Chris Rutherford wrote:
Hi All, Just to add a little more context to my question (at the risk of going off topic)... I was thinking about using highly accelerated heavy ions trapped in a circular orbit as a means of storing energy (in case I wanted to use my Tesla coil where no good power supply was available). I discovered that if I did manage to store the energy I required, then this would be dissipated as Bremsstrahlung radiation. However I have been thinking that it may be possible to capture this energy and then re-use it to accelerate the ions again, thus re-cycling the energy, allowing the system to hold its 'charge' for longer. In order to utilize the energy stored in the system for driving my Tesla coil, instead of recycling the Bremsstrahlung radiation for accelerating ions it could be converted in to electrical energy. What do you think? Could this work? Is there a good way of converting x-rays in to electricity? Any idea on the radius per a given storage capacity KWh? :) Thanks Chris
Getting perilously close to perpetual motion machines here. Quick answer, no, it cannot work, at least in any practical sense.Orbiting the ions requires a magnetic field, which requires some energy to make, and if you use superconducting magnets, you need energy to keep the magnets cold.
The bremsstrahlung radiates in all directions, so you'd need to capture it and convert it to some other convenient form. So far, nobody has an efficient way to convert energetic photons (which is what that radiation is) into electricity. multijunction solar cells are the ultimate today in doing this and they're on the order of 30% efficient, but are optimized for visible light photons. Xray detectors are MUCH worse (you'll see quantum efficiencies of 0.05, for instance, and that's without accounting for any of the electrical losses, and for single photons, for the most part)
Sure, you can absorb that energy and turn it into heat, and then turn the heat into electricity, but then, you're working against the maximum Carnot efficiency, which is a function of the hot and cold temperatures. And, of course, any practical scheme for turning heat into electricity has losses on top...
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