Author Topic: Idea for hydro power unit (Read 6581 times)

Rickle · « **on:** February 10, 2005, 06:33:08 PM »

I have a wild idea I'd like to run past you all. The idea is to have a self contained hydro power unit where there is not even an external water source. We know Pelton turbines are suitable for heads from 20 m to 180 m and effective flow rates ranging from 0.5 l/s to 100 l/s. The small flow rate for these turbines works in our favor here. Ok now try to imagine how it will look, first we have a tank of water on bottom which is our base. On top of that will be the Pelton turbine with the generator on top of that. The main idea here is to mechanically create a head using a pressure washer pump. I think another water pump will be necessary to feed the pressure washer pump. The idea is to have it sealed so there is no evaporation of the water or oil could be used. The idea also calls for a generator large enough to power the pumps as well as charge a battery bank. When the battery is fully charged the system will shut down when the charge on the battery drains down to a certain lever the system turns it's self on and starts the process over again.

So what do you think? Am I dreaming?

TomW · « **Reply #1 on:** February 10, 2005, 11:51:41 AM »

Rickle;

You are a new user so I will try to be gentle.

One simple question:

Where is the power going to come from to pump the water up to the top tank?

Sounds like you are proposing some type of Over Unity device.

Simple physics tells us that you Can Not get more power out of that water than you put in pumping it up to the higher tank. In fact due to losses you will get considerably less.

T

RatOmeter · « **Reply #2 on:** February 10, 2005, 11:55:54 AM »

Let's say that X gallons of water falling Y feet represents 100 Watts of power gained.
it stands to reason that pumping that X gallons back up Y feet represents 100 Watts of power lost.
Adding in power lost to pressure drop, prime mover and pump inefficiencies: priceless!

For everything RE, there's physics

edy252 · « **Reply #3 on:** February 10, 2005, 12:51:41 PM »

hi....to make it even easier........u cant take out more power than what u put in......for example: u cant put 1000 watts of electricity into a motor and expect it to put out 1500 watts of mechanical power............or u cant turn a generator with 100 watts of power and expect it to put out 500 watts....

the same thing goes with ur proposed system....ur putting in power to move the water.....then u cant expect this water to generate power in ur turbine more than u already have put.

hope this explains it

Kwazai · « **Reply #4 on:** February 10, 2005, 01:31:31 PM »

if you leave the batteries out of the system and run the pumps off wind or solar it would make a sort of cheap energy storage- (something like an 80,000 gallon tank(s) to run a house).

DBGenerator · « **Reply #5 on:** February 10, 2005, 02:21:06 PM »

....Or if you want to get really crazy, use a solar still. The water on the bottom evaporates when the sun hits it and is collected above the generator.

Rickle · « **Reply #6 on:** February 10, 2005, 03:07:28 PM »

There is no top tank to pump water to. It's taken directly from the one and only tank on bottom which is then delivered to the nozzles that are at most four feet above the bottom of the tank. I'm not sure how much head the 500 psi exiting the nozzles is equal to but it has to be much more than four feet. So it's not like the water has to be pumped 100ft vertically. The water pump and the pressure pump are basically one, the water pump only feeds the pressure pump so there's not much resistance there. Both of these will be level with the bottom of the tank. The pressure pump should meet next to no resistance in pumping the water vertically four feet.

I just had another though the tank can be shaped like cone so the water weight feeds the pressure pump by itself. Se we can do any with the water pump. But will add height (two feet maybe) that the pressure pump will have to pump water to. Again since it's under pressure I don't think that will be a big problem.

drdongle · « **Reply #7 on:** February 10, 2005, 03:14:19 PM »

Sorry there ant no free lunch.

You will always get less out of a system than you put in.

you can't win, you can't break even and you can't get out of the game.

Entropy: the fact that the universe gets increasingly crappy.

TomW · « **Reply #8 on:** February 10, 2005, 03:22:45 PM »

Sorry, that won't work either.

Maybe you could spend some time reading up on physics and specifically conservation of energy before you get too excited on this. Look at the rest of the posts so you can see I am not picking on your idea but it is just unworkable.

Apologies for misunderstanding the method you wished to employ but the fact still remains it is a closed system and therefore you cannot extract usable power without adding it in somehow.

No free lunch.

T

RatOmeter · « **Reply #9 on:** February 10, 2005, 03:29:21 PM »

The weight/pressure/force of water on any given area is a function only of the column of water directly above that area. Making a conical tank does nothing to increase that force.

Forcing water through a nozzle only increases your losses by causing more energy to be converted to heat. Pressure drop across an orifice (nozzle) is just like voltage drop across a resistor.

Rickle · « **Reply #10 on:** February 10, 2005, 03:36:07 PM »

I know your not pickin and that I was basically dreamin I even hinted at that in my first post. But you know? Dreams can lead to bigger and better things.

RatOmeter · « **Reply #11 on:** February 10, 2005, 03:43:26 PM »

Dreams can lead to bigger and better things.

Agreed. That you're interested and you are here are an excellent start!

Would you be interested in links to some basic physics and electronics tutorials?

Rickle · « **Reply #12 on:** February 10, 2005, 04:20:15 PM »

Would you be interested in links to some basic physics and electronics tutorials?

Sure it can only help.

I'm already looking into a solar powered steam engine for this purpose. It uses refrigerant so the boiling point is VERY low. It looks promising.

ghurd · « **Reply #13 on:** February 10, 2005, 05:57:04 PM »

Search for 'Sterling' for posts or comments by WindstuffEd.

G-

Rickle · « **Reply #14 on:** February 10, 2005, 07:03:43 PM »

Will do, that's exactly what I'm researchng now.

Thanks.

