I Built an Atmosphere Powered Battery..
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 เม.ย. 2024
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Is it possible to store energy by using the atmospheric pressure on a vacuum? That's what we will try to find out in this video! We will built a functioning prototype of world's first vacuum powered battery/vacuum energy storage system, we'll look at the science that makes this thing possible and of course compare it's efficiency against other ways to store energy like pumped hydro, gravity energy storage and of course, conventional lithium-ion batteries.
Could this be the future of energy storage? Or was this project just a waste of time? - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![BOWKYLION - ส่วนต่าง (do it without me) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7x-pwcMopzE/mqdefault.jpg)
To clearify how i got to the result as seen in the video:
To charge: ~12.08V x ~1.62A x 43.709 seconds = 860,64 watt-second (or joules)
After a discharge: ~9.42V x ~1.15A x 57.993 seconds = 628,24 watt-second (or joules)
All value's are measured by the Arduino Nano in combination with the INA3221 Power monitor module.
As many of you have pointed out in the comments below, I did indeed make a mistake regarding the mention of the Watt to energy aspect. My sincere apologies for that!
The core of this project was to explore, show and see what was possible with this experimental project, even with some limitations. Sometimes it's not just about the final outcome, but also about the journey and what we learn along the way. And I hope that despite any shortcomings, you still found the video interesting and/or inspiring!🤓
Would have loved to see it charge something.
Just a thought, but maybe to make it basically 100% effective, by not using the motors to charge it. Make it hand cranked or something.
bring the output so that it will be a stable usb-c pd and try to use a laptop with that energy, and see based on absorption if it's usable, because a larger scale version of this would mean being able to charge it with solar and release later on in a size that is way larger than car batteries( in parallel and series) that i have sometimes seen( also a cost analysis would be nice).
How much energy did you loose by friction on the tube walls and pulleys
A potential problem with your aproach is that if you whant to store energy for long periods like hours or days, the air will slowly sip inside the cilinders, resulting in potential energy loss. and you needing to reassemble the entire rig to get rid of the air that laked iside the tubes.
If only friction of the seal did not completely kill his maths.
I didn't mention it in the video but i did indeed have to test a number of lubricants to minimize friction as much as possible! I started with dish soap and a bit of water and eventually, after Vaseline, WD40, PTFE spray and even a combination of some of them, I ended up with silicone oil, which I can say works extremely well!
@@ConceptCraftedCreations Wouldn't brass tubing also decrease the friction? Or another cheaper but lower friction material? I honestly would love to see this explored more and see how high you can get that efficiency up.
@@picklesdill5462 It needs to be airtight over extended periods
Did it? I thought the efficiency captured it nicely. Though efficiency also captured the heat of the motors. It didn't capture the efficiency of generating the electricity in the first place so I think it matters where you draw the box to define the system.😊
@@ConceptCraftedCreations is silicon oil work great for some me time?
Watt is a unit of power, not energy. You didn't achieve an efficiency of 73%, those motors aren't efficient enough to turn electric power into mechanical work and back to electric power at anywhere near 73% round trip efficiency, even without all that additional friction you have in that system.
The biggest fundamental and unavoidable issue with vacuum energy storage is the extreme cost per unit of capacity. Compressed air energy storage is difficult to make meaningful in comparison to other alternatives, but many times better than vacuum energy storage, in multiple ways. For the same volume, a vacuum chamber can only store as much energy as a pressure tank with one atmosphere "gauge pressure", or two atmospheres absolute pressure, and it's easier to make a pressure tank that holds 10 atmospheres gauge pressure than it is to make a vacuum chamber of the same volume.
With all that work put into it, and it looked really nice, I wish you'd gotten the technical parts about the capacity and efficiency right.
Thanks for your comment and feedback!👌
The core of this project was to explore and see what was possible, even with some limitations.
Regarding the watt-to-energy aspect, you're correct that watts are a measure of power, and I appreciate the correction.
To clearify how i got to the result you see in the video:
To charge: ~12.08V x ~1.62A x 43.709 seconds = 860,64 Watt
After a discharge: ~9.42V x ~1.15A x 57.993 seconds = 628,24 Watt
All value's are measured by the Arduino Nano in combination with the INA3221 Power module.
I will work on refining my future explanations to provide a better understanding of the technical aspects. Thanks for pointing that out!
I hope that despite any shortcomings, you still found the video interesting and inspiring. Sometimes it's not just about the final outcome, but also about the journey and what we learn along the way.
I'm always happy to receive feedback and suggestions for improvement, and I hope you'll continue to watch my future projects!😊
@@ConceptCraftedCreationsCame to say the same as above. It is an accurate assessment. You are probably in the 25-30% efficiency range as those motors aren't very efficient. If you can measure your current and voltage over time (sampling at something like every 10th of a second) you can calculate your actual power use.
I also recommend pressure storage instead of vacuum as it removes the 1 ATM limit on storage. However, I want to add that pressure storage really comes down to a strength and cost of materials issue. You can calculate it out to a point where you can show a figure of cost/yield strength and plot all the materials. There are other factors to consider though (like the safety of a high pressure tank full of lots of energy). Vacuum in theory could be just as economic, but has a problem outward pressure doesn't have. Buckling. To make a storage system economical you would need to use the materials to the edge of their safe limits. So 1ATM would be a very thin tube for most stronger materials. However that force is pushing inward. This causes the tube to warp and collapse in on itself (buckle). Outward force won't cause that, so for the same gage pressure a much thinner tube can be used.
