Saturday 9 April 2011

Will Bessler's wheel be a practical solution, if it works?

I wonder hown practical Bessler's wheel wll turn out to be, if it ever gets re-invented. How will the world react to the news that Bessler's wheel had been replicated and proven to work?

80 per cent of electricity globally is produced by steam powered turbines - an amazingly old-fashioned concept when you think about it. These massive generators can produce 2,000,000 hp or 1,500,000 kW. They are huge beasts and I find it hard to picture what size Bessler's wheel would have to be to achieve the same output, and yet George Westinghouse was able to scale up Sir Charles Parsons' original steam turbine, which had already been increased from a 7.5 kW set up to units of 50,000 kW capacity, by some 10,000 times. I'm sure that a similar exercise could be applied to Bessler's wheel to generate enough electricity for individual consumption.

Bessler mentioned the possibility of constructing a number of wheels in series and if they were all mounted on one axle it is obvious that one could scale up a wheel of unrestricted depth, mounted on an axle of say, 50 foot, with similarly enlarged weights operating in the same way as in the original design. But is this the way it would develop? There could be a massive reduction in demand from the centrally placed power generators if there was an equally large uptake of individual designed home electricity generators.

So how much electricity does the average home consume? Hard to answer because different homes use different methods for heating and/or air conditioning but if one wanted to eliminate the need for oil and natural gas then you would require Bessler's wheel to produce more than enough electricity to power everything.

It has proved difficult to obtain a figure but I found a site which suggested that the average American house uses approximately 12,000kwh per year which is about 32 kwh a day. Of course that figure may be wildy out, but as a guide it will do. There are a number of generators currently available, producing that kind of output, some cost more than $10,000! However these do of course include the very expensive diesel engines required to rotate the armature and the replacing of that with the much simpler Bessler's wheel would reduce the price considerably. I'm sure that given the amount of competition, improvenments in design and sheer quantity of entrepreneurial manufacturers, the price would drop just as it does in the world of improving TVs and computers.

This drop in demand for centrally produced electricity could go a long way towards making the nuclear/fossil-fuelled power stations almost redundant. I guess there would still be a need for limited amounts of electricity from a central location for distribution to industrial manufactureres, and those who have not been able to take advantage of the new devices. Perhaps those larger power generators might still be able to adopt an enlarged Bessler's wheel.

I know this is just a dream, but it could happen.

JC

69 comments:

  1. John,..It's interesting to note that each time you double a wheel's size,the power increases by eight times.
    So a 3 metre dia. wheel should produce 5kw. for domestic use.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Didn't I read somewhere that a dream of Bessler's was involved somehow in the design ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm not sure about that Trevor. Do you double the dimensions of the wheel but not the size of the weights? Or do you double the size of the weights too - or do you just double the size of the weights and keep the dimensions of the wheel the same? And of course how many mechanisms?

    I know what you mean, but it is interesting to consider that there are so many ways to vary things which will alter the power output.

    JC

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes anon, Bessler had a dream which reinvigorated him in his efforts to succeed.

    JC

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes John,..It's everything cubed.It will give you 8 times the power.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sorry ,..I meant to say,everything,length breadth,height,doubled or squared.It will give you 8 times the power.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oops,..Whats wrong with my brain!,just doubled not squared,will give you the output power squared.So if the output was 2kw.then it would become 8kw.

    ReplyDelete
  8. How would electricity be generated? Wouldn't a wheel have to rotate a lot faster than 50 rpm to genreate a current?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oops wrong again!..Just double your dimensions Length, breadth and height will cube your output from 2kw to 8kw....finally! I'm not with it today.It's to early in the morning.
    Anon,..A 3m.dia.wheel would gear up nicely to a ratio of 10/1 which transforms the speed to 3 times 10 which equals 30rps or 1800rpm.

    ReplyDelete
  10. 1800 rpm? Haha That's impossible with a design like Besslers . I think if it worked, you might be able to turn something to light a bulb or two. If it ran continuosly it could charge a battery pack

    ReplyDelete
  11. How are you arriving at these figures Trevor? What formulas are you using?
    Anonymous is right; there's no way a Bessler wheel could turn fast enough. The bigger he made them, the slower they turned, unfortunately. Perhaps they could be used to compress a gas; that might be more practical, John.

