I’ve been thinking about two basic questions:
1) where are we being inefficient?
2) what natural forces can we harness?

1) We’re inefficient in a lot of things. Light bulbs put more energy into heat than light. Internal combustion engines expel a lot of their energy as heat, out the exhaust. Cars rolling down hills and applying their brakes are wasting kinetic energy (if they don’t have a hybrid synergy drive). I created a whole YouTube video for this.

2) My list of natural energy sources is short and is probably missing a lot of things. It includes solar energy, wind, tornadoes, the flow of rivers, waterfalls, rain falling, lightning, ocean waves, bacteria producing heat/gases, volcanoes … and probably some things I can’t remember because it’s 12:35 AM.

Anyway, great topic, I’m sure I’ll write more later.

very true. probably one of the most efficient(or at least most productive sources) is one that no one wants in their back yard(just like prisons) and that is nuclear. we have the technology and capability and we know it is safe if properly used. Biodiesel is another area which should be opened further. it can be made from algae grown in shallow ponds and unusable desert land could be used if the pools are covered and could be pretty much automated to grow algae. algae, at least some kinds can yield much biodiesel which all is needed to refine it is to bake it in an oven with a catalyst and the oil is extracted and ready to use. there are several universities(i cant remember the names of them probably because it is early morning) working on this and i dont remember the figures but several hundred thousand acres of unusable land could make enough biofuel to supply the country. algae doubles itself in a matter of hours to days, and is easy to grow(just look at any lake or pond)and while microalgae works best, any would do. People do need to forget about ethanol, the problem here is that ethanol production raises the price for food crops and farmers will sell at the higher price, thus competing for food. this happened i believe in italy where the price of pasta went through the roof as the crops normally used were being used for ethanol production, same thing in either central or south america. What this country needs to do is increase biodiesel production from algae or other sources, and eliminate gasoline vehicles as diesel is much more efficient overall(the automakers wont like this though)

and yes, solar is an endless supply of energy. the problem is that average people like me cannot afford solar. even with incentives it would still cost the average homeowner ten to fifteen thousand dollars or more to install, and while over several years it would pay for itself, most people dont have that luxury.

A stirling engine which could be made affordable or with plans that a backyard mechanic could make from, could be attached to a roof to gather heat from the sun(perhaps with a reflector or solar tube) and use temperature gradients to generate electricity.
And how about micro wind turbines? one idea i have is to put a wind channel through the attic of a roof from one end of the house to another with a venturi type flow which would turn the turbine, and also use convection current to do the same. and even long tubes mounted up the slope of a roof the length of the house with mini turbines each generating electricity from air currents flowing naturally up the roof slope.

the possibilities are endless brett. only problem is having the money and time to build such devices. I am considering the last two when i finish my garage(hopefully this summer so i have a bigger workspace for my projects..lol)

I’m NEVER awake this late (4am), but I’m working on a website an I told myself I could sleep when it works. (The site is www.ComeSeeMyShow.com if you’re interested. It’s a calendar for live shows — plays, art exhibits, stand-up comedy, live music.)

Anyway, I like your idea about the tube through attics! I’ll have to look up “venturi flow” when I’m more awake.

Have you heard of wind belts? They’re ridiculously simple and they work in light breezes (8-14 mph). This is the first video I found for it just now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ0v-CK63-4
There was a longer presentation I found on YouTube a month or so ago, and I was really impressed with the inventors’ approach to the design.

PS: I had no idea nuclear energy was so efficient!

PPS: I first heard about stirling engines a week or two ago. I love ’em!

well, i dont know about the overall efficiency of nuclear power, but the fact is though if you have the radioactive decay occuring anyway then to put it to good use couldnt be anything but good, as for the energy requirements it takes energy to mine the uranium and other materials and to refine it, as well as building the facilities and operation, but as i said the energy itself is already there waiting to be harnessed. the problems though are that nobody wants it in their back yard. perhaps to put them in the desert somewhere but then you need vast amounts of water for cooling so it would have to be pumped from somewhere. those are trivial problems when you consider the energy output and the need though. i still think the wind, solar, and biofuels are the best way to go however.

