posted on Sep, 2 2006 @ 07:43 PM
DARKPRO
Thermocouples as you would know are basically 2 dissimilar metals that exhibit a principle of thermovoltaic properties, which means the
hotter the joint gets the higher the milli volts at the terminal ends. Typically your looking at 50mV for 1250 C at the joint for a type K
thermocouple so as you can see the energy is pretty well useless as the 50mV when connected to a low inpedance meter will drop off to nothing->
meaning there is absolutely no grunt behind this principle and hence the reason its only ever used to measure temperature.
Now this is the good bit, there are unlimited variants of metal alloys and its possible that one configuration of these metals does
produce a large output so dont be disheartened by my earlier rant, I have worked with thermocouples for 20+ years now and its often crossed my mind
the potential for this principle to produce unlimited free power if the right alloys were employed.