This is some exciteing stuff here, I can't stop reading and I'm getting a head ache.

Heh heh

From what I'm reading all the engine needs is a hot and a cold side. If this can be done with refrigerant that can be heated by the sun then it could be run for next to nothing. And they seem to be very easy to build. I've got some 4 1/4 inch steel tubeing I'm going to build one from tomorrow.

--Rick

domwild · « **Reply #15 on:** February 11, 2005, 12:36:23 AM »

On a large scale, this is exactly what is being done in Europe and elsewhere. During the day the, e.g., Austrian hydros are supplying electricity to meet peak demand, at night any surplus electricity from coal fired stations is used to pump the water up the mountain again to the reservoir.

"The hills are alive with the sound of Peltons!"

Scrapheap · « **Reply #16 on:** February 11, 2005, 02:03:11 AM »

I have been thinking about a similar thing to be used a dump device. When my batteries get full the excess power produced by the generators is used to pump water up to a large header tank. Then later when more energy is needed this water is released through a turbine/water wheel to reclaim some of the energy.

While more power will be lost in pumping the water up to the tank than will be reclaimed by the turbine is it is better than all the energy being lost by diverting power to something that just uses it for no real benefit.

Kwazai · « **Reply #17 on:** February 11, 2005, 06:59:20 AM »

If you look on the site for the 'fluidyne sterling pump' you will find what you need in terms of a solar pump. It takes a lot of heat to get any head pressure out of it. 20F temp. diff. is somewhere around 3" h2o(.0837psi). With a propane torch(12ft dish?) applied it would pump a lot of water. just my .02$.

Nando · « **Reply #18 on:** February 13, 2005, 09:02:41 PM »

SHORT AND CONCISE without trying to be nasty at all

YOU ARE DREAMING

Nando

kenneth keen · « **Reply #19 on:** February 18, 2005, 05:55:37 AM »

Glad to see someone dealing with reality out there. There seems to be a big problem for those who have got stuck on the idea that you can never get more out of a system than is put in. I believe that most of the readers are aware of the "above unity" impossibility in physics. Some of the contributers are always harping back to something they have learnt to be true without looking at the real world.

If the system I am working with has a certain amount of energy in it, no matter how high or how fast I pump or exchange etc will I ever get more energy out than I put it. We all know this.

What some of the newcomers are trying to say is that they are aware of new energy being available. This energy is over and above the present energy now in the system, ie fresh flow from the river or another day of sunshine where MORE ENERGY IS BEING ADDED. Obviously, if the NEW energy is in some way retained or captured, (for example by pumping it up to a reserve tank), then the net result is that we will have more energy available after time.

Hopefully we can get past the stage of preaching some basics (above unity is impossible) to the stage of learning how we can deal with the real possibility of putting one unit of energy, for example in a heat pump, (the power of turning the pump), into the system and getting three units of power out (since we have "captured" new energy which would have otherwise have flowed on by without being used).

Heat pumps have been working "above unity" for the past hundred years because their efficiencies are calculated according to the energy put in against the useful energy released. This is "unfair" since it is not a closed system we are talking about. Constantly there is additional energy flowing in and by being smart and applying the pump in the right place we are getting something for free.

Thanks to the Austrian we are getting some sense into these columns. Keep going. Energy is for free!

Kenneth Keen

Kwazai · « **Reply #20 on:** February 18, 2005, 06:26:18 AM »

they are right in that the shape of the tank will have nothing to do with the exit velocity of the water. It would take somewhere in the neighborhood of 5FT of water column height/drop to charge batteries, more like 15ft if you want to run power tools and small appliances. It is basically hydrostatics. the weight of the column height of water would be desnity times gravity constant times height(rhoGh) and the exit velocity would be proportional to this height-(or the amount of power required to pump it back up same height). There was a previous post about using cisterns to do something like this and if you had an externally powered pump (wind,solar,etc.) it could actually net hydropowered electricity.

I had posted some questions on bouyancy related to using an atmospheric pressure difference to do something similar, based on the hydrodynamics- but it takes two fluids(or mechanical contrivance) to make use of it. and it still requires some external power input. the hydrodynamic relation is pressure=force*area. so that by changing the area you would change the pressure. This only works with an externally applied force- not just gravity freefall.

as for overunity devices- if someone thinks they have one there is something they haven't taken into account and they are picking up energy somewhere.

baecht · « **Reply #21 on:** March 18, 2005, 11:14:11 PM »

INGENUITY TRUMPS PHYSICS

don't ever say something is impossible, because someone will make you eat those words.

to the guy who started this, you just keep thinking and dreaming and you can never tell what might happen.

i had been thinking about something like you are talking about. my idea has a tank on top(500 gal) of a 25ft tower. about 15ft down the tower is a micro hydro unit. hte waste side of the hydro unit enters an accumilator(5 gal) which would dump it's load of 5 gals of water into a RAM PUMP which moves the water back up to the top tank.

i don't know if this meets you physics guys over unity statement, but it will work.

well let, see what kind of reactions this gets

dumb ol country boy

mcgivor · « **Reply #22 on:** March 24, 2005, 02:04:48 PM »

A hydrolic ram only pumps about 10% of what goes throu it, so out of 500 gallons you would only pump back 50 gallons, And out of the 50 gallons, only 5, and out of 5 gallons only a 1/2 gallon. So, in a very short time, you will only recover 55 1/2 gallons. Unless you have another source of water to refill the 500 gallon tank. It would not work for long. If you had a free way to refill the tank, I would build a dump valve to quickly empty the storage tank, and turn it into useable power. A simple dump vale could be made like the one in your toilet water tank, but a float instead of a handle.

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Author Topic: Idea for hydro power unit (Read 6581 times)