Static Electrcity for Charging Batteries

3M had a training video, promoting their anti-static packaging. One of the demos showed nylon and rubber generating a 35KV discharge. Tires currently have sufficient steel, to prevent static buildup. When was the last time you saw gasoline tanker trucks dragging a logging chain?

It is an interesting idea, but it will take a lot of research to do create anything worthwhile

The problem is there is very little energy there, and what there is consists of very high voltage and extremely low current.

https://www.quora.com/Can-static-electricity-be-harnessed-to-power-a-device

Recently (at a class about fire prevention) a fellow said that the spark from static by walking across a rug would be about a mega joule. I told him that was ridiculous but he assured me it was true. I doubt he knew what he was talking about.

High voltage, eh... that explains the pain!

The fact it is useless as a power source further condemns it to the lowest plane of hell.

How would you propose to get any power out of piezo tire components? Commutator? Maintenance?

One wild-arsed suggestion might be to store the charge in a capacitor and discharge at a preset level into a transformer primary coil wound into the tire and magnetically coupled to the stationary secondary on the vehicle.

That is the first thing that came to mind,but I realize there are plenty of problems to be overcome.

Tires create a lot of friction due to flexing.

Why not utilize some of these losses?

Alternatively,a fixed coil on the Wheel and magnets in the Tires that would generate power into the coil only when the tire flexes?

This coil would need to be mounted near the bottom of the tire (and consequent magnets) to be effective.

Here is a link to flexible piezo+solar generator.

There is much more energy potential in tire friction if properly designed.

I hope I did not make some gramatical errors on this post!

The wolrd is full of pedantic people.

Don't forget an idea has to pass a reality check.

If it takes 'x' amount of energy and resources to manufacture a solution like this but in its entire life the solution only generates the equivalent of 1/10th 'x' then the solution is not going to be viable except in special cases where alternative solutions for supplying power to something are worse or non-existent (such as energy harvesting for powering remote or inaccessible long life sensors).

This is why most of these energy generation schemes and ideas are investigated and abandoned.

Tires create a lot of friction due to flexing.

Why not utilize some of these losses?

Anything you add (piezo, etc) to try to get energy from the flexing will not recoup the energy loss from flexing the tires but only increase it. The energy required to flex your device will be more than the energy generated by it.

The only way to get back part of the energy from flexing of the tires is to capture the heat generated and convert this to useful work (electricity, etc). The efficiency for doing this is limited by Mr. Carnot and would not be great for the temperatures generated by tires.

Losses can be minimized by increasing the tire inflation pressure.

Here is a link to flexible piezo+solar generator

I think most things that are designed to perform two different functions often are not efficient at either. (A spork (spoon + fork) comes to mind. )

"The developed harvesters were tested in wind speeds varying from 0 m/s (calm) to about 26 m/s (storm/whole gale) and 1.8 kLux constant light exposure, simulating a wide range of environmental conditions. Under these operation conditions, total power outputs of up to 3-4 milli-Watts were generated."

https://techxplore.com/news/2019-02-flags-energy-sun.html

I'll be dead before this becomes viable.

"Supported by a $400,000 National Science Foundation grant," something MAY come of it, someday.

I can think of far more pointless ways to waste 400k, so there is that.

Electrons are also very small..what is impractical today may be feasible in the future.

"If man were meant to fly,God would have given him wings!" comes to mind.

The problem is there are so few when dealing with static electricity. Scientific advancement is great, and while generation and conversion efficiencies can be refined and improve over time you cannot go above a max theoretical value (in this case electrons obtainable) and create something out of nothing to make a concept viable.

It could be used in storing large banks of rechargeable batteries to keep the charge topped off....maybe

Check out this link:

https://www.nuenergy.org/emergency-power-from-atmospheric-static-electricity/

That article contained both conceptual and editorial mistakes, not worth the trouble to detail. But for one, the "amps per day" unit makes no sense.

