Possible Technologies for Future Energy and Power Production

What about improved transmission systems?

T-Rex

www.iscifi.tv

This is a good point. I have added it to the discussion on the multi technology distributed generation concept since for to work a fairly extensive and efficient grid is a prerequisite.

Masu,

Are we now on Solar? No more IC engine?

I have just started up to Solar discussion as I said would start a new discussion each Sunday. Its not meant as an end to the IC engine debate so please don't see it as an one and keep up the good work. I am still getting responses from the original thread about generating a list of technologies so the IC debate is defiantly not over.

The reason I start the new debates on Sundays is that there is usually only a small number of items in the Sunday mail out so it gives people more time to think about and develop their answer but in any case it takes 3 to 4 days for a new thread to get going.

Green house effect is a false and tricky sentence, That petrolum guys want us to belive in, to confuse all of us. - Sun radiation is in a perfect thermal equilibrium with earth ever since. is`nt it so? - Then , No need to use satelite mirrors to reduce incoming solar energy to avoid climate change -sun has never been harmfull- - CAUSE: The real cause is down here, where HUGE amounts of waisted heat -more that 6 billions of tons of hot gases per year- are generated while burning fuels -in motor vehicles, water heaters, boilers, thermoelectric generators, driers, ranges, ovens, etc-. For those that understand a math equation, the problem is: - sun energy + waisted heat from burning fuels = atmosphere overheating - Do you know what happen now that petrolium XX century is gone and Solar XXI century with free sun energy will replace fuels? ......very simple.....the expensive and depleted petroleum price will go down to 1 cent per barrel and that will brake off petrolium industry. and peaple will have more money to buy something else, OK? - SOLUTIONS: It is urgent to replase all combustion equipment and engines with solar and electric powered ones. As well as urgent is to reforest the world with billions of trees -which clean air by sucking CO2 and return us pure OXIGEN instead-. - HOW TO HELP: I urge any body who has rspònsability of enviromental founds to support any projects and products that pursue this chage over -to a new solar and electric eco-culture. - I hope you understand now the real problem and will help to communicate all your friends what is going on to become more that a green peaple but a ecology peaple instead. cheers, from mexico

While global warming and climate change is a serious global problem but your statement

• CAUSE: The real cause is down here, where HUGE amounts of waisted (sic) heat -more that 6 billions of tons of hot gases per year- are generated while burning fuels -in motor vehicles, water heaters, boilers, thermoelectric generators, driers, ranges, ovens, etc-. For those that understand a math equation, the problem is: - sun energy + waisted (sic) heat from burning fuels = atmosphere overheating is somewhat misdirected.

While it is true that we waste far more energy than we consume nearly all of the energy ends up as heat and thus increases the temperature of the atmosphere. However, the total global energy consumption and waste is not the most serious cause of atmospheric heating and is only responsible for a negligible portion of the predicted global warming and climate change.

The big hassle is the products of combustion and other pollutants we are venting in the atmosphere. A significant portion of these pollutants is opaque of Infra Red radiation. When sunlight falls on the ground some of it is converted into IR radiation which then radiates back through the atmosphere and into space. However if the transparency of the atmosphere to IR radiation is reduced by the pollutants we are adding to the atmosphere an ever increasing amount of IR radiation will be absorbed by the atmosphere and cause heating.

It is this absorbed reflected IR radiation that is the cause of the heating. If you think this is not the case just look at what happens when there is cloud cover at night. Clouds are opaque to IR radiation and as a result dramatically reduce the amount of IR radiation that is radiated into space at night. As a result the rate of cooling is dramatically reduced and the temperatures do not drop any where near as much as they do on a clear night.

Now, since you can easily detect the effect with a single cloud covered night just imagine if that were to happen over the entire surface of the planet every single day. The result would be a dramatic increase in the amount of energy trapped in the atmosphere and since our weather and climate is controlled by the amount of energy trapped in the atmosphere it will cause dramatic changes.

The amount of energy we are consuming and wasting will add to the energy trapped in the atmosphere but it is only a fraction of the energy that is trapped by the increased opacity of the atmosphere to IR radiation. The solution is to obviously reduce the volume of IR opaque compounds that are in the atmosphere and since the major source is the burning of fossil fuels reducing the consumption of these fuels is the logical way to reduce the effects of global warming and climate change.

take a serious at VTOL(vertical take-off landing). everything that's required for this to work well is available off the shelf now.

what about mule power-check out my discussion at gravity power under general.

CHP.

diesel engine can practically burn anything that's introduced thru' the injection nozzle-you'll need a homomgenizer, the CD-92, widely and successfully used in the marine industry(on board merchant ships).

in most combustion systems, i.e.: boilers, IC engines of all kinds, etc, nitrogen carries away a sizable chunk of heat away from the system. How about oxygen-fuel combustion system for the above. Such burners are widely used in the pottery/porcelain industry(for QC).

Hi rmg21, welcome to CR4 and thank you for the suggestion. I am not sure that the use of Vertical Take Of and Landing aircraft would solve the problems of transport and clean energy consumption any better than a helicopter would.

I can see a few problems with VTOL aircraft with the first being that they are extremely inefficient fuel guzzlers. It takes enormous amounts of energy to overcome gravity and hover an aircraft. To give you an idea to hover with a 100% efficient engine you will need roughly 50W/Kg to hover. Take into account engine inefficiencies and that quickly ends up at 125 to 150 W/Kg just to hover. If you are talking about something that caries four to six people an all the equipment that goes with it you are talking about 250-300 Kw to hover.

Secondly hovering in VTOL aircraft isn't as easy as one might think, the whole system is extremely unstable and liable to bite at the slightest provocation plus VTOL aircraft can only hover for short periods of time. For example the harrier can only hover for a maximum of 60 seconds per flight. This is because during the hover they need to inject water into the turbine to increase power and stop it from melting and there is only enough space for 60 seconds of water. If you hover for more than 60 seconds you need a new engine and they don't come cheap

Lastly flying an aircraft, especially VTOL aircraft, is considerably more complex and demanding than driving a car. As a result the majority of people are just not capable of coping with the task so trying to populate the skies with VTOL aircraft would be chaotic to say the least.

I agree that aircraft have a place in future transport for several reasons including the one you put forward of requiring no inter-terminal infrastructure like roads. However if we are looking for efficient environmentally friendly transportation I am afraid VTOL isn't the answer, well not yet but maybe in the future, you never know.

Thanks for the feedback Masu, mea-culpa on fuel consumption and solving transportation issues faced by many now. However, we do have quite a number of enabling technologies available at present to make VTOL a viable alternative transportation system for enthusiasts who are inclined towards such things. This could find wider acceptance in the leisure market.(look at jet-ski for example, what widespread commercial purpose does it have apart from the leisure market!) yet it's a multi-billion dollar industry and incidentally I have chosen its 3 cylinder engines as one of the powerplant options for my VTOL-it's compact and lite, fuel consumption isn't an issue for the leisure market, you know. VTOL application in the forces has great potential-personally I don't like going there though.

VTOL that I'm working on now, carries 2 pax and shall have approx. 300 kw onboard power, flies for 1 hour. allows for 50 kg payload/cargo/luggage.

It sounds like an interesting project. There are a lot of people here at CR4 that would be interested in it and would glad to help with any problems you come across. Have you thought of starting a thread about it that shows what you are doing and how far along you are. Being a pilot myself I am always interested in anything that flies and would like to see what you end up with.

masu,copy message, thread started.

Is "Solar Thermal Electricity Generation" the same as solar hot water heaters? If not, then should this category be considered? I have heard / read of some remarkable developments in Germany and China in this field. Household hot water and heating for the house is not an inconsiderable demand.

Good point Guest,

The answer is no they aren't the same. The debate on the use of solar power in its various forms was pretty light to say the least. I plan to start a discussion later on a multi technology distributed energy system once we have covered all the possible electricity generating technologies, so I will include the hot water part then.

1 Reduce unproductive use of energy.

Imagine the amount of additional energy available if each person in the world switched of a light 1 second sooner.

2 storage

A following saying from America impressed me a lot.

"Eat what you can and can what you cant"

More methods must be devised for canning (storing) surplus (electrical) energy.

At present water is pumped into a reservoir when surplus capacity is available. to be used for the production of electricity.

A - Please do not blame agriculture as the only bad guys.

Gidday Hendrik,

"Imagine the amount of additional energy available if each person in the world switched of a light 1 second sooner."

Last Saturday evening they tried an experiment in Sydney Australia where they asked as many people as possible to turn off as many electrical appliances and lights as possible between 19:30 and 20:30.

