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Comment by vineel | Hacker News Reader

This looks like it has the possibility to dramatically increase the efficiency of motors and engines.

Also, if they could capture the heat coming out of a nuclear reactor, they could both avoid meltdowns and not require proximity to a large body of water.

Edit: Disregard this. I don't know thermodynamics as well as I thought I did.

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If by "dramatically" you mean "by 0.004%", then yes.

More information:

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/i6pfi/new_alloy_can...

I may have been too optimistic. But 30% is still quite a bit.

Modern gasoline engines have an average efficiency of 20%. Say you put 100J into one. 20J of useful work will be produced, and 80J of heat. Now if 30% of that heat were captured, that's another 24J of useful work. In effect, we've doubled the engine's efficiency from 20% to 44%. That's pretty dramatic.

Hmm, where are you getting 30% from? The paper says 0.004%, if I understand it correctly.

This comment: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/i6pfi/new_alloy_can...

Which says that the efficiency could reach 30% with some work. I assume that %30 is not a typo.

Oh, I think 30% is the theoretical maximum. He says they can reach 3% with years of work. It would be great if they could achieve 30%, but I doubt it.

This doesn't lower the temperature of a nuclear reactor or any heat source. The new material will still experience an increase in temperature, and the same amount of heat will still be released into the environment.

If the same amount of heat would be released in the environment, you would create energy (electricity) from nothing. And I think that there might be some scientists here, who do not think that this is possible.

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