NOTE: www.kostic.niu.edu/ CHANGED TO www.niu.edu/kostic OR https://kostic.niu.edu
"If anyone could discover a possibility and utilize 'PMM2-Perpetual Motion Machine of the Second Kind', i.e., Violation of the Second Law of thermodynamics, one would become the most prominent luminary ('Super Nobel Prize winner-like'), and if "such impossibility" were possible and applicable, one would become the richest person in the world!"
The current frenzy about the Second Law violation (getting 'useful energy' from within equilibrium alone-PMM2) is in many ways similar to the prior frenzy about the First Law violation (getting 'energy' from nowhere-PMM1).
The existence of perpetual non-uniform properties without perpetual mass-energy transfer (stationary non-uniform temperatures or other properties, very often observed in nature), does not violate the Second Law. The perpetual, stationary quasi-equilibrium structures (with bounded non-uniform properties within gravity, electro-chemical fields, etc.) are abundant in nature. As “field-charged bounded structures,” sometimes with subtle work-potential, they may provide limited, transient work only, but not perpetual work to violate the Second Law of thermodynamics, as some are misled to believe. For example, hydrostatic pressure distribution in a container, or adiabatic atmospheric-temperature distribution, or non-uniform distribution of other properties in a stationary equilibrium (like a heated adiabatic-container, compressed container, charged condenser, battery cell, fuel compound, etc.). We called the above a “structural equilibrium” (with non-uniform properties), as opposed to simple 'ideal thermodynamic equilibrium' (with uniform properties), see Appendix.
Back to Dissecting the 2ndLaw Challenges and the 'So-called Paradoxes' and (LtoE)