A considerable number of lighting was extinguished, especially in the city center, where things like the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House as well as many sky scrapers turned off all but essential lights.

It was really a publicity stunt as the amount of power saved was negligible as nearly all the power Sydney consumes is generated from coal and it takes well over an hour to change the output of the power stations. Another thing to keep in mind is that domestic power consumption is only around 30% of the total power consumption

The Australian Federal government recently announce that they planned to ban the production and use of incandescent light globes. It sounds nice on paper but as usual it is a poorly thought political stunt that will probably have no real affect. There are a lot of situations where you can't use high efficiency fluorescent globes and most people have already replaced the conventional incandescent globes wherever possible.

Ok enough of my sarcasm and criticism of the Australian Federal government.

"Eat what you can and can what you cant"

It's a good concept but storing electricity in the sort of quantities that we need is currently impossible. The only way that you can currently store any anywhere near what we need to store is as you stated hydroelectric. Doing it this way works out to be around 50% efficient so it isn't that great a system for storing electricity.

Even so it is used and in Australia the Snowy Mountains Scheme dose exactly this. The scheme diverts the normal eastern flowing melt from the Snowy Mountains back through the mountain range and finally westward for irrigation. To do this they need to do a fair amount of pumping but the designers realized that they could use the flow of water to generate a great deal more power than the needed to use for the pumping. They soon realized however that if they purchased surplus power from the coal fired power stations during periods of low demand they could then use the hydroelectric generating capacity to sell power back during periods of high demand at a considerable premium. The whole thing is a license to print money and is fortunately owned by various government bodies. Recently the Australian Federal Government decided it was going to sell the scheme off to raise capital. There was such a stink raised by the public that the government was forced to back down so, at least for the moment, it remains in public hands.

I am one of the people that believes that hydroelectric power is a good thing and should be expanded whenever practical and is not going to destroy something that is irreplaceable. Many people would say that the flooding caused is environmental vandalism but my reply to that is how much more land would be inundated by rising sea levels if the dams and reservoirs were not constructed. It doesn't take much of a sea level rise to cause the loss of vast tracts of land to the sea. In Australia there is a lot of argument about building more dams but the major population centers are currently suffering severe water shortages and unless the current storage capacity is increased the shortages are going to continue.

The environmentalist lobby are insisting that there are better solutions but when asked they are never able to supply a practical or viable alternative. They have managed to stall the system so long now that Sydney and Melbourne have a good chance of ringing out of water some time in 2008.

Getting back to storage technologies, at a domestic level it is possible but the various technologies are limited to using some sort of chemical process and an electronic inverter to convert the DC that is produced by the storage technology back into usable AC. The only technology that is anywhere near cost effective is lead acid batteries and even then the batteries have a limited life and produce considerable toxic waste. Any other technology is prohibitively expensive and that pushes it out of the market.

I do believe there is a solution however and that is the use of renewable energy generating technologies that are suited for that location to supply as much of the local load as possible. Any surplus can then feed onto the existing grid to make up for shortfalls elsewhere. An example would be an area that uses wind could be used to supply the local demand plus that of a similarly sized are that uses solar power to generate power at night. The opposite works during the day when there is no wind.

If you make the system large and diverse enough you can cover all the eventualities and guarantee the supply of electricity. You would also need hydroelectric power for bulk storage and to cover any emergencies.

I don't think we have reached the point of no return yet and we do have time to avert the catastrophes that global warming but we do need to act quickly.

Regards MASU

Hello Masu a little while ago I contacted one of your governmental organisations to suggest using solar still technology to produce salt free water. I described a system where mirrors were placed around a glass spere that had a reduced internal pressure and water was sprayed in so it would evaporate quickly the condense on to a metal plat and run out to a collector where it could be removed for use. They never got back to me. I also emailed the minister for energy about the light bulbs but again no reply. I guess your politicians are as useless as ours. All they seem to want to do is dictate from on high then when it all goes wrong deny any responsibility. Perehaps you will get some good ideas and promote them. If they want me to provide all their solutions just ask them to make 150 million A$ available.

Hi BrainWave,

The more information people are armed with, the more chance they have of bringing pressure to bear on the powers to be.

The main problem with western democracies is that the politicians can only ever be rewarded for short term gains. This is only natural and no matter who is in power, they want to stay in power. The only way to do this is to make as many people happy as quickly as possible. The politicians are not to blame for the political system they are empowered by.

If you do create long term projects that are highly successful then there is a good chance that you political adversaries will get credit when it comes to fruition some 10 to 20 years later. This makes long term projects against the best interest of whichever political party that is in power, so, trying to get anything off the ground that is going to take more than a decade to show any benefit, is just about impossible.

I do not know what the answer to this is, if we do away with the party system you end up with a political free for all that is unstable and can't even decide what time to have lunch. The only other alternative is a dictatorship and that's even worse as absolute power has always proven to catastrophic.

So what is the answer, how do we reward politicians for starting projects that are essential but will never be completed during their administration and cost buckets of money?

Frankly, I really don't know but it is a question that desperately needs answering.

Sydney, Australia is facing several problems at the moment, we are running out of water and the road system is at or near capacity across the board.

The last dam for the Sydney catchment area was completed about 50 years ago and at that time the water supply authority proudly boasted that Sydney's water supply was guaranteed till the turn of the century Well guess what, the turn of the century came and went and after half a century of procrastinatory dilly-dallying, nothing has been done and Sydney is running out of water. There have been plans on the drawing board for a further dam and reservoir for over 60 years now and the property owners in the area have all purchased the land on the proviso that their property would be compulsory purchased when the dam was built but nothing has happened and it has been sitting in the too hard basket all that time.

An Australian company has developed a Personal Rapid Public Transport system that is perfectly suited for Sydney's needs. The concept is a fully automated cars that run on a monorail system and carry one or six people. All you do is go to the nearest stop, grab a car that is waiting there and select your destination, the rest is automatic. This would be expensive and would cost between 10 and 15 billion Australian dollars to implement, but the benefits of such a system would be truly incredible. The time saving each year would be on the order of 250 million man hours, pollution would drop dramatically, road accidents would be greatly reduced, transportation costs of goods would be reduced and the current road system would suffice for about as long into the future as one would care to go. But will a government even think about something as radical as this, no, not on your Nellie, instead of spending 10 to 15 billion on a system like this they are going to spend 20 billion on band aid fixes that will only get the system to cope with the current level of traffic. Total stupidity and narrow mindedness.

Sydney has the opportunity to become one of the most fantastic, technically advanced, futuristic cities in the world, but, the gutless wonders wont think outside the box and so we end up stuck with a band aid on a band aid on a band aid that is likely to fail and cause a catastrophic transport problem. That's if we don't all die of dehydration first when the water runs out next year.

Anyway, enough of my ranting, I have wasted to much of you time so I will let you go and do something more constructive then listening to me.

I just got back to this page I have had too much fun around CR4 it is compulsive. Don't hang your head like that, walk tall believe, and one day you will just be disappointed again, that's life. The idea I came up with would take just a few months from drawing board to fully working units. There is nothing magical just a strait forward common sense approach. May be that is what is wrong it was just to easy low cost and guaranteed to work. So their I go great ideas that will work. Oh well.

The idea I came up with would take just a few months from drawing board to fully working units. There is nothing magical just a strait forward common sense approach.

This is not a new idea! At least as far as the desalination plant goes. A full scale model was built in the UK as part of a green house project and is soon going to be implemented on an even bigger scale in the middle east.

Hi Masu, I really enjoy your "ranting". Just think about this. Since the beginning of mankind, nearly everything that was invented by man was for the purpose of either increasing his own creature comfort or else being able to produce more while working less. Of course, some people worked out of the curiosity or hunger for knowledge and understanding of "what's out there".

Energy use or wasting thereof is certainly a serious issue today. But I think the poisoning of the planet ( not polluting ) is worse. Many pollutants made by man are annoying but "mother nature" eventually filters or breaks down or somehow renders these things harmless. But other poisons made by man seriously harm the living creatures to the point they go extinct! Some poisons ( pesticides, chemicals etc.) hang around for many years.

I think your water issue is more important in the longer run than energy waste. Using a lot of water doesn't seem so bad since it ultimately is filtered and recycled by mother nature. But POLLUTING the water....When there's no clean drinkable water, people die or get desperate and violent. A peaceful society allows time for thinkers like us to think, instead of protect our lives and belongings like uncivilized societies.

