I once thought we could have water resistance gyms, where everyone works against the resistance of water being fed into a cistern. That water is then released at the end of the day, through a turbine, when we need the power in the evening!
I looked at a similar idea except by lifting a weight. Problem is that a decent workout by the average person will only run a laptop for about an hour.
Reminds me of a water wheels and solar storage video from the TH-cam channel Quint Builds where he stored water pumped to the roof as a “Battery” which ran a water wheel at night to charge electronics. Our future will likely contain lots of small solutions like this so keep the excellent videos coming!
Water accumulators are still used to boost the flow rate in houses fed by long small bore pipes. They fill up slowly at mains pressure, then when you run a shower they deliver the flow rate you need. They work very much like the smoothing capacitor in a DC power supply.
@@John-rw9bv I dissagree. Water is not significantly compressible so the pipe you describe cannot store a variable volume of water and deliver it in the form of increased flow rate when needed. The water coming out of the pipe is the same as that going into it. The Accumulator I described contain a bladder that can store a variable quantity of water. The analogy with a capacitor isn't perfect because the more charge you put into a capacitor the greater the voltage, where as the pressure in an Accumulator is more or less constant.
A close mate of my Dad in 1964 made a trickle charger grounded to the fender or body of car to stop the rust from forming. It was sold to Chrysler and they put it away for over 30 years. Planned obsolescence is built into our lives to Feed the Greed! Old is Gold. Sweet is Simple. Thank - You Robert....!
Brilliant! It is my humble opinion that a big part of the solution to having a green energy future will be for every household to have the capability to generate a portion of its power needs locally. You continually present some very fascinating approaches to filling this need that are not only applicable but, more importantly, achievable by the average Joe. Kudos to you for providing this valuable information!
Years ago I made a crane from Meccano driven by a teaspoon Pelton wheel. It ran purely on water falling into the sink from the tap, and could lift a 20 lb weight. My daughter's primary school teacher tried it and didn't heed the warning about the splash on startup - of course as speed built up the splashing died away, but when the wheel was stationary it was an entirely different matter!
As an experiment for the past few years, I’ve been dumping all my shaving water into the loo cistern (which includes the otherwise wasted water I have to run before the hot tap gets up to temperature). It exactly matches my requirements for flushing the loo. My cistern has never been filled directly from the mains supply, and curiously the cistern never gets manky either? It’s maybe not saving a lot of water, but it suggests that recycling bathroom sink water is viable. Eventually I’ll divert the water directly to a small holding tank and then pump it to the cistern from there.
i lived in many european houses recycling water for use to flush the toilet and it is very viable. Shower water can be easily recycled too. It does not require any filtering, and toilet smells nice with detergents you use .
Looking backward is key in that our ancestors were more connected to the natural world and analog. Austrian Naturalist Viktor Schauberger studied water extensively and his work decades later is being studied extensively.
Thank you for this video. It may just be the answer as you are spot on with looking back at systems that have proved being successful in the past. I'll be watching in eager anticipation for more on the accumulator and water generator. Greetings from South Africa.
A way to use rainwater is to install a storage tank at gutter level piped directly to the toilet cisterns. This saves not just 30% of your water but the energy used to pipe the water to your house.
I've been reflecting upon these accumulator systems for many years now. I totally agree there is something to it, and it's far greater than expected! Using weights, with water pressure and air pressure combined.
i had the same idea when I visited 'Cragside'' (Lord William Armstrong's house in Northumbria) who made his initial money on Hydraulics (later guns) in 2019; then Covid 19 got in the way. I though about using rain water off the roof to create the 'weight'' - i.e. filling up tanks at zero pressure - to charge it up and a 'System Liquid' in a closed loop that could use a Pelton style wheel. Pelton wheels being more efficient than reaction turbines (i.e. use the rain water flow directly) and it saves the infrastructure needed to support heavy tanks of water high up in a building or the hassle when they leak: all the 'business bits' are accessing at ground level.
