English

On the exploitability of thermo-charged capacitors

General Physics 2013-05-24 v7

Abstract

Recently [Physics Letters A, 374, (2010) 1801] the concept of vacuum capacitor spontaneously charged harnessing the heat from a single thermal reservoir at room temperature has been introduced, along with a mathematical description of its functioning and a discussion on the main paradoxical feature that seems to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the present paper we investigate the theoretical and practical possibility of exploiting a such thermo-charged capacitor as voltage/current generator: we show that if very weak provisos on the physical characteristics of the capacitor are fulfilled, then a non-zero current should flow across the device, allowing the generation of potentially usable voltage, current and electric power out of a single thermal source at room temperature. Preliminary results show that the power output is tiny but non-zero.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0912.4818,
  title  = {On the exploitability of thermo-charged capacitors},
  author = {Germano D'Abramo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0912.4818},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

23 Pages, 10 Figures. Physica A 390/6 (2011) 482 + Addendum (2013)

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:28:07.550Z