Best ways to store power

[adam666]

been thinking about the 'suspended weight' idea.

I think a smaller weight system, with a modular design might be better.

eg. using mountain bike style gearsets and final pullay say 30" diam. reinforced wheel to lift say 100kg? (weight dependant only on gearset strength of course)

and that a hydraulic transfer / regulator system would enable consistent lowering ie not overdriving alternator? just not sure what sort of losses can be expected from hydraulics....

food for thought.............. :p

[Orange_Crusader]

Hmm... why not use a simply rotational device to store the mechanical energy?

Simply put, a large (a foot or 2 in diameter) wind-up spring, with a ratchet-style winder (more consistent results in storing power.) and a high gear ratio to spin an alternator. Should be easy to set up, reliable, and good for those who don't live near any cliffs or mineshafts.

Properly built, you have more of a chance of cables breaking or other problems with a weight setup that you do with the spring breaking (unlikely, I'd say) or something breaking and it spinning, and losing all its stored energy, you'd need a safety-stop in case of this.

Size-wise, a spring is very good, it should be able to fit in the space of 10 car batteries (a decent-sized setup), and springs could be interchangable (one is fully wound, switch to another for more storage. As long as there's no rust and they're cared for, the springs should be able to store energy for a long, long time with litte losses. They have good torque for a high gear ratio, and could keep power coming for, say, half an hour apiece, or more, as long as they're large enough, wound enough, and geared highly. Any thoughts?

[Bob Boyce]

[kevinsatterfield]

[AbbaRue]

An idea for energy storage I've been contemplating.
Use the electrical energy to produce brown's gas, then use the brown's gas to fill a large tank placed as high above the ground as possible, maybe in your attic. This large tank has a pipe connected to it, that is submerged in a large body of water, a pond or maybe a well.
Then you ignite the brown's gas with a spark plug. The gas implodes forming an instant vacuum inside the large tank. Then this vacuum can be used to suck water into the tank through an electric generator, as you need electricity. Just use an electronically controlled tap, like the ones in washing machines. Once the tank is full of water you can open a tap at the top which allows air to enter the tank, and then pipe the water back into the pond or well through a generator using gravity. Once the tank is empty, you could just fill it with brown's gas again from your free energy power source.
And repeat the process.
If you had two tanks you could slowly fill the one with brown's gas, using the sun or wind while you are taping energy off the other one.
Using an empty attic to store the tanks, makes this a realistic idea.
Could collect the water from a swiming pool too.
The most interesting question about this concept, is weather it takes more energy to fill the chamber with brown's gas then the energy the vacuum would produce. I also read that when brown's gas ignites it produces a large amount of electric energy. Maybe someone with a brown's gas generator already built could test this concept out on a small scale, say runing a bycicle generator with it or something, and let us know what your findings are.
Till later Harold

[pertyfly]

I guess I'm not the best to reply to this, but I must first say....how would you get the suction of the water?

If you filled a tank in your attic with brown's gas, and ignited it to "suck up water" you would actually end up having to live in a local hotel or something. You would really not have a roof left at least, if not a hole in the ground.

Also, I'm not sure where people are getting this idea from, but brown's gas does not totally implode immediately on ignition like people are thinking for some reason. It actually has quite a frightening and jolting EXplosion.

Also, storage is extremely difficult. Hydrogen is so small, that it tends to leak through almost anything. All this info is in past posts as well with details. If you look at someone recently (can't remember who, at the moment) he filled balloons with hydroxy, and within 2 hours I believe they had a different bang. This means that aither the hydroxy recombined, or changed forms or partially leaked out.

Anyway, don't mean to be so negative about this. I was just informing you of why I think it's a somewhat far-fetched idea. Keep up the thinking, though!!

Chris

[Jay]

[AbbaRue]

I personally have never worked with brown's gas, I was going by all the articles I read on the internet.
Over and over again I read that when brown's gas ignites it forms an almost perfect vacuum. I thought all those reports were accurate.
I wish people would stop making false claims about things. Someone could get hurt. There is a lot of difference between something imploding, and something exploding.
Here are some links that stated that it implodes:
http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm
http://www.energyoptions.com/tech/browns.html (this one speaks of pumping water by vacuum)
http://www.amasci.com/weird/bgf1.html (This one states it's different from di-atomic hydrogen and oxygen mixtures)
One site also stated that if you power a gas engine with brown's gas it must be ignited 80 deg. before top dead center because it's instant vacuum qualities will pull the piston to top dead center.
So every site I came across stated that it implodes, I found none that mentioned that it explodes. So I was only going by what I read.