One of my intersts is hydrology. I was appalled at the amount of water it takes to turn corn into fuel. I think it was something like a million gallons/day. (I need to doublecheck that stat. It was huge, anyway.) Some communities are turning ethanol opportunities away because they are smart enough to know that their water tables could soon be depleted. And what about the algae blooms and deadzones down in the Gulf of Mexico? That will only get worse if we make the midwest our source for ethanol.

We also need to keep in mind that fossil-fuels are needed to make the parts for wind turbines and most other alternative sources of energy. What can we develop that could be manufactured in a world with finite plastics? I’m going to look up the wind belts.

(And Brett, I’m a costumer for theatre productions, so I’ll look at the other website too. It sounds like something that could really be valuable..especially to schools that can’t afford their own sites.)

by the way impressive site. the wind belt idea i have known of, not sure of commercial potential since noise may in fact be a factor(this is similar to taking a piece of paper in front of your lips and blowing to make noise if you have ever done this in school). there could be many uses for it but probably down the road. i think vertical axis wind turbines are the best way to go as they require much smaller area and dont need long blades to operate. this is one of the projects i have been working on but need more magnets, more money, and more time..lol.

Brett!! Congrats to you on your site. Looks great! Hey you the music man….love music studied it in school way back when…lol lol. Now get some rest! I must say i have never heard of the wind belt idea!

Brett,that’s a labour of love.Great Resource.
The wind-belt was intriguing-makes you think.
I agree with you,Shawn.Shortage of dosh and resources makes the inventing thing a practical nightmare,totally draining and frustrating.
I’m trying to get out of the rut,and exploit the less demanding renewable,the licensing route.

rita, i dont think the problem is the use of petroleum, we will never get away from that, but finding alternatives for the petroleum we use as fuel. plastics arent bad, just mismanaged. true we need to get the polution problem under control with less plastic bags and styrofoam cups, etc, but plastic is a great material, and they are working on ways to make polymers from other sources as well. if we could eliminate the need for petroleum products for fuel alone we would never run out of oil for plastics and other needs. the problem is balancing the resources. most extreme environmentalists would have us believe we need to do away with oil altogether, but this isnt practical nor is it feasible at this point in the life cycle of our evolution.
there are many resins and other materials which could be used for producing wind turbines as well. aluminum is very abundant, recyclable, and cheap and could be used in many areas. resins from natural sources also show promise. keep in mind though that oil came from the plants which existed before us. to think we would never need or use oil is probably wishful thinking at best. transportation uses probably a good 70 or more percent of the oil drilled, eliminate that and the oil should last many many years for use in plastics and other comodities.

Thanks all for the kudos on my site!

Shawn, one great thing that I heard about using algae to create biodiesel is that it’s carbon-neutral!
1) the algae consume sugar cane husks
2) growing the sugar cane sucks carbon out of the air!

So even when you run your carbon-emitting biodiesel engine, it’s not putting out more carbon than has already been extracted from the air during the growing process!

You guys got some interesting thoughts buzzing in my head! I’ve got some interesting work to do to clarify some ideas for myself. Thanks.

I have a comment on stirling engines too. If there is groundwater in a particular place, it seems like the “cool” end of the stirling engine could be sunk into the earth 8-10 feet, and the “warm” end of the stirling engine could sit on the ground, out the daylight, and that would generate electricity. I’m not sure how much …

But the small-ish quantity brings up another good point. Producing electricity in one location and spreading it to millions of consumers (houses, businesses, etc.) is inefficient. Every home and business ought to have a few ways to produce electricity (solar panels, my sunk-in-the-earth stirling engines, even water wheels under your roof’s gutter in rainy areas). Electricity production is heading to the “widely distributed” model, just like printing did. Remember before you had a computer and printer? If you wanted something in a particular font, or a particular color, you probably had to go to a special graphic design company and pay a lot of money and wait. Now, everybody has the means to produce their own high-quality documents at low cost. “Centralization of services” is giving way. Power to the people! :-)

stirling engines are quite complex however, and knowing the volumes and temperature and pressures is key. a good source brett is the japanese national maritime research institute at http://www.nmri.go.jp/index_e.html. it takes some doing to navigate their site but they have some good models there. nasa also has some but i cant remember their site offhand. yes everyone should have their own sources of power but until someone steps in and makes it accessible and affordable for everyone it is still a pipe dream. yes the groundwater idea is good, but dont even need to go to that extent as there are geothermal heat pumps too.

