How to build a model of it

See also a description on my blog, and an article on the renewable energy design wikia.

I'm working on a new design, but this is one which you can build a model of, and the model will work. It will be extremely cost effective when built on a large scale. It will refill the reservoir behind a hydroelectric dam from a reservoir below the dam, using only ambient heat, and increasing the amount of power available substantially. Using the excess electricity from many of these machines, hydrogen gas can be made to power cars. Carbon dioxide can be removed from the air, reversing global warming (if enough of these are built). There will be no need to use oil (which is good feedstock for making things) as fuel.

The machine consists of nothing but dams and reservoirs, tanks, pipes, valves, and some sensors and automatic control equipment. It uses water and air to store energy. The machine lowers raised water while compressing cold air. Then that air is heated as the day warms up. Then the machine uses the hot compressed air to raise water. We must show that the machine raises more water than it lowered.

It is well known that heating compressed air at constant pressure increases the volume. The machine will raise the same amount of air for a given volume of compressed air at a given pressure, regardless of the temperature of the air. So if you heat up your air, you can raise more water.

The real question is how much more water is raised than lowered? Is it just a few drops? That depends on how much you heat the air. If you double the absolute temperature, you double the volume. But if you raise the temperature from freezing to hot (0degC to 30degC = 273K to 303K), that is only about a 10% increase in the absolute temperature, so the volume will increase only by about 10%. So the machine will raise at most 10% more water than it lowered if the air goes from 273K to 303K. A real machine would be lowering the whole lake, and raising 10% extra which would be used to generate electricity. Instead of needing rain to refill the reservoir, the daily temperature variation will do it. Building a reservoir on the top of a mountain will work, because you don't need a river to fill it. You just need a reservoir at the bottom as well.

A model will be not so hard to build. Now I know why I was saving all of those soda bottles I have... You need two big plastic tubs of water, one at the top of an outdoor staircase (or better, a long hill) one at the bottom, hundreds (or at least 16) two or three liter soda bottles, a lot of cheap garden hose, and a way of making reliable valves cheap (you need one for every tank). You really need to be able to open and close a bunch of these at once. You need a T joint for every bottle, which screws into the top of the bottle (hopefully it is made from the original bottle cap) and which attaches to cut ends of garden hose.

The maximum pressure developed is equal to the "head" of water, i.e., 15 psi for every 30 feet of elevation. So if the equipment withstands ordinary water pressure, you are in excellent shape unless you are building a very big model.

You cut the bottoms off the soda bottles and effectively seal the top sections together so you get two threaded fittings at top and bottom of each tank.

The machine has two separate parts which can be demonstrated separately. The real machine uses one upper reservoir (open surface) and a large tank half full of water with a closed top that can hold pressure or a partial vacuum. But for one part of the demonstration, we don't need the large sealed tank. A set of connected tanks compresses air using a pair of upper reservoirs at different heights, or raises the level of the water in one upper reservoir while allowing compressed air to expand. For this, you connect one hose with a valve between the top T of every tank. Then you connect a hose with no valve between the bottom T of every even numbered tank (so the bottoms of all even numbered tanks are connected) and between every odd numbered tank as well. The last two tanks have only one bottom connection. The first and second tanks connect to the bottom of both upper reservoirs. That is, both reservoirs have T's on the bottom, and a hoses with valves connect one reservoir to both upper tanks, and the other reservoir to the other side of the T's of the upper tanks.

To compress air using this setup, first close all of the valves and let water flow from an upper reservoir down into both the even and odd tanks. The water will rise higher into the lowest tanks, compressing air there more. This sort of compression is called irreversible because a small change will not change it into expansion, and it isn't what the machine does after it is running. We are just setting it up initially.

Now that all of the tanks contain some air and some water, we want to move all of the water into say the even tanks by letting the compressed air in the odd tanks rise into the even tanks. So open valves between the lower odd tanks and the next higher even tank. Water will immediately flow upward from the bottom hoses into the odd tanks, and push most of the air into the even tanks. The exact geometry of the tanks is important here and will need some tweaking. Then close the valves. This is the normal working setup: half of the tanks are full of water, and the other half contain compressed air. The air in the highest tanks is compressed less than the air in the lower tanks. To compress the air more, make sure the higher reservoir is connected to the tanks with the air in them. Water will flow down from the highest reservoir into the tanks, compressing the air. Then, move the air downward by opening the valves leading to the water filled tanks. Since the reservoir which is slightly lower than the other is connected to these tanks, more water will flow into the upper tanks and the air will move into the lower tanks. It may be necessary to adjust the height of the reservoirs to achieve this.

Next, compress the air which has been forced downward. Close the valves and swap the reservoirs. More water will flow into the tanks with the air because a higher reservoir has been attached. When this stops, open the other set of valves and the air will flow down another step. Keep going, and the air will end up in the bottom tank compressed.

The other set of connected tanks pumps water from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir, using low-pressure air to move the water upward a small distance each step, or using descending water to create low-pressure air. The setup is almost exactly the same, except it is turned over. The valves and hoses connecting each tank to the next neighbor goe on the bottom, while the jumper hoses connecting even numbered tanks and odd numbered tanks goes on the top. Water flows from one tank to the next, while the low pressure air connects either to the even or the odd tanks, while the others are open to atmospheric pressure. The valves from even to next higher odd tank are closed, and the extra air pressure is applied to the even tanks. The pressure pushes water from the even numbered tank down through the hose with the open valve and up into the next higher odd numbered tank. This happens to all pairs of tanks at once. Then all of the valves are closed, the valves which were closed before are opened, and the extra pressure is connected to the odd tanks. The water rises another step.

To get a small pressure difference from water flowing downward, just reverse the operation. Air will flow out of the hose connected to the lower tank of each pair.

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