Because heat is pure entropy; it's what you ultimately end up with after electri... | Hacker News

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		codewiz on Aug 12, 2016 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: New “Leaf” Is More Efficient Than Natural Photosyn... Because heat is pure entropy; it's what you ultimately end up with after electricity has been used to do work, and the process is irreversible due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics#G... Only a difference in heat levels can still be converted to electricity, for instance by reverse Peltier effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling

creshal on Aug 12, 2016 | [–]

And on a space station, most of your heat differential is created by active cooling, so recovering that via Peltier elements is a bit… counter productive.

choosername on Aug 13, 2016 | [–]

The Second Law of Thermodynamics just means the conversion can't be a hundred percent efficient. Indeed, I didn't think of that as a problem.

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