I'm blessed with an abundance of good drinking water, right out of my well. I could bottle it and people around the world could guzzle it and say "a-a-h-h-h!" Many in the world can't. Fortunately, there's lots of smart thinkers with possible solutions for our real troubles but the rich corporations need to be able to get richer making them or else it won't get done because "its the right thing to do". Problem is, there's not a lot of consensus on what exactly IS harmful regardless of its efficiency. I teach refrigerant handling and certification in the US and I'm not sold on the global warming debate. Don't really know if mankind is significantly affecting global temperature change.

Well that's my philosphical rant. I do believe that fortunately, the thinkers of our society generally DO have the best interests of mankind in mind overall, and not just for greed for money.

Hi BrainWave,

You obviously never saw this photograph of a politician's grave site that was recently disturbed!!!!!

don't think it matters where you are..................they are all the same.

Hi Masu

maybe look at this from another angle : "Any other technology is prohibitively expensive and that pushes it out of the market." Any other technology is prohibitively expensive and that pushes it out of the market, until such time as it is produced in sufficient quantity to enable considerable cost cuts.

as an example, you may take computers, motorcars, ball bearings, cameras, watches... you name it, it's all prohibitively expensive - in small quantities. But produce those goodies in some volume and you see a shift from prohibitively expensive to ridiculously cheap.

an organic rankine cycle wasteheat regeneration unit could be selling for the price of, say, a home theater system, or a ride-on mower, if mass produced.

Hangwaiter

My curiosity is piqued by your comment "an organic rankine cycle wasteheat regeneration unit could be selling for the price of, say, a home theater system, or a ride-on mower, if mass produced."

My understanding was that ORC systems are very expensive compared to other heat recovery systems like TEGs and Absorption Chillers, and need to be large (5MW or more) to be economically viable. Also that the gases used for these are typically not-so-eco-friendly CFCs/HCFCs or not-so-safe organic alcohols and ketones.

Would you know of any ORC manufacturers or designers who have efficient, subscale ORCs for 50-500kW ranges? What sort of fluids would these use?

A very interesting document.

Sorry it is in German and there is no translation available

The main site is www.oeko.de

The full comparison of environmental costs of energy sources, showing that the so called green techniques like solar, wind and nuclear are not so green at all.

This is copied from the full text:

Tabelle 3 Gesamte Treibhausgas-Emissionen von Stromerzeugungsoptionen (inkl. vorgelagerter Prozesse und Stoffeinsatz zur Anlagenherstellung)

I kept it in German to state that the info is not mine but copied from the öko website.

The greenest is biogas CHP and natural Gas CHP. The biogas CHP solution even has a negative index as it consumes more CO2 than it produces in the energy production.

The figures are valid for the German situation. IT is better for Germany to install PV cells in Spain and transport the electricity to Germany then to install the PV panels in Germany.

The figures show that the distributed micro-CHP production model is one of the best way's to go: make the heat where you need it and distribute the electricity to the consumers. Direct solar heat is not taken into calculation as this is not a part of the electricity production cycle.

This model might not be beneficial in other regions of the world: we (west and central europe) have a typical energy distribution of 2/3 heat and 1/3 other usage (light, motor, houshold, computer,...)

Hi, Gwen!

Do You understand this table? I DONT!

HOW could Solar systems produce CO2 and CO2 equiwalent? As NOTHING is burned, I would say it is IMPOSSIBLE to produce CO2 directly, and (IF I understand it right) CO2 EQUIVALENT is waste heat, but Solars just transform HEAT of Sunrays (perhaps inefficiently, true) into electricity, either by producing steam which power turbines, or using it to heat water and save electricity, of transform UV to electricity directly, no?

Therefore, it should be that MINUS values should appear at SOLAR instead at Biogas production, which produce Methane, (but maybe they tought that colecting it removes CO2 equivalent, not thinking that if this methane is BURNED, then real CO2 goes out, and they are losing it anyway here and there) so perhaps somebody has forgoten to put MINUS in front of values for Solar energy!

Or, Is it case that they counted energy spent for PRODUCING Solar convertors (because of this mark >>multikristaline<< beside Solar), but this would be making salad out of bitter root and Ananas, since surely Atomic centrals would have much bigger CO2 footprint, if we count how much energy went to cement making, how much for steel used, (specially while making containtment wessel out of 2 inches plates and for argon welding them to build it, and in Steel Mill, transport, etc.)?

It seems that it is INTENTIONALY misleading to make Atomic centrals look clean, while they surely have much bigger CO2 EQUIVALENT footprint since they lose at least 40% of energy produced as waste HEAT.............

HOW could Earth Gas used for making BRICKS have less values of both CO2 equivalent and CO2 smaller than electricity got from Solar concentrators (Imported from Spain?) NOW, that is IMPOSSIBLE!

Am I wrong?

Considering my total understanding of the German language comes from Colonel Klink from Hogan's Heroes I haven't got the faintest clue of what the table states. Perhaps somebody with an understanding of the German language could translate it and post an English version.

• Am I wrong?

Possibly.

One of the things that often gets bandied about is that the amount of energy consumed manufacturing solar panels and cells actually exceeds the amount of energy they produce during their operational life. Initially when solar cells were only used in places like space and the middle of nowhere that was the case.

However, with mass production and improved manufacturing techniques it is no longer the case. Sliver cell technology is the current up and coming technology and has an energy payback period as short as 3 months, so if you ever see somebody claiming that more energy is used creating solar cells you can inform them that they are at least 4 decades behind the times.

You can read more about solar cells by following this link to an earlier thread on Photovoltaic Cell Energy Payback that I started as one of this series.

Hi, Masu!

Long time no word of comment from You, I was getting worried!

Yes, specially with Nanotubes technology, photoelectric cells should be much more effective in conversion of light to electricity, and therefore also cheaper for use.....

I heard that argument allready about spending more energy to produce them them they would ever be able to convert, but I did not believed it, even if at beginning where You neded 1m square to get 5 V, that was really poor eficiency.

German is not my native language also, still that much I could understand, but why they find that each IMPORTED energent (save Solar electricity from Spain) has MUCH bigger CO2 and CO2 equivalent footprint, if it was not to promote using of domestic resources, I dont know......

Still, whole table look heavily slanted toward Atomic energy production, and I notice such tendencied otherwhere too........

Did You finish this Spitfire model or you are just taking break?

Regards,

Marijan Pollak

G'day Marijan,

My better half and I have been living part time at the family home in Sydney for the last 5 years or so and we decided that having an empty house in Adelaide was a bit silly. As a result we decided to make the move permeant and rent out the house in Adelaide. Packing up a couple of decades of accumulated goodies then shipping them the 1400 km from Adelaide to Sydney has been somewhat overwhelming. We are also renovating the section of the family home that will become our apartment and as you can imagine things have tended to pile up.

I have also had to completely rethink my workshop as I only have about 10% of the space I had in Adelaide. Having such a tight constraint on size has meant some fairly lateral thinking but I have managed to squeeze nearly all of the functions of the old workshop into the new one. Mind you, I have been having a hell of a time getting builders and tradesmen to do what I want. The size constraint has meant a lot of unusual construction techniques and the average builder/tradesman can't seem to get it through their thick heads that we are not doing things the same way as usual. I have had to rip out and redo so much that I am totally peeved off with tradesmen at the moment. You explain what needs to be done, give them detailed drawings and specifications all the way to the fasteners, supply them with all the materials and explain why we need to do it differently, then guess what? I come back in two hours and they have gone ahead and done it the way they always have and completely ignored my instructions.

The end result is that the original time line of a couple of months has now blown out to around 2 years, but we are getting there and with a little luck everything will be up and running by the end of the year.

Unfortunately this has meant that I have had to put everything on hold for the moment but as soon as the workshop is up and running I will be getting the Mosquito and astronomy projects running again.

Oh yes, that Irish git Murphy has taken a special interest in my projects and threw a spanner in the works by causing a total failure of my laptop computer. I was going to replace it next year and I did have a backup but it meant bringing the replacement forward which in turn delayed everything else even more.

But I'm an eternal optimist and I can se the light at the end of the tunnel, I just hope it's not a train coming the other way!

It appears to me, that technology for minimum pollutant power generation is widely available and market ready.

However, the argument of the nuke/oil/coal-industry is - and i can't fault them on that point- is, that wind & solar require a conventional 'backup' for times when there's not enaugh shine or blow.