Thanks for the info about the complexity of stirling engines. The graphic on Wikipedia makes them look so simple!

It looks like you just set it up and it starts running on its own!

You’re right about making these devices affordable and accessible to everyone. That’s one thing I liked about the wind belt: it’s cheap, simple, and easy to maintain.

I’m not looking to create alternative-energy products right now. It’s just exciting to think about the possibilities!! My inventions tend to be very low tech, so that I can make prototypes and so that I can wrap my mind around how to manufacture them.

You mentioned geothermal heat pumps. Those are wonderful sources, and I don’t mean to sound sarcastic but I’m pretty sure they go a lot more than 8-10’ into the ground! My stirling-engines-in-your-garden idea was meant to utilize the heat difference between the warm ground during the day and the cold soil a few feet deep. Might work well in a sandy desert, too.

One thing I have thought would be good is that we should make better use of our oceans. Specifically, we could make some floating greenhouses where we take salt-tolerant bushy plants that will produce alot of oxygen and grow them in a free-floating island. Maybe we could use some of the garbage islands that are floating around the Pacific and cover them with a mesh to hold it together, spred a little dirt, and seed it with the leafy plants. If it gets too close to some country’s shore, just drag it back out via a ship that was going that way.

If you think that’s weird, wait until you see my next post on space… :-D

ok, so people might think I’m off the deep end with this but here goes:
I don’t believe the reason rockets move a spacecraft in space is because of the propellant squirting out the back. Instead, I believe that the vacuum of space is truly filled with the dark matter that they have been suspecting/looking for. I think that the reason a spacecraft moves is really because of the reaction to the rocket’s output against the dark matter (however ineffecient it currently is) and in the same fashion that a rocket acts against air molecules within our atmosphere.

So the solution to effecient space travel under Bill’s Theory of Space Flight (BTSF), is to create an engine that is more reactive to dark matter.

Feel free to work on that one for me.

See, I didn’t kill Newton’s 3rd Law completely.

Welllllllllllllll … I think that the mass*speed of the propellant is probably exactly equal to the mass*speed of the rocket accelerating in the opposite direction. Interesting thought about dark matter, though.

And I like your floating islands of plants! Shoot, we could just seed parts of the ocean with algae or something that emits oxygen and absorbs carbon. No need for islands.

I had another idea about water treatment plants. Some brilliant inventor recently created a device that uses very little electricity, takes in anything with even a little water in it, and spits water out the other end. Anything that isn’t water comes out a hole in the side (I think). It can produce dozens of gallons an hour, if memory serves. It looked like a lumpy, armchair-sized, black plastic box.

Anyway, if those things are so cheap, efficient, and consume so little power, I wonder about lining up a few hundred of them in place of a typical sewage treatment plant?

Or what about using them for rainwater or seawater?

I’m just bringing this up because I don’t know much about the device and I think it’s cool.

it’s probably a similar concept to how they recycle water on the space station – interesting thought though. Maybe not for drinking water but certainly for crop irrigation.

Regarding the mass*speed of propellant, my point is that in space I don’t think mass should be measured the same way as on earth… An easy test to my theory would be to launch an object like a bowling ball, etc from the cargo bay doors of the shuttle while the shuttle is stationary. If the shuttle moves in the opposite direction then I’m full of bunk. They should be able to accurately track any movement with lasers. I would imagine it wouldn’t even have to be stationary. If the mass of the bowling ball affected the speed/direction of the shuttle in any way, it would prove the original (normal) theory.