    ReplyDelete
  12. A 3m. wheel would revolve at 3 rev/sec.and the horsepower would be proportional to the mass of the weights.
    Remember Bessler said one side was empty and the other side was full just as it should be.There were eight weights in total which could add up to quite a torque.
    He maintained that he could fashion the output to any required degree.

    ReplyDelete
  13. The 3 meter wheel rotated about 50 rpm , not 180 rpm. 1horsepower is roughly 750 watts. James Watt invented the term, and calculated it measuring ponies pulling coal from mines. 1 hp, he figured was 33,000 ft/lbs a minute. Using that to estimate the hp of the wheel, which lifted 70 lbs. from the ground to the window (20 feet, maybe?), over how much time? 30 seconds? 26 RPM? That isn't even close to 1 horsepower.
    http://auto.howstuffworks.com/horsepower1.htm

    Bessler said a lot of things.

    ReplyDelete
  14. You could hardly expect him to maximise horsepower with such a narrow wheel.
    He built alone so the wheels he demonstrated were in keeping with his physical capabilities.
    His priority was to demonstrate perpetual motion,not power.

    ReplyDelete
  15. The speed required to drive an electric generator has always been of some concern to me. The modern diesel-driven generator has to overcome the magnetic resistance of the armature as well as the increase in load when the electric demand increases.

    It seesm theoretically possible to me to achieve this with a very large Bessler's wheel. High speed could be obtained with a slow moving wheel with suitable gearing. This would be a heavy load to overcome on its own, and with the potential increase in load when electrical demand is high an even bigger wheel is envisaged.

    So even for individual housing needs the wheel is going to be pretty big I think.

    JC

    ReplyDelete
  16. Yes John,.. that may be the case but then why are we wasting our time?
    Are we not looking at Bessler's wheel as it stands? There is still room for much improvement.
    The diameter of these present windmills is the size of a rugby field and they are only 3 megawatt but does that put them off?!
    Furthermore the Bessler wheel works 24/7 and the output speed is constant which is important for A/C. I think it is a serious contender to the windmill and its reliable.
    It's ironic that Germany is busy investing in a major project using solar panels and they were the very ones who rejected Bessler's wheel.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I did not intend to appear negative Trevor, just warning that the size of the wheel could be much bigger than people think, but that there need be no limit to its size.

    Yes very ironic about the Germans rejecting Bessler. I saw a progam on TV last night about the huge solar panel displays near Leipzig. The Waldpolenz Solar Park is built on a surface area equivalent to 200 soccer fields, the solar park will be capable of feeding 40 megawatts into the power grid!

    JC

    ReplyDelete
  18. Yes that is space prohibitive at a time when we need space for crops.
    Imagine if that space was used for Bessler wheels.You would probably reap 40 gigawatts.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I thought he had to build the bigerr wheels to demonstrate greater power and bi-direction to show no clockworks. And the small ones were never measured for power or perpetual motion

    ReplyDelete
  20. Correct Anon,..He did say that size diameter was proportional to power but only because bigger weights can be used.The bigger wheels speed is slower but the power is proportional to to mass of the weights only.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Yes John, suitable gearing would equate to higher rpm. My knowledge of gearing tells me it would require a huge beast of a wheel, too. It is hard to imagine. Certainly ferris wheel size if not bigger just for one house. Building such big wheels would likely present new problems of efficiency also.
    The small version that turned one way faster seems to me to have the greatest domestic potential. They weren't put under a load, unless I'm mistaken. So it's difficult to speculate on their power, but the speed was impressive.
    Thinking along those lines, why didn't Bessler try smaller wheels?
    My first thought is there wasn't room in a smaller design for the mechanism/weights. But, could the mechanisms be made smaller with today's technology? Would an even smaller wheel turn faster than 50 rpm?
    The other instance of perpetual motion in the universe is electrons. They're pretty small.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Although I disagree, apparently many on this forum believe that Bessler exploited gravity to make his wheels work, i.e. he immersed them in the earth's acceleration field, which is only about 9.8 meters per second squared. If that really caused them to work, then there is an obvious way of dramatically improving performance: by immersing a suitably designed wheel in a much higher acceleration field, which would be very easy to do using a centrifuge approach.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Acceleration is relative to mass. Acceleration = Force/Mass. The only way to improve the performance is to increase the mass of the weights or the mass of the earth.
    So how do you think his wheels worked if it wasn't gravity, Arktos?

