Evaporation Driven Self-Sustaining System

[gravityblock]

You are making this up as you go along. 

If the system would work without 1) continually filling the top reservoir with water in an open environment  or 2) Using a pump and fan in a closed environment (that you continually say they did not do, but pasted a screen shot of anyway) then why didn't the inventors do this? 

Another false assertion by you!  Where did I say they never used a pump and fan in a closed environment in one of their experiments as found in their white paper? 

In reply #26, I said, "An electric fan isn't needed and was never used in the video for the rotary engine as you falsely assert!  In a separate experiment which you are referring to in the white paper, they completely enclosed the moisture mill inside a chamber of 2-mm-thick acrylic glass so the humidity couldn't escape into the outside environment.  They used an electric fan to evenly distribute a stream of humidity-controlled air that was pumped into the enclosed chamber".

Now, the experiment using a pump and fan in an enclosed chamber as found in their white paper is a separate experiment with a totally different purpose as the experiment we find in the demonstration video.  In the video, it clearly shows there is no 2-mm-thick acrylic glass chamber completely enclosing the moisture mill, and it also clearly shows there is no stream of humidity-controlled air being pumped into an enclosed chamber with a fan moving the air around.  Two different experiments with two completely different purposes.  You continue to misrepresent the facts with one false assertion after another!

Gravock

[gravityblock]

Are you just smarter than the guys who invented it?

How is the environment kept dry that your vents are opening into?

How is the environment kept moist that the vents are opening from ?

Is the water wheel in the Humid environment or the Dry environment? 

How does the water wheel traverse between the two environments Dry and Humid (through the vents) ?

Is the water wheel going through the vents when they are closed ? 

Are you just smarter than the guys who invented it?  Sahin said they took many shortcuts in the proof-of-concept version as found in the demonstration video and that they know it actually can be made 100 times more powerful by solving a number of problems."   I'm only picking up where Sahin left off and presenting ideas to make this more efficient, more powerful, and self-sustaining without taking all of the shortcuts for a proof-of-concept demonstration.

How is the environment kept dry that your vents are opening into?  The environment above the shutters of the oscillatory engine don't need to be kept dry.  However, the environment above the shutters can be kept dry through condensation via the WarkaWater Tower or other similar methods.

How is the environment kept moist that the vents are opening from?  The environment isn't kept moist that the vents are opening from.  This environment, which is below the shutters is kept dry by the spores absorbing the moisture from the surrounding air and releasing it through the shutters into the environment above it.

Is the water wheel in the Humid environment or the Dry environment?  Half of the moisture mill is in a humid environment and the other half is in a dryer environment.

How does the water wheel traverse between the two environments Dry and Humid (through the vents)?  This has already been explained and can be seen in the demonstration videos, which has already been posted.  As the spores absorb the humidity on one side of the wheel, it not only causes the spores to become heavier, it also increases the moment arm of the strips as they expand and straighten out, which increases the torque.  On the lighter and dryer side of the wheel, the moment arm of the strips will decrease as they contract and curl back up while losing their moisture content, which causes a further mass imbalance while increasing the torque once again.

Gravock

[allcanadian]

@Nink

I have been responding to questions asked.  My opening question was  "how do
you maintain two environments, one wet and one dry?"  The inventors manually
moved water to the top of devices to achieve this and the energy consumption to
move the water exceeds the energy created by the wheel. 

I think you may be confusing the issue and fundamentally the premise is that under the influence of high humidity in the air the test strip curls and when the humidity drops the test strip uncurls. The curl represents a force acting through a distance and this consitutes work due to a change in the relative humidity in the air surrounding the test strip.

Think of it this way, we have a test strip in our hand and when we move it over a dish of water it curls due to the humidity above the dish and when we move it away from the dish of water it uncurls, the curl is work (force x distance). To be absolutely clear they do not pump water to the top of the wheel and I have no idea where you got that from.

I'm not some random guy, I'm an Engineer and an expert in energy systems and you are mistaken. You should look more closely at this technology which I would group into a relatively new area called Biomimicry. That is where we copy energy systems found in nature outside the context of what we could concieve as man-made. Think of our muscles, we use our muscles and our brain to gather food which provides the energy for our muscles to perform work. To my knowledge there is no man-made machine in existence that can even come remotely close to doing what we do every day and we are in some sense the most advanced autonomous organic machines in existence... that we know of.

Now this may seem like nothing for those who do not understand energy or science and technology however this technology is the first step to some pretty amazing things. Here is the progression of technology -- tangible work from a change in humidity which is where were at now, next work from an artificial organic muscle where we pump fluids to cause a reversible chemical reaction not unlike our own muscles. Thus we may concieve that in the future we could create an organic machine not unlike a man or a horse with an artificial computerized brain. Think about it, we know we exist and we can do work and maintain ourselves with energy from organic material thus we already have proof that it can be done, we are that proof. In the future we will build self sustaining autonomous organic machines based on the same technology we are based on. It is the natural progression of the technology being debated here and we are only seeing the start of something very big.
Regards
AC

[Nink]

@Nink

Think of it this way, we have a test strip in our hand and when we move it over a dish of water it curls due to the humidity above the dish and when we move it away from the dish of water it uncurls, the curl is work (force x distance). To be absolutely clear they do not pump water to the top of the wheel and I have no idea where you got that from.

