Quote from: Charlie_V on December 12, 2008, 11:26:33 PM
Also, I can tell you right now a coil of 22ohms is WAY too lossy.  Try getting a half inch piece of copper pipe and bend it into a coil, and make sure all your leads are large wires and very short.  That should improve efficiency a lot. 

I WANT TO TRY THIS I WILL BUY PIPE TOMMOROW HOW BOUT 1/4 OR 3/8?

ist

btw vid is 10 min long and i uploading right now to youtube......

link as soon as it is done and well worth your waite 

Quote from: Charlie_V on December 12, 2008, 11:23:08 PM
One thing I wanted to mention that seems to be overlooked (probably isn't though, I haven't read all 70 something posts).  Anyway, when you place the capacitors in parallel, you are adding the capacitance of the system.  Together they become one capacitor of 9400uF charged to 9Volts.

One thing I was thinking about today was what happens when you add capacitors that are not of the same capacitance.  As Allcanadian said, if you add a 2F capacitor in parallel instead of another 4700uF, what is the voltage in both after the discharge?  I know the ratio will be different, but how do you determine what the voltage ratios are?  Its probably simple, but because the energy stored in the first capacitor is limited, its not initially apparent to me.  Any ideas?

Charlie

Actually, it's better to think of the two capacitors as being connected in series, not parallel.

To work out the end result voltage, you work the problem as you would a resistive divider, but in this case they are capacitors. An example to illustrate, we'll discharge C1 into C2 directly through a piece of wire:

C1=4700uF
C2=470uF
C1 initial voltage = 18.33V
C2 initial voltage = 0V

C1,C2 Final Voltage is: 18.33 (4700/5170) = 16.66V (yes C1 and C2 are the same voltage)



Regarding the copper tube coil idea, good luck with that. The idea is to make the L/R ratio as high as possible, so unless you are going to make a 1/2" copper tube coil that is a few hundred feet long, you won't get enough inductance. What is needed is the primary of a high VA transformer.

.99

After seeing captainpecans hard work I decided to go back to the bench which is never a good thing because I always end up learning new things that I knew for certain could never work, LOL.

Experiment 1
Three Caps are utilized, Cap 1 is 4700uF@25v, Cap 2 is 4700uF@25v, Cap 3 is 2 Farads@24v.

Start Conditions:
Cap 1 = 12.51v or 367.775mJoules energy
Cap 2 = 0v
Cap 3 = 0v
Cap 1 is discharged into Cap 2 through Cap 3, that is Cap 3 is in series with Cap 1 and Cap 2.

Finish Conditions:
Cap 1 = 4700uF at 8.09v or 153.803mJ
Cap 2 = 4700uF at 7.45v or 130.431mJ
Cap 3 = 2 Farads at 0.265v or 70.225mJ

Total Energy at Finish = 354.459mJoules Energy
354.459 / 367.775 = 96.3%

All calculations were done here---
http://www.electronics2000.co.uk/calc/calcchrg.php
Energy stored: W = ½ QV = ½ CV2 where W is the energy measured in Joules.
Note:All experiments performed in an ice cold garage under poor lighting while half intoxicated 

Here is another neat trick, take a joule thief circuit which will drive six or more 3v LED's from a single 1.5v AA battery, mine runs at 1Mhz. Next instead of discharging through the LED's to ground put a 2 Farad capacitor in series with the LED's and the common ground. You will find after running for a minute or so that the very large 2 Farad capacitor will still read zero volts which is expected------ but what is unexpected is that if you short the 2 Farad capacitor at zero volts with a large conductor/wire a good spark and very loud crack will be heard, that seems like an awful lot of power at zero volts generated from a single 1.5v AA battery.
Regards
AC

@AC

Thanks for hitting the bench for a few minutes, lol.  Your results are very interesting, I'm trying to get my hands on a larger cap, but I dont have any available. 

Also, I'm playing with the idea of using Nimh bats.  It's really hard to get accurate measurements with them though since the voltage changes quite a bit as time passes between tests. It seems I am moving energy between them very efficiently, while still running a motor.  But to be honest, I cant really tell for sure, measuring the energy in these Nimh bats is definitely more difficult to do accurately. The caps definitely move the energy around faster though, and your results look pretty promising.

@buzz

Thanks for the link, interesting read. Although looking at the results of those tests, it seems they lose even more energy than I do.  Good read though, right on topic, and does follow the same concepts. Very interesting.