    ReplyDelete
  24. There is another option,..Put three wheels within a wheel horizontally,revolve them at 8 g's.
    That will give you centrifugal gravity,making the wheel lighter and more compact.It can also be used in space!.

    ReplyDelete
  25. A horizontal wheel wouldn't revolve at all.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Think about it! Sir.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Give one reason? Go on I dare you.

    ReplyDelete
  28. For one thing, there's no such thing as centrifugal gravity. You just make words up to get reactions.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Ok Doug,..Then why is Nasa considering a design for a revolving space station using the walls as the floor,that is CF.
    I don't make up things to get reactions but I will defend a logical argument if I sincerely believe in something, don't you?

    ReplyDelete
  30. That would be artificial gravity. There is no gravity in orbit, only free fall. Objects in orbit all free fall together around the earth, creating the sensation of weightlessness. They have to revolve the station to create artificial gravity for the month-long stays the astronauts endure. Guess how strong that artificial gravity is. A (so far hypothetical) gravity driven wheel would not work in space, vertically, horizontally, or diagonally for that matter. The reason it's easy to revolve things in space is the lack of friction. Don't try it at home.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Thats right,..It's man made artificial gravity by using the property of CF.It's just as easy to revolve a horizontal wheel on earth also,like a gyroscope ,it takes no energy to maintainthe the revs.
    Thats my point,you could tailor make the Gs to suite by just speeding up the group of bessler wheels.The actual output would maintain the revs and provide work output for generating power.We don't even bother with friction because with todays ceramic ballbearings thats negligable.
    Furthermore ,in my book,freefall is nothing but zero gravity through acceleration toward the earth.
    An orbiting body is not in freefall but in gravity minus centrifugal force,which equals zero.

    ReplyDelete
  32. I give up.
    I don't think you understand what you're saying.
    The first 5 or 6 comments you made on this post had no scientific basis. Then when you say it's just as easy to revolve a horizontal wheel on earth - well, good luck with that.
    I'd comment on the rest of what you just said, but, well, you know.

    ReplyDelete
  33. This is hopless,You seem to be in total denial.
    John,..HELP!!!

    ReplyDelete
  34. Doug, You're on dangerous ground saying "acceleration is relative to mass". Wasn't it Galileo who showed that unequal masses all fell (accelerated) at the same value?! But of course I agree, acceleration = force/mass, and if the acceleration is G, then the force is Weight.

    There's no doubt that a centrifuge can generate a much higher acceleration field than the Earth's gravitational field. Back in the early 1960s NASA subjected Gordon Cooper to 18 Gs in one. But I still doubt that net energy can be obtained from an acceleration field alone.

    The problem I have with gravity is that I can't see how it is any different in principle from a compressed (or stretched) spring, or a permanent magnet attracting a piece of steel, etc. Sure, you can get a one-off, strictly limited amount of energy, but then to reset your machine, i.e. to keep it going, you must give up all of the energy you just got.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Yes,..Thats correct Arktos! Acceleration is constant for mass period. It is held in check by inertia.
    The statements I made about C/F were only to improve the weight/power efficiency in the light of my knowledge of how the wheel actually works.
    The only way to actually increase the power output of the wheel is increase the mass of the weights.

    ReplyDelete
  36. I've been away for quite a long time guys, so I guess the bad news is that I'm back but the good news is that I wasn't able to find a purely mechanical solution either. I did tinker a lot with my electromechanical stuff which I find very interesting in several configurations. You may have heard (outside of the MSM) of some new developments in LENR as well as in Asia; I've been quite immersed in that as well. Interesting discussions going on here!