Vacuum pressure does have an advantage in that it is nearly constant however, which works really well for getting a constant pulling force over a distance and making the generation and tensioning system much simpler.
I looked at all sorts of energy storage options years ago.
Mass/gravity systems take enormous masses to be effective and is why really only pumped storage is practical.
Inertia is decent for short term storage, but friction catches up to you for longer term. Safety of a spinning disk is also a consideration.
Pressure stores moderate amounts of energy, but also creates a huge bomb to rupture at some future date.
Capacitors don't store enough energy, but are great at buffering changes in charge and discharge rates.
Chemical has been pretty inefficient and low storage amounts in all but the latest generation of batteries. The cost has been pretty high until the last 15 or so years too. There are other technologies making fuels that have some promise.
Electrolysis and H2 storage could be practical for a fixed facility. I don't see it being practical for vehicles. There are too many conversion losses and safety issues to address that drive the cost way too high (they can be overcome, it just costs a lot).
Internal stress (springs) don't store enough to be practical for the cost of materials used.
Thermal storage can be very practical, particularly if it doesn't need to be converted to higher quality energy like electricity. Homes for instance could use store heat for space heating very effectively.
It is also somewhat practical for grid scale energy storage, though I believe the plants they have built thus far are considered failures.
In the end LiFe batteries are the most practical storage method available at smaller scales. They are pretty high energy density and the cost is getting pretty low. Sodium batteries will probably over take them in the next five years as the low cost option.
Regardless of whether something is the best method though. It's still fun to experiment. Also sometimes efficiency is irrelevant. Sometimes it is about what you have and can achieve with it. I have interest in low temperature difference stirling engines. They will never be efficient, but if the energy source is free, sometimes efficiency doesn't matter.
Good luck on your experiments. Your video was well presented.
I'd love to see the piston system being used with a valve to drive the motors in a ratchet-way so compressed air could be used to drive them.
That would allow a fun test of pumped storage.
@@court2379 Good breakdown and accurate afaik.
@ConceptCraftedCreations You must take in account the time needed for charging / discharging if you want an accurate evaluation of the efficiency of your battery :
Efficiency=(Td x Pd) / (Tc x Pc) = Ed/Ec
Td : discharging Time in seconds
Pd : average discharging Power during Td in Watts
Tc : charging Time in seconds
Pc : average charging Power during Tc in Watts
Ec : Energy needed for charging in Joules
Ed : Energy recovered while discharging in Joules
@fishyerik Without explaining how to correct it, pointing a mistake has low value.
This is basically the inside-out version of compressed air energy storage, except the maximum pressure difference is 1bar compared to the 80bar used in commercial compressed air energy storage solutions.
Actually it is not "basically the same". This one here has a major advantage!
When compressing a gas (air) and releasing it, you do temperature changes, whether you like it or not. This eats up your efficiency.
Here you do not compress, so you do not have this issue!
@@romanp.5236 makes you wonder how hard it would be to convert a compressed air energy storage to one of these types of batteries and what the difference in efficiency will be doesnt it
@@romanp.5236 When you pull a vacuum, you're just pumping heat into the cylinder instead of out of it? How would that not be the same on both sides?
@@romanp.5236 you get the same rate of heat increase/decrease when pulling a vacuum as when pressurizing. The only difference is the amount of pressure differential, which in this case is necessarily limited to 1 atmosphere of pressure.
@@faethewolf I disagree. If you start from a perfectly empty syringe and just increase the empty volume, no gas is there to cool down.
Pretty sure this whole Rube-Goldberg can be replaced with a garage door spring.
I was about to point that out. However, it may be worth doing this instead, because springs wear out faster when held depressed for long periods of time. Still, this atmosphere battery isn't much better, because it's likely it will lose "power"/stored energy over time due to small air leaks. Those rubber gaskets are under alot of load, and i don't imagine they'd last much longer than a spring.
it can be replaced with capacitors, and be smaller and cheaper.
@@danielmontmeny9880 The video literally showed air bubbling into the vacuum cylinder during charging. A spring is at least more efficient than that long term.
@@danielmontmeny9880 Wait a minute who told you that springs wear out when compressed? As long as they don't go beyond their elastic range a compressed spring should experience virtually no wear.
@@kieran8266 they do, it just happens rather slowly. large temperature variations can speed it up, but even considering that it'll happen orders of magnitude slower than a vacuum chamber will degrade
73% is pretty damn good for not having a team of engineers perfect and tweak it over decades. Definitely some potential there for improvement.
This.
yeah, but the problem is still energy density
@@concadium hey it just needs to be about 15 times greater and then it's worth using 😁
Yeah that was my first thought. Not to knock the video or the effort put in, quite the contrary rather. The idea has great merit if a dude can achieve 73% efficiency with home tools and a 3D printer.
@@knifeyonline Right but this is literally a desktop sized battery. Put it on the scale of space a pumped hydro station takes up and it might be viable.
This is very neat but the Achilles heel is the fact that it has an upper limit on extractable force. No matter what materials or innovations you have, you can only ever get to one atmosphere of pressure.