So, my reasoning is, rather than splitting hairs about the best power generation system, the emphasis should be on power storage . So called alternative (why not simply 'righteous') power generation systems can produce power maybe on a different time cycle, but with very little running cost and environmental damage.

all possible means of power storage should be extensively explored, even before viability comparisons are attempted. Sometimes a small change in an existing system can lead to a significant cost cut. Rather not throw an idea out too early on assumptions that it may not be viable.

• Pumped storage systems are already in use and some practical feedback should be available
• Further, how about storing energy in the form of heat in an insulated volume of liquid(water), and recovering it, using organic rankine cycle generation systems as electricity on demand ?
• Large, and i mean LARGE scale use of batteries, possibly utilizing waste metals and waste acids to make such real big batteries? Sound impossible? Well, man made it all the way to the moon and back, and that's a few years ago...We cut thick solid steel plates with a beam of light on a daily basis, we do a lot of impossible things. So, how impossible can it be to make a battery, half the size of the great pyramid ?
• Crystalization as a means of heat storage. How's that ? Can store heat almost indefinitely and recover on demand. Just add an ORC genset to this and here's a portable battery of almost any conceivable dimension.

We must stop thinking inside the box which is built by industry, greed and politics, and we can look forward to a good, clean future on this beautiful planet.

Hi hangwaiter,

This thread is only the one for suggesting the sort of technologies that may prove to be viable. If you look at the introduction to this thread you will see a list of all the technologies that people suggested were worth discussing. Many of the technologies already have threads and you can read and add to these threads by following any of the links You may find these threads of interest as they cover much of what you have put forward in your posts:

• Totally Distributed Multi Technology Co-Generation
• Uranium Fueled Nuclear Fission
• Thorium Fission Reactors
• Battery Electric Vehicles

Hi, MASU,

Just two days ago friend asked me to find him autobiografy of my countrymen, Eng. Nikola Tesla, and searching for this I have found that he has among all other things invented Gravity conversion motor for a car and tested it very succesfully. So that ought to be also one of category as energy source.......... I had in mind something similar that would be using Gravity force but in much more primitive way, so if he has suceeded, somebody ought to try to replicate his results, even if FBI has sequestered lot of his invention descriptions, and also somebody set fire to Tesla's workshop one day after his death, so lot of things are lost, prototypes included, unless someone set fire to hide fact that things have been removed after his death.

Interesting fact is that he had in that time his nephew with him in US, so perhaps someone persistent enough could find what happened to this nephew and his work, because it is first such reference that I saw mentioned..........

Anyhow, to know thing IS possible solves half of problem, and that would be really INEXHAUSTIBLE energy source, more so as he seemed to make some electronic Gravity to Electricity conversion, and mechanicall power was produced by speciall electromotor, manufactured in Westinghouse Laboratories, and if plans for it are saved then we would know more than half of system, because we could see what kind of electricity was input from Gravity Converter, and since he supposedly used radio lamps of known type, perhaps someone with expert knowledge in that area could unrawel this mistery? Alltough, use of radio lamps smack of another of his inventions, wireless transfer of energy, but then, if he wrote it is Gravity force converter, I would hedge my bets that it were so in reality! Since he was son of the priest, he would follow 10 Commandments to the letter, therefore, and because of history of my country, it would be unthinkable for him to lie :-)) Details of his Gravity car motor invention are here:

http://www.bio-plasmics.org/tesla/nikola_tesla_6.htm

while more about my great countrymen could be found here:

http://flyingmoose.org:80/truthfic/tesla.htm

It seems that some Russians allready patented magnetic gravity converter, too:

http://www.rexresearch.com/roschin/roschin.htm

therefore I definitely think one more category is required in Your list.......

Regards from Zagreb, the capitol of Republic of Croatia, Europe!

Marijan Pollak, IT SE 1st Class, Instructor and Team Leader
Owner and Director of company
OBERON d.o.o. ZAGREB +385 1 463 5 338

Hi Henrik14,

Nicholas Tesla was certainly a genius and he was definitely treated unethically by the likes of Edison and Westinghouse. However, towards the end of his life he became somewhat bitter about the way he had been treated and went somewhat off the rails in the reality department. As a result you need to be very careful about how much credibility you give much of his later work.

An example of this was his claim to have accidentally triggered an earthquake while testing a device that played about with natural resonate frequencies. In his notes he describes how he made the device and how that while testing he nearly demolished the surrounding area and how he made all the employees that witnessed it swear that they would never reveal the truth of the source of the resultant earthquake. The only trouble with his claim was the complete lack of seismic activity anywhere or any time close to his claim so the whole story needs to be looked at with a great deal of skepticism.

I havn't yet had the time to read all the information in the links you have provided and I will when I get time. Something to keep in mind is I have lost count of the number of people that have claimed to have invented an energy from nothing, perpetual motion machine and every last one of them has been shown to be wrong. I have personally spent weeks and tens of thousands of words corresponding with people that have posted a claim on the CR4 site that they have created such a machine. To date 100% of the people that have claimed to have located a way around the law of conservation of energy have failed miserably when their clams have been tested. So, to date that law of conservation of energy has stood without exception.

Hi. Masu,

We cannot judge his state of mind because of not knowing Mr. Nikola Tesla personaly, and if I remember it corectly, it was NOT at end of his life.........

Here we dont talk about Overunity device, but of Converter of Gravity Force (or energy if You will) that is somewhat an anomaly in itself, and as one physicist from >>Rudjer Boskovic<< has mentioned, exhibiting "Inverse Square Rule" property (where he added how NO ONE OTHER phenomena is manifestating such property, but I had to correct him and remaind him that ilumination ALSO have same property, and so we know that it is just like radiation of light, and for me it means how Light and Gravity must be phenomena where there is >>straight perpendicular line radiation of energy<<) but opposite force to it is not known, where physic postulates that for any action there is equal and opposite reaction, or force.

So perhaps my countrymen has found the way to tap into this seemingly inexhaustible energy source and CONVERT it to Electric current using some sort of transformer or antena system, and his radio lamps were just a resonator or stabilizer.

I remember how my father has shown me most primitive radio, consisting of one telephone receiver, two wires and one needle, and small lump of Germanium crystall.

I could get music, and not so quiet, without any energy source, because radio station was sending enough into air! So if our planet >>emmits<< lot of energy, then surely we would be able to tap into this source and use it, if we have appropriate "tuner" device......

Hi Henrik14,

I have been having a detailed look into the links you supplied in post

When I see statements like this

• generator's weight is claimed to have dramatically decreased to a negative state

I get this, "On no, here we go again!" , feeling.

Negative mass, what the smeg is that? You can't have a negative mass and in absolutely ever case of anti gravity or negative gravity that has been tested scientifically has shown that to date nobody has been able to modify or alter the effect of gravity.

Gravity is the result of the way mass and energy distort space and time but you can't or at least to date nobody has demonstrated you can, distort space and time in the negative way that would be required to negate or reverse the effects of gravity.

There is a device that consists of a sealed and evacuated container that contains a electromagnet that is utilized to pick up and hold a ferrous sphere. When the electromagnet is turned off they measure the time the sphere takes to fall a defined distance. The whole thing is kept in a highly controlled environment and is capable of measuring the effect of gravity to a phenomenal degree of accuracy. It can easily detect the distortions in space and time of the Moon and Sun as well as people walking past and objects being place near it. Whenever so called claims of gravity moderating devices have been tested with this device they have all been show to in absolutely no way whatsoever alter the effects of gravity.

Keep in mind, for any of these dubious claims to be true it means that all the scientists and engineers since Sir Isaac Newton have been working on a flawed concept and havn't know what they were doing. It would also mean there would be some cataclysmic disaster when items designed using these flawed concepts failed because the engineers and scientists didn't know what they were doing when they designed whatever it was they were working on.

So, who are you more likely to agree with? A person that often has little or no formal education or training that is working out of what is usually nothing more than a shed in the back yard, or the millions of scientists and engineers that have spent large portions of their lives studying and training, have built and explained everything from a match to the space shuttle or Saturn V launch vehicle that tool the Astronauts to the moon in the late 60s and early 70s, while working out of some of the most renowned institutions throughout the world.

When you look at if from that point of view it really a non starter, isn't' it?

Hi, Masu!