    ReplyDelete
  37. John, I think we should see (treat) a Bessler generator as a solar panel: several small units (perhaps in a basement or attic) coupled to low-speed DC generators feeding a battery bank through a charge controller. The house would be run off a grid-tied inverter. Would the batteries be depleted (or 40% capacity or so to preserve the life of the battery) the inverter would couple to the commercial grid while the generator(s) are recharging the battery bank. A bit like a small local windmill/solar panel setup.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Acceleration is proportional to mass is what I meant to say.
    How do you think the centrifuges obtain their acceleration? A lot of electrical energy expended, don't you think?
    Please explain how you can place a Bessler wheel inside a centrifuge and improve its' performance. I'd like to understand that.
    And I am still wondering how you think Bessler's wheel worked if it didn't rely on gravity alone. Do you think he was hiding something?

    ReplyDelete
  39. I'm sorry Dough,..I started this whole debate because it was a pet concept of mine.If you will permit me to explain I will.

    ReplyDelete
  40. The key is opposing forces.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Everything we've commented on here would be great if someone had a wheel. But all these comments are rendered moot, by the fact that no one has built a wheel, and, by the laws of energy and motion. They can't be broken. They haven't been misinterpreted. They aren't misunderstood. No wheel, no reinterpretation of the laws of physics, so like Trevor said April 11, that ( a wheel doesn't turn fast enough to generate electricity ) may be the case but then why are we wasting our time? Not only does no one have a wheel to generate electricity, no one even has a wheel that could pump water or lift a weight. Until someone does, the laws are "particularly robust" as I read somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Doug ,..Maybe I was misunderstood.I never ever said the wheel was not capable of generating electricity,in fact I meant the exact reverse. I was challenging John who was starting to have doubts.This why I said to him why are we waisting our time.
    Although a large dia. wheel of say 6HP only turns at 3 revs/sec it can be geared up to spin a generator at 30 revs/sec,remember horsepower stays the same,only the torque drops at the higher speed.
    I think the wheel is perfectly suited to generate electricity and it won't be long now.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Surely Doug, as soon as someone comes up with a wheel (or any sort of moving device that somehow utilizes gravity in such a way that the torque available on the output shaft is greater than the effort/energy required to get it going and keep it going) no doubt it will be possible to gear it such that a low-speed DC generator can be used, like the type that was used in cars before AC alternators became common. That's just engineering. Heck, one could even have something really basic such as a couple of powerful magnets fly past a number of coils and induce electricity that way. That won't be the problem. The problem is to crack the Orffyreus code.

    Of course the laws of thermodynamics can't be broken. They don't need to, as already has been proven that they do not always hold true in OPEN systems: for example, on the 19th July 2002 the New Scientist news service reported that the second law of thermodynamics has been shown not to hold for microscopic systems.

    It's often said that almost every household already owns a device that *seemingly* breaks those hallowed laws (which of course it doesn't); but it DOES exhibit a higher COP, often more than 2 or 3: a refrigerator. The coefficient of performance is higher than 1, meaning that more energy is output, made available to us, than WE have to input to make it work. This of course doesn't imply that the laws of thermodynamics are invalidated, but it does mean that it's possible to construct devices that make more energy available than is required to get them going and keep them going. The "secret" is simply that these are open systems, and of course the "missing" input is coming from somewhere - in the case of the refrigerator, the environment. So no laws are broken. But we DO have COP higher than 1!

    Isn't that exactly what we are after? The problem is, in my view, our purely mechanical approach we want to replicate.

    Purely speculative: maybe Bessler used some kind of clock-ish mechanism to get the thing going. He was an experienced clockmaker after all. Once it was going, it barely needed any "assistance" from the mechanism, thus exhibiting a very high COP, at least way over 1, for very long periods of time. And perhaps even enough to keep it going indefinitely - until the parts wear out.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Doug, I agree that centrifuges use a lot of energy from somewhere to get up to speed, but then they only need a very small amount of energy (to overcome minor frictional losses) to maintain their speed and hence maintain their acceleration field indefinitely. And the centrifuge could be slowed down again by regenerative braking, thus recovering most of the original energy used.