I appreciate the use case where the strip is situated above a body of water and evaporation due to heat causes the spores on the strip to absorb water. 
The spores expand the strip expands opening the vents to allow the evaporated water to escape.  I have no issue with this use case and fully appreciate the way this works, although they only manage to generate an average of 1.8 μW using this method and I can generate more power with a $5 drinking bird and it uses a lot less water. 

Where I do have an issue is the rotary wheel.  In the video you clearly see them place water in the top of the unit. This is done manually but it still required work to move the water to the top of wheel.  I do not see any other method possible to only have one half of the wheel in a humid environment and the other half in a dry environment.   

You could suggest put half the wheel over a body of water so only the spores on the right hand side become moist.  unfortunately evaporation does not cause water vapor to move directly in an upwards vertical direction only.  The water molecules will expand upwards and outwards.  The result is we will have water molecules spreading out moving across the entire wheel and they will concentrate on the bottom of the wheel as the water will be first absorbed by the spores at the bottom.  The inventors worked around this problem by moving the water molecules above and directly beside the spores on one side only by lining the sides of the waterwheel with paper.  The water is absorbed in the paper using the capillary effect. When the water is vaporized through heat it is immediately absorbed by the neighboring spores.

You could also suggest the capillary effect could be used by placing the water at the bottom of the wheel. The problem we have here is the density of the water would be greater at the bottom of the paper and lighter at the top of the wheel as more water vapor would be released at the bottom of the wheel and absorbed by the spores at the bottom of the wheel.  This would not work. We need the reverse with more water vapor released at the top of the wheel. 

If you can explain to me how the water wheel could work and I like diagrams I would be more than happy to learn.  The challenge with your statement is you say when "we move it over a dish of water it curls" and this requires work to move it over the dish of water.   You also say "when we move it away from the dish of water it uncurls" this also requires work.  Where does the energy to move it come from?

The problem we have is every one is assuming there is an option E,  A fictitious environment where half the environment is naturally humid and the other half is dry. This of course is impossible as the level of humidity will simply equalize as the space between Environment A and Environment B needs to be open to allow the wheel to turn. 

[allcanadian]

@Nink

If you can explain to me how the water wheel could work and I like diagrams I
would be more than happy to learn.  The challenge with your statement is you say
when "we move it over a dish of water it curls" and this requires work to move
it over the dish of water. You also say "when we move it away from the dish of
water it uncurls" this also requires work.  Where does the energy to move it
come from?

You make some good points and in may cases a primary effect may appear to have great potential however many smaller secondary problems many overwhelm the primary effect to the point it seems unworkable. In my simple example we could use a test strip on a pendulum and when the test strips curl this changes the balance point of the mass of the pendulum not unlike pumping a swing. There are many ways to produce a simple feedback control and they are so obvious and easy they are hardly worth mentioning. The issue is how efficient the feedback control is and how much energy is required relative to the total energy.

The problem we have is every one is assuming there is an option E,  A fictitious
environment where half the environment is naturally humid and the other half is
dry. This of course is impossible as the level of humidity will simply equalize
as the space between Environment A and Environment B needs to be open to allow
the wheel to turn. 

Open-closed are relative, nothing is open because something is always retained and nothing is closed because nothing is perfectly insulated from everything else. Thus we are simply speaking of the degree of interaction is every case. I have no issue with this technology considering the most popular machine we use, the automobile, was calculated to have an average total efficiency of 16%. I mean if this is supposedly the best we can do then I'm really not sure how we could do any worse and quite frankly it's embarrassing. One cannot claim to be intelligent and in the next instant think 16% is the best we can do or is even acceptable unless their stupid but that's another story all together.

In the case of the wheel over a body of water I would propose what seems obvious. The wheel as shown has strips extending from the wheel which is the same basic design as a centrifugal fan. So we build a modified volute case with a water pad in the bottom and rotation causes air flow over the water in the bottom increasing the humidity over part of the wheel causing rotation.  I mean I could give you hundreds of variations of ways to do this and this part of the engineering is preschool in my opinion. The real issue is energy density and how to compact as many strips into the smallest volume while operating at the highest efficiency. While many are still trying to understand the basic models shown I'm researching the application of high density 3D geometries which still retain high airflows thus rapid changes in relative humidity. Not unlike a self-pumping flexible micro-honeycomb structure in which contraction/expansion pumps air and also switches air flows between dry and humid. Which is strange because I have very little if no interest in this technology other than a creative exercise in engineering that might apply to other technologies.

I understand most people couldn't develop a technology if their life depended on it so I will throw you guys a bone. Look at the wheel... what do you see... wheel causes air flow over water which raises humidity, which turns wheel. Evaporating water cools air, kind of like a self-driving evaporative air conditioner on a planet getting hotter every day. Connect the dots, what do you think a self-sustaining air conditioner would be worth?.

Regards
AC