Perpetual motion

[peadar1987]

Your Country Your Call: View Idea

For background, this is off an Irish website called "your country; your call", where people send in ideas they think can improve Irish society. I came across this idea someone had for a perpetual motion device.

Now naturally, I reckoned it was impossible, and I put forward my professional opinion on why it wouldn't work (incidentally, I'd be interested to know if it lines up with those of any of the other scientifically-minded people on here).

The thing that concerned me was that literally nobody backed me up. Everyone who read the post and was interested enough to comment didn't accept either my arguments (fair enough), or the laws of thermodynamics (very worrying!). What does it say about our society that people would rather believe some crackpot on the internet than the scientific principles on which our entire society is based?

 

[BrianOnEarth]

The paper is so turgid and full of goofs and lacking in equations that I am struggling to understand it whilst maintaining the will to live.

Is this a correct summary of the claim?
You run an electric current through water which releases hydrogen and oxygen gas (and warms the water) and you use the buoyancy of this gas to turn a turbine. The turbine output power is greater than the electricity input power.

Inspired by a tropical fish tank, no doubt.

 

[peadar1987]

The paper is so turgid and full of goofs and lacking in equations that I am struggling to understand it whilst maintaining the will to live.

Is this a correct summary of the claim?
You run an electric current through water which releases hydrogen and oxygen gas (and warms the water) and you use the buoyancy of this gas to turn a turbine. The turbine output power is greater than the electricity input power.

Inspired by a tropical fish tank, no doubt.

He also wants to run the gas through a fuel cell, but that's pretty much it, yeah. He loses any credibility the second he says that gravity is a form of energy, and it all goes downhill from there. Essentially what he has is a very convoluted way of turning elecricity into less electricity.

 

[BrianOnEarth]

I was about to mention fuel cells. I am not a chemist so my knowledge of thermodynamics and Gibbs energy and such is vague at best. In the absence of expert knowledge I was going to offer you this reasoning:

Energy is conserved. So any excess energy produced must be derived from potential energy stored in the water itself. In this case this requires that the conversion of H2O into H and O must produce excess energy. However, fuel cell technology operates on exactly the opposite principle - that combing H and O into H2O produces excess energy. So either SU92 works or fuel cells work but not both. Fuel cells work.

How's that?

 

[Nostromo]

I love these guys.

"Hey, my invention is revolutionary and smashes all known physical laws to bring free energy to all! It works, I swear, I haven't quite finished and tested it because my dog ate part of it, but it works because buoyancy is all spooky and that! Prove me wrong."

Every other thread on this forum is like that, sadly :/

edit: I forgot the all-important: "I daren't produce it because the corporate Illuminati will emasculate me in my sleep!!£$ Conspiraceh!"

 

[visionary]

From the depth of the unknown at the edges of the known is the future... Issac Newton, Einstein and other will all tell you it was not the first attempt or the million attempt but the final attempt in which it all came together and worked... Let the exploration continue.... intelligent contributions are always helpful.. but negative remarks never are...

 

[sfs]

From the depth of the unknown at the edges of the known is the future... Issac Newton, Einstein and other will all tell you it was not the first attempt or the million attempt but the final attempt in which it all came together and worked... Let the exploration continue.... intelligent contributions are always helpful.. but negative remarks never are...

If Newton and Einstein had wasted their lives pursuing millions of really dumb ideas, they would never have accomplished anything.

 

[visionary]

From what seems like a dumb idea .. can come other ideas which are brilliant.. Let them work it out in their own way.. you never know what may come out of it all.

 

[Nostromo]

Sometimes brilliant ideas come out of dumb ideas, but only by accident. Why not start with a good idea and build on it?

 

[peadar1987]

I was about to mention fuel cells. I am not a chemist so my knowledge of thermodynamics and Gibbs energy and such is vague at best. In the absence of expert knowledge I was going to offer you this reasoning:

Energy is conserved. So any excess energy produced must be derived from potential energy stored in the water itself. In this case this requires that the conversion of H2O into H and O must produce excess energy. However, fuel cell technology operates on exactly the opposite principle - that combing H and O into H2O produces excess energy. So either SU92 works or fuel cells work but not both. Fuel cells work.

How's that?

Pretty much what I said.