Thanks for setting me straight on it. I figure the people on this forum have a better understanding about these things because of personal experiance.
Anyway, I am gathering up the materials to build my own brown's gas generator, I hope to use it as fuel for glass blowing.
Till later Harold

[AbbaRue]

[Steve-tee]

Howdy folks,

This is a fascinating discussion. As a new member here, I have only now noticed this thread.

My power is all generated here on my little farm. I have a number of homemade wind turbines and a couple of homemade backup generators.
Battery maintenance is an important issue, as failure to take due care results in expensive losses.

In an attempt to partially resolve this issue, I built an extra big wind turbine. it stands 30 feet tall and carries a rotor that is 20 feet in diameter.
It delivers electricity at 400VAC by 3 phase. Just lately, I added a four cylinder car engine that I converted into a compressor. Now, I get compressed air at 125 PSI whenever the wind is blowing. The air is stored in a series of tanks that give me a total of 400 litres of capacity.
Since this machine operates so effectively, I plan to add more air storage tanks to the system.
Ultimately, this part of the windmill project will be controlled by a little computer, so it will be able to 'look after itself'.
Right now, it's manually operated. I have to operate the electric clutch to engage / disengage the compressor, based on air demand, tank status and electricity usage.
To use some of the energy that is so stored, I built a little air engine.
It's the first I have ever built, so I started small. It has only one cylinder, and that is only 1 inch in diameter. The piston travel 1.5 inches and the whole thing delivers a whopping 40 watts!

I plan to build something better soon. Perhaps one that will deliver 1HP of power at the shaft. Using a home built genny on the shaft, I may expect 500 Watts of electrical energy .

So, one can run an 'engine' inside the house and benefit from the exhaust gases
I 'sniff' mine all the time


Best wishes,
Steve-tee.


Oh, by the way - the 'Vanadium Solution Redox Battery' may be worth having a look at also .

[Chris]

Hi Abba,

Just to clarify things for you, the gas we're producing here most definitely EXPLODES first and then as it's cooling in the next few microseconds, it creates a vacuum in on itself. Try this simple experiment for yourself and you will see. Hook your Hydroxy generator to a line of tubing, let it run for a few minutes to purge any normal air from the system, then put a balloon on the end of the line. It is best to have a shut-off valve in line before your balloon so you don't have an explosion all the way back to your bubbler.

Take a small solid aluminum cube and drill 3 holes in it so that each of the holes joins in the center. 2 holes are simple barb ends to accept 3/8" tubing. The 3rd hole is bigger and accepts a standard spark plug. This way you can ignite your gasses in the line over and over again with the simple press of a button (piezo ignitor).

Here's a shot of the cube that I made:
http://oupower.com/index.php?dir=_My_Pr ... s/1156.jpg


If you can't machine a solution here is something you can do with some small nails and some goop glue to create a sealed ignition chamber.
http://oupower.com/index.php?dir=_My_Pr ... s/1093.jpg

However you create your sealed spark chamber, you should now be able to reproduce the simple experiment that will prove to you without a doubt, that this gas is most definitely EXPLODING first. Fill a balloon to something the size of a walnut and then turn off the valve. Remember you don't want this flashing back to your bubbler. Now ignite the gas and the balloon should go BANG! But probably will not break. It will then suck back in on itself creating a hard vacuum.

Now fill that balloon a bit bigger, close valve and hit your ignitor. Same thing again? Looks like it's imploding doesn't it?

Now fill it a bit bigger. Close the valve and ignite your gas again. This time the balloon will likely BREAK. Why did it break? Because for a very brief moment the balloon got so large that it could not contain the gasses expanding withing itself and it therefore BROKE apart. Hence you have exploding gasses before their cooling off creates an implosion.

[Benjamin Roth]

Here's an idea for the suspended weight. Out here in the country there are some abandoned wells from 20 to around 150 ft. deep. The old dug ones are about 2 ft. wide. If a person were to hang a weight inside the well it could provide power and would hardly be noticeable. Any other comments on this, I would like to try it.

Ben

[Brett]

[hypersoniq]

Interesting... apparently other elements will work, such as
-Cerium/Zinc
-Zinc/Bromine
-Vanadium Bromide

and
-Uranium
-Neptunium
[/url]

[AbbaRue]

I think by far the best storage system in the world today is:
The Vanadium Redox Battery. You can read up on this technology in
the following pdf file.
http://www.electricitystorage.org/pubs/ ... Miyake.pdf

Hope this is usefull info for some.
Till later Harold.