This is an edited letter sent to me by an Australian Experimenter
by the name of Chris Scott
They will still require similar resources to create them that we
currently use. Why would I want to run an inefficient washing machine on my
efficient energy generator? All washing machine motors should be melted down!
( If they don't do it themsevles that is, and take your generator with it! )
Truly efficient appliances are hard to get. One full size electric refrigerator is available that uses one TENTH the energy of any other on the market. It simply has extra insulation and a ~90% efficient D.C. motor sealed unit, which is a standard Japanese make. Several voltage DC. models and mains transformer models are made in America. The hot stuff is mounted on top of the icebox for access and efficiency. See the 'Real Goods Mail Order Catalog'
Pre this government, Australian industry had finally agreed to this type of
change in standards and had tooled up to carry it out based on the Rio D. J.
Greenhouse gas treaty. This would have meant MASSIVE reductions in pollution,
and gone a long way to reaching the set targets,BUT, Jeff Kennett's Energy
minister vetoed the Australian agreement at the last minute. All the parties
concerned had reached agreement and ONE man could be seen to have been
responsible for some of our current waste.
Coober Pedy once had the worlds largest solar still to treat the water supply.
Now all it has is a broken windmill, because the governments who build these
things never budget for maintenance. The outback solar furnace stations in NSW
are closed because one mans salary to clean the mirrors costs them more than
it does to prospect, mine , refine, and transport large amounts of diesel to
the remote areas ? The Mintabie opal fields in the 80's had the Southern
hemisphere's greatest concentration of heavy earthmoving machinery, and
Diesel fuel use. I dont know if the solar ponds in Alice Springs or S.A. have
been kept running.
An simple example of a free energy system is to connect a 3 way
refrigerator to a solar panel. Peltier modules or Ultrasonic refrigeration
also matches well and I have installed the first 2 mentioned. The Australian
inventors of the piezo-electric-utlrasonic refigerator moved off-shore.
No moving parts is good for long life.
energy. I went ahead and did it, he spent lots of dollars AND hours trying to
make free energy. I can have a cold beer and tinker with ideas without running
a diesel everyday like him. Wood is also burned in winter in an efficient
heater, but the hot water and refigerator runs off bottled gas.
General Electric / Westinghouse and others make excellent Peltier
generator modules that won't oxidise in air at 900 celsius.
Spaceprobe Stirling engines are also in one of their old catalogs.
Some Installed applications were Himalayan Border beacons, Sonar buoys and
mines and other such inaccessible sorts of places
Apparently when thermocouples were discovered ~1840 they were more
efficient than the steam engine.They could have burnt coal or focussed
sunlight to heat banks of thermocouples to produce all the electricity they
needed but they had no electrical appliances to speak of. Georg Ohm used one
as an accurate current generator to define the unit bearing his name. Ice,
steam, thread and a needle were added to make an sensitive instrument.
The vortex tube you mention is a Hilsch tube invented in Germany ~1930. It
has a vortex chamber at the injection point and a throttle valve on the hot
end. It can achieve -60 celcius temperatures. They apparently were used to
cool lathe tools during use. Scientific American has a good starting plan.
Real ones are commercially available somewhere. Compressors are usually
inefficient unless you can power them for free.
Heat pipes are another oddity currently used to cool lathe tool tips.
These conduct more heat than Diamond OR Silver and are trivial to construct,
in Copper or stainless steel.
missing. There is an amazing book on water pumping technology put out by the
United Nations. Giant Humphrey pumps were tested on the Murray last century. [ still working on long weekends for tourists web master]
towns tractors and cars instead of letting it run over his neighbors place and
into the river. It wasnt a large piggery either. Larger quantities of methane
can be made using plant matter. If an engine runs on this fuel it is
essentially free and almost neutral as an air polluter. Efficient methane
compression is a big problem for portable uses. Hydrogen or home brew will
also do. It seems that for real Portable power nothing comes close to solid or
liquid fuelled engines/burners for the power to weight ratio. Flywheels could
exceed them.
Food or fertiliser are more valuable than any fuel however.
this country by Mitchell who invented the Marine thrust bearing. He built
three compact 8 cylinder engines, one of which was still in use in the 60's
without an overhaul. These motors were also experimented with in flying boats
by the U.S. Navy. This engine design requires only straight or round machining
and can be made on a lathe. Some car air-conditioning compressors use a 12
cylinder Mitchell configuration. My friend found some scale blueprints for the
original motor in a university library. I intend to build one from ceramics,
There is no existing patent on this motor. Pritchard's Steam Car is also worth
looking at, or ANY steam car for that matter, they have many advantages,
having the highest torque available.
They can be constructed from off the shelf parts.
interesting photo of a prototype appeared recently in a solar energy journal.
(See AUSTRALIAN INVENTIO-(NS) (RS)? edited by Leo Port. At any libray)
This book was inspired by the ABC inventors series in the 70's
ELECROSTATICS By A.D. Moore (recently republished and updated) ~$16 U.S.
(A.D. Moore was the worlds greatest electrostatic consultant.
Electrostatic web sites tell his story, and review this book.)