Beg Your pardon, but that was article about patent granted, and it was not 1st April news either. I chose to NOT make opinion on this, perhaps because I have witnesed something as a boyscout that I cannot explain as of today: nine >>Dervishes<< on Adriatic seacoast dancing in frenzy around big stone (size of skyscraper garbage can), ritmically inhaling and exhaling and shouting, then bending and grabing stone with ONE hand (and not really grabbing it either, just laying palm againest it) and lifting it into air as far as their hands could reach, chanting for one minute standing like this, and then letting stone drop back to the shore........ It were evening and fire was burning around which they danced and jumped (pretty high, at least 1.6 meter as their feet were over my head, and they continued to jump, without break, too) so thinking back I would now say it was mass hipnotism, if anybody has suceeded to hipnotise ME, and I was so baffled that I have checked this stone in the morning, and find it laying little oblique in its hole in shore gravel and shallow water of morning tide, showing marks of water line and darkened stone beneath on one side........

I also was shown a movie with some chinese monk practicing CHI energy acumulation excersizes, then grabing stone ball greater than football and playing with it like it has small weight, to throw it on young tree nearby which broke from impact.......

But, this were some 20 years ago, and I was thinking of movie tricks so I did not really believed it, but former experience kept nagging at me........

Since we have just theories what Gravity really is, and perhaps we have mixed cause and effect in case of mater and force bending space (I have seen the computer simulations shovimg Planets >>rolling<< around the Sun in something that looked as elastic or rubber plate, and all would be well if I did not know that Sun is also traveling fast along its trajectory in our Galaxy, so actually circles were spirals) where it may be that it is Gravity which is bending them.......

So if only one thing is similar to it, and it is the light (or better, energy), where light is comming out while gravity is going in, so we could think of oposites.... But if we have learned that we could make light by leting electricity pass trough a wire in vacuum, why woud not magnetism, complement of electricity, be able to influence the gravity, and if there is some kind of influence of magnetism on gravity, then why would not some kind of magnetic resonator be source of electricity? Tesla's inventions are still demonstrated in Technicall Museum in my city, and I have seen it demonstrated in our Physic cabinet in primary school, and later in life father has shown me device based on one of such inventions (called Tesla's egg) where magnetic field was used to hold a tool in air and inducted electric current was heating it untill it become white, and dropped into an oil drum become tempered steel. Tool was held in the air, defying Gravity, and surely energy was spent to counter its effect on tool......... If You would let tool to stay too long in such position, it would melt forming a ball of perfect roundness, but to quench it You would need much deeper oil barrel.......

If one would know everything (at least on this level of knowledge as we have today) then perhaps one can connect theretofore unconected phenomena, about only specialists in the field know about... For instance, I was talking with man who has installed radio emision antenas, who told me of curious thing he has found, that magnetic waves (that is, radio waves) pass trough nearly everything, but matt made of plant like bamboo that grow on the edge of ponds, and someplaces on seashore which we call >>Trska<<, sorry that I cannot remember english name right now....

Therefore, if this article about issuance of Patent rights were not fake, surely this Patent Office wold not register it without comprehending tests.....

Tesla has invented first radiocontrols that You use in model airoplane, and surely it was looking like trick to onlookers tha were trying to find threads that connect him to the boat he were commanding, but since You know how it works, surely You would not do it :-)) But imagine an engineer of this time who knew just mechanicall way of control of movement for machines and devices, would not he tell it is not possible if somebody described it to him?

Do we really KNOW what Gravity IS, or Magnetism, for that matter? We USE it, like we use the electricity, and we have measured its effects, but do we know it, really?

If Tesla have invented motor that use FREE and seemingly UNLIMITED source of energy, would capitalists, and specially those that produced and sold electricity, let him give it to the world? Would they let anybody even today? You can bet, they would rather kill such person and destroy all inventions! We have one thing that can save us from such fate, and it is Internet, as we would be able to send plans to all our coleguas engineers so anybody qualified would be able to put it together, but how to protect this person's rights to exploit his discovery? I am sure there are lot of inventions that were bought and intentionally burried deeply by those capitalists or companies that would be out of business if such invention become known and used, and since it is cheaper to kill somebody than to pay him, many "accidental deaths" including Tesla's are hiding inventions too good or too terible to be used.......

Imagine that in the war scientist or group of them made discovery of something Tesla called >>Death Ray<<, where gun like device using just half kg of batteries can literaly extinguish life in pointed direction for 300 km.... Such weapon would bring sure victory for their army, but render lifeless any living creature that has nerves in the body, too............ Would they, children of Atom Bomb age, let it be used? Of course not! Principle was so simple anyone could copy it, and sooner or later enemy army would get hold of at least one piece, and two sides would kill each other, devastating all country in process! So they destroyed all evidence and burried their knowledge deeply, to be untouched unless all is lost for their side, which fortunately did not happen.

Scientists of Tesla's time have had no such scrupules, our generations are forced to think globaly. So, if Tesla HAS invented Gravity converter and it went in use worldwide, just think how many things would be different today, how many wars would NOT be fought, for instance......

But perhaps Tesla realized how drastically things would have to change, and he lived trough Big Crash of Wall street in 1929, so perhaps he realized it is not right time for his electromobile, and all other ways in which FREE energy could be employeed, from airoplanes, trains, trucks, to common electric devices........

Now put Yourself in his shoes for a while, what would You do?

But there are scientists today that dont know anything about Global economy, and those would open Pandora's Box, just to show others that THEY could do it........

Such things have to go in stages, half free energy first, then when cheap energy change ecconomy enough, it would be time for totaly FREE one....

My late father has once shown me somethimng that looked deceptively simple, one wheel made of bronze on axle on which little generator was connected by transmission, all upon a box, one electric lamp conected to generator wires and nothing else...... Bronze wheel was hollow and plate was screwed from one side, it was turning and turning without stopping, and father told me to guess how it is powered. He used to make things and I would have to guess what it is, or what it is for, or how he put it together, since I was little boy, it was our game, but father offten spent lot of energy to make it just for few minutes of my guessing which ended it....

That one I could not understand, and he told me to not mention it to anybody at all, at least not while he was alive....

Unfortunately he dismantled this and I never have found all parts, just lamp and generator, and opened and empty wheel of bronze........ What was missing was just this round plate that was screwed on the wheel, and obviously it held all of secret, since wooden box was empty, too.......

To this day I was not able to guess what it were and how it turned, and I would not say it was only stored kinetic energy device, but maybe it was his joke on me.....

However, two years ago I had some ideas for gravity machine, but I would nedd to make prototype and see what happens, as maybe I have overlooked some little thing, who knows, and I am not so young and fresh as before......... But, it would be a hobby, after I make devices that would surely work and bring money for research and inventions development!

Right now, I would like Your comment on building of kilometer height tower solution, if You dont mind?

Regards, Marijan

Right now, I would like Your comment on building of kilometer height tower solution, if You dont mind?

I believe that something on those lines is being tried in the Australian desert, which is one place where it could work, because of the thermal difference.

I found the post interesting and invigorating! There might be more than a grain of truth in this.

Hi Henrik14

• so thinking back I would now say it was mass hipnotism, if anybody has suceeded to hipnotise ME, and I was so baffled that I have checked this stone in the morning, and find it laying little oblique in its hole in shore gravel and shallow water of morning tide, showing marks of water line and darkened stone beneath on one side........

There are more ways to hypnotize a person that the old you are getting sleepy and watch this object method portrayed in movies. There are a considerable number of drugs that fall under the category of hypnotics that are quiet capable of inducing an hypnotic state in anybody that is exposed to them. Many of the can be administered by burning and then inhaling the resultant smoke and in the situation you described my bet would be on something in the fire.

Keep in mind, there is an instant US$1,000,000.⁰⁰ prize up for grabs for anybody that can demonstrate under scientific conditions any sort of supernatural event. So far there have only been a handful of claimants and all have failed miserably. If what you saw wasn't some sort of slight of hand why have they not claimed the prize? It would seem to me to be the easies US$1,000,000.⁰⁰ they could ever earn.

• Since we have just theories what Gravity really is, and perhaps we have mixed cause and effect in case of mater and force bending space (I have seen the computer simulations shovimg Planets >>rolling<< around the Sun in something that looked as elastic or rubber plate, and all would be well if I did not know that Sun is also traveling fast along its trajectory in our Galaxy, so actually circles were spirals) where it may be that it is Gravity which is bending them.......

The demonstration you described is one to the common ways that Einstein's general relativity is explained and how a mass distorts space and time and as a result causes what we see as gravity. It is however a poor demonstration and you need to extend if from a three dimensional representation of space and time into a four dimensions in order to understand what happens in the real universe.

While it is true we do not have a complete understanding of gravity the current theories stand up very well and the more we test them the more they appear to stand up to scrutiny and accurately predict observed events. For there to be a negative or repulsive form of gravity it would mean throwing out something that has stood up t every single test scientists have thrown at it for nearly a century.

