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Slam Rod Generator
#1
Looking at a lot of these thermopile videos showing what's inside a common pilot flame sensor:

   





I got to thinking that one of these common thermopile bundles would easily fit inside the cylinder of a fire piston.

Maybe not everybody knows what a fire-piston (sometimes called a "Slam Rod" ) is, so a few more videos:





Putting two and two together, it should be pretty obvious where this is going.
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#2
A little over a month ago I posted this drawing on the Stirling engine forum

   

There is some explanation about the operation there:   Forum.  but the thread was a different topic and the drawing was not actually intended as a viable "invention" or working engine per se, but the intent was to illustrate a basic principle about Stirling engines and how they ACTUALLY operate, (IMO), which was, that although the engine can operate as a result of the existence of a temperature difference, it does not operate as a result of a "flow" of "heat" between hot and cold, like water flows down from high to low.

The hot and cold portions of the engine remain separated. So I "invented" this hypothetical device based on a fire piston and the compression and resultant heating of air and the expansion and resulting cooling of the same air.

If instead of compressing a "fire syringe" or fire piston, the syringe is pulled out, expanding the air instead of compressing it, the result is cooling.

So, this device was intended to capture the temperature difference generated by alternately compressing and expanding the air in a Fire Piston type closed   cylinder.

The difference from a fire piston is the bottom slides back and forth so as to capture the resulting "heat of compression", then the heated bottom can slide over during expansion when the air is cold (Cold not only due to being expanded, but also cold due to the heat having been "taken out", as it was absorbed into the "regenerator" or heat absorbing medium in the bottom of the cylinder.)

The "regenerator" (heat capturing base) moving into the cylinder at the point when all the air is fully compressed into the small space in the bottom of the cylinder while the piston is all the way down.

Then as the piston moves up and the gas(air) cools the regenerator sneaks off to the side to "protect" and conserve the heat so that it does not get lost back into the cold expanding air in the cylinder.

A similar "regenerator" might also capture and preserve the cold.

In other words, this engine is acting as a heat pump. But, with the addition of a flywheel, it could also run as an engine, it is, infact, intended as a representation of how a Stirling engine ACTUALLY operates. Not by allowing a flow of heat between hot and cold portions of the engine, but rather by maintaining a separation between hot and cold, as well as, in fact, creating and maintaining that separation, like a heat pump.

The piston "bounces" on a "spring" of hot gas. Bouncing with more force each cycle as the temperature of the gas increases.

Anyway, with a slight modification of this concept engine:

   

We, in theory, could have a fuelless diesel type engine/generator.

All it does basically is compress air to create a temperature difference and use a thermopile to convert that temperature gradient into electricity.

There is not necessarily any need for exchanging air if the cylinder were made of a good heat exchange material, such as aluminum, the expanded cold air in the cylinder would simply absorb into itself the surrounding ambient heat through the cylinder walls which heat could then be concentrated with the subsequent compression. This heat in turn captured and utilized both to keep the engine going as well as generating electricity via the thermopile in the base.

Then, of course, this could evolve further into a more powerful multi-cylinder engine.

There is additional explanatory text in the previous post on the Stirling Engine Forum here: https://stirlingengineforum.com/viewtopi...774#p24774 mostly after the text: "Imagine two regenerators..." A few paragraphs down.

A warning however about the Stirling engine forum. The owner apparently has passed away so for the past few months the forum has been almost entirely overrun with spam and who knows what. All the spam has mostly been confined to new threads.
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#3
Though I still don't know exactly why lead seems unaffected by the seebeck, Thomson or whatever thermoelectric effect, it can serve, apparently, as a kind of neutral  conductor. At least that is my takeaway or hypothesis.

Some metals, so to speak, or perhaps literally, have an abundance of electron "gas" so if a wire is heated at one end the electron gas at that end expands setting up an electrical potential.

The problem in trying to utilize that potential however is any wire attached (of the same type) will also feel the heat and set up its own electrical potential that opposes that in tbe first.

If only there were some electrically conductive metal that was not effected by heat, that had no thermal electric properties, then that material could be used as a conductor to provide a path for utilizing the electrical potential in the first wire.

If only...

Well, interestingly, lead telluride is used in various aerospace and military type thermocouple applications, but lead telluride wire does not appear  to be available, though ordinary lead wire is a available from fishing supply stores everywhere. So I just sent for a few rolls of varying thickness to experiment with. Very inexpensive. Less than $5 a roll.

Pencil "lead" is apparently quite effective as well. Not sure if it really needs to be a carpenters pencil, but those do have much thicker, stronger lead for marking lumber.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpx...1RsZ8qjYbg

I started a playlist for DIY thermopile stuff if I find any more like this, or do some experiments of my own.

I suspect the advantage of lead telluride over ordinary lead is only that the alloy has a much higher melting point which allows it to be used at temperatures about 3 times higher than what would be possible otherwise.

Melting point of lead: 327.5°C (621.5°F)
Lead Telluride: 924°C (1,695°F)
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#4
I was just thinking to myself that a good alloy for conducting electricity from a material with a high thermoelectric response might be lead combined with tungsten.

The lead, of course, for its thermoelectric neutrality as a conductor when subject to a temperature gradient and, of course, tungsten for its high melting point.

I soon came across this apparent, at least partial confirmation.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...115851.htm

My theory is wildly different but this new world record breaking thermoelectric material does contain lead and tungsten, coincidentally, along with a few other things: 

"Iron, vanadium, tungsten, and aluminium".

Well, tungsten anyway.

On rereading to get that content info, I see I got carried away.

Researchers are actually trying to find substitutes for lead.

Lead bad.

It seems like everything that can be used for "free energy" gets banned or is highly regulated and controlled. Like salts (or whatever it is) for storing hydrogen.

https://youtu.be/E23aqCQHr6U

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