I get mail: Brown’s Gas and Perpetual Motion
The cranks believe that if you just find the right way to burn it, then you can create a perfect source of free energy. You see, if you can just burn it so that it produces a teeny, tiny bit more energy being burned that it cost to produce, then you’ve got free energy. You just run an engine – it keeps dividing the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then you burn it, producing more energy than you spent to divide it; and the only by-product is water vapor!
Of course, this doesn’t work. Thermodynamics fights back
Closely spaced vacuum diode. One plate has a low vacuum work function (e.g., LaB6, CeB6, barium at ~2.5 V; doped diamond and carbon nitride ~0.1 V) and is micro-spiked facing toward the other plate. The other plate has a high vacuum work function (osmium at 5.93 V). The two plates are connected through their vacuum envelope to an electrical load. If the temperature is above absolute zero… the emitter will spontaneously cool (electron evaporation) , the receiver will spontaneously warm (electron condensation after acceleration through the net work function), a current will spontaneously flow – forever.
Take that, thermodynamics.
http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/ecqsun/rtf/SSC-WF.pdf
carbon nitride, diamond,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20715844
LaB6 maximum emitters
also, App. Phys. Lett. 89 203112 (2006)
Doesn’t the vacuum diode have a filament heater?
I’ve learned more from cranks than I have actual professors. Mind you, you never know who to trust 😉