But you've kind of engineered the opposite of pneumatic storage. There's different flavours of it (cryo vs standing air) but it all works on the same principal of exploiting a pressure differential.
Very cool project!
What about taking advantage of the pressure of the ocean by having a plant deep underwater? Could it work?
@@contafamilia2092 sure, but now you've got to maintain equipment under the ocean. Cryogenic storage does the same, but you can easily access the equipment.
I like it, and I think that cost and size are more important than efficiency, because these are intended as solar powered batteries. This idea doesn't require an artificial lake in mountains (die we niet hebben in Nederland) or holes in the earth. If the batteries don't get you through the night, you just need more of them. So great job!
i really did not expect your losses to be at 27% i though it would be much more! i didnt expect you to beat hydro with basic tools and to be honest this could be scaled up pretty easily and fit into a home, i would be interested in its weight or volume / energy capacity but this video is very inspiring by itself. Thank you
I clicked on the video because I was intrigued by the idea. I didn't expect a great outcome, but I found the idea interesting. The approach was very entertaining, and adding a bit of science always enhances it! You deserve more encouragement than just open opinion or criticism. Great explanation and a nice idea; keep making this kind of content!
A really useful project for youngsters to learn physics & engineering. If the battery was charged via solar, or wind turbines then yes, it's a viable way to save energy for use later, when demand arises.
This was actually pretty brilliant. A great example of lateral thinking the gravity based system. Regardless of the efficiency and others critiques, I really enjoyed this project and look forward to more.
I was glad to see some more experimenting done with this concept. I started buying screen door closers for my experiments, unfortunately I never made it to any prototyping
Make it a sealed large diameter diaphragm to minimize the losses and maximize the space efficiency
That should also largely increase the lifespan… those friction seals will not be around long, and the habit of leaking will rub off fast…
What sets this apart from compressed air energy storage is that the pressure differential remains basically unchanged while charging/discharging and never exceeds 1 bar, since the limiting factor is the atmosphere itself. That can be an advantage, because the power output remains constant, but also a disadvantage because you need significantly bigger tanks to store the same amount of energy.
Fun fact: since you can't do weightlifting exercices on the ISS for obvious reasons, NASA had to come up with a special apparatus to allow for a similar type of exercice so astronauts can keep their bones healthy (living in microgravity for months at a time can lead to dangerous loss in bone density because you're not straining your skeleton as much, since you don't weigh anything). You might think "well just have them push against a piston or a spring instead of lifting a weight" but the issue is that in both cases, the amount of force required increases as you compress the spring/volume of gas (as described by hooke's law), whereas the force needed to lift a known weight remains constant. So, instead, they make astronaut pull a vacuum inside a reservoir, the same way you did here, because then you're pushing against the air pressure inside the ISS instead of trying to compress a comparatively smaller volume of air at an ever increasing pressure. This way, the pressure exerted on the piston remains basically the same, meaning the amount of force astronauts need to exert during their workout remains the same all throughout!
very nice seeing someone execute the project very well i have thought of this, but in reverse storing the energy as air under pressure but slowly releasing it, this is awesome
I work with equipment that is very sensitive to atmospheric pressure changes and I will say that this energy storage is extremely interesting. Especially, in climates that have massive ambient pressure spikes.
imagine if this is done under water. or lik ea mile deep in the ocean. the force of the water on the equipment would be a lot higher
I work in an industry where i get to witness how quickly seals fail
I think everybody here is missing the point thats its a proof of concept, some of the maths might not be exact or perfect but im sure none the less he had a alot of fun building and designing this project, learnt a bunch of things on the way. C'mon ppl his not saying he is making zero point energy just having fun expermenting with alternative battery types. Im looking forward to a MkII.. 😊
Yes, exactly what you say is indeed what I first thought when I saw all those comments coming in😄. But the other side of it is that it does spark fun discussions🤓 Thanks for your support! Appreciate it!👌
As a POC it's interesting, and it's going to spark some thought, but it's got several major challenges that will make it less than ideal for implementation. It's part of the reason the Hyperloop concept was doomed to failure after over a century of pneumatic pressurized tube passenger rail trials.
A proof of concept is supposed to show something as being feasible, this contraption is just not feasible. The friction, multiple layers of energy loss, air leaked and wear, there's just so much worse about this than a spring, compressed air storage, or even just a weight on a very rope.
This seems to have amazing potential with those kinds of numbers from a 3d printed setup, I imagine with machined parts and possibly an exterior, partially vacuum sealed space to reduce leaks over time do to the pressure differential, I imagine it would have a much smaller loss over time on the pistons.
I had a similar idea many years back for how to produce useable methane on farms where I imagined building a circular tank (concrete manhole, they prefab similar stuff) to ferment cow shit in and have a giant round weight with a seal, could be on a solar powered winch that you top it off with, give it some time for the bacteria to work then lower the weighted seal to create pressured gas that you could then pipe out on site and put into cans provided some filtering mechanism of course.
