This could be a real paradigm shift in electric motor and generator technology.
http://revolution-green.com/capacitive-power-coupler-capacitive-machine/
Kind Regards
Mark
Yes, indeed interesting.
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C-Machine™ Capacitive Machine The second machine is an electrostatic motor. Although not as advanced in its development C-Captive are claiming the following:
- Electrostatic motor designed as a full replacement for existing motors and generators
- Produces high-torque at low-speed
- All-aluminum and recyclable
- Lightweight
- Does not require a gearbox
- Achieves smooth rotation and minimal noise
- Designed to operate at 95 percent efficiency, cutting energy loss by a factor of 3 over conventional motors
Status: Prototype nearing completion and will begin Beta Testing in 2014.
Is it 2014 yet? I really want to see this particular prototype in operation. My own experience with electrostatic motors makes me tend to doubt that they can achieve some of these design goals. However I am happy to be proven wrong, with evidence. I can certainly believe that they are not as advanced in development with this project.
Argh. Now that I have watched the demonstration video I am really depressed. I used essentially the same system, except with concentric, airgapped cylinders instead of facing plates, for capacitive power transfer to rotating equipment back in 2000 and 2001. But nobody thought it was significant or important back then, it was just a useful lab kludge to get power where it was needed.
In my opinion, now, having experience with both capacitive power transfer and EM transfer, there are very few situations where the capacitive solution would be the better choice.
ETA: the more I read the more depressed I get. What, exactly, is really new in this company's demonstrations? They appear to have patented common items of electrical art that have been known for over a hundred years, some of them, just arranged slightly differently. Benjamin Franklin would be more interested in the HV power supply and diodes. The actual "capacitive coupling" and motoring part would be completely familiar to him. He might marvel at the transparent plastic but the operating principle was first used by him, after all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir9RIsXzmzY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir9RIsXzmzY) (2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqf3bUL4YqE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqf3bUL4YqE) (2009)
@TinselKoala:
The new thing are the "flexible plates" which allow for a very small air gap between the rotor and stator plates.
In the video on this page http://www.c-motive.com/our-technology-products/ (http://www.c-motive.com/our-technology-products/) see from minute 3:20 onwards.
The very small gap between the plates is held by air flow and the flexibility of the plates corrects the distance (slight wobble).
The invention is the design of the flexible plates (which makes a very small gap between rotor and stator plates possible) and not the motor principle (which is known since the 19th century).
But I do not know whether the very small gap really makes a great difference. It could well be. In an electrostatic machine mechanical precision is the main hurdle for creating a very small air gap. May be the flexible plates are a good way to create a very small air gap with manageable precision.
Modern electronics also makes high Voltage (e.g. 20.000 Volt) more manageable. May be the time for the electrostatic motor has finally come.
Greetings, Conrad
P.S.: http://www.designworldonline.com/noncontacting-slip-rings-capable-kw-level-power/ (http://www.designworldonline.com/noncontacting-slip-rings-capable-kw-level-power/)
One of the first prototypes used rigid plates, but the design team could not position them close enough because of mechanical tolerances. "There is always a little wobble and misalignment. Our inventing devised a way to achieve levels of capacitance no one has done before," he says.
The plates, now flexible, sport an aerodynamic fluid bearing between them. "Because they flex, they float on a cushion of air making them quite durable. You can shake the assembly while running and the plates do not touch," adds Reed.
Yes, I see that, thanks. They say that they are able to achieve separations closer than 0.004 inch with their flexible plates. That is closer than my concentric cylinder system but not by very much. And for any capacitor to hold off voltage it has to have a pretty good dielectric in between the charge-carrying plates. It doesn't take much voltage to jump a 0.004 inch air gap. So I can believe that they have large capacitances, maybe... but not at high voltages without something other than air in between rotor and stator plates. Capacitor plates also experience an attractive force from the opposite charge concentrations. I am having a lot of trouble understanding how an air cushion can keep two oppositely charged, flexible plates from making contact, at any point, when their nominal separation is that small to begin with. But certainly my system didn't use any deliberate air cushion. So OK, good on them for that improvement in the art.
Does the air cushion come from the spinning itself, or is it supplied by an external source of compressed air? If the first, then what happens when the thing isn't spinning but power still needs to be transferred? If it is externally supplied, what happens if that supply is interrupted for some reason while the system is operating at kiloWatt power transfer levels?
I once built a large Bonetti machine using thin polycarbonate discs. This plastic is a lot more flexible than acrylic. The electrostatic forces on these rotating discs would pull and push at different places around the discs and set up a travelling warp that was frightening to behold. Yes, the discs crashed together in places in spite of the "air cushion" between them (about 30 times larger than their gap!) But the voltages in that machine were over 200 kV so the forces were correspondingly large.
All of that still doesn't apply to their ES motor though, just the capacitive power transfer system.
How two parallel plates made of a uniform material exert force to make them move one against another? I understand they can exert perpendicular force but I don't know the other way.
Quote from: TinselKoala on October 14, 2014, 08:58:28 AM
..............
And for any capacitor to hold off voltage it has to have a pretty good dielectric in between the charge-carrying plates. It doesn't take much voltage to jump a 0.004 inch air gap. So I can believe that they have large capacitances, maybe... but not at high voltages without something other than air in between rotor and stator plates. Capacitor plates also experience an attractive force from the opposite charge concentrations. I am having a lot of trouble understanding how an air cushion can keep two oppositely charged, flexible plates from making contact, at any point, when their nominal separation is that small to begin with.