brett, geothermal heat pumps dont go very deep, just below the frost line, usually several feet.
Bill,the rocket propulsion is based on the fact that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. the force of the pressure from the burning fuel, or gas from a steering nozzle, pushes on the rocket which must then be balanced by an equal reaction in the opposite direction thus creating motion. the concept of mass is used because it never varies. an object with a mass of one gram on earth has a mass of one gram anywhere. mass is different from weight which is force, weight in metric is measured as the newton, 1newton = 1kilogram x the gravitational constant of earth=9.8 meters per second squared. so the newton is unique to our planet, and would be different on other planets, but the kilogram is constant. one gram of hydrogen gas would contain 6.022 x10^23 atoms or half that number of molecules as hydrogen exists as a diatomic molecule. mass is a measure of the content, not weight of matter, which doesnt vary.

and by the way bill, if they launch a bowling ball from the space shuttle it would move. whether we have sensors sensitive enough to detect it is another issue.

Shawn, thanks for the info about geothermal heat pumps! When I pictured a geothermal heat pump I was envisioning using very hot sources hundreds of feet deep. Just below the frost line — wow!

in a way brett you are correct, geothermal heat is brought up from deep such as hot springs, etc. but the geothermal heat pump takes latent heat fromt the ground and pumps it into the house for heat, the same way a refrigerator takes heat out of the compartment and pumps it outside, basically a heat exchange process. in fact, if you could take your refridgerator and make the coils hudreds of feet long and coil them up and put them underground you would have the same thing, just instead of taking heat out of the compartment and putting it into the surroundings, you take heat out of the surroundings and put it in the compartment(house)

Shawn – even though physics class was 25 years ago I have tried to keep up with most subjects including rocket propulsion/space travel – I just don’t like the logic they use to explain the movement. It’s always been a convenient explanation for them to say ‘it must be the mass of propellant going out the back’ while I think ‘there must be something other than air molecules that it is pushing against’ – I guess that’s why I’m not a rocket scientist.

bill, its not air molecules being pushed against. the mass coming out of the end of the rocket is creating an equal, but opposite reaction on the rocket. since there is no force keeping the rocket in place(no strings or wires or anything) the rocket moves in the opposite direction. there is little matter in space, not enough to matter to anything, the propellant is pushing out of the rocket and this causes the rocket to move in the opposite direction.

It’s an on going explosion where every action has an equal and opposite reaction-I think.
[Shawn,did you hear back from Eagle?]

yes adam, they are still working on it though, which is good i am in no hurry right now. have so many other projects on my list got plenty to keep me busy with two jobs, even though i average seven days off every two weeks one of my jobs is contract delivery my fiancee(or fiance i can never keep them straight) does most of the time but some of my nights i take over so she has time off.
by the way brett, stirling engines are simple in principle, but the regenerator where the gas is passed and where much of the heat energy is exchanged can be quite complex, in order for a system to work at its peak the volumes and expansion have to be calculated, and some of the regenerators i have seen can take as many as hundred tubes of specific size. the calculations are beyond my memory, been twenty years since calculus, so i am looking for information which will already have the basic work down for me from which i can build mine. winter here in northern ny is cold cold cold and my workshop only has a little heater in it so even with that going it gets about 40 degrees, so hopefully my garage will get done this spring and then i can do more work. i can get my shop warmer but takes a long time and dont want to use flame powered as flamable materials in there. winters i do more of my computer and design work so hopefully this spring aside from the garage i can get my wind generator and stirling engine off the ground. note the key word hopefully(my life there are always things coming up.)

I just watched yet another scientific “end of the world” program that talked about the super-volcano under Yellowstone park and how it’s overdue to explode. Why aren’t we tapping that as a great source of geothermal energy and getting double benefit by holding off the explosion?
It seems like one heck of a missed opportunity.

probably because it is a national park and is protected. too much red tape involved i guess.

They could drill into the Yellowstone volcano from the “side”, from outside the park…? And why the heck aren’t they doing that in Hawaii?

Shawn, about heating your workspace, have you thought about a heater with a parabolic reflector to make a beam of heat, so you’re getting the heat directly on you instead of filling the whole room?

