Hi!
I?ve been reading this forum for months (or even years) ... It is inspiring, to say the least.
I work for a non profit non gubernamental institution down here (I live in Uruguay, South America) which focus in renewable energy sources. Among other stuff, we teach school and highschool children to build solar ovens, solar water heaters, etc. So I've been playing with some concepts for now. I have limited proficiency in electronics (I design temperature controllers, with microcontrolers, sensors,etc. but that?s it) and good programming experience (been a software developer for 20 years).
Excuse my probably obvious ignorance in physics, but, I?ve been fantasizing with the following idea:
http://www.tellurex.com/power_modules/p219.html
1) That peltier can generate 4.8 volts at 1.2 amps when one side is exposed to a cold source and the other to a heated one (for example: assume 30 peltiers, which could eventually give me 14,4 volts at volts and 12amps, which is a bit more than needed for my idea, but hey, lets overengineer this thing! so we are sure it MAY work)
2) I would place such peltiers in a thermically insulated container, in such a way that they are placed exactly in the middle, creating two different and equal cavities, So I can blow hot air in the first and cold air in the second, for the peltiers can create electrical power.
3) In each extremity of each cavity I would create a hole, so I can blow in any of both sides and the air would travel in the inside, making contact with the peltiers and escape out in the other extremity. This of course could be configured in many other shapes / ways, but the main idea si to circulate hot air into one side and cold air into the other side of the peltiers array.
4) I would get a VORTEX pump (no moving parts, it just needs compressed air IN; and then outputs HOT (72 degrees) and COLD (-40 degrees) air, and attach a hose from the vortex outputs into each cavities of our thermic contraption, in the same side. This is also MORE than needed, temperature-wise, for the peltiers to create maximum output, but hey, it is nice to overengineer everything so you can have extra numbers to compensate if needed)
http://www.gyroscope.com/d.asp?product=VORTEXTUBE
5) The tricky part is to find an air pump that would use LESS power than what peltiers can provide: doing a 5 minute search in the internet I found: HIGH-OUTPUT 110-PSI 12-VOLT AIR COMPRESSORS: works with 12volts and draws 10 amps. (which gives a bit more pressure than what the vortex pump uses, but, lets play with bigger numbers in each part, so we are on the safe side).
In short: This system would get air at ambient temperature, accelerate and break into hot and cold air streams inside the vortex tube, and pass it thru, each stream, into each side of a peltier array which in turn generates enough voltage to power the air pump and give an excess ...
WHAT ? crazy ? reachable ? Where I am going wrong ? I confess that I only studied it a couple of minutes, and used information from internet that COULD be wrong ...
We are grabbing energy from the ambient air ... and probably returning it a bit ... cooler ?, in exchange of an excess of power ... Not a perfect self running machine, but no one will notice ;) we NEED cold air ;) "used air" would just be thrown back, out of the holes in the other extremity of each cavity of our thermic contraption, into the ambient air (probably as far as possible from the air intake of the pump).
I am buying 10 peltiers to play with my wood stove ... but I have no vortex tube avail to expand my testings...
I am thinking ... WHERE did I go wrong with my idea ?
110psi .... maybe it is not enough to create the thermic differential on each side of 30 peltiers ? that is an area about 480 square centimeters (it seems small enough) ...
Opinions and suggestions please :)
Regards,
SigmaX
hey sigmax, something similar- use decomp. to cool one side then maybe a vortex tube to re-heat it causing expansion then run through turbine-i dunno
all boils down to extracting the heat energy out of the ambient air, you could do it till you got close to 0 kelvin in theory-temp difference is potential energy just waiting to be used!
I found this web site-about air powered stuff but, a lot of it is run on heat actually-http://www.aircaraccess.com/download.htm (http://www.aircaraccess.com/download.htm)
I downloaded every thing-
this guy says he can build a heat extracting machine-based on Viktor Schauberger-but he took everything off?
