first book and so I could avoid them.
These were (I repeat) the difficulty I had created for the reader to follow all the mathematical calculations relating to the efficiency of the Ericsson cycle, and the difficulty of following the reasoning relating to the theorems I developed.
The other error was that of having scarcely emphasized the error of logic committed by Clausius in his memoir of 1854.
I had also understood that in order to achieve the goal I set for myself, it was necessary to demolish the thermodynamic theory developed by Clausius, which made any machine capable of violating the axiom behind the theory itself unlikely in the eyes of scientists.
In the meantime a very interesting novelty had occurred in the field of publishing: the advent of the electronic book, or eBook, which has various advantages compared to the paper book – first and foremost to avoid the problems that usually arise when granting editorial rights to a publisher, given that an eBook can be self-published and put up for sale online at very low costs.
This aspect was very important for me, as I expected that the book in paper version would be very voluminous, so very expensive and consequently little bought.
Only one last difficulty remained to overcome – this was the fact that scientists do not read, or do not take into account, even if they read it, a book that was not submitted to the Peer Reviewing process in use today.
I put aside the issue of the Peer Review, because I knew from experience that I would never have obtained it.
I decided to start writing the new book following three criteria – the first was that it had to be an eBook; the second was that I had to give the maximum evidence to the error of logic of Clausius cited above; the third was that the book could be read by anyone, even by those who had no knowledge of thermodynamics and even little knowledge of mathematics.
In short, it had to be an eBook in which the reader did not need to follow mathematical calculations presented by the author in relation to a physics problem.
Then I realized that if I had succeeded in putting those criteria into practice, I would have partly overcome the last difficulty, that of the Peer Reviewing procedure, which would certainly have prevented the publication of the book if I had turned to a publisher qualified in the scientific field.
In fact, even if scientists had not considered the eBook, it could be read by anyone and could influence the rest of the Company, including Politics.
To reinforce my idea of publishing an eBook, it was also the favorable combination of two circumstances. The first is that an eBook allows interactivity with the network; the second was the discovery that Clausius’ memoir of 1854 had been scanned and put on the net.
Putting these two circumstances together, I could make my report of the error of logic that I had discovered in Clausius’ aforementioned memoir very convincing.
I could literally cite Clausius’ phrase that contained the error, and whoever did not believe it, could have immediately accessed the memoir itself, simply by clicking on the link to the website that contains the scanned memoir.
Again, the fortunate combination of the two circumstances facilitated the overcoming of the blockade determined by the peer review procedure, given that any scientists who had read the eBook would not have had to waste time going to some scientific library, to verify that the error committed by Clausius was not my invention, but was actually contained in his memoir.
So it was that I began to venture into the uncertainty of writing an eBook aimed at eliminating the current dynamic theory.
During this work, I discovered, to my surprise, that all the other works or memoirs of Clausius, and of the other Founding Fathers of dynamic theory, had also been scanned and networked.
Even in these works I was able to identify errors of logic in all the theorems demonstrated by the Founding Fathers of Thermodynamics.
These errors always intervene before there is an opportunity in the same theorems to invoke the fundamental axiom that has been placed at the base of the whole dynamic theory.
Chapter 13
Despite the initial unfavorable forecast, I had achieved my goal!: the common belief that the dynamic theory of heat would collapse only when the erroneousness of the fundamental axiom was denied, that is, if someone had built a machine capable of converting entirely heat into useful mechanical work.
All the experiments previously mentioned, as the two due to Xu Yelin, the one due to the inventors of the device Quenco and finally the one made by Hardcastle, were just demonstrating the incorrectness of the fundamental axiom.
I therefore decided to perfect my study concerning the Second Principle of Thermodynamics by repeating Hardcastle’s experiment in more meaningful ways, achieving positive results exceeding my expectations.
Fig. 13 Voltage developed by the thermionic tubes
In conclusion, at the end of the work (which lasted more than five years), I was able to show that the theory in question is not sustainable regardless of this axiom, as it has always been affected by Logical errors, which unfortunately were not discovered and highlighted before now, but also to show that the axiom itself is wrong, repeating Hardcastle’s experiment in a more significant way.
Here is how and why my second eBook was born.