One more idea: when loggers cut down trees, there’s a lot of potential energy in the upright tree that gets converted to a lot of kinetic energy as it falls. It’d be nice to convert that into electricity (somehow).

sorry havent been on in a while, just got my professional version of turbocad and love it, just been trying to work with it to get a feel for it, pretty easy though as i have been working with the deluxe version til now.
my workspace can wait, gonna finish my garage this summer and it will have heat. i do most of my computer work in the winter though, then spring i work on putting my ideas to the lathe, press, etc.
i don’t think it would be cost effective to try to harness energy from trees falling though, would detract from what they do, ideally would be to cut less trees to begin with, chainsaws create a lot of pollution, as do most of the equipment being used.
http://www.gallowaytechconsulting.com

Mark,

that tapping a volcano thing was already done on that show DINOSAURS. The WESAYSO corp said it would threaten their market share and squashed it…

Matt,

You’re right, it would hurt their business. Unless they are the ones doing it. I’m not too proud to let them. We could use the power and the added safety.

In answer to your question about energy or environment related projects, I have designed a miniature wind generator with no moving parts. I will let you guys know whether or not it works when the prototype is finished. If my theories and calculations are correct then scaled properly an array of these could be built onto or into any roof producing an approx. capacity of 1 kw or more per sq. ft. of roofspace with essentially no change in the profile of the house. Even at extremely slow windspeeds.

Seth that sounds awesome! Definitely tell us what you find when the prototype is finished!!

i would be interested in knowing how to generate electricity with no moving parts. the object is to move a magnetic field past a coil, how can this be done with no moving parts?

Static electricity, maybe? When the wind’s a certain way, I know there’s more static “in the air” … but I gotta say I don’t know the physics behind it. I assume that negative ions moving past … uh … something creates an electrostatic charge.

either way even to produce static would need movement of some sort, other than a solar cell, the only way to generate electricity is to convert either mechanical, thermal, or chemical energy into electrical energy. i would be interested in seeing this new method.

I really enjoy watching you guys wrack your brains trying to figure it out, but unfortunately I cannot let you in on the trick, its too simple. If I posted the answer then someone else could easily “invent” this before my prototype is done. I will say that you are closer Shawn. It is however not a new method, merely a new application of an old one.

one of my ideas was to use microturbines mounted inside tubes which run up the slope of a roof, with many connected side by side so wind would channel up the roof and even with no wind if the sun is shining would create convection current and turn the turbines. if you could also channel the wind into them would create a reasonable amount of electricity.

Triboelectric charging on electret roof tiles?

Shawn I like that idea especially for a Southwest location. You could use the existing half tube cavity created by a traditional Southwest tile roof. On the down sloping end could be configured with a hose or exhaust manifold connected and sealed to the tile so you could draw the hot air directly from the hot air created in the attic space. Under the ridge on the roof cap on the top of the roof would be a long shaft running the length of the house with small turbines positioned at each opening on the up slope side of the tile roof. There could be two parallel shafts connected by a gears to cover both sides of the roof to generate even more torque and rpm. One of the problems is after running this for a while you attic space would probably cool down somewhat thereby limiting your hot air source. This would create less of a flow to the turbines. The reason I say this is I knew a guy 10 years ago that had a patent on something similar. He even installed a prototype unit on his own home. His claim was that just letting air naturally circulate and flow through the channels in tile roof would somehow cool down the attic space. He had a special ridge cap designed and did a lot of testing. Initially he claimed he was getting a 10% to 15% better cooling effect in the home. In my opinion this would be a hard test to run too many variables. This was ten years ago and I’ve never seen one on the market.

well tom i was actually thinking more along the lines of just using wind flowing when it hits the roof it naturally goes up the slope, so if you have openings, perhaps with a wider opening at the bottom near the eave, or perhaps even an opening underneath the eave as well so that wind hitting the side of the house would go up into the channels, this would turn the turbines. i wasnt thinking so much about heat from the attic although convection current could also play a role. we get a lot of slower wind where i live and this would be ideal(just need lots of money to test it and hope the code enforcer doesn’t see it..lol)

also, i think having each turbine in each channel running independent of one another would work best, that way if one isnt turning the others may.