The ionosphere is super charged referenced to ground,what if we could,hypothetically,connect from the ground to the ionosphere?

The shuttle once deployed a 25 mile long conducting tether and the power produced exceeded all design expectations and blew the tether apart.

This was generated by the speed of the shuttle cutting through the Earth's magnetic field and the potential difference from one end of the tether to the other.

Further testing revealed that taking power from the tether slowed the shuttle down,and adding power sped it up.

This is now being used to keep satellites in correct orbit without the need for chemical fuel using solar cells and fuel cells.

Just thinkin'.........

The ionosphere is super charged referenced to ground,what if we could,hypothetically,connect from the ground to the ionosphere?

The guy in your avatar picture had dreams of doing this, before he got into the car business.

The ground and ionosphere make a huge capacitor that is charged up by all the thunderstorms in the world. There is normally about 100 volts per meter atmospheric electric field, but apparently, there is no way to get much current, so it is about as much use as static electricity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_electricity

However, I recall reading in the early 1970's of a model airplane autopilot circuit that utilized this atmospheric electric field to keep the wings level. It utilized the newly (at that time) developed ultrahigh input impedance op amps.

The shuttle once deployed a 25 mile long conducting tether and the power produced exceeded all design expectations and blew the tether apart.

I'm thinking that the failed tether experiment was due to a manufacturing defect where air was trapped inside the tether. When the tether was deployed, the air escaped and was ionized by the high voltage causing a short circuit and melting the cable.

" The first attempt at the tether experiment ended prematurely when problems arose with the deploying mechanism, but the one on February 25, 1996, began as planned, unrolling mile after mile of tether while the observed dynamo current grew at the predicted rate. The deployment was almost complete when the unexpected happened: the tether suddenly broke and its end whipped away into space in great wavy wiggles. The satellite payload at the far end of the tether remained linked by radio and was tracked for a while, but the tether experiment itself was over.

It took a considerable amount of detective work to figure out what had happened. Back on Earth the frayed end of the tether aboard the space shuttle was examined, and pieces of the cable were tested in a vacuum chamber. The nature of the break suggested it was not caused by excessive tension, but rather that an electric current had melted the tether.

The electric conductor of the tether was a copper braid wound around a nylon string. It was encased in teflon-like insulation, with an outer cover of kevlar, a tough plastic also used in bullet-proof vests, all this inside a nylon sheath. The culprit turned out to be the innermost core, made of a porous material which, during its manufacture, trapped many bubbles of air, at atmospheric pressure.

Later vacuum-chamber experiments suggested that the unwinding of the reel uncovered pinholes in the insulation. That in itself would not have caused a major problem, because the ionosphere around the tether, under normal circumstance, was too rarefied to divert much of the current. However, the air trapped in the insulation changed that. As it bubbled out of the pinholes, the high voltage ("electric pressure") of the nearby tether, about 3500 volts, converted it into a plasma (in a way similar to the ignition of afluorescent tube), a relatively dense one and therefore a much better conductor of electricity.

The instruments aboard the tether satelite showed that this plasma diverted through the pinhole about 1 ampere, a current comparable to that of a 100-watt bulb (but at 3500 volts!), to the metal of the shuttle and from there to the ionospheric return circuit. That current was enough to melt the cable.

As the broken end whipped away from the shuttle, the plasma established electric contact with the ionosphere directly. The satellite on the distant end monitored the current: after about half a minute it stopped, then it reignited and flowed again for about another half minute, stopping for good when (presumably) all the trapped air was gone.

"

https://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html

"Car Business?"

I don't remember that.

Thanks for the link.

The tethers are now used for satellite position correction.

"Car Business?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Just a little joke on my part...

1 amp at 3500 volts is 3500 Watts.That is about 3 hairdryers,all expended in a millisecond or two.Plenty to explode the tether.

Here is an interesting link:https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/Tethered_Satellites.pdf

Just use your alternator.