    I don't want to discourage those who think there might be a way of exploiting gravity. I'd be the first to agree that Earth, and a centrifuge, generate their acceleration fields in entirely different ways.

    I mentioned earlier one faint possibility: extracting energy from Earth's rotation. At least we would then have a clearly defined energy source, and it would be very "stiff" i.e. it has a very low "source impedance" as an electrical engineer would say. I ask again, does anyone (John?) know whether Bessler always oriented his wheels East-West? If he did, that would be a big hint that he exploited Earth's rotational energy. If he didn't, then I think that idea could probably be ruled out.

    PS Sorry about delayed responses. I'm obviously in a very different time zone from most here.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Andre, Refrigerators are not that energy efficient. If they generated more energy than they used, then we wouldn't get an electric bill for them. A refrigerator is a good example of the losses involved when we use energy to move heat from one place to another.
    So the secret is open vs. closed systems?
    Do you have a link to the New Scientist report?
    We all agree on the problem. But I continue to believe the answer involves a stored source of energy.

    ReplyDelete
  46. The force of earth's rotation is called the Coriolis effect.
    Not really enough energy there to measure hardly.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Let's calculate the Earth's stored rotational energy. Treat the Earth as a sphere of radius R = 6.37e06 meters, of mass M = 5.98e24 kg, rotating at w = 7.29e-05 radians/sec.

    Its moment of inertia about its polar axis is:

    I = (2MR^2)/5 = 9.706e37 kg-m^2

    So its stored rotational energy is:

    E = 0.5I(w^2) = 2.58e29 joules, i.e. 258,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules, i.e. a lot!

    ReplyDelete
  48. Doug, I don't have a link handy to that article, but it should be relatively easy to find it in the online archives of that scientific publication.

    As for COP - I'm not talking efficiency, but strictly coefficient of performance (COP) in an open system. Remember the laws apply only to closed systems. The fridge isn't producing any energy, because that would mean it's more than 100% efficient, we could "close the loop" and that's impossible as that would violate our laws of thermodynamics.

    But it DOES exhibit a COP>1 (most 2 or 3, some even more). It's nothing more than a heat pump (an inverted heat pump, actually) but achieves this better-than-expected net result because it's open to the environment. The energy for the COP>1 comes from the environment, obviously, that's why it's not more than 100% efficient.

    But this does demonstrate that in an open system (where a large part of the energy comes from the environment) COP numbers higher than one can be achieved relatively easily.

    The Bessler wheel, by it's very nature, is open to the environment as it should be constructed such that the majority of the energy required to keep it going comes from gravity: the environment. If we could construct it such that it behaves exactly as history tells us (a slight push is sufficient to start it, or even removing a brake) then the COP would near infinity.

    If we would NOT succeed in replicating that design, but would instead have a design that uses some clockwork (or electric motor, for all I care) to get the thing moving, and that clockwork or motor would supply 50% of the energy required, and the remaining 50% would come from gravity, the COP would be 2.

    All if which brings me back to my old mantra: we are looking for a mechanical "amplifier" in order to achieve COP>1.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Arktos: those are numbers I wouldn't mind seeing on my bank account. Although, which inflation these days... :-)

    If we could harness all that energy... but where do we attach the shaft? But imagine a ring of coils, in orbit around the earth (and somehow stationary in space). The earth itself would act as a giant generator and would induce massive amounts of electricity in the coils... (and probably eventually slow down much faster than we wanted!)

    ReplyDelete
  50. "which inflation" should be "with inflation".

    ReplyDelete
  51. Doug, I found you a link:
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=second-law-of-thermodynam

    ReplyDelete
  52. Andre, Yes, it's fairly easy to think of large-scale ways of getting at the Earth's energy. In a way, we already do it with tidal schemes (like the Rance tidal power station). The big problem is to do it on a smaller scale, and I admit I don't see how, in any realistic way.