Where I live, the area has been powered by pump storage supported by various power plants since the 1980s. About 15-20 years ago though, they started putting in wind turbines. Many people were critical and still are. I think it's really cool though. In the time since they started installing the turbines, they've put enough in that the pump storage is entirely powered by wind energy and it's really cool to live 20 miles away from something like that. I feel fortunate to have such clean energy generation in my area and if I go past that, it's just a giant lake all the way to Wisconsin so the air here is pretty clean
pumped storage is such an interesting and useful idea! its so simple yet effective.
it helps combat the unrealiability and demand problems of green energy by allowing the energy to be stored and made more stable!
cool idea but your efficency calculation are wrong. Watt is the unit that mesures how mush energy is used/generated at the moment. but it is not a messuremtn of how much enegergy is stored. for that you need to take time into consideration (ie. Wh, kWh, Ws). you can have a battery that chages with 10 watts over an hour and dischage 100 watts in 2 seconds. with your calculation, it would have an efficency of 1000% and thats not the case. in reality the battery charges with 10 W over 1 hour (60 min -> 3.600 s). so it saves 36.000 WS. it discharges 100 W over 2 seconds so 200 WS. so the real effiency would be ~5,5% and not 1000%
I understand what you mean👍 and the power monitor module in combination with the Arduino Nano measured the voltage, current and time for both charging and discharging. So the wattage is, as you say, the full and actual consumption and power generated by this setup👌
@@ConceptCraftedCreations Are you saying that it took 860Wh to charge this battery?
If so, this result seems unlikely because the video shows that charging takes less than a minute, which means that in order to store such energy in such a time, the engines should have a power over 50kW. You must have a miscalculation somewhere, maybe this capacity is 860mWh?
@@ConceptCraftedCreations Yep it's pretty easy to understand all the so-called people using precise exact overthinking terminology just don't understand it. you measured what it takes to charge and what it discharges.
This
Batteries are a hell of a drug
To clearify how i got to the result you see in the video:
To charge: ~12.08V x ~1.62A x 43.709 seconds = 860,64 Watt
After a discharge: ~9.42V x ~1.15A x 57.993 seconds = 628,24 Watt
All value's are measured by the Arduino Nano in combination with the INA3221 Power module.
Vacuum batteries, what a neat idea. Awesome work, man, I hope your channel keeps growing.
Thanks mate! Appreciate it👌
storing energy like this always wondered me, from giant flywheels to air/water pressure contraptions. i think the main advantage of this kind of idea vs chemical storage is the material availability and thus scalability
pretty cool. I'm just an armchair enthusiast of energy storage but the thought experiments are fun. For a compact energy storage method with no chemical danger, no real degradation and easily serviceable parts, I think this is a pretty cool experiment. I think scaled up with some refined tolerances could absolutely get the efficiency up. The danger, of course, is large vacuum chambers, but this would be interesting to see something like this on houses. It makes me wonder if there is any potential in simple having a large vacuum chamber with a regular vacuum pump and then a valve to switch it over to a fan generator.
Really cool project! I think friction is your big problem. First of all. The pistons are not staying vertical as they are pulled slightly off axis by the timing belt. I'd make the pistons have skirts made of Teflon to keep them vertical. I'd also consider trying different seals on the pistons to see if there is anything capable of producing a vacuum but causing less friction. Finally, the big move is to reduce the number of pistons by increasing piston diameter. When you double the diameter, you double the friction surface, but you quadruple the displaced volume. 8 pistons looked cool. But it made the friction problem worse. It's why you don't see many small displacement, high cylinder count engines like a 2 liter V8.
Oh, I see Robert Murray-Smith all OVER this idea if he ever comes back to TH-cam. RIP Patti Smith.
I miss him tbh 😢
I hope he's doing ok
@@atrumluminarium I miss him too 😭
Loosing your significant other is a tremendous blow, and then there's ALL the practical things on top
Give it time, they say. I'll give him all the time he needs - and yes, I'm sure he'll have some wonderful insights on this amazing idea
oh no i didnt know that.. how sad :(
Awww. I'm sad now.
Been wondering what happened. Poor guy.
I clicked on this video to see what other technical vids would be suggested because i knew this wasn't going to be efficient enough to be practical lol. I watched it all though so you get the algorithm credit. Keep at it man!
Very good video, amazing work and creation! No bs no useless face camera talking, straight to the point & the build, with stunning ingeniosity! So good man!!!
You can improve efficiency by making the tubes larger in diameter, and less tubes. This will reduce contact area of the plunger to the walls massively and therefore losses due to friction.
You could probably increase efficiency using thermodynamics too. Store while warm discharge cold..
Nope. Friction is independent of area of contact.
That would increase the pressure and thus making his seals fail quicker...
Nevertheless it is working by using vacuum pressure so it is limited in the amount of energy stored per volume compared to a compressed air storage. i think 1 bar was less than 20% of a kWh per cubic meter. which is 1000 liters and those tubes maybe had 1 liter each ;)
So if it takes less energy to store, and you get the same energy out... it doesn't matter that it's a vacuum. It's the differential that is important. I don't think seal failure would be any different. I'm not talking about 100degree differences... I'm talking about normal atmospherical temperature differences from night/day. It doesn't make sense if you have to create heat/cold.
I'm thinking you're just being obtuse.