@@ThinkingandTinkering Nod to my comment: fill tanks of rain water at ground level to create the pressure; system liquid for the Pelton wheel (water likely, but conceptually hydraulic fluid and so all the standard fittings and pistons work) to extract power at high efficiency.
Yes, water is a very old battery. The problem is that the amount of water needed is extremely high to actually achieve any significance in constant power. Plus, one would have to pump the water (recharge the battery) with solar or something, thereby negating most of the benefits. By the time you add up the cost, you will find that the better option is solar or something equivalent with current battery technology. Much cheaper and the system takes a lot less space. I've run the numbers as I actually live off grid and experience the reality of energy storage. The real solution is USE LESS POWER.
as a pure energy storage device, I've been pondering the idea of a weight thats winched up a pole by a motor-generator when there is excess energy and then released when there is excess demand. the power of the motor-generator, length of pole and size of the weight are all variables according to the scale required.
another reason to look back is sometimes really good ideas get patented and then sit in some greedy back pockets for 70 years before the rest of us get to play with it, so it aint our fault we gotta wait for old ideas
@@ThinkingandTinkering Criminal Monopolies have gotten away with Monetary Murder for far too long...Tesla tried to correct this but was banned from all science books in our schools here in Canada. Now Big Pharma is at the Hog Trough to fill us with false hope and poverty. Now my Rooster needs his monthly Booster! Rock on Robert!
Hats off brother. Your approach of looking at older proven technologies to solve our current problems are actually great. We wait for next episodes on water accumulator.
Thanksfor your series on this - its fascinating ( as are all of your videos) and that's mainly down to your presentation, knowledge and your passion, keep it up & well done
Something that should be on every home but you rarely ever see (especially in my area where we don't get enough regular rain for it to be of much use) are rain barrels. Most are designed just to catch run-off from your roof to be used for watering plants down the road, but somewhere where rain is a more oft occurrence, imagine how much water you could store in a giant tank, for instance, and later use to run a power installation or whatnot, let alone for drinking or using on ancillary devices when you don't need pure water for consumption.
100 kg of water for 5 meter has a potential energy of 1.3Wh, assuming that you could get to harvesting 100% of that, it would still not be a lot. While usable for really low power devices, it would not make sense for charging a phone.
ONCE again Robert, you pulled a rabbit out of the proverbial hat. Job well done. Just hope all is well and will work out with this idea. Am having a hard time to understand that this will actually work. But a proven model and testing will probably make me look bad for sure.Nice work fella for sure again.
If we're talking about pumping water into a container at pressures above one atmosphere i.e. one bar gauge this would be a pressure vessel subject to pressure system design rules and inspections.
Heat pump efficiency decreases with temperature differential, having a body of water is much warmer than the ambient air temperature most of winter. Cooling can be a direct circulation.
I have a well water system, with a 1/2 horsepower pump. If it runs ten minutes a day total, it costs me less than one cent per day. You gotta do the math to see whether things are practical. That's the difference between dreaming and engineering.
I am very much looking forward to your video on accumulators. It has often been a thought of mine that the ephemeral sources of green power (wind/solar) could simply do the function of pumping as much water up into as high a cistern as possible. They you let it all down in the dark quiet to generate smooth consistent power in the 500 to 1000 watt range as necessary. Scale to your needs, and don't forget to recycle the same water each time. Peristaltic pumps are the BOMB for this.
i just love your ingenuity Robert. taking ideas and showing that they can be achieved is what i love most..I'm toying with Battery updates for my camper this winter in Oz and I've been following the Lithium batteries but today i discovered a new push into the world of Sodium-ion batteries and wondered if you have broached this subject previously or indeed if you may in the future. I know a guy who generates his household DC power needs from a small stream and some paddle wheels fitted to a washing machine motor and has been doing so for years. There is just so much to explore isn't there? Hi from Oz mate.
I'm liking where this series is going. There's an easy method to calculate roughly how much energy you can expect in water: At 50psi of water pressure that's 35m of head pressure. If you used 150l of water that's 14,3Wh per person per day. That's enough to charge your phone a couple times. Edit: the easy method is to convert your water pressure into head pressure and use m.g.h to get joules (watt seconds). 1000kg of water ~=100Wh at 50psi.
