i really don’t know what to say… i mean,
why not have a large light which shines on a solar panel which runs the light? that makes sense right?
(this post is pointless… as is this thread)
convert from electrical to mechanical and you get heat in one form or another. Heat is a loss of energy which is why your system will fail.
Hell, the modern gasoline engine is roughly only 30-40% efficient. If it was 100% efficient you wouldn’t need a cooling system.
[quote]Bri Hildebrandt wrote:
Ok guys… I have this idea of creating a fusion reactor in my backyard. Do you think it’ll work better than this guys idea? I saw it done in a movie once. If I stick to the principles layed out in the movie do you think it’ll work?
p.s. by the way… the movie was called “The Saint”.
Let me know what you think. Thanks. :)[/quote]
Hey, I was thinking about having a mini-fusion reactor (Mr. Fusion) in the back of my car, which can take any random garbage (including banana peels) and run off of it.
I saw it on a movie too!
haha
it was called back to the future.
[quote]bullpup wrote:
How do you come up with this? If you have a 12 volt electric motor that draws 15 amps at 1800 RPM under full load, and it is powering an alternator rated at 150 amps@1200RPM, where do you associate a 135 amp parasitic loss? This doesn’t make sense,. I just want to know how you determine the alternator will be less power than the motor turning it will require?
[/quote]
Just because a component is rated to have the ability to put out a certain amount of power doesn’t mean that it will.
If the power supply is not capable of driving the component at it’s capacity, you will not achieve the maximum rated value of units- what ever they may be.
The weak link in this chain will be that the 12 volt motor will not be able to drive the alternator to its max output. Hell, it might burn up just trying to make it turn, let alone put out a signifigant amount of power.
[quote]mdm wrote:
Also,
Why not just buy a small domestic wind turbine, or use solar power to charge your batteries or store enough diesel to power a small generator?
Cheers,
Mdm
[/quote]
Yes, just take the windmill down when hurricanes are forecast. Then again solar power cells should be good for most conditions, except night of course. Only problem is you would need quite a few solar cells. Alot of remote pipeline insrument stations use solar power nowadays. Now if you could burn wood in a steam generator … hmmm
You should then connect the battery to an alchemy set and turn scrap metal into gold.
Guys,
An electrical engineer that I work with agreed that it would work.
When I talked to him about it he said he did an expirement in his post graduate studies similar to this and he said his contraption extended the discharge rate of the deep cycle battery by 75%.
I am aware of the parasitic loss of power due to friction, heat, etc… But I was really looking for other ideas and or opinions that could help me. I’m not trying to change the world, I’m not worried about gas prices, but If i could extend the charge life of a battery and in the process not use the gasoline resources I have durring a time of need I think I have accompolished something.
I’m going to try and get one put together if time permits. I just think the idea seems to simplistic not to work.
The light bulb idea shining on a solar panel has some merit, but the light bulb should be an LED light. An LED light produces 94% efficent light with out the production of heat. It’s common knowledge that heat associated with a standard light bulb wastes 85% of the energy used to make the light bulbs filament glow.
Just a thought
Remeber they thought Leonardo Da Vinci was a fool too…
Bullpup
[quote]bullpup wrote:
The light bulb idea shining on a solar panel has some merit, but the light bulb should be an LED light. An LED light produces 94% efficent light with out the production of heat. It’s common knowledge that heat associated with a standard light bulb wastes 85% of the energy used to make the light bulbs filament glow.
Just a thought
Remeber they thought Leonardo Da Vinci was a fool too…
Bullpup[/quote]
A superb solar panel is MAYBE ~15% efficient. Solar panels are an extremely inefficient way to convert energy. The poster was pointing out the rediculousness. And this EE is jerking your chain. Engine-generator-battery is the most efficient way to do this, period. Adding any other step is just more wasted energy.
Just get hold of some anti-matter thats 100% efficient and theres no radiation fallout just the fact that if it touches any other form of matter it will cause a devastating exsplosion!
If you somehow makes this work I’ll buy the patent off of you for 100 bucks.
[quote]Think tank fish wrote:
Just get hold of some anti-matter thats 100% efficient and theres no radiation fallout just the fact that if it touches any other form of matter it will cause a devastating exsplosion![/quote]
Oh, I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Bullpup’ll just make a perfectly fool-proof magnetic bottle out of duct tape, a watch battery, and three blanched peas.
[quote]bullpup wrote:
Guys,
An electrical engineer that I work with agreed that it would work.
When I talked to him about it he said he did an expirement in his post graduate studies similar to this and he said his contraption extended the discharge rate of the deep cycle battery by 75%.
[/quote]Perhaps you could have this engineer friend of yours write up a brief explanation of how and/or why this would work? Or maybe you could draw up a schematic or something. From what you’re saying I think we may be misunderstanding your contraption because it sounds to me like you’d be decreasing the charge life of the battery by using it to charge itself. By the way, I’m not an electrical engineer but have a degree in computer science and studied quite a bit of electrical stuff in college.
[quote]
Remeber they thought Leonardo Da Vinci was a fool too…
Bullpup[/quote]
I know it wasn’t your intention, but this makes it seem like you’re comparing yourself to one of the greatest minds of all time. It doesn’t help your cause and makes you sound arrogant and pompous. Besides, daVinci didn’t have gas generators, alternators, or batteries, how’s that for foolish 
You know, at this point, I think he should really just go ahead and try it. We don’t lose anything if he does. And, since he’s wrong =), maybe he’ll learn something about resistance, friction, and physics in general. If (by some unlikely occurence) he is right, then the whole world gains by tapping a source of infinite energy.