Kinda, in theory, in purely static or dynamic scenarios, with rigid bodies.
adhesive force is proportional to the surface of contact, and rubbers are very adhesive
I think the best part in vacuum storage over pressure storage is the fact, that it provides linear force and can be generated and used very fast. I could see it as a kind of capacitor. Used when an excess of Mechanical energy is there that needs to be stored and then used almost instantaneous afterward, so airtightness isn't as big of a problem. I had to think of one video from Tom Scott, where he uses a Motion wheel to transfer the momentum of a bike to use it for accelerating afterward. This seems like a pretty good use case especially because it is limited energy that can be converted, and it doesn't bring any access weight with it like the flywheel.
You are absolutely right! And the way you describe it is also the best way to look at it, I think👌
You can get a linear force using preassure storage as well, you just ned a preassure regulator.
This is brilliant, the reverse method causes you to store pressure vs. remove pressure. If this fails it implodes vs. explodes. Much easier to handle from a safety perspective.
That was super cool! I really liked your innovative testing procedures, like using the syringe to fill the water bottle to test the torque required to move the system. All of that looked like so much work to ideate, design, and build and then to film and edit on top of that. Woah. All I can say is thank you for taking the time to create this and share your work with the world!
No offense, but measuring energy in watts is a bit cursed 💀
It's not measured in Watts. He said Watts, he meant Joules.
We're all going to be fine 😂
It's fine. He's measuring the power in and out. Energy is going to have a linear relationship to that. It's the same as when people talk about their weight in kg. We understand what it means.
@@JohnDoe-ej3wp Yes and no. Depends if he is measuring stuff for the same duration. But yeah, it's just a physics thing. He is actually measuring Joules, just said it was watts
Its the most efficient way if doing it. Wdym lmao.
You cant find current without both volts and amps. You can convert your current to whatever you want, 1000000 volts or 3 volts. The only important part is the wattage. Its just amps X volts.
@@TheAshYam Not really. The important part here was Joules because he wanted to know the efficiency of the battery. Watts is useful to calculate Joules. The main issue was the nomenclature because he ended up calculating Joules, but called them watts
Seems pretty cool. Considering this is 1 guy making what would effectively be a prototype I bet you could get the efficiency drastically higher than that and you're already in the range of other energy storage systems. There are many questions that come to mind, such as how much efficiency would be gained by having a single larger vacuum chamber since you are increasing volume (potential energy) and reducing the circumference of the seals contact point (loss)
Indeed, if you were to use a single piston you would reduce friction. I did however use silicone oil in this setup which worked really well I must say! 👌
I also think the great thing about vacuum is that it is easy to scale up because when you double the diameter of the cylinder, the force of the piston quadruples.
I second trying a bigger single piston wonder what the difference would be between a small medium and large scale and maybe the scale of efficiency follows a pattern in relation to volume. Awesome implementation and beautiful explanation of forces required in the hearing ratio
What matters more is total energy storage relative to resources invested. The result: It has a very low capacity. Nobody with an undergraduate degree in physics of engineering would even bother wasting more then 2min on the idea.
A slight more serious concept has been using concrete container deep under water (200-500m). At 400m you have 40 athmospheres of pressure and correspondingly 40x higher energy storage. But even this idea failed so far when put to practical tests. Just too much effort for too little energy.
Can you maybe make a 1 & 4 piston setup. Try keeping the area within the piston the same overall.
Really neat idea! I subscribed 👍
Great attempt. One important thing to note is that when a load is connected to the motor the force required to to overcome inertia will be significantly more than when no load is connected. You measured the force required with no load on the motor.
Very cool project. The design gets cool points. A few suggestions:
To cut down on frictional losses, 1 vacuum chamber with a diameter optimized for ideal torque. And something to better stabilize the plungers as it looks like they are crooked in their cylinders which will reduce efficiency.
I appreciate and applaud the investigation, though there are significant losses and efficiency issues here. I initially thought you were going to try and make a barometric powered energy generator- it is possible to pull energy out of the atmosphere by harnessing barometric pressure changes. The Atmos clock is one practical example of such a device.
"Vacuum energy" sounds somewhat like Stargate technology, it even looks a bit like Zero Point Module ;)
If only it could produce power on par with one of their zero point muduels, that would be amazing and terrifying.
Man, I'm just impressed with the 73% energy return, I figured with the friction that the seals and belts have to deal with it'd be more like
i think considering you were using less expensive materials for this project the efficiency might change if you were able to use more exotic/higher quality materials
really cool experiment & I'm glad you share it with the world
Would submerging the tubes underwater or in a pressurized air tank increase the total resistance it has to overcome thus you could increase the gear ratio to also increase run time?
A giant vacuum battery in the bottom of the ocean could theoretically store a huge amount of power... Maintenance would be a PitA though
@@raphaelsampaio7172 It would also strongly want to float
I couldn’t stop thinking of using diaphragms for vacuum formation instead of pistons the entire time I was watching the video. It would eliminate leakage and friction.
friction, leakage and maintanance for this battery would be to high to be practical, But idea with diaphragms would reduce those. You could build closed sealed system with less wear. But! you can create vacum, how dou you want to turn it back to mechanical energy? they won't vibrate by constant vacum and i think mechanical solution to turn the vacum back to mechanical would add the problems back that you solved by using diaphragms :)
@@smoketatum6730One way valves and a crankshaft?