Regardless of that the current theory works very well and precludes a negative mass and gravitational effect.

Just because an item remains at a given height above the ground doesn't necessarily mean there is any energy being expended to keep it there. If we work on purely Newtonian concepts of gravity the energy would have been expended I the lifting process and not the holding it there. If you pick something up off the floor and place it on a table is the table expending energy holding the object off the ground? The answer is of course no so if an object were to be suspended off the ground using a magnetic field you are not adding or subtracting energy from the object. The energy expended in electro magnets is there to overcome the resistance and losses in the system not the actual magnetic field that is holding the object up. A permanent magnet is perfect capable of holding something ferrous and opposing gravity for an indefinite period of time without expending any energy. To have any transfer of energy you need to have a dynamic magnetic flux not a static one.

If you do generate a dynamic magnetic field, for example a coil energized with a alternating current, then you have introduced a dynamic magnetic flux. A varying magnetic flux can then induce a electric field in any conductive medium that is close enough to be affected by the field and this can easily result in heating due to the induced current in the object.

• Therefore, if this article about issuance of Patent rights were not fake, surely this Patent Office wold not register it without comprehending tests.....

A patent has nothing to do with the science behind the operation or non operation of an object it is just a statement that the person holding the patent owns the idea. If it is based on a misconception or incorrect analysis it doesn't matter. A patent is not a verification that the science, theory, principle or physics behind a claim is true it is just a statement that the holder was the first person to claim ownership of the idea.

• Right now, I would like Your comment on building of kilometer height tower solution, if You dont mind?

The enviro Mission Solar Tower is an interesting concept and on paper would definitely work. However you are talking about constructing something that is over twice the height of any structure built to date. In order to do this the first thing you are going to need to do is produce a new form of concrete that is over twice as strong as the existing concrete. That's not going to be easy but Australia is definitely the place to try as we have been world leaders in constructing structures from concrete from the late 1960s This came about primarily from the requirements of the Sydney Opera House and the techniques and materials that were developed have enabled engineers to construct skyscrapers that at the time of building were the tallest concrete structures in the world.

It's worth getting off track a little here as the technique that is often used to construct skyscrapers is somewhat different to the steel frame technique commonly in use throughout the world. Not all skyscrapers are built this way but the larger ones certainly are.

• The first step is to build the concrete core that contains all the lift and vertical utility risers as well as the fire escapes, toilets, bathrooms etcetera. This is constructed entirely out of concrete that is reinforced with steel. That includes floors, ceilings, walls etcetera and contains Drywall or Gyprock sheeting.
• The next step is the construct a series of vertical steel reinforced concrete columns around the perimeter of the tower. There are normally between eight and twelve of these columns.
• At the floor level of each floor they then install a series of prefabricated, pre stressed steel reinforced concrete beams. These function as the anchor for the floor as well as reinforce the concrete columns.
• They then construct a mould that will ultimately be used mould the concrete for the floor but before thy pour the concrete they construct what looks like a spiders web of steel cables that run from the building core to the beams that separate the columns at the perimeter of the building. These cables are then placed under considerable tension and once everything is in place they pour the slab for the floor.
• Once the concrete is cured they remove the mould and allow the tension on the steel cables to be transferred to the concrete slab that forms the floor slab.

The result is a concrete structure that is always under compressive loads due to the pre-tensioning of the steel cables. It also allows you to reduce the thickness from an average thickness of around 230 mm to und 50-60 mm. It also has no columns within the building giving you a better usable floor space to footprint ratio.

The interesting thing about this technique is that after the attack on the World Trade Center they are now using it in other countries. Nobody has actually tested it and I hope it never is but a skyscraper constructed this way would have a better chance of surviving an attack like those on the World Trade Centre. The building may well ultimately collapse but as the fire stairs are surrounded by at least a metre of concrete in any direction they would more than likely remain usable after the impact and allow those trapped above to escape. The fire stairs in the WTC had walls constructed from Drywall or Gyprock and were destroyed by the impact of the aircraft and cut off all the escape routes for those trapped above the point of impact.

Anyway, if you were to try and build something like this I can understand trying to build the first one in Australia. However, something that is worth noting about this project is the total and complete lack of coverage about it in the Australian media. Very few Australians have heard about it and the only way I found out about is was by accident while doing research for one of the threads on my blog. To me that sounds just a tad suspicious.

Hi, Masu!

As far as I know, and I have neigbour that is employeed by Patent Office in Stockholm, they DO require inventor to demonstrate working model, else any idea no matter how absurd it may be would be able to be patented, and it would not need TWO years to get Patent, one would just have to fill application and pay fees!

Now, in regard to this tower, I proposed that they should find a mountain that high and drill hole verticaly from top, and tunnels horizontaly on ground level.... If mountain is less than kilometer high, then they could build a tower on the top to get desired height of one kilometer, which means if mountain is just 750m high, they have to build 250m tower on the top.........

We use such prestressed concrete in Croatia at least 20 years, and build bridges and motorways that way......... Trick is to have steel frame around future concrete plate, and use speciall tools to string cables and cables get speciall endings that hold their ends fixed after strain is applied uniformly..

In regard to this "levitating" stone, I explained that I checked stone in the morning and it was showing signs of being torn out from place where it was laying very long time, and it did not fell quite in same place nor in same position as before, so 10 cm or handspan on one side was lifted up, showing tidal marks...... As this happened 40+ years ago in a country where to travel to seaside was realy adventure that took 2-3 days by bus, where today it take 2-3 hours by modern highway, and those were muslim warior-priests called "Dervishes" from monastery situated in some truly backward place (even for so backward country), I dont think they ever heard of this prize, and even if they did, I think their creed would not allow them to show their secrets, I just intruded by chance upon their practice, celebration, or whatever it was actually.

In regard to statement that energy is just spent to lift something off the ground, in case of table and stone I agree with You, but in case of electromagnetic field, You have to continue spending energy to keep something in the air, not so with permanent magnet and iron.... If in Your example You substitute permanent magnet with electromagnet, once You lift that iron up, surely You have to use electricity to maintain magnetic field that keep it up, yes? Even in case of table and stone, if stone is big, table may collapse and Your stone would surely not remain there where You put it, therefore it show how gravitationall force did not stop influencing it, so surely there is equall and opposite force holding stone where it is put on the table? Classic explanation state how weight is transfered to table plate uniformly, and from table plate on legs of table, and those leght has breaking strenght, or one may call it compresion resistance, which is force acting in oposite direction than weight of that stone......

Hi Henrik14

• Now, in regard to this tower, I proposed that they should find a mountain that high and drill hole verticaly from top, and tunnels horizontaly on ground level.... If mountain is less than kilometer high, then they could build a tower on the top to get desired height of one kilometer, which means if mountain is just 750m high, they have to build 250m tower on the top.........

It's an interesting concept, but I have the feeling it wouldn't work as well as the free standing tower for several reasons:

1. Mountain Size: Australia is a very old continent and as a result has really suffered from erosion. It is the only continent that is completely free of volcanoes and the maximum elevation is 2,228 m and to the best of my knowledge there is no mountain that rises 1,000 m from base to peak.
2. Solar Collector Location: One of the important design parameters is the solar collector at the base of the tower. You need to have a large flat area around the base in order to be able to gather the energy and heat the air. This I can absolutely guarantee doesn't exist in Australia anywhere near a mountain anything like the size required.
3. Horizontal Transfer Loss: The further the collector is from the base of the tower the more loss there will be due to temperature drop and friction making the whole thing less efficient.
• We use such prestressed concrete in Croatia at least 20 years, and build bridges and motorways that way......... Trick is to have steel frame around future concrete plate, and use speciall tools to string cables and cables get speciall endings that hold their ends fixed after strain is applied uniformly..

If you do it properly there is no need to surround the vertical pillars with steel in order to avoid what is often referred to as an hourglass failure. The idea is that by placing the steel cables and reinforcing under great tensile stress and then releasing that into the concrete then the concrete will always remain under compression regardless of and shear, torsional or rotational forces applied to it. The do however add internal reinforcing wires that wrap around the longitudinal reinforcing members as well as using a system called Rib Loc that can be used to initially contain the concrete while it is poured and set as well as prevent hourglass failures afterwards.

