Obvious Falsehood of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Non-isothermal heat engines - apparently do not violate the second law of thermodynamics:

http://readingpenrose.files.wordpres...and-engine.gif

"All materials react to heat in some way. But this new shape-changing polymer reacts to temperatures as small as the touch of human skin to contract - in the process lifting as much as 1,000 times its own weight." http://gizmodo.com/this-new-shape-ch...-it-1759165438

"Stretchy Science: A Rubber Band Heat Engine. Learn how a rubber band can turn heat into mechanical work with this simple activity. [...] Your blow dryer essentially turned your rubber band into a heat engine - a machine that turns thermal energy into mechanical work." https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ber-band-heat/

ISOTHERMAL analogs - pH-sensitive polymers - do violate the second law of thermodynamics:

http://www.gsjournal.net/old/valev/val3.gif

"When the pH is lowered (that is, on raising the chemical potential, μ, of the protons present) at the isothermal condition of 37°C, these matrices can exert forces, f, sufficient to lift weights that are a thousand times their dry weight." http://www.google.com/patents/US5520672

A. KATCHALSKY, POLYELECTROLYTES AND THEIR BIOLOGICAL INTERACTIONS, p. 15, Figure 4: "Polyacid gel in sodium hydroxide solution: expanded. Polyacid gel in acid solution: contracted; weight is lifted." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih..gov/pmc/ar...00645-0017.pdf

The following four-step isothermal cycle, if carried out quasi-statically (reversibly), clearly violates the second law of thermodynamics:

1. The polymer is initially stretched. The operator adds hydrogen ions (H+) to the system. The force of contraction increases.
2. The polymers contracts and lifts a weight.
3. The operator removes the same amount of H+ from the system. The force of contraction decreases.
4. The operator stretches the polymer and restores the initial state of the system.

The net work extracted from the cycle is positive unless the following is the case:

The operator, as he decreases and then increases the pH of the system (steps 1 and 3), does (loses; wastes) more work than the work he gains from weight-lifting.

However electrochemists know that, if both adding hydrogen ions to the system and then removing them are performed quasi-statically, the net work involved is virtually zero (the operator gains work if the hydrogen ions are transported from a high to a low concentration and then loses the same amount of work in the backward transport). That is, the net work involved in steps 1 and 3 is zero, and the net work extracted from steps 2 and 4 is positive, in violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Pentcho Valev