Ideas and Inventions I designed that I was told would not work

Bicyclecamper · Guru

Ideas and Inventions I designed that I was told would not work

dorian · Guru

Bicyclecamper wrote:
So back in the 80's I invented an alternative power system for our family cabin out bush, This was to power our lights and charge our batteries, as at the time solar panels were too expensive for our barn up top. We have a 20,000 litre water tank beside the barn and a bit of land fall 22 feet drop over 65 feet in length to the impellor driven generator and pump. So the generator, powers the shed electrics, and also powers the pump, to get the water back up to the tank. I was told at the very start this is a perpetual power system and it wouldn't work. But it has been working now for over 40 years. The same system as Snowy 2.0 I also had an idea about charging batteries on a Ev by having Ram Air powered generators on the roof of these EV's, to charge the batteries as they drove along. I mentioned this at the Wikicamps Forum, sometime last year, and was shot down in flames as a silly idea. Well Mercedes Benz, is currently designing a test EV with just that idea. My estimate was it could generate up to 50% of the power required to run the car for a day. MB are looking at 36% extra power advantages having these generators on the roof of this vehicle. So sometimes people have good ideas, but the general Australian public shoots them down in flames, because they think they know it all. Probably why Australia is behind the rest of the world in innovation and not interested in having a manufacturing base here anymore, because they know they are not intelligent enough to compete with the rest of the world.

This is all nonsense. Your ideas are just perpetual motion fantasies.

So is this patent:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US8098040B1/en

Do you have any links to the MB test EV? I can see how such a system might be used to charge the battery during braking, but otherwise it would just impede the forward motion of the car, resulting in greater loss than any perceived gain. In any case, EVs already employ regenerative braking, without the expense of drag.

Whenarewethere · Guru

An AC train network will put power back in the network. But a fully loaded freight train downhill can only put in enough energy to power an uphill empty freight train.

As good as it's going to get.

Izabarack · Guru

In 1989, Preston TAFE (Melbourne) had about 10,000 litres on a building roof and a simple Pelton wheel driven generator at ground level. People doing a Renewable energy certificate used the installation to carry out practical experiments and bump the data against theory. Yeah, Nah. Without external potential energy input, like town water replentishment of the water header, the installation was of little practical use. I did participate in a more useful setup on similar lines at Wild Mountain in Qld, a few years later, with usable results because the gravity fed water input came from a natural spring, 40 vertical metres above the generator.

And if roof mounted ram air spining turbines worked as a regen device, lots of people would already be driving around with wind genearators on their vehicle.

No need to shoot such ideas down in flames as practical experiments provide the data to show the ideas are not practical within the Laws of Physics.

dorian · Guru

In Australia it's possible to be granted a patent for just about anything.

web.archive.org/web/20030315142315/http://www.ipmenu.com/archive/AUI_2001100012.pdf

dogbox · Guru

most things start out as some ones silly idea. then some one comes along an smooths of the rough edges

watsea · Guru

I heard about this type of pump doing my work career.

A pump powered by water pressure that will pump water to a higher height than the original water.

No, it does not gain energy. More "driving" water is passed through than the volume of water that is pumped.

Refer to the link: https://journeytoforever.org/at_waterpump.html

-- Edited by watsea on Tuesday 5th of December 2023 10:04:24 AM

Are We Lost · Guru

Thanks Watsea. From that link ......

"....(the) pump can lift about 1500 litres of water daily to a height of 20 metres, using 2 to 3 metres drive head and 20 litres a minute inlet flow".

20 litres a minute inlet flow is 28,800 lites a day. So, approximately 5% of the input can be pumped 20 metres high. Certainly far from the solution initially posed in this thread. But even for this, I am still skeptical. The explanation of how it works leaves much to be desired. I wonder why farmers waste energy pumping from rivers when there is a solution entirely self powered.

Whenarewethere · Guru

Because some of them are pumping water out so fast rivers are flowing backwards.

dorian · Guru

Are We Lost wrote:
Thanks Watsea. From that link ......

"....(the) pump can lift about 1500 litres of water daily to a height of 20 metres, using 2 to 3 metres drive head and 20 litres a minute inlet flow".

20 litres a minute inlet flow is 28,800 lites a day. So, approximately 5% of the input can be pumped 20 metres high. Certainly far from the solution initially posed in this thread. But even for this, I am still skeptical. The explanation of how it works leaves much to be desired. I wonder why farmers waste energy pumping from rivers when there is a solution entirely self powered.

Potential energy of 1500 litres of water at 20 metres = 1500 kg x g x 20 metres = 30,000 g

Potential energy of 28,800 litres of water at 2 metres = 28,800 kg x g x 2 metres = 57,600 g

Potential energy of 28,800 litres of water at 3 metres = 28,800 kg x g x 3 metres = 86,400 g

Are We Lost · Guru

dorian wrote:
Potential energy of xxxx litres of water at x metres = xxx etc

..... which means that ....?

watsea · Guru

Are We Lost wrote:
dorian wrote:
Potential energy of xxxx litres of water at x metres = xxx etc
..... which means that ....?

I have seen one of those uncommon pump systems working.

I think Dorian was trying to show that the driving (input) energy from the high volume low pressure water is highly available, compared with the energy required to pump the smaller volume to a high pressure.

Hence the system works.

Are We Lost · Guru

I interpret the words from the link to mean that the pump head is 2-3 metres below the intake. So the water would then have to flow to below that level.

Perhaps that 57,600 g of kinetic energy from the intake could drive an impeller that pumps the smaller volume up high. But how to get rid of all the water that has flowed down that 2-3 metres. I can see it could be possible if the source is elevated, but not sure how in practice.

watsea · Guru

Maybe the following link will help with a explanation of how one of these pumps operate:
wet1.com.au/all-you-need-to-know-about-hydraulic-driven-water-pump/

Are We Lost · Guru

Thanks. It confirms that the principle works. The downside is the water source must be higher than the pump and there is a lot of waste. I found a few videos of the design on Youtube, but none showing a practical application. They probably exist but after finding 20-30 demo systems (including phoney ones) I stopped looking.

So you can't use it to pump water from a river because the pump needs to be lower than the source. No doubt there are some applications where it could work. For example a dam on a hillside. As long as the pump is lower than that, it could pump water higher up the hill.

A neat idea I had no idea existed.

watsea · Guru

Yes, below a dam was the situation that I had experienced.
The pump was near a dam wall below the dam water level. A pipe fed the pump system with the pumped water supplying a header tank at a caretaker cottage overlooking the dam.

Izabarack · Guru

The Splityard Creeek dam above Wivenhoe dam in Qld uses grid power to pump water up to the water storage above two 570MW generators to provide surge capacity back to the grid. The installation was commisioned in 1984, from memory. Apparantly, the header dam contributes to a Load flattening strategy popular back when the coal powered Swanbank station was operating.