Things have gone very quiet. The last I heard, on Wayne`s website, he planned to call in Mark Dansie. Anyone heard any news from anywhere?

they are planning to do long term running this week, will keep you informed.
Mark

Hi Mark, and many thanks for the update. At the risk of repeating myself, it is obvious that Wayne`s team have to have everything perfect before your tests begin.There is, after all so much at stake. This technology , in terms of the future of mankind, is of far greater importance than putting a man on the moon. Not only is there the prospect of cheaper , cleaner energy, but if this pans out, we can never look at physics in the same way again. I trust that, in as much as you are able, you will keep us up to date.

@mondrasek: thanks for the answer and the graphics. You are working hard on this, I can tell. I hope you are getting enough sleep!
I see then that you are considering the moving masses of the cylinders themselves, and your iterative process seems to be zeroing in on the maximum "break even" masses: if the cylinders are too heavy, the system won't work. And apparently also if they are too light it won't work, because the added lifted mass (A "bias" mass?)  is just effectively making that cylinder heavier, since the mass itself is constant.

I still haven't had the time to go over the spreadsheets in detail. I am trusting the accuracy of the modellers and accepting the numbers provisionally but I still feel that somewhere there is something that's not getting into the accounting.

This last little RED statement worries me, pulls me up short. Have I missed something?

Compressed air must be pumped in? From where? What does the pumping, how much compression, etc. and is this pumped in compressed air accounted for when we have been told that, except for the precharge, nothing is added or exhausted during operation?

(Linear, nonlinear? These terms are used ambiguously. Sometimes it appears that "linear" is used in the sense of the order of the equation: linear, quadratic, cubic, quartic, etc. all of which have different shaped "lines" on a graph of the function. And anything that is not first-order (straight line) is considered non-linear, even if it is still a smooth, easily predicted graph like the second order, quadratic function. Stretchy springs or compressed air cylinders are examples that are smooth functions but not necessarily straight line functions... especially if the way the volume changes as the air is compressed is itself NONLINEAR....... imagine a tapered cylinder with a conforming piston..... hint hint....
Other times it seems to mean "non-differentiable", that is, the function cannot be described by a _smooth_ line, or it has holes or kinks in it.. discontinuities or cusps, places where the function's first derivative vanishes or is undefined. Bend a pencil and you get a linear stress-strain relationship right up until it breaks-- becomes non-linear, the derivative vanishes and the behaviour can't be described by a simple function whose solution is a smooth curve ( a straight line is the ultimate "smooth curve".))

@TK, lol yes I am able to sleep with this one!  It's not my baby to birth. 

Re: Compressed air.  The addition of compressed air is part of the assembly process of the ZEDs.  It is how you get the water and air into the proper locations within the system.  To begin assembly you start with no Pod or Risers installed.  You have only the main tank and it's internal walls that are all sealed and attached to the bottom.  You need to fill that tank until the water covers all those internal walls.  Then you install the Pod.  Next you install the smallest riser.  But to do so you must have a vent in the top to allow for the air inside to escape.  Once this riser is full submerged you seal that vent.  The next larger riser is then installed, also allowing the air inside to vent.  Rinse and repeat until all risers are installed, all trapped air is vented, and all vents are sealed.  Note that at this point the only air in the system is the air inside the sealed Pod.  The Pod may also have been slightly pressurized to help neutralize the minimal water pressure it will face.

Of course, the Pod and Risers need to be held down in the water at this point as well as when the compressed air is introduced.

The compressed air is then added from below the Pod in the center chamber of the ZED.  It is compressed only enough to overcome the pressure due to the weight of the water in the system, nothing more.  This air will bubble up around the Pod and begin filling the gap between the Pod chamber wall and the inside of the inner most riser.  It forces the water in this area down, thus increasing the water level in the outer most chamber and driving up the overall pressure in the system due to that water height.  So the compressed air pressure to overcome is also increasing in order to continue pumping.

Once the air has driven all the water out of this gap between the Pod chamber wall and inner most riser it will begin bubbling up again through the water between the outside of the Inner Riser and the wall directly outside the Pod chamber wall (middle wall).  Once again the air begins to fill and drive the water down and out of the gap between the middle wall and the inside of the Outer Riser.  Again, this drives up the level of the water in the outer most chamber and increases the pressure in the entire system.  So the compressed air pressure is still rising to over come the ever increasing water head pressure.  However, the compressed air is still relatively low pressure.  Wayne is saying it is only about 8 psi gage in his 6 foot tall system.  In my little model it is only .917 psi gage.

The system is "full" of the correct amount of air when you see air bubbles start to rise in the outer most chamber.  The ZED will now have water and air in the comfiguration shown in my illustrations as "Full."

As far as the nonlinear stuff goes, I am not 100% sure how Wayne means this and look forward to his explanation.  I have found some relationships that might not graph as a straight line, but I'm not sure if it is exactly what he means.  The most interesting is that when the water is allowed to flow out from the ZED Pod chamber in the "Full" condition, the water pressure begins to drop and therefore the air in the chambers begins to expand.  So the Pod/Risers do not drop as much as I have shown in my illustrations so far (those ignored air volume increases).  The expanding air increases the buoyancy and the pressure of the water flowing out of the Pod Chamber.  Calculating for data points under these conditions is an iterative nightmare for me, so I cannot tell it yet if is nonlinear or simply linear with a different slope.

The way this thing moves and the air and water levels adjust is fascinating!  I can only now begin to visualize what is going on inside after a LOT of calculations and illustrations.  I can only imagine Wayne learned as much about his system as he experimented and tested.  To think that anyone could come up with all this straight away is more than I can (yet) attribute to any person of less than savant status.

M.