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Earth Battery?
By tdale4, Section Homebrewed Electricity Posted on Wed May 14, 2003 at 01:07:53 PM MST
is this actually possible?

I came across a document that susgests you can use the earth as a battery. essentially you get a 10' long 1" diamater copper pipe and drive it into the ground. inside the copper pipe you place a zinc rod and fill it with dirt. you have to make sure the zinc rod is in the center of the copper pipe. serise 12 of these together is suppost to yeild around 12 volts. I was wondering if anyone has tried this. I don't doubt one can get a 12 volt reading, however I wonder what kind of amperage you could get? Please let me know if you have ever tried this or if you know what the results would be. I'm thinking of trying it just to see what I get, but the copper and zinc are expensive and I don't want to waste money to build a few hundred dollar 12 volt .01 amp battery :-) Thanks, Tim

Earth Battery? | 12 comments (12 topical)

It sems to be a way (none / 0) (#1)
by Larsanderss on Wed May 14, 2003 at 02:49:03 PM MST

to get copper or zink ions spreading in the soil and its water........ Does not sound very good to me. Most probably someone else is better off to think about chemistry in this kind of galvanic cell.......... Something has to happend when taking anything out of such a battery. Good evening LA

zinc (none / 0) (#3)
by Johnny Cool Pants on Thu May 15, 2003 at 02:40:42 AM MST

My wife takes zinc.
I wont take up the coppertone issue or Dan will tan my hide.
But what are the effects of copper in the water and are there cheaper less damaging substitutes that can be used?
I ask because I notice the flashing used on the pilons they use in the ground when constructing buildings.,

...okay I never noticed it, but I will now.
Anyway what ever happened to the story about the guy who ran an insulated wire up a tree and got voltage? Any follow up on that?

[ Parent ]

I think the main benefit would be - (none / 0) (#2)
by Electric Ed on Wed May 14, 2003 at 03:45:16 PM MST

- the boost to the economy that would result if thousands of guys were out there driving copper pipes into the ground.

There is a good aspect to almost anything. :-)

pipes in the ground (none / 0) (#4)
by Johnny Cool Pants on Thu May 15, 2003 at 02:48:36 AM MST

Got my wheels turning Ed. Alot of steam rising from the sewer covers If I hook my stirlings up to, nevermind,
But, some of those pipes are hot and some cold, and all connected (miles of it) I bet you could get a little current out of the ground pipes leading to your house. Anyone ever try this? Could be usable vibration in those pipes too.

[ Parent ]

home grown batteries (none / 0) (#5)
by troy on Thu May 15, 2003 at 10:49:47 AM MST

Zinc and copper are far enough apart on the periodic table that you could get a reasonable output. The limiting factor is probably using damp earth as the electrolyte. Ion mobility in damp earth won't be nearly as good as a more liquid electrolyte like sulfuric acid. Safer though, hard to burn yourself with dirt.

Copper and zinc aren't bad things to have in your ground water, in reasonable amounts. Nobody seems to mind copper water pipes...

I suppose the other downside is this looks like a non-rechargeable battery. Hmmmm, you'd have to actually try charging it, the zinc ions could migrate back to the electrode. This is all just scientific wild-ass guessing anyway, but recharge efficiency probably not that good.

Good luck and Have fun!

troy

recharge (none / 0) (#6)
by Johnny Cool Pants on Thu May 15, 2003 at 03:49:29 PM MST

To me it sounded like it would be drawing energy from the whole earth not just the space around it. What if you had a cable attached to it and threw the other end of the cable up a tree?