@@iiiiicp A phone battery is around 10watt-hours. You've confused energy with milliamp-hours (mAh). Do you think that a phone contains enough energy to run a room sized lamp for many days?
@@AORD72 You're right. We've got a house and an air-conditioned wooden cabin (badly insulated) on our property here in Durban and I've been measuring our consumption to be ~60kWh a day. I think it's worth doing a quick calculation about what pressures you'd need to store enough energy in a few thousand litres of tank for that sort of demand, or how big your tanks would need to be. I'll see if I can run some numbers. edit: power -> energy Well after a lot of poking around in a spreadsheet and thinking it seems not very practical to store energy in compressed air with water in the tank. Compressing only the volume of air in a 5000l tank to 30 bar gives you ~0.5kWh. If instead you compressed atmospheric air into the tank you could fit 30 * 5000l in the tank at 30 bar. That gives you 15kWh. Formula is E = nRT(ln(V) - ln(v)) where: n = moles of air you're squeezing in. 1 mole of gas is 22.4l at standard temp and pressure R = Gas constant (8.3) T = Kelvin temperature (293) V = Uncompressed volume in m^3 (150) v = Compressed volume in m^3 (5)
I've thought of using gravity batteries but this is very interesting, maybe combine the two to harvest not only the energy by water pressure. Thank you for the video.
That is a good point. Modern toilets have a float in it to shut off the water flow and can scavenge the tank fill as it is filling. One side to this is that your own tower tank, filled with rain water, can also be used with the issue of filling it. Have you looked into hammer pumps or cold alternatives to the system in the fire heated coffee maker? You might find a way of having 2 tanks, top as the potential, bottom as an accumulation tank to be pumped back up in order to have potential pressure back down. I am not sure how the hammer pump works, however, the coffee maker has a very small diameter tube and one way valve that takes heat ( bubbles of steam ) to push the water above the water up the tube and brew your coffee. The whole system needs to have more added due to losses from splashing, leaks and evaporation.
there were some rotary hammer heaters used in fire station heating applications in the US if memory serves - not sure what happened to them - nice pointer mate - cheers
regarding water for power/old ideas... In 1918, George Constantinescu published the book A treatise on transmission of power by vibrations. Covers an equivalent of alternating current but with water power.
thats why it is important to run the numbers !! People who create opinions prior to getting any data are optimists or pessimists. People who get data before making opinions are scientists.
Better check the license from your water supplier. "May not be used for other than intended use". (Just being cynical ;) ) The outlet of our washing machine goes into a 20L 'capacitor' where the overflow either goes down the drain (to kill the roots growing in the old pipe, as we learned the hard way) or optionally to a long tube to water anything in the garden in need (not much rain here over summer). The 20L then drains out the bottom slowly through a garden irrigation system. I have considered using solar to pump into a large diameter vertical drain pipe to recover the energy at night, but the solar production is just too good and the batteries last long enough, even in "winter".
Have you done any anergy calulations to look at the energy potential of this? 1 cubic metre of water lifted 3 metres has a potential energy of about 30KJ. At 100% efficiency, that would allow you to run a 60W lightbulb for 500 seconds.
Shouldn't you have 3KJ instead of 30KJ in your calculation? The amount of energy that can be extracted from water supply is indeed about nothing. As Westerners we consume about 100 liters of water per day. Suppose it is delivered at 4 bar, it would give 4kJ potential energy per person per day. A phone charger at 4W would run for 1000 sec. Not enough to charge a phone!
I just got the idea of how we can harvest from water waste. Fill the tank in the basement, but water waste or dump has to be clean (edit maybe we can use completely clean water), or filtered since we will store it in the tank. And use it for energy generation from buoyancy effect. That's cool idea. And as first, we will make a steel that is filled with air, you know that can float like ships. And use steel wire that holds it from bottom of the tank until the tank is filled, we let it float and generate energy from it. And after that we lock the steel (that floats) in the middle of air, and dump half of water to the second tank through valve and again and rest to other tanks that has same things as we use in this tank. And last we use gravity to generate second time as the steel goes down to the bottom of the tank. That was long.
