I have to agree, at least in my limited knowledge. The refrigerator efficiency calculation seemed senseless.

I wonder if TheOilDrum could use a little more "prescreening" of articles! Sorry for criticism...

Schmitz did say an "atmospheric" steam engine, i.e., not pressurized.

i am niether a scientist nor an engineer
i am totally a layperson when it comes to this. but i have read a little about thermodynamics through books like "Entropy," from jeremy rifkin etc.

my understanding:
The Nature of Energy

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change form -- From radiant energy to mechanical or electrical etc. In other words, the amount of energy in the universe is constant. There is just as much energy in the universe today as there was thirteen and a half billion years ago. The difference between now and then is that the amount of high quality energy is not the same. It has declined.

i like to think of it in terms of an hourglass with a waterwheel inside. The amount of sand in an hour glass.
Remains the same; and as the sand falls, it has the ability to spin a wheel. But you can't turn the hourglass upside down and start over again.

There is highly organized energy or high quality energy in a high state, and there is low quality diffuse energy in a low degraded state. As energy flows from a high state to a low state, it has the ability to do work. Heat always flows from hot to cold, never the reverse. Work is only done as energy flows from a high state to a low state. In the case of Industrialism, work is normally done as heat generated by burning hydrocarbons heats a turbine that generates useful electricity.

Exhaust from the tailpipe of an accelerating car, plus friction from the air and ground, equals the amount of energy burned during the trip.

Time measures rising entropy in the universe. The natural tendency is for things to fall apart through time. A highly organized system requires high quality useful energy to continue functioning. As time passes, the organized system ages and falls apart naturally. Large amounts of useful energy are required to prevent decay and eventual collapse. Human beings eat food which provides people with fuel to burn (calories) for energy and raw material to build bodies.

without actually doing the math, i'll probably never understand it like a physicist or an engineer...
but i do intend to buy the book "The Second Law of Life: Energy, Technology, and the Future of Earth As We Know It."

anyone and everyone please feel free to correct me. got to go.

Yes, applying the smell test to his refrigeration calculations downright curled my nostril hairs.

With his formula, if you take the fridge down to absolute 0 efficiency approaches 100%!!!

Pretty obviously bunk.

I also have no background on physics or mechanical engineering (out of what is common to computer engineering), but would never make such mistake.

That is plain common sense (once you know about entropy) that it should be easier to create a small temperature gradient than a bigger one, as it is easier to exploit a big grandient than a smaller one.

A engineer background isn't even needed to know that. At least around here, Carnot cycles and steam machine efficiency are hight-school knowledge.

Such an ignorance from a person with that curriculum is not excusable, and TOD would be better without this article, since it makes such a gross mistake and adds so little (most discussions about wasting energy around here have very little to do with theoretical limits, but with practical ones imposed by economics or lazyness).