I found this cache of his site though haha!!http://72.14.205.104/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Awww.ultralightamerica.com%2Fair_power.htm&btnG=Google+Search (http://72.14.205.104/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Awww.ultralightamerica.com%2Fair_power.htm&btnG=Google+Search)
he also has some cool stuff herehttp://www.ultralightamerica.com/edav.htm (http://www.ultralightamerica.com/edav.htm)
you might like this too!!http://www.frank.germano.com/viktorschauberger_3b.htm (http://www.frank.germano.com/viktorschauberger_3b.htm)
SigmaX,
I think you describe the invention from Ranque and Hilsch also called vortex tube. There doest't exists exact measurements about this tube. See the example from one producer of this tubes: https://www.abbeon.com/store/item.cfm?code=2082.
Your idea sounds good. But I don't see overunity. To generate the Peltier-effect you need a source of engery (heat, coldness or electricity).
But is seems interesting. The vortex tube splits air in hot and cold air. But think about this: What does cold air do: It uses the ambient air to get up to the same level than ambient temperature. This goes hand in hand with the increase of pressure. I think this is what Pyrodin wants to say with the stuff from aircaraccess (air - heat - pressure).
SigmaX
To my understanding a vortex tube is not a very efficient way to create hot and cold.
A sterling engine can be very efficient .
Normally a sterling engine runs off a temprature difference just like your peltiers
If a sterling engine is driven by an outside power source one cylinder gets hot ..........the other side gets cold.
There are sterling engines out there that have been developed to cool cryogenic prosesses
In the case of the sterling you would attach half your peltiers to each cylinder of the sterling
It might be possible to loop the thermal energy .
If you were driving 2 sterling engines with one shaft ....... if one of the sterlings was set up in reverse of the other the tempratures they produced would be opposite ..........you would have both hot and cold on each side of the shaft driving the sterlings . Your peltiers could be placed between them
gary
Hi AlanA, Pyrodin, Resonanceman!
Thanks for you comments and information!!
I followed each of your links, Pyrodin with most attention. I already knew the Austrian's Victor work (I read the Alan Cook book about antigravity, and learned about him in there, and then looked out for more info ... he was a brilliant man, used first by the SS nazis and then by apparently covert CIA people in the disguise of a corporation offering him work in USA... which ended up killing him, I assume, of sadness / disgust. GRR
AlanA: The vortex tube I am speaking of, is a commercial product, and there are all the specs in the link I provided. What I proposed is based on actual commercial / "everyone can buy" ...
About the overunity: I think like you, this is * PROBABLY * NO overunity system (but the question at the bottom of this post remains)
What is more, my personal opinion about the overunity topic (which I might have misunderstood of course) is that there is none in the strictest sense: Please correct me if I am wrong, but the strict overunity concept would mean to create energy from nowhere, which seems to be a NO-GO by our current physics standards.
If you manage to get an excess energy, and can?t find an answer, you might search for the energy provider even in quantum phenomena: There should be always an energy exchange, even if it comes from "a parallel universe". But anyway, if we can't find an answer, we are also entitled to shout Overunity!, aren?t we ?
So now, back into my "idea":
1) I grab ambient air temperature (lets say 20 ?C) with a 12V 10amps air pump
2) and insert it into the vortex tube (now I am truly thinking of buying one!). In 100 psi ... I get TWO air streams output, one at around -30 / -40 ?C and the other at 60 / 70 ? (I assume that each one will be HALF in pressure as the input air).
3) I inject each 50 psi stream to each side of a peltier array, enclosed in a thermically shielded case. The air will cool and heat each peltier?s side, thus generating voltage / current (ATTENTION 1: HERE IS THE FIRST PROBABLY PLACE where things wont be as nice as put in paper by the peltier manufacturers, and I might end with not enough power to move the air pump, in practice)
4) If everything is according to manufacturers, I could get in excess of 12v, with excess of 12 amps. If I dont get it, ATTENTION: SECOND PROBABLY FAILURE PLACE: it could mean that air temperature gets balanced out before reaching the far end of the peltier array (hence the peltiers are not working at 100% electricity generation).
5) The "used air" (will escape into the atmosphere (probably outside the house, so it does not change my ambient temp over the time, as I suspect that it will come out hotter / cooler than what was sucked in from the other side).