@@ThinkingandTinkering I wonder if small scale utilities may be the way to go, in the future. Obviously, battery electric storage isn't working very well. Perhaps, storage is not necessarily the best idea for long term use.
There's a couple complimentary terms for what you describe that escape me atm. I think they're simply novelty and traditional fallacies respectively, but I generally try not to assume we're clever enough to name things that readily understandable. What you talked about, we have a tendency to get excited about the novelty of NEW and downplay or dismiss older ideas as inherently archaic, impractical, inappropriate for today's complexities, etc. After all, it's been around this long, why hasn't it caught on, solved the problem, etc? We see this in social psychology a lot. Justifications also jump into something about efficiency of old designs that fall back into the magpie's "ooh, new is SHINY" thinking. To me, I can't help but think about the kinetic sculptures sold as art these days weighted against Maillardet's Automaton.
I love all these ideas you have … I have always been interested in this field of study. One thing I have always thought, in gymnasiums we have all of these resistance machines used to expend our unwanted calories. If instead these machines wasted all of this human energy plus the wasted energy of all the human body heat by use of air conditioners, lighting etc… all other topics to look at… but the resistance machines if we replaced the weights, the resistance wheel mass / resistance bands etc … with generators then think of all of the energy that could be generated. Instead of paying to use the gym, you get paid to use the gym, the gym owners then get a small percentage of the energy sold back to the grid. Or the energy could be used to charge a mass battery like you have described. Maybe in the city, where a lot of energy is required, in a multi story building with multiple lift shafts, lifts descending could be used to generate energy too. Even take a lift out of its shaft and replace it with a huge mass so all of the energy saved elsewhere could be used to provide the energy to gradually lift the mass (use a lead screw arrangement or a ratchet system that lifts the mass as it rotates axially through captive nuts / bearings fitted to the mass). When you think of all the energy that as humans we use to do work that is wasted is phenomenal, we spend all our lives wasting money, our health, our time trying to lose all of the energy we store. When it all boils down at the end of the day, the best and most green source of energy is us, but the application is storage as for prolonged energy supply, as humans we can only sustain short bursts of energy but add it all up then we can save the planet (without it sounding twee) …. The other thing that isn’t discussed is we need to reduce the planet population to a certain amount (loads of social, economic, political issues there … ). I wish I could quit my job and spend time doing stuff like this I’m a bit of a mad professor … you should see my garage haha but like wasting energy at the gym I wish I could put the energy that put into a job that I’m not really interested in into something that would be really useful… Here’s another concept I saw somewhere…. why aren’t we using wave power more? Ok turbines are expensive and can cause a massive lot of damage to marine life and alter tidal flow etc… but someone (I can’t remember where I saw it) essentially built a concrete box on top of a sea wall and as the waves ran up against the wall, the water would enter the box at the bottom and the compression of the air was used to drive an air turbine. I have so many ideas that I’d love to try out … Keep up the great work mate, your videos produce so much thinking material …. Maybe we need to get groups of like minded people together in a subscriber group and have scheduled Teams chats to discuss ideas and concepts maybe springboard projects that we all could collaborate on … maybe not, I don’t know as you get some people who are just in it for themselves and steal,ideas…
there are always a few mate - but they are the few - most here are a good group of colloborative and like minded people - it is one of the things I like about the channel how many ideas are shared - I read the comments and the things I learn from folks just willing to share - it is truly amazing - as for the few here to steal - they are pretty lazy - or they wouldn't be trying to steal - and have no idea what it takes to get an idea off the ground - mostly the ideas they steal have no benefit to them as they just can't do anything with them lol
I once had an idea to use a closed loop system utilizing ram pumps to pump water to a reservoir that would then feed into a downward channel and through a water turbine connected to a generator and back to the starting point. The exit valve of the ram pump would spout the waste water into a container that would feed that waste water back into the start as well. However, a few have told me that friction would eventually hinder the flow. By no means am I an expert in engineering so I'll take all the pointers I can get! Lol Though perhaps with these accumulator systems you mention, that frictional force may be much easier to overcome.. What you are doing for the community is nothing short of amazing by the way. Thank you for being an inspiration! 🫡
Hello! When you mentioned water as possible energy storage I realized that there is an option to split water into O2 and H2 however instead of storing pressurised H2 it is possible to use H2 in thy hydrogeneration process and produce methanol in H2 + CO2 + heat + pressure reaction. What do you think about such method Mr Robert? Perhaps you could make a video about methanol production using this technique( I think a Copper Aluminium Zimc alloy cathalyst is used for this reaction). Best regards!