I was going on:

Energy must be conserved. You put 30W of power into your system. This goes to: Heating of the water, Enthalpy of formation of gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, which increases as pressure increases, so it's essentially divided between pressure (potential) and chemical energy

The pressure is used to form a bubble underwater, which will rise to the surface, reducing in pressure as it does so. The pressure inside the bubble will equal the pressure of the water, (otherwise there would be a force difference, and the bubble would collapse), so as it approaches the surface, the potential energy decreases, the bubble only has a certain amount of energy to expend before all the pressure is exhausted when it reaches the free surface. It can be used to turn a wheel, which will reduce the speed with which it rises, but the pressure will still be expended as the bubble rises, just into the dynamo, instead of by viscous dissipation into the fluid.

When the bubble escapes, it can then be put through a fuel cell, which converts it back into water, releasing electricity.

All the energy you get out is accounted for by this, and it can be quantified. I could do it myself if I could find the time. There's no "new science", no magical source of energy, and no point to the device.

From the depth of the unknown at the edges of the known is the future... Issac Newton, Einstein and other will all tell you it was not the first attempt or the million attempt but the final attempt in which it all came together and worked... Let the exploration continue.... intelligent contributions are always helpful.. but negative remarks never are...

The first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed, is one of the most basic principles of physics, and our understanding of the universe. If it were untrue, it would contradict almost everything we know, just as surely as if someone postulated that gravity was a repulsive force.

 

[sbvera13]

Even if the conversion efficiency (from electricity to hydrogen, and back) was 100%, you'd still never exceed the original input amount. I guess the idea is that the turbine run by bubbles tips the balance. Unfortunately, the actual efficiency of hydrolysis appears to have a theoretical maximum of about 80%, and a fuel cell a theoretical maximum of about 50%- and these numbers assuming that a flawless technology is developed. There is no way a slowly turning turbine with very little actual kinetic energy can make up that difference.

Oh, and it might blow you up. Hydrogen is flammable and all that. It's happened before when people put these hydrolysis machines into their car to magically increase mileage.

 

[visionary]

If it were untrue, it would contradict almost everything we know, just as surely as if someone postulated that gravity was a repulsive force.

On the surface this does seem to be the only truth.. using your analogy ... gravity has other aspects that need to be taken into consideration... like

gravity vortexes... Vortex control gravity

Harness that one.

 

[BrianOnEarth]

From what seems like a dumb idea .. can come other ideas which are brilliant.. Let them work it out in their own way.. you never know what may come out of it all.

What may come out of it is that some innocent schmuck will be parted with their money. This is a confidence trick and the proponents are crooks.
Do you still feel like defending their ingenuity?

 

[visionary]

You are against the selling of a half baked idea.. which I have no problem with.
You are for throwing out the whole idea because it is half baked.. which I am arguing needs more baking.

 

[BrianOnEarth]

You are against the selling of a half baked idea.. which I have no problem with.
You are for throwing out the whole idea because it is half baked.. which I am arguing needs more baking.

With all due respect, to call this a half-baked idea is to lavish it with flattery. It is entirely erroneous. It is a lie. It is fraudulent. The idea contravenes the laws of physics and it implies fuel cell technology cannot work.
Not only that, but their written claim is utterly devoid of proper scientific process nor has anyone duplicated their claim. It is bunkum. It is snake oil. It is homeopathy without so much as a placebo effect as a veneer of an excuse.
They are asking for funding. They are crooks.

 

[sfs]

From what seems like a dumb idea .. can come other ideas which are brilliant.

Many, many people have had dumb ideas about perpetual motion. After untold man-years of work developing these dumb ideas, they're still just dumb ideas.

Let them work it out in their own way.. you never know what may come out of it all.

I wasn't planning on stopping them. If they try to raise money from the public by promising free energy from this kind of idea, however, they should be thrown in jail. There is a distinction between dumb ideas and dumb ideas used to defraud people.

 

[visionary]

Leonardo da Vinci made a number of drawings of things he hoped would make energy free. Da Vinci examined a few overbalance wheels. He also designed a centrifugal pump and the "chimney jack". The chimney jack was used to turn a roasting skewer (a reaction-type turbine)

 

[visionary]

While I am not a fan of Wiki... it is always interesting what they have on the subject...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_perpetual_motion_machines

 

[BrianOnEarth]

from Wikipedia:

"The term perpetual motion, taken literally, refers to movement that goes on forever. However, the term more commonly refers to any device or system that perpetually (indefinitely) produces more energy than it consumes, resulting in a net output of energy for indefinite time. The law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, implies that such a perpetual motion machine cannot exist."

 

[jwu]

Leonardo da Vinci made a number of drawings of things he hoped would make energy free. Da Vinci examined a few overbalance wheels. He also designed a centrifugal pump and the "chimney jack". The chimney jack was used to turn a roasting skewer (a reaction-type turbine)

Da Vinci didn't know about thermodynamics though.