    Before I gave up on it, I did look at one other possibility: to exploit mass-spring resonant oscillations within a wheel, trying to get a timing imbalance to turn the wheel forward. If there's any interest, I could post more about that tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  53. I think you guys are getting off the track in your desperation.
    I'm completely turned off by your sophisticated math but the one whose going to solve it is the one who can visualise it in his mind.
    Think gravity and gravity only with clever mechanics then you will crack it.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Arktos: I am always very interested in any system, mechanical or otherwise, that utilizes resonance effects. Stronger even, resonance is a extremely important and powerful concept in electronics, for example. So certainly also in mechanical systems it can be powerful (think of Tesla's mechanical oscillators that could even induce localized earthquakes! And those are well-documented historical facts!). the funny thing is that in mechanics engineers are taught to avoid, at all costs, mechanical resonance as that might destroy the entire machine. I wouldn't be surprised if Bessler did the opposite to enhance desired effects (a moving pivot comes to mind, or perhaps a vibrating axle, the vibrating "donut" dr. What came up with). We should thing out of the box...and this is definitely out of the (modern) box.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Trevor, clever mechanics, I agree with that, even though I am not a fan of difficult to implement, purely mechanical solutions in this day and age when so many things can be solved so much easier with some basic electronics, together with mechanics. But don't forget that some math can help to come up with clever (feasible) mechanics. Tesla is a good example of this. A genius who could literally visualize entire systems in his mind. But also a genius at math.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Good to have you back Andre, and yes math is very important in explaining why things happen after they have been dicovere,but remember that it was a mathematician who proved the heavier than air craft could never fly.It had to be proved in practice.
    I agree with you about the electro-mechanical way too,which I love, but I would rather stick to pure mechanics first just as Bessler did.
    Arkos you are so right about resonance,it is very important in the wheel,but it is a low frequency in time with the wheel cycle.

    ReplyDelete
  57. COP is a misleading measurement , agreed?
    We also seem to agree the Coriolis energy is inaccessible.
    Don't forget that mechanical resonance introduces more losses. Isn't that why they're to be avoided in machine design?
    Gearing up a slow moving wheel would introduce tremendous losses.
    If you think a gravity driven wheel is possible, no matter what size you build it, the empty wheel (no mechanisms or weights yet) has to be perfectly balanced to begin with, agreed? Mounted on bearings with the least amount of friction possible? And, if possible, mounted in a near perfect vacuum while still being able to transform the energy it might produce, right? Does anyone have an argument with me so far? After you have this set-up, then you place your mechanisms and weights in your wheel, and pump the air out of your container. Start your wheel. It turns and stops. Why? Anonymous earlier said the key is opposing forces. The word he left out is 'overcoming' opposing forces. Gravity can't overcome the other forces in a rotating frame of reference even after you reduce frictional losses to near zero.
    That's why gravity driven wheels won't break the conservation of energy law.

    ReplyDelete
  58. We are talking about a wheel that has sufficient power to do work.Friction is not a factor in the main bearins,opposing forces are not a factor,vibration is not a factor either.The cyclic swing of the weights is important.Bessler said perfect balance is not that necessary because it will just go on it's meerry way regardless.
    Gee you guys are so negative!

    ReplyDelete
  59. We're actually talking about a hypothetical wheel.

    ReplyDelete
  60. The wheel became hypothetical the instant he destroyed it and the papers that explained it..

    ReplyDelete
  61. Not negative Trevor, merely facing reality square-on.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Not so fast, Doug. COP is most certainly not a misleading measurement, because that's exactly what we are after: COP>1. It's very useful, because it gives us a measure of effectiveness. Remember, it is defined as the amount of power (work) coming out of a system, divided by the amount of power (work) that the OPERATOR has to input into the system to make it work.

    Let's consider a school electronics project, such as a crystal radio. There is no battery necessary, and yet it outputs sound (through a headphone). There is no conflict with the Law of Conservation of Energy, as the power needed to drive the transmitter at the radio station is millions times more than the feeble sound that's coming from the headset. So far so good, no laws broken.

    However, since we know how to calculate COP, we know that this little gadget is incredibly effective (NOT efficient, as we have just seen - it's producing only a fraction of the power of the transmitter). So while the efficiency of the crystal radio is well below 100% the COP is actually very high, near infinity actually. This is because we don't have to supply any power to make it work, and yet it outputs power in the form of sound. So efficiency and COP are two very different things, but it does show that "overunity" is possible - in other words, more work out than WE have to put in.