Mate; put a triboelectric collector in the tank so that as the tank fills it charges the battery/capacitor system. Most tanks have a small fill system that provides a solid stream to fill the tank, and there is a way to modify the system to allow room for the triboelectric collector. Same concept, different application. Your thoughts?
I bought a little 10 watt hydro generator from DX in China that was able to thread onto the same hose that connects to our shower head. The impeller and electric section were only magnetically coupled so there wouldn’t be any eventual leaking from a failed seal. I was thinking about using it for the kitchen sink at our off-grid cabin as a way of scavenging the little bit of power we get from the water system that’s set up.
This is very interesting, Doctor Smith. If you can get that much PSI from the accumulator, will that allow use of a Tesla turbine? And how does the turbine compare to the wheel for efficiency? Solar panels are becoming inexpensive. Batteries are the huge expense. In order to charge my future EV at night, I'd need a large battery bank. I'm curious to see what size of an accumulator system would be needed to make a comparable bank of energy.
Pumped hydro is not the most efficient conversion of energy, and usually only makes sense on a large scale. But you could calculate it, it all just depends on the capacity of your EV battery and the efficiency of your generator. The size of your tank would need to be something like (battery capacity) * (flow rate) / (generator output) 100 kWh * (1 L / s) / 1 kW = 360,000 L = 360 m^3 And the time it would take is just (battery capacity / generator power), in that example 100 hours.
Love love love your videos!! Have to ask, when will you have one or more completed solutions that can fully charge a 12V / 50-100Ah battery that can then have an inverter attached to run a refrigerator, lights, charge phones? My favorite is the gravity battery / generator because any adult can use their body weight to hang from rope loops to pull a weight up into the air… and let gravity do it’s thing! I would really like a reliable solution that doesn’t have to rely on wind, sun, or a stream of water I don’t have. I’d like to be able to recharge 10 batteries and have them in reserve… or use them for camping . Thanx for listening!!!!
I am sorry, but there is a big misunderstanding here. Although they generate high pressure, they can not store much energy. Energy is basically the product of volume and pressure. It is very simple to calculate the amount of energy, such a system can hold. Assuming a high density brick with about 2 kg/dm^2 (the double of water), a cube of 2m edge length would weight abaout 8t. If it's raised 2m in the air, the energy is E = m * g * h = 160.000 Ws. That is about 45 Wh (not kWh). You could power a 22W LED lamp with it for 2h. An average 4 person family with lean use of 3500 kWh (pure electric power) per year needs about 10 kWh per day. This is more than 200 times as much, as this thing could store. Even if you would lift your whole house (up to 240t, which is 30 times more), you would not be able to store the energy for one day.
Dear Robert, As a fan of gravity energy can you do a comparison between the methods of producing gravity engery/battery storage and efficency for a 3/4 bed home (8 to 10Kwh per day). From all your knowledge and experience what would be your goto solution for setting up such a system. Kind Regards, John.
For a sense of how much power this type of system is capable of, the world largest artillery pieces weighed 100 tons and were each moved by a cistern system and a 1/2 hp steam engine.
Suppose you had two IBC containers held in a steel framework one 3 metres higher than the other, connected by belts or chains. The one at the bottom is full of water which over time gets pumped up a hose into the top one by a low power solar or wind powered pump. When the top one is full a float switch operates a solenoid which releases the brakes allowing the whole top tank to 'fall' driving a geared flywheel and generator as it falls. As the falling tank hits the bottom another switch is operated diverting the pump to fill the other tank which has now been pulled to the top. The same 1000Kg of water is used repeatedly. It doesn't really matter how long the cycle takes if the electricity is stored or fed into the grid. Rainwater could be collected in the upper tank speeding up the cycle.
