Ask HN: Is it possible to generate usable energy from environmental heat?

3•melenaboija•5h ago

Yes, I know I could just ask ChatGPT, but I still believe in good old HN wisdom, and I’m also curious about the entrepreneurial point of view. It is surprising to see there has been attempts for everything in the past, and this community always knows something about it.

Comments

toomuchtodo•5h ago

You need a temperature differential. If you have energy, you can move that heat somewhere with a heat pump, but heat alone is insufficient to make usable energy.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/44247/can-i-take...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

janmarsal•5h ago

check out the Stirling engine

aristofun•3h ago

Generally speaking - no.

Why? Because 2nd law of thermodynamics. More precisely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipation

Is AI the End of Dating Apps?

Marijuana dramatically increases risk of dying from heart attacks and stroke

Blue Origin successfully completes 13th crewed suborbital flight

Integrating with ClickHouse MCP

Show HN: GPS for entire project architecture, everything one click away

'Lidar is lame': why Elon Musk's vision for a self-driving Tesla taxi faltered

Key Senators Strike Deal to Pause State AI Laws for Five Years

NativeJIT: A C++ expression –> x64 JIT

Flux – Rust annotation-based type checker

Officials celebrate sale of worlds largest solar-powered steel mill in Pueblo

Microsoft plans major job cuts at Xbox

Depopulation Won't Change the World for the Better

Scaling Redis at 7shifts (2023)

The F1 movie is a cinema smash hit, on track to outperform previous Apple films

Musk's 'robotaxis' draw regulatory scrutiny after video shows one

Programming Language Switching Politics: A Rigged Game of Power

Atomic War or Peace (1947)

The World Is Warming Up. and It's Happening Faster

Why Tokenize Domains?

LLM's Illusion of Alignment

Study challenges assumptions of racial attitudes and political identity in U.S.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Glastonbury – and the Purge of the Jews

Golden Dome (missile defense system)

Ceasing my use of Creative Commons

Continuous Glucose Monitoring

WebGL2 Fundamentals

Use AI to build ecosystems, not just products

Land Values and Affordability

English and a Translator's Shame

My home servers are not a homelab