I recently found this "quote" from "Anonymous #580" in the last post in a thread at GNN.com Forum Post (Guerrilla News Network)...
I asked "Jonathon" in a private message what he thought of it, now that I have his opinion... he can post it if he wishes
I want to know what you all think as well?...
here is the quote:
The "experts" say you can fill a resivor tank with water using an electric water pump and a hose over the side, drain the tank through a turbine generator, and the most you will do is break even, generating only as much electricity as it took to fill the tank with the electric pump in the first place.
This is a lie too but we'll humor them and use their electric pump,
no problem, I won't dispute their words at all, okay little feller?
Now put a 3000 ton fraighter ship in the resivor. It floats in the ocean, it will float in the resivor tank. When the water rises the ship will rise with it, no extra work on the top feed water pump. Drain the resivor tank through the turbine generator breaking even on the initial electricity. You still have a 3000 ton fraighter ship hanging in mid-air via cables ready to use with gravity and a linear generator all night long until morning when you start the whole process over again.
...Free energy.
any opinions?
As far as I understand it would take no additional energy from the top feed water pump to raise a multi-ton vessel up and retrieve this stored energy potential after the resivor is empty... also one could utilize the up-float of its path while the resivor fills...
sounds like F/E to me...
maybe this is my idea, maybe it's not... ;)
hope this... at the least it gets some good thinking going on.
F/E in 2004! ;P
"A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds."~ M. Twain.
consider this. The hull displaces water to the point the mass is supported. In a fixed enclosure with a fixed fluid the fluid would rise as the apparent quantity is increased. It is increased by the quantity called "displaced" This is the quantity with an equivalent mass.
If instead the water is pumped into a container just filled with air and the ship the level will rise eventually raising the ship. If the ship is then secured and you drain the water the water will drain quicker in the space occupied by the hull as the available liquid has some missing due to "displacement" That volume represented by the hull will not be available to drain. Were the ship free to descend with the liquid the height would be increased by that volume and height until the hull reached bottom.
I hope I have presented this clearly enough.
Kirk
Not knowing is not the problem. It is the knowing of what just isn't so.
It is our responsibilities, not ourselves,that we should take seriously.
I suppose you could run your own experiment with a block of wood in your kitchen sink. Until then the jury is still out for me. I have to say I like the idea, however a tanker is not designed to be suspended from cables, it could break up. An alternative is required.
I would recommend not completely draining all the water. Drain to the level where the tanker just floats without resting on the bottom.
Kirk wrote:consider this. The hull displaces water to the point the mass is supported. In a fixed enclosure with a fixed fluid the fluid would rise as the apparent quantity is increased. It is increased by the quantity called "displaced" This is the quantity with an equivalent mass.
If instead the water is pumped into a container just filled with air and the ship the level will rise eventually raising the ship. If the ship is then secured and you drain the water the water will drain quicker in the space occupied by the hull as the available liquid has some missing due to "displacement" That volume represented by the hull will not be available to drain. Were the ship free to descend with the liquid the height would be increased by that volume and height until the hull reached bottom.
I hope I have presented this clearly enough.
Kirk
ha? ... ;|
statements are hard to understand...
the idea is to raise a (3ton.approx) vessel up by adding water to a (5ton.approx) resivor by a top feed pump, the added water lifts the vessel (not ship) up, and upon/during/after the release of the pumped water to the lower resivor, the suspended/supported vessel can generate energy on the way down from its height. also the vessel may be utilized to generate energy on the way up too (buoyancy)
pumped water in/drained water out, break even maybe
Add to that
lifting vessel up = generating energy / lowering vessel down = generating energy
...problems
simple.
here is a picture...
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"A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds."~ M. Twain.
The reason why it doesn't work depends on the exact design (w/ or w/o bouyancy, number and placement of pumps and turbines, etc.), but I'm not just good enough with fluid mechanics to begin to explain why I don't think it will work.
Disclaimer: I reserve the right not to know what I'm talking about and not to mention this possibility in my posts. This disclaimer also applies to sentences I claim are quotes from anybody, including me.
Actually that is the basis of an idea I've had "floating" around for a decade or two for creating electricity from tidal rise & fall. Except instead of anchoring your boat to a mooring you anchor it to inground block & tackle (pulley) directly beneath the "vessel", which then connects via a spring loaded cable to a land based generator/turbine. The vessels bouyancy causes it to rise with the tide pulling the cable thru the generator & turning a geared armature etc. The spring tension (or counter weight arrangement) reverses the action as the tide falls. A short but powerfull stroke 4 times a day limited by anchoring strength & bouyancy so can be scaled. Just like a elevator/lift with counter weight but the electric motor becomes a generator.
As for your "intellectual problem" I would think that the the power generated from the water as it drains from the tank is dependant on the "head" or pressure (atmospheres) of the water created from vertical water height, & as the water level drops the water pressure avaiable to drive the turbine is less, therefore once the ship is suspended the displacement it created is "swallowed up" (causing a rapid drop in vertical water height) & the ability to do work drops proportionately so no extra energy in the system. That's because bouyancy/dispalcement doesn't change internal pressure between individual water molecules in an open system - Bournelli's theorm I think ? - just my opinion, I'm no expert. Convince me otherwise.
-Fletcher
Last edited by Fletcher on Wed Aug 18, 2004 1:17 am, edited 3 times in total.
It won't work. Here is a very simple analysis of what would happen.
[1] On the left the green vessel floats.
[2] In the middle the water level is raised by pumping the red square full of water.
[3] To the right we have drained water in the red rectangle through our generator and no longer have any pressure.
[4] On the far right is our water source.
But we are short a whole lot of water through the generator compared to how much we pumped!!
If our water source was lower we would get similar results. Just that we would be pumping water higher and draining it lower.
many pumped-storage plants utilize the process of pumping and releasing water to maintain power needs... here an additional supplemental power is created without consuming from the earlier process...
I dont want to sound off soo much, I just don't see the flaw in my understanding...
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"A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds."~ M. Twain.
You would have some loss I think. From the water draining and replenishing. If you had a big enoff tank you might be able to gain some energy with floating weights. I think atleast.
I was going to post another image, but dont want to keep pushing my images on besslerwheel.com without need...
the connecting pipe (penstock) maintains the pressure (pipe beneath the upper resivors release gate) most of the stored energy remains in the large wide shallow high compacity resivoir.
Actual length not shown... in previous image "energysurplus.jpg"
(imagine edit) ;)
...
"A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds."~ M. Twain.
OK what goes up must come down. But the path may vary. Lets say we take figures like I used before.
Since I used real numbers to make the drawing I'll use the same to descibe them.
The small red rectangle is the water pumped in until the vessel starts to float. It measures 1 x 4.5 with a volume of 4.5
The large rectangle is the water pumped in after the vessel floats. It measures 5 x 5.5 with a volume of 27.5
If we assume it takes 1 unit of energy to lift 1 unit of water 1 unit high, then the following is the results. I broke it down into 1/2 unit increments.
I thought it was pretty clear, the energy used to pump the water is greater than the energy gotten when releasing it by exactly the amount of potential energy gained by the vessel.
Disclaimer: I reserve the right not to know what I'm talking about and not to mention this possibility in my posts. This disclaimer also applies to sentences I claim are quotes from anybody, including me.