Air Buoyancy Machine

[brian334]

Air Buoyancy Machine
Build yourself a 1000 ft. high tower. Make a continuous column of tanks on both sides of the tower. The tanks on one side of the tower are lighter than the air they displace and will rise.
The Tanks.
The tanks are cylinders with a diameter of about 10 ft. the tanks on the up side would be filled with a gas lighter than air. Each tank would have a compressor/turbine, a generator/electric motor and a separate tank to store the compressed gas. The weight of the tanks on the up side is exactly the same as the tanks on the down side, the only difference is the weight of the gas in the tank.
Method of Operation
Allow the tanks that are lighter than air to float up doing work, when the tanks get to the top use the compressor to pump the lighter than air gas into the separate storage tank. The tank than fills up with air and will sink. The compressed lighter than air gas will give back some of the energy it took to compress it at the bottom.
At the bottom release the compressed lighter than air gas using it to power a generator. Use the electricity  produced to compress the lighter than air gas at the top.
Note: There needs to be a piston in the tank to keep the lighter than air gas separate from the air.
At my website http://bsandler.com there is a gravity powered machine similar to this except it operates under water. At my website click on the tab at the top of the page marked GRAVITY MACHINE # 2

[TinselKoala]

Ah, Brian. Here we go again.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/themes/buoyant.htm

Just consider two tanks for now, one on the rising side, one on the sinking side. Let the rising one rise, doing work. An equal volume of water sinks. This is where the work comes from. On the other side, a tank sinks. IT MUST DISPLACE AN EQUAL VOLUME OF WATER BACK UP. This takes exactly as much work as you got from the rising tank. However you do it! Whatever mechanism!! You must raise that water back up!! The taller the outer tank, the farther you must raise that water back up!!!!!





(I like your hurricane eyewall vehicle idea, though...)

[Alien509]

Here is my design.

[TinselKoala]

Alien, your design also suffers from the flaw that I try to illustrate in the video below. When the ball enters the column through the trap, it must displace an equal volume of water UP. This takes work. How much? The same amount you get from letting the ball float to the top.
And then your system has many sources of loss. The pump, the gearing, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFO7OvcvUl0

[Alien509]

When the ball enters the trap there is no water inside the trap. it has already been removed. When the door opens, the water comes in and the opposite door has closed. The actuator moves the ball over and the ball floats up. The force on the ball is the larger area, not the trap. The water displaced back out of the trap requires less force than the force generated by the ball moving the generator. Maybe you should look closer.