My intuition tells me that there are two "could go wrong" points: 1) Air temperature would balance out inside my thermic enclosure before doing its work with every peltier, so generated voltage would be lower than advertised, thus not generating enough to work the pump out. Or 2) I did not correctly understand the peltier information provided by the manufacturer.
BUT: if everything works OK, where does the energy comes from ? The only place I can think of, is from the air temperature: I am suspecting that the air coming out of this hipotetical system would be at different temperature than the one coming in.
BUT: it could come out at the same temperature, if we assume that the peltiers just try to balance out each temperature?s side in the same amounts (and creating electricity while at it). If it comes at the same temperature (which would mean that the peltier?s themselves does not favour or create coldness or hotness in the process of making electricity) then it would be overunity, wouldn't it ?
Damn! I will have to buy everthing and test it out :) please some reader with physics knowledge could throw down my idea, so I dont invest several hundred dollars purchasing a ghost ? :)
Resonanceman: Thanks for the suggestion. Problem is that the peltiers need the cold and heat at the same time, applied to both surfaces. If I correctly get your idea, I need TWO stirling machines to create this (at the same time) hence, needing twice the power to move them (thus halving the system efficiency).
ANyway, I find stirling machines QUITE INTERESTING!!!! It is very nice to see all these puzzle pieces and the way they might interact to create a notable result.
Regards,
SigmaX
Quote from: sigmaX on April 26, 2008, 12:39:02 PM
Resonanceman: Thanks for the suggestion. Problem is that the peltiers need the cold and heat at the same time, applied to both surfaces. If I correctly get your idea, I need TWO stirling machines to create this (at the same time) hence, needing twice the power to move them (thus halving the system efficiency).
SigmaX
Not exactly
It would take 2 strelings to try the thermal loop
The simplest way to test the sterling version is to place one of your peltiers on each cylinder of the sterling . ..... the stirling will pump heat from the cold side into the hot side . Your peltier devices will extract energy from BOTH ends
Unless they have changed alot in the last few years ..... most peltiers will only create a 40 degree change ....... so creating more temp difference than that is probably wasteful
gary
[edit] -
Nice idea....good luck. I am not familiar with the effeciencies of the peltier.
One thing to watch for is the air volume that would be required. Those little 12v pumps can get high pressure but the volume or flow is very small. They can inflate a closed system (tire) to high pressure but if you try to use it as a blow gun you will quickly notice the flow of air is very small....it is even pulsed.
A large air tank maybe necessary to store a volume of high pressure big volume air.
Keep us posted.
Thanks
Hank
Quote from: PYRODIN123321 on April 25, 2008, 03:20:32 PM
hey sigmax, something similar- use decomp. to cool one side then maybe a vortex tube to re-heat it causing expansion then run through turbine-i dunno
all boils down to extracting the heat energy out of the ambient air, you could do it till you got close to 0 kelvin in theory-temp difference is potential energy just waiting to be used!
I found this web site-about air powered stuff but, a lot of it is run on heat actually-http://www.aircaraccess.com/download.htm (http://www.aircaraccess.com/download.htm)
I downloaded every thing-
this guy says he can build a heat extracting machine-based on Viktor Schauberger-but he took everything off?
I found this cache of his site though haha!!http://72.14.205.104/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Awww.ultralightamerica.com%2Fair_power.htm&btnG=Google+Search (http://72.14.205.104/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Awww.ultralightamerica.com%2Fair_power.htm&btnG=Google+Search)
he also has some cool stuff herehttp://www.ultralightamerica.com/edav.htm (http://www.ultralightamerica.com/edav.htm)
you might like this too!!http://www.frank.germano.com/viktorschauberger_3b.htm (http://www.frank.germano.com/viktorschauberger_3b.htm)
More from this device:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Generator_from_Ambient_Air_by_Kim_Zorzi
Ambient air is warm because of energy from the sun so why not skip the heat pump and mount the peltier near the focus of a parabolic mirror aimed at the sun. On the back side (towards the sun) place a computer CPU heat sink and fan. These fans use 12VDC but some old ones (Pentium Overdrive CPU) have a 5VDC fan. You could use an aluminum coated sheet of plastic (space blanket) stretched over a ring to make a very light weight mirror. Pull a slight vacuum to make it convex.