I don't know if you have heard of this before but the "" had several techniques that they used for what can only be described as getting off their faces. One of them was causing disorientation and minor concussion by spinning around jerking your head back and forth. The result was total spatial disorientation due to the fluid in the vestibule starting to move with the body while the head jerking produced a mild concussion. That's where the term "Whirling Dervishes " comes form. If they had anything to do with what you saw then I would be taking a very serious look at what they were burning in the fire as there is an extremely good chance that they were burning something that produced hypnotic and or hallucinative effects. Actually I'd be very surprised if they weren't burning something like that in the fire.

I realize that it is a long time ago and you were only young at the time but did you notice any sort of euphoric feeling or feeling of I feel really great. You may have also had some mild nausea and special and temporal disorientation.

• If in Your example You substitute permanent magnet with electromagnet, once You lift that iron up, surely You have to use electricity to maintain magnetic field that keep it up, yes?

No! A permanent magnet requires no expenditure of energy in order to maintain the magnetic field. The only reason an electromagnetic field collapses when the power is removed is due to the properties of the core. If the core were to be made of a material that was capable of retaining a magnetic field then the removal of the power would not result in the total collapse of the magnetic field, there would still be a residual magnetic field that could be quiet strong if the correct material were used.

If you were to life an object up through a certain height then while the object is moving towards the electro magnet the power being consumed by the magnet will increase for the normal static consumption. Once it the object reaches a stable position the power consumption of the coil in the electro magnet will drop back to the normal consumption.

That's a simplified answer and analysis of electromagnetic devices can become extremely complex but it all comes back to the conservation of energy.

• Your stone would surely not remain there where You put it, therefore it show how gravitationall force did not stop influencing it, so surely there is equall and opposite force holding stone where it is put on the table?

Force does not equate to energy. You can exert a force on something without expending energy as in the rock on the table. For energy to be expended the force must cause a change in state which is what is happening when the table collapsed. However, if the table is strong enough to support the rock without failing then the rock will stay where it is on the table possessing potential energy and with the force of gravity being opposed by the structure of the table indefinitely and without expending any energy.

Pleas don't take this the wrong way, but are you aware of the fundamental forces that govern the universe. Originally it was believed there were for fundamental forces, the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, the electromagnetic force and gravity. It has, however, been shown that the weak nuclear force is in fact a different manifestation of the electromagnetic force which brings up back to three fundamental forces. Any other force you come across is actually made up from a combination of these three fundamental forces.

Hi, Masu!

In regard to Dervishes, Yes, those were EXACTLY >>Whirling Dervishes<<, but I was perhaps 20 meters away and on higher ground, so fire and its smoke cannot reach me, and certainly under normal conditions just big lever could move this boulder from its place......

In regard to tower, Solar colector plates need not be on flat surface, in fact were they on slope of the mountain, then hot air would move naturally upward in parts of greenhouse that are on higher ground, and tunels also need not be horizontal, but if one make use of tunels as real road tunnels, there would be naturall ventilation without spending energy for use of ventilators, too! Australia has plenty of such mountains, for instance in Flinders Rangenear Adelaide with peaks in height of 1165m ((Saint Mary Peak), 1083m (peak without name near Leigh Creek), 951m (Freeling Heights), 969m (Mount Remarkable), 933m (near Jamestown), 846m (near Quorn), 710m ( near Mannahill ), and so on, and as I said, what hill is lacking in height could be added as (now much smaller) tower on top of it........ Great Dividing Range is peppered with such mountains and even of greater height, like Round Mountain with its 1615m, if I read my Atlas of the World correctly :-))

So it is feasible, and tunels could (or rather ought to be) covered with thermo insulating and smooth finish, so loss of temperature would be lessened, but then, if temperature is absorbed by walls of tunel in the beginning, (up to some point, only!)then it would be also released during the night, so tower could work anyway........ Actually I believe, but it should be verified by doing fluid movement simulation, that by building vortex like pipes in this mountain would start a Cyclone wind that would be chained to its source, and simple temperature difference between ground level air and this on top of mountain would feed it energy to continue swirling day and night, regardless of weather..... I had built something like this on top of my computer cabinet, and it serve instead of additionall ventilator quite nicely, and it would be still better if I could channel hot air out of the room entirely, at least in the summer.... My >>Cyclone chimney<< is just 1.40m high, but is on top of 1.8m cabinet that takes air on the ground level, 10 -20cm over the floor, and has first 8 pipes that spiral upward turning from right to left for 45cm, then they join to form 4 pipes of greater diameter for another 45 cm, and then they join to form one pipe with aerodinamic chanels that is also bending to front side, so even with its 30cm height it has cca 40cm lenght....... Perhaps in Australia it would be better to have opposite turn, as it is known that whirls in water have different turn above and below Equator!

Also, with such whirlwind channels or pipes, I believe it would work even in 100 meters height range instead of 1 kilometer, but this also have to be simulated on computer, and I have no money to buy adequate software, and fighting for dayly bread, I cannot make such simulation program by myself....... This is also one thing I invented and would like to patent, and I got idea some 30 years back when I was allmost swept off the ground by draft that was made by an ordinary unused factory chimney some 120 meters high, on not so sunny day and without any greenhouse attached to it....... It was enough that someone open the doors at base of the chimney, and it would start working! It is how I have find that, of course!

If You let Your imagination work, then think what would be if that steel wires (actually ropes would be better) would be made to form complicated net like "Dream catcher net" of American Indians of Cherokee Tribe.... or the way this nets for walking over the snow are knitted :-))

That much for now.........

Regards, Marijan Pollak

Hi Henrik14,

• but I was perhaps 20 meters away and on higher ground, so fire and its smoke cannot reach me, and certainly under normal conditions

Don't you believe it. I will not go into specifics as this is a public forum but there are numerous compounds that will produce hallucinogenic effects at extremely low doses and certainly 20 m is close enough to succumb to their effects. Being young at the time would also increase you susceptibility as your body would have most likely never been exposed to such compounds before and would therefore not developed the metabolic pathways that are required to purge it from you system. As a result the level of the compounds in your system can be dramatically higher than an adult and the effects can last considerably longer.

Mind altering drugs are notorious for varying in the response they produce and the size of an effective dose can vary by up to 100 fold across the population. This is what makes them so dangerous as a dose that one person finds only marginally effective may be several times more than the fatal dose in another person. You susceptibility also varies with time any the level of recent exposure.

20 metres is definitely within the range of some of these compounds and you may very well have unwittingly been under the influence of such a compound.

I'm rapidly running out of time and have several pressing tasks to perform so I will only be able to address the rest of you're post briefly.

The idea of utilizing a mountain would more than likely work but it would not be as efficient as using a flat plain. The solar collector does need to be slightly higher as you get closer to the central chimney but the angle is highly critical. Too shallow and it wont work at all and too deep and the velocity of the air will increase too much and therefore not collect as much energy making the system less efficient. Since with the mountain you have no control over the slope you will end up with a compromise that works but isn't any where near as efficient as a completely man made structure.

Anyway, I will have to leave it there for the moment but please have a look at the other threads in the series and see what you think.

Hi, Masu,

Just recently I have seen same thing from India, how group of people lifted half ton stone in similar way in front of the camera, and surely no drugs would influence recorded material, or television spectators, for that matter? Therefore, I dont think drug theory stand.... But it were looking to me that stone dervishes has lifted was at least 4 times as big as one on television, and there were 5 people (fakirs) doing it, while there was 9 of dervishes, but I was a boy so maybe stone was looking bigger... You know, there is one thing known as >>hysteric strenght<<, where people in danger are able to lift by far much greater weight than normal, and perhaps it is the answer to this riddle!

Therefore, that is end of THAT story, till further notice :-)) PLEASE!?

Now, if we would not be able to make artificiall slope on the mountain, then we would not be able to make roads that cross mountains, would we? Actually, black color of asphalt would be just fine for collecting heat, and the rest of it should be just calculation how high from the ground the glass plates should be, knowing volume od air passing trough, but it is not temperature of air that we are interested in here, but exactly volume and speed? Beside, air passing trough >>greenhouse<< would accumulate temperature in pasing trough, and that is exactly how this would work: more temperature, more speedy passage! But whoever is building this dont know about >>chimney effect<<, as it is enough to have just initiall volume of hot air that would start lifting in chimney, because it would leave vacuum (or at least part vacuum) instead, and since Nature abhors vacuum, surrounding air would move to fill it, and even if temperature difference would not be high compared to temperature of air at the foot of the mountain, difference in temperature at mountain top would be greater, as air is colder up there and slightly more rarefied, so I believe that this system would not only work on temperature accumulated in >>greenhouse<< but would suck good deal of surrounding air that has heated itself over the ground there! But, that ought to be simulated on computer to see how exactly it would work, and I can bet that You would be surprised what effects would spiral pipes in this big "chimmney" would produce! I remember strenght of this draft in old factory chimney, and it had NO >>greenhouse<< attached at all.......... I would USE our actuall problem of >>greenhouse gases<< to acumulate MORE heat in that greenhouse surrounding device (even if it is big, it is still a device, no?), by making hollow glass bricks, or just old bottles filled with CO2 and other greenhouse gases at optimized mixture for best temperature absorption, and either put them on the ground or make glass cover over greenhouse, so it would not radiate back that much of energy as it would otherwise! Now You know about more than one of my energy projects that I want to realize, and I am happy to know that scientists has found it viable project back in 77' but then there was no trace of energy crisis and oil was cheap so that looked like expensive way to get electricity, then! But, they calculated just with straight pipe, while spiral ones would be muuuuch better, I am sure!

