BULLENERGY
Heat and cold?
How can Rolf Crane's heat engine generate heat and cold?
The vortex tube
The answer is provided by a commercially available so-called vortex tube. A pressurized gas (usually air) is injected tangentially into a circular vortex chamber, causing it to rotate rapidly (over 1,000,000 rpm). The gas leaves the chamber through differently designed axial air outlets:
- cooled air exits through the narrow hole (in the picture on the left)
- hot air escapes through the opposite hole with a considerably larger diameter.
Georges J. Ranque discovered this effect in 1928 and published it in 1933. Rudolf Hilsch provided the first physical systematic publication based on Ranque’s discovery in 1946. Because of the improvements to Ranque’s design and the value of his work, the vortex tube effect is now known as the “Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube effect.”
Although the structure in Rolf Crane’s heat engine does not directly correspond to that of a vortex tube, the effect is identical. A whirlwind is generated at high speed and emits heat and cold – which are skimmed separately.
The vortex tube has a poor efficiency. Why then does the heat engine generate energy?
In the vortex tube, a compressor generates the compressed air that is blown in. The air forms a cold and heat flow that exits through the openings. The generated cooling and heating energy can be used. The air itself escapes again.
In Rolf Kranen’s heat engine, the gyro takes over the compression and the gas remains in a closed process.
The differences between heat engine and vortex tube:
In his tests, Rolf Kranen proved that the centrifugal process offers a clear advantage over a mechanical compressor.
The heat engine is a closed system that does not exchange matter with its environment, but only energy. An example of a closed system is a Stirling engine, which contains a fixed volume of gas that is moved back and forth between two cylinders. The advantage of a closed system is that there are no losses due to friction or leakage, and it works regardless of the type of gas used.
A Stirling engine can therefore achieve high efficiency and a long service life, which also applies to Rolf Kranen’s heat engine.
The combination of gyro rotation and vortex process in a closed system generates the usable energy surplus as heat and cold. This process has never been tried like this before. Therefore, there are no qualified scientific statements. In this respect, the conditions are the same as before the discovery of the vortex tube.