I have played with a peltier from a Coleman electric cooler where I used a kerosene lamp to heat one side (one inch wick burning about 1/3 of maximum output) with a big heat sink on the other side. The heat sink also came from the Coleman cooler; I used a snowball instead of a fan. It produced about 3VDC. One drawback with this design is that some or most of the Colman peltier units have a built in thermostat set to open at about 180 deg F so you don't melt the cooler when it's in heating mode. That's why I used a snowball.
those models of (flat) peltiers are actually rather hard to keep cool. they are designed to USE electricity for heating/cooling, not produce it.
though they WILL make electricity, they do so very inneficiently, and the other side heats up quickly. rendering the unit useless, without putting more energy into cooling it than the device actually produces.
i have a few of these (CPU coolers, same type used in the coleman) and play with them from time to time.
if you are looking into serious power production with this type of device, what you want to use is the generator ring from a BigRig.
they are placed around the verticle exhaust stack, these work very well to produce power. which helps to operate the electrics in the truck, as well as kick back some of the power for battery charging.
You would then use your lense to heat a cylindrical chamber, and place the peltier-ring around that, with subsequent heatsink/fan for cooling.
Interesting idea. I was not aware of either the vortex tube (very cool!) or the peltiers. My meagre suggestions would be to try the rotoverter idea on the compressor motor to reduce current usage and check out the Thermal Accelerator by Archer Quinn to achieve maximium cooling/heating of the air before sending them to the peltier chambers. But being a long time reader of this forum, you have probably thought of these already :)
wow. an actual USE for the archer's loop, im impressed!
there IS a point of compression (at least using "air") where the cooling energy of decompression exceeds the energy used to compress the nitrogen. This occurs at just before the point of condensation and extends slightly passed the liquid point - after which there is a great energy LOSS incurred to achieve further compression pressures. If we could achieve this for the given size of the air-tank, we could maximize cooling, and minimize input energy. We're talking VERY very low flow-rate, or you will destroy the peltier trying to cool it, not to mention waste usefull cooling energy, by exceeding the limitations of the device.
30 peltiers, + a solar concentrator + a high-pressure air compressor.
since the pressure in the tank is so great, we can forego any type of fans, the air will move itself when you release it, and decomp will more than take care of the cooling we need.
the question is, will the electrical output be enough to run the compressor.. while still leaving us with usable thermal - electricity from the sun?
I am pretty sure the thermal accelerator has already seen commercial use in air-conditioners.
I don't quite get where you're going with the liquid nitrogen - correct me if I'm wrong, but nitrogen will not condense out of air to form a liquid at 110 psi - google informs me that this takes place at around -200F, which seems 'excessive'. And the high PSI requirement for an efficient vortex tube could actually be a benefit as it would appear to provide a considerable amount of hot/cold air, possibly allowing for far more peltiers to be employed. They also provide a 'toughened' version of the peltiers, giving them a -50 -> 150 operating range, which should mean they should easily be used without damage.
Quote from: Sprocket on April 27, 2008, 09:48:39 PM
I am pretty sure the thermal accelerator has already seen commercial use in air-conditioners.
I don't quite get where you're going with the liquid nitrogen - correct me if I'm wrong, but nitrogen will not condense out of air to form a liquid at 110 psi - google informs me that this takes place at around -200F, which seems 'excessive'. And the high PSI requirement for an efficient vortex tube could actually be a benefit as it would appear to provide a considerable amount of hot/cold air, possibly allowing for far more peltiers to be employed. They also provide a 'toughened' version of the peltiers, giving them a -50 -> 150 operating range, which should mean they should easily be used without damage.
yeah you'll need at least 5500 PSI, and a slow compression rate, or else you will have to artificially cool the air to liquify the nitrogen content. i also discovered another problem with using liquid nitrogen, it forms a layer between the airflow and the heatsink, nullifying our attempt to cool the device (at least to some degree).
we could probably get enough cooling from just compressed air, but as someone stated above, volume+flowrate is going to play an important role there.
also:: out of curiosity, which A/C company is using the archer's loop? it was invented late last year, and the patent not even applied for until Dec. (still pending from what i understand) Thats a strange place to use it, as the thermal effeciency of an air conditioner is fairly close to ideal, with a closed system -working fluid.
