Mythbusters tonight "Free Energy Devices"

Anyone see any of those so called "free energy devices" especially the ring oscillator and the radio antenna thing?

Reply to
Kissing Lettuce
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I wonder if they got their money back on the kits?

Dave :)

Reply to
David L. Jones

Kissing Lettuce while reading the NewsGroups, found courage and express out opinion in news: snipped-for-privacy@internode.on.net:

I have a gripe on the propane wheel experiment. I have done this experiment (using a much smaller and lighter disposable propane cans) and found that it works really well.

The dude who did the experiment should have painted the cans MATT BLACK. Having shiny white propane cans coupled with using only low power (compared to the energy from the sun) electric light for this experiment shows that the idea was not being given a fair trial. Nor did the dude understand the concept of the wheel correctly.

There are very efficient engines (models) that runs from the heat of human hand and some even works down to tempreature difference of 0.5 degree celcius. These engines are called the Stirling Engine.

Stirling engine water pumps have been made for irrigation of arid areas in some places (cant remember where) and they are running "free" from the power of the sun. These pumps could easily be replicated and used anywhere.

I think the Mythbuster crew screw up in this experiment.

Par.

Reply to
Parmin

On 5 Jul 2005 10:47:22 +1000, Parmin put finger to keyboard and composed:

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Thanks for the explanation. Apparently the Mythbusters crew could have bought any number of ready-made kits. I like this one that runs on ice water or a cup of hot coffee:

"MM-1 Coffee Cup Stirling Engine"

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- Franc Zabkar

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Reply to
Franc Zabkar

True but what they were trying to bust were the myth of so called "perpetual free energy" energy machines in that their claims far outweigh what they can actually do....

Reply to
Kissing Lettuce

I have worked on a piece of equipment that contained a 3kW stirling cycle engine, powered by a burning block of Lithium. It ran for about 35 days, charging up a 3MJ flywheel. When the flywheel was fully charged, it drove a 50kW piezo transducer for about a minute to produce a long, loud sonar ping. The room in which the engine was tested had 2' thick walls, and many scars. They had copper powder fire extinguishers to put out the lithium fire......

Cheers Terry

Reply to
Terry Given

That is a seriously weird system. What design considerations led to the idea of using a block of lithium as fuel?

Reply to
Keithr

So business as usual then.

MrT.

Reply to
Mr.T

beats me. These are built into torpedo tubes, and are basically an underwater GPS. Rather than a sub sending out a ping, these devices sit above the sea floor and emit the pings subs use to track things. So they have to run continuously for a month underwater. That seriously narrows the range of fuel sources. radioactive heat sources were discarded as they are real nasty, and hard to turn on.

The tricky part of the overall design was in accumulating the stirling engine output. The flywheel spun at 43,000 rpm or so in a vacuum, and was smaller than a beer keg (the vendor spent years developing it). Squeezing it into the torpedo tube was a good trick, but there was plenty of room for the 50kW SKiiP pack.

The 350kW drives we then built (totally custom design) were the same size as the 50kW assemblies from Semikron, but took a lot longer to get going. Modifying sensorless vector control software to run at 750Hz wasnt easy either :)

OTOH it was very easy to cool the device.

Cheers Terry

Reply to
Terry Given

What a seriously cool engineering job!!

Reply to
Mark Harriss

the guys at Penn State were easily the smartest mechanical engineers I've ever met.

Cheers Terry

Reply to
Terry Given

Kissing Lettuce while reading the NewsGroups, found courage and express out opinion in news: snipped-for-privacy@internode.on.net:

No, They look at "FREE" energy by harvesting existing energy of different spectrum.

The only perpetual stuff they tried is the generator garbage, which any self respecting engineer could see that there are a lot of energy wastage on the transfer (heat of the coil in the motor, loss in friction of the motor bearing etc.) to make it an impossible dream.

Par.

