APPLICATION NOTE 011
Benjamin Bacon, Owner, Plane Space Design
Imagine how much better off humans will be if we can do something to undo the global warming that we have set in motion. Being that we are not absolutely sure that events will evolve in any specific way with respect to climate change, having a response available for one of the possible outcomes will be very valuable. The Photonic Power System (PPS) may provide one such counter measure against a rapid increase in temperature. What will be described below is feasible in theory at least, and can be tried when this power system becomes available to the world.
Because the PPS captures heat from the environment and converts it to electrical energy, the total quantity of heat freely traversing the environment after conversion is less. At one point in space, at a time, this is not significant, but if many such systems operate at many points in space such that heat is collected from a large region, then there is the possibility of a net appreciable decrease in freely propagating heat at the earths surface in this region. This is benefit number one of the PPS.
Anyone familiar with the concept of entropy and with the behavior of energy systems will know that getting rid of heat is not that simple. If heat is converted into another form of energy this will only be a temporary state because it immediately begins going back to heat. In fact one of the reasons that the greenhouse effect is such a huge threat is that once fuels are combusted and converted to heat, it is going to stay heat for a long time. Once the location where the heat was located cools the tendency is to think that the heat is gone. The heat may be gone from the local position, but it still exists. It goes to some place that was cooler than the place where it was created. So the truth is that once heat is created it exists almost forever and moves second by second, step by step, day by day towards the coldest places on earth. The realistic, shocking, truth is that all of the fuels that have been taken from the earth and have been converted to heat will remain in that state for a long time. Couple this with the greenhouse effect and the whole picture of the seriousness of this situation is realized. Add to this the heat influx from the sun that will remain trapped under our atmosphere and the case for worry is established. The setting for the next benefit of the PPS is now laid out.
The PPS not only has a function that converts heat to electricity, but it also converts electricity to light. It performs the function of wavelength conversion. The purpose for this function is to improve the energy conversion efficiency of a photonic converter like solar panels. But what if wavelength conversion was used for lasing light at wavelengths that can pass readily through the atmosphere. Then the energy that began its journey through the PPS as heat will end it as laser light bound for transmission out of the atmosphere. This is not an ideal process because lasers are inefficient converters of electricity to light, and much more heat than light energy is remade in the system. However, the PPS is designed to keep this waste heat in the system and use it until it eventually all gets converted. The heat trapping feature of the PPS, which is a major focus of development, can make this a successful method of disposing of earthbound heat over a time period. The problem that is least easily overcome is the lossless passage of light through the atmosphere. We have shot the moon with lasers, but it probably was not lossless. The goal of development is to come as close to lossless transmission as possible.
The idea then would require first the wide scale deployment of the PPS in places selected for heat disposal. Then the device is left to do whatever it can towards sending heat past the greenhouse barrier into space. Over long periods of time there may be a significant effect.
The third benefit is the power to choose when and where the greenhouse effect is mitigated. If there is no greenhouse effect, then the PPS is just an electrical energy system. However, in the case of an emergency where our very survival is at risk, this solution is something that we can possibly do about it.