...............
Does the air cushion come from the spinning itself, or is it supplied by an external source of compressed air? If the first, then what happens when the thing isn't spinning but power still needs to be transferred? If it is externally supplied, what happens if that supply is interrupted for some reason while the system is operating at kiloWatt power transfer levels?
...............
@TinselKoala: You are right, there are a lot of unexplained factors in this "invention". Let's hope there are more ideas in this machine than the "inventors" disclose. If not, it is just nonsense or grand standing.
These electrostatic machines are hard to understand (motors and specially the generators), and I am not even sure that anybody really understands them completely. I read a few different explanations.
I always wondered if an electrostatic generator (Whimshurst, Bonetti, ..) keeps functioning in an airtight housing? There should be air in the housing, but no air exchange with the outside. And let's assume there are wires leading the generated charge out of the air tight housing where it is grounded.
My own unproven theory is that these generators steal the charge from positive and negative air ions and if there is no fresh air, after some time, no more air ions can be discharged (neutralised).
The functioning of these generators depends a lot on the weather or climate in a room (humidity is not the only factor). Some days they work better and some days they hardly work. My tests worked better in winter during the night, may be because the rooms are dryer, but I was never sure about this.
Greetings, Conrad
Quote from: Qwert on October 14, 2014, 04:05:23 PM
How two parallel plates made of a uniform material exert force to make them move one against another? I understand they can exert perpendicular force but I don't know the other way.
The patent drawing shows some segmented plates, like Maltese crosses but with more arms. If you are familiar with how some electrostatic voltmeters work, they may be using the same idea, where two segmented plates will try to rotate so their segments overlap completely. If you remove the charge at that point inertia can carry the plates to the non-overlapping position, where charge can then be re-applied to once again draw them towards full overlap. This is a weird way to make a motor but it does work.
However I did not read the patent carefully enough, I just looked at the pictures, so I don't know if their motor is actually supposed to work that way.
Quote from: conradelektro on October 14, 2014, 07:36:13 PM
@TinselKoala: You are right, there are a lot of unexplained factors in this "invention". Let's hope there are more ideas in this machine than the "inventors" disclose. If not, it is just nonsense or grand standing.
These electrostatic machines are hard to understand (motors and specially the generators), and I am not even sure that anybody really understands them completely. I read a few different explanations.
I agree. Even the old and well-known ones are not fully understood. And you are right, you can find several different explanations of how they work. But they are understood well enough so that they can be engineered, improved, and every now and then someone does actually come up with a really new design, so the understanding can't be all that wrong. Maybe just different flavors of "right".
Quote
I always wondered if an electrostatic generator (Whimshurst, Bonetti, ..) keeps functioning in an airtight housing? There should be air in the housing, but no air exchange with the outside. And let's assume there are wires leading the generated charge out of the air tight housing where it is grounded.
My own unproven theory is that these generators steal the charge from positive and negative air ions and if there is no fresh air, after some time, no more air ions can be discharged (neutralised).
It's a nice theory, but I think it's wrong. Actually I think they separate charge that exists in the machine itself. That is, when the machine is idle and discharged, the capacitors and metal parts are all neutral. But when you start up the machine it starts separating the charges in the caps and metal parts, pumping the electrons with their negative charges all over to one side of the machine, which results in "holes" on the positive side. They are charge separators, not charge accumulators. All the charge they are working with is already in the machine to begin with. The input of mechanical power is what separates the charge and pumps the electrons over to one side.
Now, all that being said... would they work in a vacuum? I think a Wimshurst will, but a Bonetti won't. The reason is the contact. A true Wimshurst has brushes that make physical contact with the charge-carrying metal sectors on the discs. This is why they will self-charge. The Bonetti, though, relies on corona emission from the non-contact combs which deposit and receive charge from the surface-charged portions of the non-conductive discs. So there has to be some gas that can be ionized, for this to happen, and the machines must always have a little charge imbalance in order for the induction process to begin. In my Bonettis, I have discovered how to apply this starting charge with my fingers. Others use rabbit fur and pvc pipe, or an electronic supply, or even a beta-emitter, to provide the starting charge.
But I think yours would be an interesting experiment to perform. Perhaps, as you say, the system will come to some equilibrium and stop charging, especially if some of the power is used outside the enclosure.
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The functioning of these generators depends a lot on the weather or climate in a room (humidity is not the only factor). Some days they work better and some days they hardly work. My tests worked better in winter during the night, may be because the rooms are dryer, but I was never sure about this.
Greetings, Conrad
You are right about that too. I have found, and more experienced workers agree, that it isn't so much the moisture in the air itself that hurts ES machine performance, but rather the thin film of water adsorbed onto the surfaces of the machines from the humid air that does it. Combined with dust etc. the water makes conductive paths that short out the machine or bleed off charge to where it doesn't belong. This is good, though, because it means that gently warming the machine itself with a blow dryer can "instantly" restore full functioning in humid weather. I have given ES demonstrations in full rainstorm weather by doing this. A small blowdryer is a permanent part of my ES demonstration kit. Be careful though, a low power unit is best because it's easy to melt plastic with too much heat.
The colder the outside air the better. When I was in Toronto, and the outside air would get down to -20C sometimes... the ES machines loved it!
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