@@Alkatross yep, and thats what i ment, by adding complexity You are adding more maintanance and leakage possibilities, so You are back to Point 1
I think that's a pretty cool idea. I thought that it was gonna struggle to pull the plungers up until I remembered that atmospheric pressure is constant for a given altitude
I have always thought that stored air was great and never thought of the opposite. Great concept. Maybe rethink the gears and motor but all was awesome
Nothing is a waste of time if you collect valuable data 😊
Great Idea! One question: In the efficiency calclulation you wrote "watts" which is power, not energy (would be watthours). Were the motors consuming 860 Watt during charing and generating 628 Watt during discharging? If yes, how long does it take to charge and discharge the "battery"? - Watt * Seconds / 3600 = Watthour. Stored energy of about 700 Watthour seems to much... Thank you for your answer and keep your great work up and the TH-cam channel up!
Was about to ask this as well, how long does it discharge vs charge. Having something put out 600 watts is nice an all but if it only lasts for a few seconds, that's not really much usable power
He said tripple before so i’m assuming 1:3
Hrm, no response yet. Not a good sign.
exactly that.
Must be ~4Wh on output. ~4.5 second for ~4cm of tube...
I just loved how the moisture in the cylinders started to boil the moment you lifted the plungers. Very neat! The main disadvantage I see over pumped hydro is complexity and cost. A reservoir and a pump vs. all of this. Pumped hydro also allows easy control over discharge power over time and I think you would need a very beefy gearbox to achieve the same here. Still it's a great experiment and a very interesting result!
This is amazing. I developed this idea some 15 years ago. However I used both weight and vacuum to increase the energy density. I was disappointed in the available energy and decided not to pursue it. However in the last two days I decided to return to this idea. And now I see this video covering many of the things I wanted to explore. An Amazing coincidence.
I'd like to add my design did not use seals as I immediately recognised that it would be a major weak point never mind efficiency losses due to friction.
Commenting so you get recommended by TH-cam.
I think it worked because it got recommended to me lol. Worth it.
Also just a crazy idea for a gravity battery that could work is turn a whole parking garage into a gravity battery. The roof can be all solar panels. It should be loaded like a spiral column with a car elevator in the middle to load and unload cars. It will double as a space saver too.
You'd have to park by day and unpark at night
I have my doubts about how you rate efficiency, but the video is great and the time you put into that nice looking device makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the interesting video.
This is a really nice project! It's nice to see a rarely utilized physical effect used for a practical purpose. The efficiency is very impressive especially for a prototype. It would be interesting to compare the energy density as well. Both in Joules/kg and Joules/m3.
Nice video. It reminds me of compressed air storage (CAES). It is a shame you didn't calculate the energy capacity in Joules or Watt-hours.
To clearify how i got to the result you see in the video:
To charge: ~12.08V x ~1.62A x 43.709 seconds = 860,64 Watt
After a discharge: ~9.42V x ~1.15A x 57.993 seconds = 628,24 Watt
All value's are measured by the Arduino Nano in combination with the INA3221 Power module.
Thanks for the clarification. Then your calculation is correct, but the units are the Joules not Watts. Hence why others have commented on that.
Again, thanks for an amazing video!
I should have paid more attention indeed! In the future I will double check everything before uploading a project🤓
Given the easy access to the used materials and the easy way to construct it: Yes please for a bigger version! This has so many possibilities and just the reduced need of special materials makes this a very cost effective way. I love your creative engineering!
Thank you for your compliment👌 and I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
This result has made me itch to start working on a large version.. So there is a good chance that this will happen in the future!🤓
@@ConceptCraftedCreations I am an engineer myself and too many of our projects are only looking at high-end solutions, that cost a fortune to build. If we really want to enable others with less financial abilities to be part of this transition, we desperately need solutions like the ones you show.
That's one of the main reasons i wanted to try this approach. To get new results, you sometimes have to try new things! And i always think that if you don't try, you won't know! Right?
Would be interesting to build a gravity machine using weights that has nearly the same power output as your contraption, to see if you are saving space. If your build produces the same energy but is 10x smaller, that definitely makes it worth looking into! Especially considering the volume to surface area ratio.
Just the compactness of it makes it viable I think! I'd love to see you try to make a smaller-scale sand battery that can be used for charging 5V electronics like mobile phones.
it's super freaking cool, with a little bit of decoration this could be a functioning sci-fi power cell
Whats funny is that it basically alreay looks like a power cell. Imagine a charge station were you just plug in the button and theres a motor to pull them up creating the vacuum lol. In a sifi setting it wouldd charge in seconds but take a while to run back out based on application.
Watts, or Watt/seconds ?
I assume W/s as the gearmotors are not very big and the charging time was quite long.
Watt per second is not a thing
@@StefanReich You are right. The correct notation is either Ws W*s or W-s depending on the nomenclature. Point is still, we need a measurement of energy not power.
To clearify how i got to the result you see in the video:
To charge: ~12.08V x ~1.62A x 43.709 seconds = 860,64 Watt
After a discharge: ~9.42V x ~1.15A x 57.993 seconds = 628,24 Watt
All value's are measured by the Arduino Nano in combination with the INA3221 Power module.