Huh, had no idea these even existed. Even a brief google search shows me they are popular for RV and marine water tank applications. Now I'm going to be thinking about how to convert these into an apartment sized backup power system.
Fracking uses chemicals to make water 'slippier' (less friction) and since the accumulator is a closed system, this could be considered to increase the energy conversion efficiency.
I've been thinking of something like this lately but it fit to the waste pipe for the bath and sink, collected that water until a tank is full and use that water and gravity to drive something.
You could combine things couldn't you, some way of using the heat as your say either assisting a combinboilwr or a peltier device to utilize the heat, the weight of the water to drive some form.of generator and something inside the outlet pipes for running water to generate too similar to what Mr murray-smith has been doing.
To drive a wheel you need hi pressure and flow. To collect the hot wase water and allow that heat to heat say the floor i the bath room is relatively easy no moveing parts easy plumbing job realy
@@seanchadwick6182 yes you could but you dont have any real pressure or flow . The real cost is heating the water , then you are throwing that heat away !! , its low grade heat so to use it for back ground heating in the house or pre heating incomeing cold water is much more dooable
Hi everyone for as long as I can remember I have been a huge fan of alternative technologies but have never put them into practice I must have watch hundreds of TH-cam video clips on all sort of gadgets. Roberts recent videos have ignited an idea I have been contemplating that is to install Micro-hydro Water Turbine Generators to all the water pipes in our very small two bedroomed house. I have counted that there are eleven pipes plus the actual mains supply its self. I have found that you can buy "Micro-hydro Water Turbines" on eBay which might suit the purpose. Please note I am not promoting this actual produce I am just pointing you to the page where up there are dozens more similar items. As a secondary thought I have just counted the actual two inch waste pipes out of the building and it comes to four and I was also thinking maybe I could use some kind of pipe reducers ??? to further get power from the waste water as well. I really like how Robert looks back on proven systems just think what this system would be like today if the original water system had been developed over the last hundred years. You can see why it was not developed as there was no MONEY in it for the water companies !!!
Fill up a water tank that lifts your accumulators' weight into position as a counterbalance lock the accumulators' weight in position shift/pipe the water over or fill another tank with more water and then lower the weight to pressurize crazy simple. Thanks Robert :)
A thought popped into mind. Can a pump type, as used in a washing machine to feed and drain water, be use inline with inlet water pipe inverse to instead generate electricity? Logically it should work, but again, health risk from type product material and strength of handling the pressure come to question. I would appreciate your feedback on that.
gravity and pressure are lovely. I wonder if theres some ingenius way of moving water with little input like a whick or how a tree pumps water. Interesting stuff mate.
Like I just said in my comment you only need to have the water motors above the storage tank for them to drain into. Then they rain into the accumulator and the pressurised water feeds back up to the water motors.
@@stevetobias4890 Three water tanks one above the second tank the #1 tank holds the weight that will compress the lower #2 tank that is where the weight gets lifted once lifted you lock it in place and drain the water to the #2 lower tank close off a valve then unlock the weight and pressurize the lower tank and then the #2 lower tank water goes up to the water motor spins it then the water goes to the #3 tank that will refill the #1 tank when the weight/plunger has reached the bottom of its stroke. The #3 tank is above the #1 tank and a valve is between them.
You could have a large open top tank and the weight buoyantly lifted inside the tank as water fills it lock it in at the top of the plungers stroke then let gravity fill a lower tank that the plunger connects to, close the valves, and unlock the weight thus pressurizing the lower tank. All done with a cheap low power water pump. Edit Steve Tobias brilliantly came up with simply putting the water motor above the first collector tank!