    So COP is extremely useful and not misleading at all - to the contrary, it gives us a meaningful measure of the effectiveness, "usefulness" of our wheel to do work. Efficiency can never exceed 100% and most likely never exceeds something like 90% in most systems, due to losses, friction, heat, air resistance and so forth. But the COP>1 is what we need - the higher the COP, the more effective our wheel is and the more real work it can do.

    I also respectfully disagree that (mechanical) resonance introduces (more) losses. Maybe in a conventional engineering sense it is not beneficial, but it certainly can be very useful in suitable devices. In electronics, resonance is everything and is the very mechanism that enables huge amplification effects. Yes, but that's electronics, you could argue. Well, also in mechanics it can be
    a great boon.

    For example in two-stage mechanical oscillators, which are, in effect, the mechanical "amplifiers" I have been harping on about. At the resonance frequency, achieved by the proper swinging period of a pendulum, this system causes an overbalanced beam to perform 12 times the work (COP=12) as is required to keep the input pendulum swinging.

    So yes, both COP and resonance are extremely useful. As for Coriolis forces, I suppose we are not yet able to harness that power, although we might at some
    point in time.

    As for a gravity wheel (or any other device) breaking the conservation of energy law: of course they don't. No device does that (except for microscopic devices under certain circumstances as per the link I showed you). We had that discussion already: but we do have COP, which is perfectly in line with all laws of thermodynamics, no law is broken, but we DO have more work out, more work available to us, than WE have to put in.

    Therefore, we don't have to break any laws. It ("it" being COP>1) can be done, as any windmill, solar panel, sailing boat, waterwheel, two-stage oscillator and refrigerator proves.

    ReplyDelete
  63. COP is useful in measuring heat pumps' ratio of heat exchange to supplied work , how does that translate to any other system?

    Crystal radios don't really demonstrate anything other than the sensitivity of human hearing, which can detect sounds with an energy of only 10(−16th power) W/cm2. A very miniscule bit of energy. They rectify the alternating current radio wave into a pulsing direct current on a single resonant frequency. It's cool, but it doesn't show over-unity. COP near infinity? What?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine

    I remember you talking about two stage mechanical oscillators before. I gave a lengthy response to that already. If someone had a mechanism that did 12 times the work, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

    The report from 2002 was never followed up. I'm guessing they measured something incorrectly; no one seems to have even tried to duplicate the experiment.

    Coriolis forces are quite small since the earth's rotation is so slow. They are shown by ocean currents and air movement. You'd probably have to build something thousands of kilometers in diameter to tap its' energy.

    Oh boy. A windmill? A waterwheel? solar panel ,sailing boat?
    What do all these have in common? The sun. Don't forget about the sun. I've talked about the sun til my fingers hurt.

    ReplyDelete
  64. Trevor, I agree resonance must be low frequency, and if gravity is involved, in time with the wheel cycle (more below).

    Doug, I agree that Coriolis force looks hopeless. I calculate that the energy difference (that we could get at using Coriolis force) between a 4kg mass at sea level at the equator, and one at 4 meters above sea level, is only 0.0000001752 joules.

    Andre, my simplest idea re resonance:
    Imagine an offset mass on one end of an arm. The other end can pivot around a wheel's central axle, and it is also attached to the axle via a torsion spring. The axle turns with the wheel. Ignore gravity for now.

    If the mass and arm are initially at rest, with the wheel turning at a constant rate, then over one cycle of operation, the graph of wheel torque vs angle (giving energy when integrated) is sinusoidal, first negative, then positive, in equal amounts. Can we increase the positive portion and/or decrease the negative one? (So far, I can't.) We can increase periodic time when required by increasing I (the rotational inertia) and can do that by shifting the mass out to a higher radius. Or, we could pick up more mass from the wheel as long as it is returned at the same velocity. Or, we could start the mass at some velocity back, and then always "chop out"/"short circuit" part of the negative portion of the cycle by elastically reflecting the mass from Earth. There are almost endless variations, but I haven't found any energy gain. I don't build physical models, but I have dozens of silux ones.

