http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a16045/evaporation-engine/
I thought "Drinking Bird" was the first.
Quote from: lumen on June 18, 2015, 03:14:24 PM
I thought "Drinking Bird" was the first.
Drinking bird is a heat engine. This one is not. Actually it's veeery cool.
So this is more based on humidity and not on temperature difference from evaporation.
Like using the nylon filaments from a humidity sensor.
Drinking bird is evaporation driven but by the thermal difference and this uses dry and moist air to operate.
Quote from: lumen on June 18, 2015, 03:14:24 PM
I thought "Drinking Bird" was the first.
Evaporating water = steam. A couple of thousand years ago, Hero of Alexandria gave us the aeolipile, a hollow sphere, mounted on a pair of tubes, with two angled tubes forming jets. Then came James Watt or the chap with the Cornish name..
I understand many of the old school people really don't understand Energy nor the evolution of Energy systems as it applies to the exponential growth of knowledge so I figured I might explain our future.
Now on the surface the critic might say... so what?, the evaporation engine is a low energy device. However it is not the device in itself it is the concept and the core technology which matters most. We have plastic strips coated with organic material sensitive to humidity which expand and contract. Next we integrate this technology with nano-technology to increase the energy density then devise ways to mass produce it like using a printing press.
We end up with a semi-organic device not unlike our muscles only much stronger and powered by ambient energy or changes in the relative humidity... water. Now if we have water and hot dry air and a massive surface area in a small volume then we do have a high energy density. Personally I find it very strange that most are completely oblivious to an energy solution which is staring us in the face every day. We are the perfect machine, we can perform a great deal of work on a minimal completely organic input, we can heal or repair ourselves and are sustainable and completely biodegradable.
There is absolutely no reason simple and very cheap organic machines could not be built which are based on our physical process which can perform a great deal of work. If we can do it then we can build a simple organic machine to do it just like we do. We may not understand this but we are looking at the beginning of a technology which will revolutionize our future. It is like when those inventors who doped some silicon discovered the p/n junction which is the basis of our solar cell technology as well as the transistor which led to the computer revolution.
This is not small it is a very big deal.
AC
Yes truly revolutionary path
On another note and More in Line with "your" thinking @ AC [albeit a bit grizzly...]
we had a thread here on Cow Hearts and utilizing them to do useful work ??
almost afraid to Bump that thread :o