Perpetual batteries from Vasilescu-Karpen

[exnihiloest]

This article stipulates that a Karpen's battery is still working after 60 years:
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2010/12/25/karpen-pile/

Vasilescu-Karpen, Romanian physicist, proposed batteries without chemical reactions. They are made from an ionic solution in contact either with two unreactive electrodes of different materials or of same material but one completely immersed and the other partially or with two identical electrodes in two non-miscible solutions in contact.

When the battery is producing a current, it becomes depolarized after a while. After being disconnected, it polarizes slowly, and the cycle can continue forever without chemical reaction or material consumption. Vasilesco-Karpen says that current consumption lowers the battery temperature, thus that energy is supplied by the environment (constituting a Maxwell's demon).

Vasilescu-Karpen seems to be a serious scientist. He has published numerous papers accepted by the official French Academy of Sciences and still readable in the archives. I have gathered some of them as well as its patent (sorry, all in French):
http://exvacuo.free.fr//div/Sciences/Experiences/Piles/
See particularly his papers of 1927.

I read also his more theoretical papers. Obviously he is not a crackpot. I did not find any refutation of his theory. So there are many reasons to think it could be very interesting to build and test different kinds of his batteries -I will try myself-, to see the magnitude of the supplied power and verify that we are really outside the framework of conventional batteries (in which the electrodes and/or electrolytes are consumed).

[lumen]

I agree, either this has never been advanced to a useful device or it can never get any better than it is.
Seems odd with all the advancements in technology, this has never improved since it's concept in 1908?
But then, who would want something that pulled useful power from the environment for free! Of what value could that be? It would just put all the coal miners out of work.

[shylo]

Hi all this sounds alot like what I have going right now ,maybe not though.I don't know French so no sense in looking at the links but, could either of you mybe describe cell construction ??Btw if it is perpetual I'm not so sure you could classify them as batteries............thanx ....shylo

[exnihiloest]

Hi all this sounds alot like what I have going right now ,maybe not though.I don't know French so no sense in looking at the links but, could either of you mybe describe cell construction ??Btw if it is perpetual I'm not so sure you could classify them as batteries............thanx ....shylo

Hi Shylo,

I have translated the patent for the group and kept the same format (using google translation that I have corrected, but remaining errors are possible).
Here it is:
Direct url:
http://tinyurl.com/3yodn5q

http://exvacuo.free.fr/div/Sciences/Experiences/Piles/
(File: N Vasilesco-Karpen - Pile permanente - FR577087A en.pdf)

I think we can try with any material for the electrodes or the electrolyte(s), the important point being that none reacts with others.

[shylo]

Hi ex.,that tiny url wouldn't load it said there was some kind of error,thanx anyways."important point that none reacts with the others" not sure exactly what you mean by this??.....shylo