Real Minecraft Furnace turns coal into electricity!

If I'm not mistaken (and I very well could be), TECs' power output is directly related to the thermal gradient across the cell. The larger the temperature difference, the greater the power. So, it doesn't matter how hot the interior of the inner chamber is if the exterior is also heating up. 400 on the 'hot' side vs. 200 on the 'cold' side produces less power than '300' on the hot side vs. '50' on the cold side.

wow at this rate we wont need mc vr we have joel 😂

You definitely need insulation and even flow of air across the whole heatsink. TEC's really hate uneven heating and cooling, if even just a small part of a TEC is hotter then the rest it eats in to your power output!

Everybody chilling untill this person creates a fully functional command block

one big efficiency loss is in the exhaust of the furnace, which is literally just venting an immense amount of thermal energy to the atmosphere in steam engine boilers, the exhaust of the firebox runs through a set of tubes running down the entire length of the boiler, the goal being to extract as much energy as possible from the hot exhaust, and i would actually say that the exhaust is probably where the majority of the energy is going, and it should maybe be the focus of your attention, placing several heatsinks directly in the exhaust flow to gather energy from it before it is discarded

I actually quite like the current finish of the Furnace. Reminds me of the early Minecraft modded furnace generators. A metal-looking furnace is basically exactly what they looked like, and a furnace that produced electricity instead of cooking things is basically exactly how they worked, so I think this actually works perfectly! :D

Joel, have you tried characterising the TEGs you're using in a single-TEG, no regulator scenario? It sounds very much like you might need to back to basics in order to reduce the number of variables you're working with. Maybe make a miniature proof of concept model for your heater/TEG/cooler sandwich and take it from there. Your electrical insulation between hot and cold is the only obvious issue as far as i can tell, but it would help to be able to prove this in isolation.

The thermal electric cells are probably rated at peak efficiency, meaning extremes on both ends, you would need liquid nitrogen on the cooling side to get anywhere near peak wattage, but if the goal is to run on only combustibles, two ideas come to mind. 1. There is more room for thermal electric cells with some space optimization. Just avoid stacking them. A furnace with less width, more hight and depth, with heat sinks parallel to airflow should increase thermal capture and release while adding more room for cells and cooling heatsinks. 2. Optimizing the use of exhaust could get you very far. (exhausting out the front is a bad idea as wind will oppose the exhaust when the furnace-minecart is in motion, make that port aesthetic and move all exhaust to the top back, the wind will then feed the furnace so fans don't waste your power. Also, a tall chimney will utilize your exhaust through convection to generate more free airflow without much need for fans.

Thank you for the honest video. I often see flawless videos from other creators which lowers my self-esteem. In almost all my projects I face unexpected problems and seeing other people are struggling too helps to keep track of reality. Thank you 🙏

Joel is on a journey to get Mojang to finally update the minecart, we all know it needs a buff!!! #Mojang #BuffMinecart #FurnaceCart4Bedrock

Oh so goooood! I love the effort, and now I can look forward to 5X the electrical output. I KNOW you'll do it... SOMEHOW! You pay so much attention to details I don't even notice until the 3rd or 5th viewing! You should make full length movies! Congrats!

So cool to see all the copper heatsinks you picked up working for what you needed them for.

You need to put the air hole lower in the coal chamber, roughly at the same level with the burning coals. Cause you are not only fueling air to the coals, you are taking away hot air.

That's not a furnace it's the generator from Industrialcraft 2! Then there wouldn't be any problems with the design :D Really cool what you've done!

Idea for the pixels: if you use the CNC for drawing, you could use dithering, i.e. have differently spaced dot grids inside each pixel to represent darker and lighter shades when viewed from a distance. The farther the dots are spaced apart, the lighter the shade. Should work great here 👍🏻

You could water cool the cold sides and then run the cooling water through a radiator on the front of the minecart. Together with better insulation that should improve performance quite a bit.

Great project. Few thoughts: - Cuts aluminum sheet with a CNC? Lol. You can use standard woodworking tools to cut aluminum. A jigsaw, a circular saw, a table saw, just fine. But it's loud. - Titanium screws and plates? Ugh. Makes almost zero difference. The thermal mass combined with the difference between that and steel, yields probably less than 1% difference from using steel. - Cabinet hinges was a great idea. Really slick and clever application. - Your heatsink fins are horizontal, that jams up airflow. You have to pull air sideways rather than just let it rise. - All those insulator plates are too much thermal mass and too much thermal conduction, I bet you're losing most of your energy though that. - TEMs require a thermal difference obviously, and the bigger the thermal difference the more power you can pull from them. So, more aggressive cooling on the coolsinks would make them work a lot better. Even bonding them to the outside of the case, you have that massive aluminum sheet as a potential heatsink. Likewise for thermal mass inside, a copper plate or even just a big slab of steel to soak up energy in the combustion chamber would help keep the hot side hot. - Clamping load on heatsinks is often underestimated for efficient thermal transfer. It wouldn't surprise me if you needed several tons of clamping force to keep those surfaces in contact. The thermal compound is still a terrible heat conductor compared to metal, it's only there to fill in the microscopic surface features between the metal plates. You want the metal touching metal as much as possible, the thinnest lay possible (with excess squished out with clamping pressure) can make a 300% difference.

I really like the unique approach to powering the cart, it's awesome to see the effort you're putting into it. I also really appreciate that you include the parts that didn't go to plan, the solutions to those problems are really interesting.

I am glad you did not make any complicated steam boiler. I wonder though if a flash boiler would have been a safer alternative if it were only driving a turbine for electricity. As for a stirling motor good luck getting any meaningful power without a high pressure atmosphere in it. I guess an alternative you could have done was like gasification to power an engine. Either way I support the route you have chosen and I am hoping to see your success.

nice work, i did something similar with peltier modules to add a fan to a central heating radiator ran off the radiators heat. 1. if you mount the larger outer heatsinks with the fins orientated vertically you can make use of convection currents to aid airflow. 2. you could repurpose/reuse the expelled (cell cooling) air into the exhaust using a manifold to make it suck air through the exhaust. this would delete the wasted energy on the exhaust fan your currently using. 2a. you could also repurpose this hotter heatsink air into the fire/furnace intake aswell....recycle some more heat. 3. its possible your exhaust fan is also cooling the internal furnace heatsinks with too much airflow. 4. you already mention insulation, it will definately help. (edit) point 1 will also address your modules being at a uneven distance from your heatsource. the top ones will be cooler and therfore flow less electricity, actually being slightly restrictive in energy output to the other two hotter cells.