I found this on YouTube
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oizI6ysEcKo (http://youtube.com/watch?v=oizI6ysEcKo)
Hi Everyone!
So many interesting puzzle pieces to play with!!
Sm0ky: illuminating video! I can see that the vortexx tube gets 3 times more heat air than cold air, If I correctly interpret the information provided, it is 6 cfm for heat air and 2cfm for cold air, out of an 8cfm / 60psi air input. This sound a no-go to create the desired effect with the peltiers, as I need (again IF I correctly interpet the manufacturer?s info) the same amount of heating and cooling, so it keeps correctly (in) balanced in order to create electricity.
Sprocket: I found Archer Quinn website (the one about the god?s sword) some days ago. Where did you see a schematic / detail of the Thermal Accelerator ? Archer is either crazy, genius, or both. let?s see what happens in June ...
Pese: I visited the link you provided, and searched for more info on Kim Zorzi. I cannot figure out if he actually built his invention. His design is like an artist drawing, which gives me the idea of very early / inspired / but not toroughly studied system.
I got a very big metal stove in my livingroom, which will burn lots of woods this winter. I was also counting on this big wasteful heat source to play with the peltiers.
About the SUN : What gives more electricity per square inch ? A peltier (maybe with one of its faces placed inside a "solar oven" contraption and the other with an aluminium dissipator, below in the shadow) or a solar panel ? Anyone cares to consider it ? I got 1v / 500mah little solar cells ... they are about twice as big as the peltiers... I Will try this when the peltier arrives.
One other thing: I was playing with the concept of sodium acetate (it's the "miracle" liquid inside the hands warmers). It is a supercooled liquid, that you can heat to 100?C for some minutes, then cool down to ambient temperature, and it will stay liquid until some metal sheet, cable, pin whatever inside the liquid gets stressed (would it work, I wonder, with a flexinol / nitinol wire, so that I could automate the heat release ? - Another thing to try) and then it will start a crystalization process that will generate temperature of around 60?C for minutes (hours?)
I wonder: Could this be used as a heat batery ? As I said, lots of pieces to play with the energy puzzle in different ways :)
Regards,
sigmaX
@sm0ky2: Presumption is the mother of all evil - I presumed this was more than a pending patent, so you are correct that it is unlikely to have any commercial applications yet. I think I am right in presuming that this could be used to maximise cooling as well as heating though - at least that how I read the patent..
@sigmaX: The patent pdf is available here http://www.surphzup.com/downloads/Thermal_Accelerator_app.pdf (http://www.surphzup.com/downloads/Thermal_Accelerator_app.pdf). From what I have read about the vortex tube, the temperature is adjusted using the valve on the 'hot' end. Also, don't the peltiers have a pretty 'asymmetric' temperature range - I recall reading -50 -> +150, so more hot air might be a good thing...
peltier devices are based on a simple thermocouple.
the power output is based on the difference in temperature between the two sides. wether one is "more hot" than the other is "cold" is quite frankly irrelevant.
its the total difference between the two that determines your power output.
so equal ammounts of "hot" and "cold" are not necessarily needed to create power.
the problem we run into is that the cold side gets hot - thus decreasing that difference in temperature.
as long as the vortex-tube can maintain that temperature difference, we should be good to go.
Ive started a thread, on "how to" go about constructing your own Vortex Tube.
http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,4607.0.html (http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,4607.0.html)
enjoy
::::: i've come across this other device, which could take the place of the Peltier, for a higher conversion rating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkali-metal_thermal_to_electric_converter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkali-metal_thermal_to_electric_converter)
dear sigmax
why you didn't write about the conclusion of your interesting experiment
please write soon
thank you in advance