3 ms·
One application of Maxwell's demon would be to sort hot atoms in a gas from cold atoms thus allowing you to create both an efficient heater and air conditioner.
by itronitron 5y ago
One application of Maxwell's demon would be to sort hot atoms in a gas from cold atoms thus allowing you to create both an efficient heater and air conditioner.
- yesenadam 5y agoThat sounds a lot like a vortex tube, a tube with no moving parts that separates a stream of air into hot and cold, which at first sounds kind of impossible! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube http://vortextube.scienceontheweb.net/index.html http://vortextube.scienceontheweb.net/index.html
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fsh 5y agoThe essential difference is that you have to put in energy to pump the fluid through the tube. Essentially a vortex tube is simply a very inefficient refrigerator that is fully in agreement with the second law of thermodynamics. With Maxwell's demon it is not immediately obvious that it has to do work in order to sort fast from slow atoms.
- es7 5y agoWikipedia mentions that the inefficiency of that is less than a normal AC unit even. So the vortex tube is actually using up more of the energy in the system than you might originally expect