Perfect gas:

It doesn’t change in the case of  an ideal gas in which no intermolecular attraction occurs ( Van der Waals’ interactions). This can be easily understood as no energy is freed out of the system, contrarily to what takes place in an engine in which the gas yields energy to the piston which turns it into work.

Imperfect gas:

It is different with a real gas in which a cooling occurs just after the expansion, which is due to the increase of the volume taken which moves the molecules away the one from the others. Indeed, when two molecules belonging to such a gas get close enough the one from the other, they attract each other, they fall on themselves as in a hole and so, their kinetic energy and their temperature increase. Consequently, when the gas expands, the free mean path of the molecules increases and the molecules don’t “fall” so often, their average level of kinetic energy is less high and the gas is cooler.

Natural and artificial attractors

The molecules behave  like attractors with one another. One thus realizes that the temperature of the gas could vary if one could diminish or increase the role of the attractors, that is to saymodify the frequency of the interactions. We can’t make the molecules meet more or less frequently but we can add some artificial attractors. This invention rests exactly on this principle. By fixing some attractors at the surface of a wall, which can be a metal grid charged as described in the experimental configuration, some ions, one increases the energy of the particles which come and hit the wall and we warm it.

Some people told me that my process looked like the one based on a vacuum diode, in which a cathode with a very low work function cools under the emission of electrons and they didn’t really see why this process should spend less energy.

In both process, we actually find particles which transfer energy from a cold plate to the opposite warm plate thanks to an acceleration force of the particles. In the vacuum diode, we have charged particles ( electrons) accelerated by an electric field , in the actual process, we have electrically neutral particles (gas molecules) which polarize themselves by penetrating into an electric field located at the surface of the plate called “electrostatic” and which by so doing, are attracted towards the plate.

Why is there no energy consumed with this principle of acceleration? Indeed , in the ideal device, in which the electric insulation would be perfect or in a configuration in which an electric field is produced without a generator, a molecule polarizes itself and let itself being attracted into the electric field but, after having hit the plate and yielded energy by thermal accommodation, it bounces, depolarizes itself when getting out of the electric field and consequently slows down while undergoing the same attraction energy. So there is no more energy globally spent (W=0. We remember the imagery of the ball falling on a planet mentioned before). The only wanted effect is for the molecule to get out of the electric field with a kinetic energy lower to the one it had before penetrating into the electric field, as if it hit an ordinary cold plate.

But, in the vacuum diode, the heat transfer from one plate to the other depends on the acceleration of the electrons from the cold cathode towards the warm anode. The electrons acceleration work from the cathode towards the anode is made necessary by the fact that the cold cathode has more difficulties to emit electrons than the warm anode.. Indeed, the electric current can only circulate freely (without resistance) if both electrodes are at the same temperature. As soon as the cathode is colder than the anode, it has more difficulty to emit electrons than the anode and there would be a return of electrons from the anode towards the cathode if the accelerating electric field was suppressed (it is the principle of a thermoionic generator). It is thus necessary to compensate this emission “difficulty” of the cathode by the acceleration of the electrons towards the anode.

This can be simply compared to a mechanical compression pump by replacing the cathode by the evaporator and the anode by the condenser (see diagram below). When the evaporator and the condenser are at the same temperature, the steam can flow freely (without any resistance) from a compartment to the other. Because of this steam flow, there is, in the evaporator, a higher number of  molecules which evaporate ( than molecules which condensate) and in the condenser, a higher number of molecules which condensate (than molecule which evaporate). The evaporator is thus going to cool down and the condenser to warm up. Therefore the molecules have more difficulty to evaporate in the cold evaporator and there would be a return of steam from the condenser towards the evaporator if the passage between both compartments was freed ( it is the principle of the thermodynamic engine). It is therefore necessary to “accelerate” the molecules towards the condenser, which means, practically speaking, that a depression must be created into the evaporator with the help of a pump.

The present process doesn’t belong to this schema any more. The great difference with all the existing processes can be explained as follow: the work fluid, here some polarizable gas, SF6 or other, doesn’t undergo anymore cycles of  thermodynamic change of state. For instance, in the mechanical  compression pump, the fluid evaporates in the cold evaporator, then liquefies in the warm condenser. The temperature, the pressure and the state of the matter are changed when changing of compartment. This is the same for the vacuum diode: the electronic fluid “evaporates” at the cold cathode, then “condensates” at the warm anode. The temperature, but also the “electronic pressure” increase when passing from the cathode to the anode, the electronic fluid therefore undergoes a thermodynamic change of state.

In this process, there are no more cycles of thermodynamic change of state but several thermodynamic states co-exist in the gas, the pressure and the temperature being higher against the electrostatic plate. The same thing occurs in the atmosphere where the pressure and the temperature decrease as one rises in altitude. The gas can be in thermal equilibrium in spite of these differences in temperature and pressure.. In this process, the heat transfer comes from the thermodynamic disequilibrium that is created in the gas by reducing the difference of temperature between the plates compared to the one we would have if it was only due to the attraction field. This reduction can be achieved, for instance, by cooling the warm plate or by warming the cold plate (or both at the same time).

It is also necessary to stipulate that if the particles don’t collectively undergo a cycle of change of state anymore, an individual or molecular cycle remains which performs exactly the same function. That is to say that it is impossible to follow a group of particles whose pressure and temperature increase in a compartment, maybe with a change of state of the matter and which then turn back into their initial state in another compartment, etc…; but each molecule of gas located between the plates carries out at any moment  a phase or another of a cycle called molecular and this absolutely independently of their neighbor-molecules: a molecule will be accelerated when penetrating into the electric field while another one yields energy by thermal accommodation on the warm plate, while still another one slows down when getting out of the electric field or while another one recovers energy  by thermal accommodation on the cold plate.. All these phases of the cycle take place at the same time and it is impossible to detect a macroscopic motion as it was possible to do with the existing processes.