Reply to
Parmin

Terry Given while reading the NewsGroups, found courage and express out opinion in news:avFye.13182$ snipped-for-privacy@news.xtra.co.nz:

Way cool job Terry.. any vacancy ? It sould like you are working with the Swiss Navy Stirling Submarine!!

Ah yam happy nuf wiff mah job, but ah man gotta look fer bettah ones :)

There is an experiment done on eastcoast of USA in where they use Radium the size of a matchbox to heat up a stirling generator, which in turn light up a sea buoy for over 3 years non stop!

There are also pacemaker made using some radio active stuff.

A NZ company WhisperGen made some 3000 Watt multi fuel 4 cylinder stirling generator that is targeting sales to remote farmhouses. They could operate from any type of fuel, diesel, kero, petrol, gas, coal, chopped wood, methane, Phil Alison's fart and dried horse shit. Imagine! (I may be a bit exaggerating :))

Then, the Philips company does stirling engine experiment on a city public bus. They pulled out the V12 diesel engine and replace it with a V12 stirling stuff on the original block. The engine runs for 5000 (or was it 50000?) hours without any service (aside from oiling some shafts and gears) No tune up, no injector cleaning ... AND, it uses only 25% fuel compared to its best behaving cousin buses. Then, before you know it, they pulled out from the game without any explanation.

I am not into conspiration theory but, a man got to think about it deeply.

Par.

Reply to
Parmin

On 7 Jul 2005 19:07:04 +1000, Parmin put finger to keyboard and composed:

From my reading, Stirling engines are regarded as unsuitable for intermittent work due to their thermal inertia. If true, then how did Philips make the engine responsive enough for use in a bus? Did they use a continuously variable transmission? Hybrid engine?

See

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- Franc Zabkar

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Reply to
Franc Zabkar

yep. the corollary is for fixed loads its pretty good, so odds on its running a generator (just like the sonar device) in a hybrid.

Cheers Terry

Reply to
Terry Given

Franc Zabkar while reading the NewsGroups, found courage and express out opinion in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Yes I believe it is Hybrid.

But back to the original topic, I am still a bit pissed off by the MythBuster show on which they dismissed offhand the possibility of getting energy by harvesting unused (waste) energies floating around us.

The energy available may be small, but hey, little ants make anthills. And the main thing is that we are minimising waste instead of adding to it.

They may ruin the chance of some future inventors or investors, just because they did not grasps the concept. They have a popular show and although some of the watcher are scientifically minded, a great number of them are the "believers" that thought having "facts" spooned to them, means there are no need to explore other possibilities. These people are sometimes the "money people" who invests in "technology" or even children who we hope to better our future.

Hearing some "Famous" figure in TeeVee, dismissing the possibility of harvesting unused energy, they could believe that it is true, thus ruin the chance of them who may try to prove it wrong. I think I am rumbling now...

But think about bumblebee.. "scientific" studies proof that they could not fly, but luckily them bees never watch MythBusters... Otherwise, we would never have honey.

Par.

Reply to
Parmin

On 9 Jul 2005 10:08:31 +1000, Parmin put finger to keyboard and composed:

Mythbusters has scant regard for proper scientific method. My overall impression of the show is that it has become a vehicle for two pyromaniacs looking for excuses to blow things up.

- Franc Zabkar

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Reply to
Franc Zabkar

Well..... it is what they do for a living though, there is some attempt to make measurements and obtain relative comparisons of speeds etc., like they did with the "cards of death" card throwing segment, but the show is just trying for a simple proved/disproved result for an urban myth. At least now their budget allows for some qualified experts and some chicks to help dispel any speculations on their sexual orientation.

Reply to
Mark Harriss

Franc Zabkar wrote: [SNIP]

You say that like it was a *bad* thing.

Cheers, Gary B-)

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Reply to
Gary R. Schmidt

I wouldn't give them that much credit.

Yes, that is the whole purpose for them and their viewers. You have to give them credit for being able to get paid for it though.

MrT.

Reply to
Mr.T

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