[ Parent ]

Copper in water pipes (none / 0) (#7)
by Larsanderss on Thu May 15, 2003 at 04:37:51 PM MST

is normally not used as a galvanic cell that pulls copper out of it unless You have some kind of weird experiment going on.... If You do not have a rich flow of ground water or a very large field to host this battery the level of copper would easily reach what we use for allowed levels of copper in Swedish "water for drinking" - 2 mg/l (upper limit) and 0,2 mg/l (risk level more samples have to be analyzed). I do not know what this is in lbs/gallon....... no offense meant !! Tables of galvanic cells indicates a theorethical voltage for this kind of 1,1 V.... Good evening - Lars A

Copper (none / 0) (#8)
by Johnny Cool Pants on Fri May 16, 2003 at 08:52:50 PM MST

Copper comes from the ground, doesn't it?
So whats the deal?
What if you build a big flower pot out of scrap tin roof, above ground, fill it with sand, gravel and old EverReadys?

[ Parent ]

Earth battery (none / 0) (#9)
by Anonymous Hero on Fri May 23, 2003 at 05:28:20 PM MST

What you are asking about is described here www.icehouse.net/john1/earthbatt.html The author of this site purports that it is NOT galvanic action that drives this kind of action but something else entirely. Legend and the TV show Phenomenon:The Lost Archives has it that Nicola Tesla had experimented with these types of systems and found a way to get a constant, usable source of energy greater than the energy input. The TV show has footage of Tesla running lines up from the ground to lit light bulbs. In theory a large Tesla coil that does NOT discharge instead radiates its charge as radio waves--which will get you in big trouble with the FCC in the US or the CRTC here in Canada--and a second Tesla coil that is tuned to the same frequency will pick up that wireless transmission and behave as if it had an external energy source driving it. Now supposedly there is a very strong 6 Hz "terrestrial frequency" bouncing around everywhere on Earth. An earth battery behaves like a Tesla coil that is tuned to this "terrestrial frequency" and supposedly needs no external energy source to drive its behavior. Legend has it that Tesla successfully took the energy from such a coil and converted it back to standard AC. Somewhat of a "free lunch" as it were. The conspiracy theorists have a field day with why this free energy source was never developed and deployed. Anyone want to speculate that the "cold fusion" boys accidentally created a system that could do this without realizing it? Damned intriguing though. We are constantly bombarded with the radio background and earth's magnetic field. What if it could be tapped?

Re: Earth battery (3.00 / 0) (#12)
by Permafrost on Sun Aug 08, 2004 at 06:22:24 AM MST

Its a little off to the side but I was very interested in information about Mr Nicola Tesla. I had heard he made good on the earth battery, and also a biosphere generator, what ever that is. Anyone have any ideas, I'd be very interested.
Raoul

[ Parent ]

Re: Earth Battery? (none / 0) (#10)
by Lyle on Mon Oct 27, 2003 at 10:51:29 AM MST

This weekend I played around a little.
I took a 9" long 6" dia HVAC duct (available at most hardware stores) and shoved it into the ground. In the middle of that, I shoved a 3/4" copper pipe (from a left over plumbing project). This resulted in 0.975 volts. Putting 2 of these in series right next to each other showed 1.3 volts at 0.7 milliamps. Not enough amps to light a light bulb but a fun experiment non-the-less. BTW, it was raining and just touching the copper and tin with the volt meter I got the 0.9 volts even before I put the metals in the ground.

Re: Earth Battery? (none / 0) (#11)
by zbotrobot on Sun Jan 25, 2004 at 12:59:59 AM MST

I did a test of this but from Stublefeilds patent, and the model was poor and weak and the results were week. from the way the polarity tested, it is not a galvanic action although there may some of a galvanic presence there by default. This was the coil of wire method which takes copper and iron wire, the copper must be insulated and the wires are wound togeather paralell, at each new layer the coils are insulated (as the iron is not insulated and it is paralell so it (the iron) never touches itself or shorts itself as the coil is built up. There is definitly something to research here, but the practicality is I can buy a microcrystaine solar cell for 4 dollars a watt and the cost is the same or better per watt than the large amount of copper and zinc involved, not to mention the work of digging.

Earth Battery? | 12 comments (12 topical)

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