@@ConceptCraftedCreationsYour unit is Ws then (Watt seconds). 860 Ws vs 628 Ws
Indeed! Or.. because 1 Watt scond is equal to 1 joule: 860 joule vs 628 joule
a neat idea I seen was someone use was sand to gen power. because it can flow like water when being poured so they used it to spin a water wheel and an auger screw to lift the sand up into a holding tank. would be neat to see someone make a nice sized one from 3d printed stuff.
I'm just watching half of the video and I'm already amazed at the experimental setup you implemented for each phase. Kudos to you!
BTW, which model are these motors you're using? Thanks!
better seals made 2 handle that pressure, build a plate to hold all the plungers and run a single cable. Interesting idea , worth a look
Are you Dutch?
Dacht het zelfde 😂 lekker Nederlands ge-Engelst
@@nefarious_blue Ja.
He’s 100% listen those dulcet tones he’s gargling
@@matthewgriffiths9642 Fr.
I have always been interested in gravity energy storage. This was a fascinating concept and design.
At 73% and being a prototype only.. there is always a lot of room for improvement. Especially with a team of engineers.
On that note. This holds good potential.
Thank you for the video!
is that a serpentine belt i saw? this is a cool project man! didn't expect to see a powerful vacuum seal today but here i am lol.
you made a tutorial with no precedent. The didactic value of your work is as great as the mashine you made. Thank you so much for this video!
Really impressed you get something over 50% efficiency on this small scale
I thought the capacity of this system would be around 50 - 100 watts, but 800 - damn!! It have a big potential, and it is relatively small too.
Very interesting project even and if it lacks potential the main thing is that you tried and did. Very good work on the design of the print parts
No project is a waste of time. You always learn something new. No matter how big or how small.
Nice build and good energy. Rather than making a bigger one, try something like a flywheel battery.
Thanks for sharing 👍🏼
Awesome video and very clear explanations, thanks! I would bet you're losing some efficiency due to friction inside the cylinders, but you have still obtained an excellent result. Please keep the great content flowing!
After some thought, here are a few that I'd toy with:
Thermal properties: Maybe messing around with external cooling/heating to expand the atmosphere when you're collecting it and contract the atmosphere when you're drawing the energy.
Higher quality parts: I'd maybe see if you can find higher quality parts for the seal itself. There's a ton of friction, so you can possibly look at a different material for the tube and use a perfluoropolyether based applicant (like Krytox) for a lubricant.
Gear ratio's: You could implement some gear ratios into the mix for a few different ideas. The first would be energy over time; you'll be able to draw your energy over a longer period of time. The second would be for speed, allowing you to store the energy quickly.
What a cool project! I would love to see a Pressure tank storage instead of a vacuum one. Exploring more aspects like the importance of the lubricant in the tubes, the power efficiency of the motors (the difference between a brushless motor, the impact of gear reduction in efficiency, and so on.) In the future, maybe explore some thermal advantages, for example: we know that when some gases get colder, they have the tendency of occupying less space, so, if you “charge” the vacum battery in the sun, then wait for it to cool off, would it have some impact on efficiency? (Black tubes would be necessary, but i think you got the idea). Definitely deserves some follow ups on this, could turn into a series, just like the 3D printed Air Motor from Tom Stanton.
Interesting that a home made hobby project managed to get such a high efficiency. Though i would be curious to see what the power loss while in storage over time is and how that compares to other storage methods
This setup actually made me think of something kinda interesting: Since your energy storage in this system is working against the atmosphere, the work you have to put in to charge the system is dependent on the atmospheric pressure around you and same in reverse for the energy you get out when you discharge it. So charging the system on top of a mountain where atmospheric pressure is lower will take less energy, but when you move it back to sea level before discharging it, you would still get the regular amount of energy out of it - so that "extra" energy has to come from somewhere else in the process. But where?
I'm pretty sure the difference would have to come from the fact that with the system charged, the vacuum takes up additional space without adding any mass, so the entire system would be slightly less dense, giving it higher buoyancy and making it so you get that tiny amount less energy back from moving it back down the mountain, than when you had to move it up the mountain in the discharged state.
Or perhaps I'm missing something more obvious. lol
Awesome channel! loved the video. my only tip is regarding the video style: i would like to see the batery being used to power something in the end right before the numbers of efficiency, it helps with the story-telling if you have a "final results"/resolution part in the final edit :) keep the good work!
Thanks for the feedback👌 I will definetly keep that in mind for the next video!
Viable? For the model you showed, Short answer is no. I don't think 73% efficiency is the correct number. I think you did over engineering some parts of the process. You did good overall, if you could achieve at least 80% with great energy potential storage for longer cycles of use, it would become more interesting. If I had to take your project for real, I don't know if I would use so many moving parts, I don't know why you have chosen 8 vacuum chambers (true V-8?), the motors seems troublesome, the electronics seems ok for a prototype. In the project, overall price and materials would be the big talk for me. You should take a look on sand battery too.
First of all, great job.
I'd like to see this system with all 8 tubes at at least 1m in length. 😎
I thought it is easy to spot a German speaking english but it is as easy as spotting Dutch people :D
😂😂
I've always dabbled in pico hydro & aero turbine for energy generation. This concept is entirely new for me (but yeah... Efficiency will need a lot of work). Thanks!
