The problem is that people refuse to control themselves. If you feed the hungry they will go have more children and come back hungry and with additional hungry children.
Actually this is not true at all. In rich countries people have less children and therefore the population shrinks. Its the poor countries where the population grows.
Isn't that basically what he is saying?
Thank you briselec, that is exactly the reaction I had.
Moving on.
Anyhow, if you had something that was more than 100% efficient , why would you combine it with anything else? Why not just use it? Probably because without the engine it won't do actually do anything, and if it doesn't do anything there won't be any data to wrongly acquire, poorly analyze, misinterpret and/or otherwise screw with until it shows some mysterious effect.
So I'm sure that everyone here knows what an engine does. It applies heat to some material, usually a gas, which changes pressure and works upon some mechanism.
The 'other' device takes some material, usually a gas, changes its volume and condenses heat into a more compact space thereby raising its temperature. No mystery, no magic. It follows the Pressure Volume Temperature equation. The energy you put in is what you get out.
Now for the magic.
When a material changes phase, from a gas to a liquid, it takes an unusual amount of heat to do so. That unusual amount of heat is called latent heat. The word latent; from Latin latent- ‘being hidden,’. This latent heat does not get counted in the Pressure Volume Temperature equation. So our 'other' device takes a certain amount of energy to squeeze heat into a smaller space raising its temperature. Now instead of the energy you expect to see there will be more that has stowed away for the ride. You didn't have to pay for the extra latent heat to get it there at that elevated temperature. The coefficient of performance is greater than 1.
Our 'other' device is a common heat pump.
Can you think of any instance where you have seen a heat pump taking the rejected heat from an engine, compressing it and feeding it back into the intake? Would it be beneficial even if the efficiency of the engine were less than the inverse efficiency of the heat pump?