    I became interested in this idea because it seems to tie in with some of Prof Alfred Evert's Bessler Wheel remote viewing experiments (note the emphasis there on "bended time").

    ReplyDelete
  65. Doug. I explained, or so I thought, extensively the definition of COP and how it's calculated - and also how it's translated to any other system, including the crystal radio example. Yes, COP is near infinity with a crystal radio as WE don't have to supply any input power to make it output sound, to make it work. May I suggest you re-read the definition. I'm afraid I can't explain it more clearly.

    I don't understand you remark about a report from 2002 that was never followed up? Au contraire - research is ongoing and there are almost monthly discussion and demos of it, even on youtube. And yes, that COP=12 has been demonstrated. But there are more devices that demonstrate a COP>1. I mentioned it as an example of a mechanical amplifier, as I think it would be extremely useful in our application.

    What do a windmill, waterwheel, solar panel, sailing boat have in common? COP>1. Open systems with no user input, lots of output.

    ReplyDelete
  66. Arktos: Interesting, thanks for describing your ideas. The way I read it, your resonant frequency is very low, half that of the rotational cycle of the wheel? Not sure I follow correctly. I heard about prof. Evert's work and site, I will check it out. BTW - by changing the periodic time (by manipulating/changing the rotational inertia) you are, basically, "kiiking", right?

    ReplyDelete
  67. Andre, If I was intending also to exploit gravity, e.g. by getting the mass to the descending side of the wheel sooner than it would otherwise do, then I could have only one full cycle of resonance per wheel revolution. But of course I was trying to extend the length of the positive part of the cycle, which of course makes the full cycle longer. Most of my models were like that, but for those I usually shortened up the whole cycle, and could have several cycles per revolution. (i.e. for those, I was only concerned about inertial mass, so I just switched gravity off in silux.)

    I'm not too sure about kiiking - I've seen a few videos of it, and the kiikers just seem to be raising themselves up a bit near the top of the swing, to give themselves the energy they need to keep going. But yes, I suppose that does also increase the periodic time of their "cycle".

    ReplyDelete
  68. Andre , the definition for cop that I have only seems to apply to heat pumps. Here is the link to the wiki definition:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance
    It doesn't mention the ratio being used in other systems, only heat pumps.
    A crystal radio's antenna wouldn't pick up the radio wave signal unless the radio transmitter was pumping that signal out with, in the case of early AM stations, up to 500 kilowatts. That's a lot of energy, why doesn't it count in cop, if cop applies here?

    I can't find anything on the web, or youtube, other than the original report and the media coverage. I found a few things that mentioned nanotechnology will have to take the implications of the experiment into consideration. The New York Times article from July 30, 2002 "Humpty Dumpty Restored" has a quote from one of the scientists who said that the results show "you cannot get perpetual motion machines, you always get back to the second law". Here is the link to that article:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/30/science/humpty-dumpty-restored-when-disorder-lurches-into-order.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

    So the sun's energy doesn't count as user input? Because we haven't converted it, only used it directly from it's source? I've said this on here before: Nearly all the energy we have access to on Earth traces its origin back to the sun. Wind energy ,water energy, solar cell powered electricity, coal, oil, nuclear. Geothermal energy is a good example of energy from the earth. As far as a green source of energy (or no user input, if you prefer) it's the easiest one to implement. I think the COP ratio, when you try to apply it to other forms of energy transformation besides heat pumps, can mislead us into thinking that we're getting something for nothing. A heat pump doesn't transform the energy; it uses electricity to pump the heat from a cold reservoir to a warm reservoir, or from warm to cold. The more efficient the pump uses the electricity, the higher the ratio is, and the higher the cop. At least that's the way I understand it. How do you explain it?

    ReplyDelete

The True Story of Bessler’s Perpetual Motion Machine.

On  6th June, 1712, in Germany, Johann Bessler (also known by his pseudonym, Orffyreus) announced that after many years of failure, he had s...