Now, You can see ideas are there and plenty of them, what is needed to be done is to start organizing funds for us inventors that have them, and we could fast change situation, dont You think so?

You know, sometimes I wonder what is real purpose of this threads of Yours, perhaps You are colecting new ideas or testing Your own by such discution and criticism, but what do You intend to do THEN? Have You any plan for puting something valuable in practice? Is it just >>Intelectuall gymnastic<< for You? THAT would be waste, and we from Croatia abhore it, we were too long making do with what meagre resources we had, that we use and maintain all we have untill nobody could use it any more at all :-)) I suggest we should make fund and invest in it, at least those that could do so, and anybody investing get share of fund in return, while those without money but having ideas would be able to borrow money for their research, but they wold have to return this loan at prescribed time if unsucessfull, else in addition to returning the loan, they should give 10% of their earnings into fund as recompensation to owners of the shares, and of course to make money incubator work and also fund other inventions. Owners of shares could at any time sell their shares to fund itself, and if there is at the beginning ratio of one share = one $, then shares owned would multiply, they would be VIRTUALL shares, a part of value of fund itself proportionall to initiall fund itself and number of $ invested by person or the company. Since loans returned would not incerase number of $ in fund, ONLY successfull inventors would make others having more, unless loans would be given for interest, in classic way as Banks do it...... For example, let 10 engineers or other investors collect total of 1000 $ (hm, better make that in Euro, because value of US $ is sinking in crude oil barrels price) which means every one has given 100$, and 500$ has been approwed as loan to 2 inventors by commision made of meritory members of engineering society..... Then one succeed and earn 10 000$ per year on his inventions, and start giving his 10% of profit to fund, which amounts to 1000$ every year. Since original loans would be returned to fund, with additionall 1000$ it would make each of investing engineers or wealthy people owner of 200, then 300, 400 and so on number of shares, where each share is exactly worth ONE $. So if anybody needs money, that person could sell his shares to Fund and by receiving that much dollars it would not change stability of other people's shares, while fund would be less for exactly that much dollars. Bookkeeping would be simple indeed! Now come complications: some of inventors would fail (not if beforementioned commision would be good at assesment of projects in question, and give active help to inventor, of course for pay, not for free! Wether this pay would be in some % of future profit or in cash, is up to Inventor and engineer(s) in question), and if project fails, money would be lost, therefore out of % that succesfull inventors would pay to fund, some % have to be for covering failed projects, and somebody has to run this fund, and therefore there would be expenses, as would be with any approwed loan that would need documents and Notarization to ensure return of loan. Only problem is criticall mass of money to be collected initially for the fund and that depend on estimated number of projects that would need funding and average cost of one such project...... Tricky, I know, but one could allways overestimate, no? Actually, I have some software that were made for calculation of production price for bilding of houses, but it is a system that can also be applied to any device, if it is produced from standard parts or if parts are built from materials (like wall is consisting of bricks, cement, sand, water.....) for which accurate prices are maintained in database, and it would also be known how much (and what type of) work, electricity, water or anything else is necesary per measuring unit of this product.......

Now, what do You say of my idea? Shall we start new thread about it?

Regards,

Marijan Pollak

Hi Henrik14,

• Now, if we would not be able to make artificiall slope on the mountain, then we would not be able to make roads that cross mountains, would we?

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, it's just that it more than likely wouldn't work as efficiently as the free standing tower placed on flat and relatively horizontal terrain. The horizontal foot print is the critical factor here. The energy that is reaching the ground is around 1 kW per square meter at the equator when the sun is directly overhead. If you incline the collector it decreases the footprint and ultimately the amount of energy that can be collected.

It's more complex than that as the angle the sun's rays hit the ground varies with your distance from the equator, the time of year and the time of day, but the further the collector is from being perpendicular to the incoming solar radiation the less efficient the collector will be.

I also believe that the angle the cover over the collector needs to be an exponential shape decreasing in height as you get further from the central chimney. The further you move away from this the less efficient the system becomes.

It more than likely would be possible to use an existing mountain but the end result would more than likely cost more and be less efficient.

• and even if temperature difference would not be high compared to temperature of air at the foot of the mountain, difference in temperature at mountain top would be greater,

There are two things you need to look at here:

1. Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate: This is the rate that a rising parcel of air will cool due to the reduction in pressure and increase in volume. The dry adiabatic lapse rate is 1°C per 100 m or 3°C per 1,000 feet. While a parcel of air is rising it will cool at this rate and keep rising provided it remains warmer than the surrounding air.
2. Wet or Saturated Lapse Rate: It a parcel of air becomes saturated due to the reduced temperature and pressure the latent heat of vaporization will be released and warm the air as it rises. Consequently the wet lapse rate is half the dry rate and saturated air cools at 1°C per 200 m or 1.5°C per 1,000 feet.

So, with our 1,000 m high tower the air traveling upwards through it will reduce in temperature by about 10°C by the time it reaches the top of the tower and provided the surrounding atmosphere is warmer that this the system will work.

Something that is worth noting is that if you can get the air to reach saturation before in reaches the top of the tower it will increase the temperature differential at the top of the tower making it more efficient. That is however provided the cloud base is not below the top of the tower and the moisture is in the atmosphere before it passes through the solar collector.

The idea of using surplus heat from wherever you can get it might be worth looking into but it would need to be applied after the solar collector. The rate energy is transferred from the collecting surface to the air is controlled by the difference in the temperature between the two. If you warm the air prior to passing it over the collecting surface you will decrease the temperature differential and reduce to overall efficiency. On the other hand if you apply in as the air is rising in the tower you will cancel out some of the lapse rate and therefore increase the temperature differential at the top of the chimney making the system more efficient.

The only hassle with doing this is getting the energy to where the tower is. The current proposal is for a tower that is located near Mildura which is in the middle of orchards, vineyards and other horticultural activities. The nearest place you would be able to get any where near the amount of surplus heat form a process is over 300 km away. In this case it just wouldn't be practical to do so but if the concept proves successful then it is something that should be investigated with future designs.

• You know, sometimes I wonder what is real purpose of this threads of Yours, perhaps You are colecting new ideas or testing Your own by such discution and criticism, but what do You intend to do THEN? Have You any plan for puting something valuable in practice?

The whole reason for this blog was to show that there are already technologies available that could go a long way to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Global warming is a serious problem that we are all facing and we all need to do our bit to solve it.

I am in no way benefiting from this in a financial way, in fact it costs me, but if it creates discussion and gets people to think and work towards solving the problems then we will all benefit greatly.

What you are talking about is called "Venture Capital" and there here are already well organized groups that do exactly what your are talking about. The whole idea is that the investors take the financial risk while whoever they are backing takes the intellectual risk. If the project works then the profits are shared, if the project fails then the investors loose their money while the developers loose their reputation and ability to raise venture capital for future projects. The greater the chance of failure the greater the returns the investors will demand.

By trade I am a control systems engineer and scientific instrument maker, but I ended up working with computers and communications for more than half my professional life. However, I was forced to retire early due to failing health and am extremely limited in what I can physically do. Writing and analysis is something I can and still do but only to a certain limit and trying to do things on an inflexible time line is impossible for me as I can never guarantee that I will be able to do something by or on a certain date. This makes it very difficult for me to be of any great use or supply the sort of services that are required in a market economy.

I can however do things like this blog that get people thinking and talking and stimulate their need to learn and understand what they see around them.

Anyway, I will have to leave it there for the moment as I have some other things that I need to do. I do enjoy conversing with you and I think you have some really good ideas that show you are trying not to allow yourself to be constrained or stifled by others so keep it up and we will converse more in a few days.