And I’d really not recommend you use the “They laughed at ” quote. It’s a failure of basic logic. Remember the Strong Words from Carl Sagan a few days back?
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
Kailash, Bullpup, I can’t believe you clowns are berating me for being negative (or making a spelling mistake… dipshits).
There are some fundamental laws that have been proven to hold up to the tests of time. If you want to devise a way to break those laws it will take more than duct tape, a hammer and some bloody knuckles.
Bullpup, the best you can do is use a battery to store any power you aren’t using while the generator runs, then turn off the generator once the battery is fully charged.
However, I suspect that for anything useful you’ll be looking at deep discharge batteries, because normal batteries like those in cars don’t work well for that purpose.
Anyway, I must go now…
I’m building a new contraption that sucks heat out of objects and I have to get it to market in time for summer!
[quote]
I’m building a new contraption that sucks heat out of objects and I have to get it to market in time for summer![/quote]
They call those heat pumps.
Let’s try this.
Say your motor uses 10 Amps, or 120 Watts, and is 80% efficient. The most power that can be produced by this motor is 96 Watts. If this is mecahaniclly connected to a 75% efficient alternator, the maximum output would be 72 Watts, or 6 Amps at 12V. This is equivalent to connecting the battery to a device that uses 4 Amps to produce heat and a spinning motion.
So, if you want to generate more power than you use so you can operate other appliances, the net efficiency of the alternator and motor must be greater than 100%. Unforunatly efficiency ratings are never over 100%. Look up some alternators and motors and check.
A standard Ford alternator can be manipulated by disconnecting the diodes in the rear, it will now produce 120 volts. Take this 120 volts and split it into two legs run each of them through an adjustable regulator. You can now use 12 volts to charge the battery and you can regulate the other leg to run the electric motor. The alternator requires 1 HP for every 25 amps it produces. A typical 60 amp alternator will produce 120 amps with no increse in HP demand. So a 3 horspower electric motor rated @ 5000RPM will supply the correct power and torque needed to drive the alternator inturn producing power to feed the electric motor and charge the battery simultanously.
Bullpup
[quote]bullpup wrote:
A standard Ford alternator can be manipulated by disconnecting the diodes in the rear, it will now produce 120 volts. Take this 120 volts and split it into two legs run each of them through an adjustable regulator. You can now use 12 volts to charge the battery and you can regulate the other leg to run the electric motor. The alternator requires 1 HP for every 25 amps it produces. A typical 60 amp alternator will produce 120 amps with no increse in HP demand. So a 3 horspower electric motor rated @ 5000RPM will supply the correct power and torque needed to drive the alternator inturn producing power to feed the electric motor and charge the battery simultanously.
Bullpup[/quote]
And that makes sense to you? Have you not read anything we’ve been telling you? Thermodynamics…laws of…friction…heat loss…do you have magic alternators that defy the linear power/output ratios you establish for them? I suggest you build this, because otherwise you aren’t going to learn. I’m out of here before my mind explodes.
[quote]bullpup wrote:
A standard Ford alternator can be manipulated by disconnecting the diodes in the rear, it will now produce 120 volts. Take this 120 volts and split it into two legs run each of them through an adjustable regulator. You can now use 12 volts to charge the battery and you can regulate the other leg to run the electric motor. The alternator requires 1 HP for every 25 amps it produces. A typical 60 amp alternator will produce 120 amps with no increse in HP demand. So a 3 horspower electric motor rated @ 5000RPM will supply the correct power and torque needed to drive the alternator inturn producing power to feed the electric motor and charge the battery simultanously.
Bullpup[/quote]
Amps and Volts are variables that make up Watts, and you cannot change the voltage without changing the amperage at the same wattage.
Power = Potential * Current or
Watts = Volts * Amps
If you change the voltage output from 12 volts to 120 volts, you either:
a) divide the current (Amps) output by 10 or
b) multiply the power input (watts) by 10
Example:
25 Amps at 12 volts is the same as 2.5 Amps at 120 volts. Both of these = 300 Watts
Also, the example of 120Amp output from the alternator assumes 12 Volt output setting. It would produce 12Amps at most at 120 volts with the same input power.
Watts can also be expressed as horsepower:
1 horsepower = 745.7 Watts
Input power * Efficiency = Output Power (expressed as watts)
So, your 1 horsepower input producing 25 watts (at 12 volts) can be written as
745.7watts * efficiency = 12volts *25 amps
745.7 watts * efficiency = 300 watts
efficiency = 300 watts / 745.7 watts
efficiency = 40%
So if you had a perfect, 100% efficient motor to produce 1 horsepower, it would consume 745.7 watts. The 40% efficient alternator will produce 300 watts. You are not producing enough power to store any excess in a battery (in fact you are using stored energy).
Shoot!
And here I was getting excited, thinking maybe bullpup could shrink the technology and deliver it in flashlight sized increments.
Just think, you could hand crank it for a second and run it for a few years… and if you wanted to, you could charge batteries connected to solar panels when you didn’t need the light yourself.
Woohoo!
Oh, sorry, am I being an inconsiderate naysayer picking on the geniuses of tomorrow again?
I can’t wait for tomorrow…
The end of coal, the end of dependence on oil, the end of nuclear technology, wow, we’ll all just crank up our generators and live off all the extra power they generate for the rest of our lives.
I hope I didn’t make any spelling mistakes, because we all know that would invalidate everything I said, and that would be such a shame, this holds so much cough promise.
