--- thomas malloy wrote: > Phase change I understand, but how does this relate > to cohering the ZPE?
Good question, and there is no assurance at all that it does. But in general there is such a large difference in volume between a gas and a liquid of the same molecule- as much as 3000:1 and the transition can occur in a narrow range of overlapping pressure and temperature- that there could be an external force involved at the atomic level - which can be optimized for gain. Think about water and steam and the supercritical overlap of the two. This is where things are not well understood and anomalies happen. This page on Wiki is a good introduction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_water_oxidation ... which is not to say that "excess energy" is involved, but yet science has not really fully tried to engineer FOR the anomaly - and instead usually tries to *avoid* this range. As you note, the published results of the Negre system do NOT seem to add-up to a normal thermodynamic use of compressed air, and all that I am suggesting is this double phase-change could be one of the "cracks" in the Laws of Thermodynamics which he has stumbled on to do this. ... or not. Jones