It's written for children/adults but It gives full plans for many Improved
electrostatic generators and devices.(giant ones made from junk are discussed)
His Dirod and Radial generators have greater efficiency than Whimshurst and
other generators. Watch it in the dark to see where it leaks. I built several
20 years ago for shocking fun. I also tried a one-shot Kelvin rail gun. The
current edition has a new construction section for the whole family of
generators. I built my original two Radials from a basic table of dimensions
and some tiny photos given in the first edition. The bizzare spray patterns
from the Kelvin were my favorite, real spooky in the dark.. This book is
essential if you play around with electrostatics in any form. A water or
camera flash capacitor can EASILY kill under the wrong conditions. This book
shows how to do things safely. I foolishly connected with a small water bucket
capacitor charged up with nothing but a hand spin from my machine. I didn't
recover properly for 2 days! A whole family of people said that they saw
lightning strike a metal pole not 3 feet from where I sat during a storm but I
never noticed it ! (it was one of those VERY bright and loud thunderstorms)
This has some very strange devices in it!
Self exciting direct capacitor disharge distributor drop in replacement.
Lucas fleet trialled 100's of them in the 50's. The engines can run submerged
in salt water with bare wires to the spark plugs. The original was a Whimhurst
on a Rolls Royce silver ghost ~1930. The Lucas unit was pressurised with a
small amount of hydrogen gas at ~300 psi. The thrust bearing or seal would
fail. Their research stopped after a few years.
A distributor using the Wiegand Wire effect to directly fire plugs was
described in Electronics Australia.
Take one radial aircraft engine and propellor.
Inject oil into the exhaust manifold.
Ionise the exhaust with a high voltage.
Blow Ionised Aerosol at target.
At night Depending on the weather, trees and objects downwind for long
distances over land and shorter distances over water were observed to break
out into spectacular corona. No wonder!
This has probably been tried since with a jet or rocket engine.
Airborne sand curtains and particle deflection systems. Suitably excited
electrodes resembling fence poles and screens raised and sustained vibrating
sand curtains which were accurately steered by voltage control. Insect
trapping and ejection was also investigated. Electrostatically deflected ink
jet printers and mineral separation systems exist.
France. Many electrostatic industries are based there. Reports from there
were/are available. SAMES DC generators. (parley vous Francai?)
I also built a small Adams motor and took it to Mr. Adams at the Sydney
Nexus workshop in 1995. A Farmer from Queensland built a 1 metre one costing
$0000? and his son showed a video of it. Mine cost nothing to build from
recycled junk, The magnets were made from an old IBM washing machine size hard
drive servo assembly magnet and one was cut into 6 pieces and hand ground to
identical cylinders weighing within 0.01 of a gram. The 6 magnets were epoxied
into a perspex rotor and a 5 inch floppy drive provided the bearing and drive
coils as well as the hall effect device. Fake leadlight adhesive copper foil
was used for interconnetions. It has a 5" by 1/2" or so rotor sandwitched
between 6 drive coils with room for more coils,and it will run at 15,000 rpm
on 24 volts for fun, but this motor overheats because the prewound coils and
poles dont match closely. The first ever motor that I helped a friend to build
did not overheat and the ocilloscope showed 24 amp pulsed coil currents and
ran cool using 3 mosfets. Unfortunately the magnets got loose on the first one!
My disc Adams
motor has a strangely shaped power curve, (The current required drops
dramatically as a load is applied.) This was done using true RMS measurements
and there are several reasonably sharp resonant modes in different direction
and timing positions. Some AC motors are more efficient when under load but
not quite like this. I have had no free time to investigate further except to
build a rougher smaller motor out of an ag-pipe end cap, with relay coils for
drive. 50 amp power mosfets are used for all motors, Motorola make the most
rugged devices and lowest 'on resistance'. 75 amp are available in TO-220
packages which are easy to parallel.
The Queensland one had a Special grade non magnetic stainless steel rotor
and when the son saw my small one he said "Why didn't we try a small one
first!" Mine was the same design. Both were built on farms! Adams could have
simply proved that his design worked by bringing a motor to the conference,
starting it on a battery and then switching it over to its own power to let it
run stand alone as claimed. He didnt. He has stated that he wants to help
solve the energy crisis, he better hurry up as he was in his mid 80's at the
time! A man has to eat but the rest of us can starve! I don't blame him
really. Whether it is free is another thing but the motor alone is an
excellent design for many uses. I need to pursue it further. An aquaintance
claims to economically split water using the pulsed output from this type of
motor. I haven't had enough time to check it out. All the texts I have seen
say a fixed amount of electrical energy produces a fixed amount of gas.
(Faradays laws) Some conventional devices RELY on this known quantity. This
amount of electricity is HUGE for the amount of gas produced. (Aluminium
production is worse.) It is better to use the electricity directly if
possible. However, commercial hydrogen manufacture uses pressurised cells to
increase gas production. There is no mention of pressure in any of the
scientific texts I have read.
Energy is only one of our resources! Not many things can be built to last
for more than 20 years before wearing out, The ultimate in energy conservation
is to delay the need to recycle the material, Perpetual motors included.
Current solar panels are Guaranteed for 20 years, no other energy product
comes close to this.
I liked the windmill instructions but it's
properly called a Savonius Rotor. A drag type as opposed to lift type of
windmill. It can be made in many configurations and blow over at right angles
to light winds due to the Coriolis Effect. The Flettner rotor sailship of the
1930's used this effect. It's inefficient but cheap. I would like to find out
more about vortex energy. I always thought those printing plates were good for
something but I never knew what. I have some good books on pedal power,
windmills and kites. Major parts were ratted from my electric bicycle to fix
the Adelaide University's Solar bicycle. I wonder if they got it all together
in time for the start.
Diamond tools are still made simply by rolling or casting diamond
into copper. Sand works well. I have ground many valuable gems to dust with
these primitive methods and am not alone in this opinion, as all the
Lapidary people would agree.