For more fun, put it in the car and take it to a high altitude with lower atmospheric pressure. Pull the vacuum there, then drive back down to a low altitude where pressure is higher. Add another motor, using some kind of coupling, and you should (will?) get more power when the generator runs due to the increased atmospheric pressure. This would be useful if, for example, you work at a higher altitude each day, then return to a lower altitude afterwards. (I'd love to see a test of this!)
I'm new here, first vid.
If you're gonna make a second version, make it to the dimensions of current solar batteries. This version has the tubes in a circle to make many things more convenient, but a real consumer version might still look like a big box. Could hold 200 of those tubes in theory.
I wish I had more advice to share regarding improving efficiency, because I'm so very sure there's at least something to improve over 73%. Imma wrack my noggin on this one for sure cause this is an interesting concept I've just learned of. Shits neat 4 sure.
I seem to remember a clock from over a 100 years ago that had one of these. It’s still running.
Really nice, the sealing will cause problems eventually but is interesting and a new alternative to weight energy storage. Perhaps with water or oil sealing...
great work so far! you should also graph, lifespan, energy density, cost per kilowatt of storage and then you would have a better idea of wear your headed, its worth noting that a prototype is probably significantly worse than it could be with upgrades
before I watched this video but after reading the title I had an idea of small piezo generators that react to changes in atmosphere pressure and seeing the preview I thought about chambers with different pressure in them to make this all work on any height
I am no engineer, but impressive to me.
Few potential improvements.
1) Belts are less efficient than chains. Maybe, the linear motion required could be achieved with toothed rods and gears.
2) larger diameter tubes and less of them would be less surface area on seals.
3) could be worth seeing what % vacuum achieves the greatest efficiency. Maybe only charging to 50% is more efficient than to 100% (or some value other than 100%).
As you have a prototype, could be worth exploring patents in this area and seeing if you could patent it. It being lower efficiency than batteries which are the only other worthwhile home storage solution (maybe gyro too) is fine as this is much simpler to build and doesn't require rare earth metals (well... magnets in the motors but still).
One idea for improvement: have both ends of the tubes sealed (with an airtight steel wire to lift the plungers). This would increase the energy density of the system, because you would be creating both a high pressure area and a low pressure area (rather than just a high pressure area). This could be further improved if the high pressure side had a minimum pressure above atmospheric pressure (this would increase the pressure differential and total storage capacity).
As you noted this is similar to pumped hydro. You could achieve the same with moving water and its less likely to leak as water seals are easier to maintain than air seals.
But here is an idea you can't do with pumped hydro. Air pressure is always changing. If something is changing we can harvest energy when it moves from a high stored energy to a low. Think about building a pressure vessel with one way valve. When the air pressure goes up it overcomes the valve and equalizes the pressure inside the vessel. When the air pressure goes down you can harvest the pressure from vessel as you allow it to escape. The interesting thing is that this can happen passively and you can sale the vessel to be very large capturing more energy.
changes I would try:
Instead of using the motors to pull up and create the vacuum as it pulls, Have a release valve that will allow the motor to pull the tubs into the up position with no friction of a vacuum. Then I would have a vacuum pump to make the vacuum after it is all in position and the seal is closed. I think running a vacuum pump would use less energy then it takes for the motor to do that same work.
To people curious for capacity comparison, it would take about 28 of these to equal 1 standard 3.7v 18650 cell.
No worries about the efficiency. For a prototype that could benefit from scaling and optimization, 73% is remarkable! Very nice concept. If you make a larger model, I think the efficiency will improve because the losses due to friction will be relatively smaller. All good wishes.
Cool video. However, consider that the top of the plunger is not flat, which means it has a larger surface area.
Erik, I have an idea for electricity generation using the gravity model.
Basically a house that floats in its own Dock. The tides lift the house and then the house through some kind of gearbox/generator acts as stored potential energy until the tide comes back in, alternatively the Dock could be pumped with water to float the house then a series of houses on a hill use the same water to float meaning you could float several houses only needing to pump the water to the top of the hill.
I need help developing this
Neat but dude come on, just use a spring! ... it's basically already working as one and you are just complicating it with all those rubber seals that will need lubrication and still fail in a couple of thousand cycles. Using a steel spring would be so simple and just as effective.
Here are some of my thoughts right after watching your video great job by the way. My first thought is your design has a lot of friction in it with how many tubes you have. reduce the amount of tubes ideally to one. And increase bore diameter. The last easily doable thing I see is make the tubes out of a metal that will not deform when a vacuum is applied to them. This will also increase the efficiency if the structure does not deform while under the vacuum. I would also conduct a test without the pullies to see if there is loss in the mechanical system and maybe you would make the design completely linear so you wouldn't have any pullies in line on the design at all. Such a brilliant video I really appreciate you making it it was a beautiful project to watch you bring to fruition and to conduct your testing and to see your methods was quite amazing.
Very impressive. I wonder if a version of it might be possible using the temperature difference between day and night, specially during the hot summer.
wow that's a lot of work, now do one with metal springs
What a great idea, please go on! You don't have to build it bigger, just find a nice way to present the incomming and outcomming Watts
It’s an interesting concept. The main problem is that it’s dependent on the pressure of the atmosphere. I would suggest doing it under water for wave power or sea wind farms or adding a weight to the plunger and combining it with a gravity battery.