Three water tanks one above the second tank the #1 tank holds the weight that will compress the lower #2 tank that is where the weight gets lifted once lifted you lock it in place and drain the water to the #2 lower tank close off a valve then unlock the weight and pressurize the lower tank and then the #2 lower tank water goes up to the water motor spins it then the water goes to the #3 tank that will refill the #1 tank when the weight/plunger has reached the bottom of its stroke. The #3 tank is above the #1 tank and a valve is between them. Reposted for hopefully greater clarity and review by others of the design.
Imagine having a showerhead that has some kind of generator in it to heat up the water in a small element. Even if its an experiment it will be awesome to see.
Damn I wondered where you went. I was subbed a long long time ago and apparently unsubbed a while ago. I'm glad to see you're still putting out great content.
I’ve often thought about nature and evaporation where water vapour is ‘taken up’ via the effect of sunlight. Imagine the weight of water rising within the air (warm air holding vastly much more than cooler air etc). What if we could somehow use nature to do the lifting and, at some position, cause it to condense into a container at height. There’s your water store and weight at height. Also, re condensing, what about morning dew-point…..picture the tent with ringing wet fabric and water droplets running down the sides first thing in the morning….add your varnished capacitor and voila……works both in the rain and on days where there is no rain but the dawn. ……that’s some of the things I daydream about anyway 🙂👍
The maths is not in your favour here. An accumulator stores energy by lifting a weight - and unless you're using weights the size of your entire house, the amount of energy you can store is tiny - not even enough to boil a cup of water. It's true that you can use it to create a high pressure jet, but the amount of energy you can extract from that jet is just the same (the jet won't run for very long). The amount of energy stored is easily calculated as m x g x h (m=mass, g=force of gravity, h=height lifted). So if you lift a tonne by 1 meter, you store 9,800 joules - or 0.003kWh. That's about 1/3 of an iPhone charge, or boiling about 1/100th of a kettle of water. A 1 ton weight is not a small thing, and lifting it safely is also non-trivial.
Just store rainwater collected from your roof in a tank in your attic, then use it to flush the toilets and harvest the energy using one of your contraptions.
You come up with some brilliant ideas & now have inspired me to get my thinking cap on! Every body has mains water coming into their houses why not put a small generator in at the point of entry into your house also the waterboard has these mega pipes they could fit large generators into them. Just a thought!! - Keep them coming!
Buena idea para utilizar agua de río, mar , etc 🤔 quizás un módulo transportable en combinación Agua + Aire a presión 🙄 pero debería disponer de un colector para recuperar / reciclar nuevamente la misma agua 💪. PDT: Antiguamente existía farol de Luz que funcionaban a querosene, mediante presión de una pequeña bomba se lograba pulverizar el querosene sobre una camisa/bolsa ignífuga que se encendía mediante un fósforo previo calentar el caño que transporta el combustible (pequeño recipiente anexado al caño al cuál se le agregaba alcohol). En Argentina 🇦🇷 👋 lo conocimos con el nombre "Sol de Noche" 😊 Saludos desde Argentina
Do you have any reference material about the old water accumulators? I've looked high and low and can't find anything. It's probably just because I'm not using the proper search terms.
Is it worth the hassle and expense? If a person is using 150 litres of water per day and the head of the water is say 5 metres, the potential energy is about 7350 joules. If you can convert this to electricity at 100% efficiency, this is equivalent to the power required to run an electric kettle for just over 7 seconds! Not very impressive to say the least. Maybe I'm missing something.
Combine this logic with repurposing the source (filtration). The average shower loses 16 degrees of heat from the shower head to the drain in anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5 gallons/min. Why not capture and filter it, heat the 2-3 Gal/min by 16°/min.(which your average electric kettle can do). I just think of big families taking 5 to 10 minute showers each every day of the year with 120 000+ households in the US. We'd better change something sooner than later!
Showers use both hot and cold mixed so you only have to transfer the drain water heat to the shower cold side supply to recover that percentage of energy.
@@malcolm8564 Agreed but my point was to repurpose the 2-3 Gal./min. Shower water is clean and easy to filter so why not just reheat and re-cycle 4-6 Gal. especially considering 110V heater can handle it. I do like your point of re-routing it back directly. That in itself would add up quickly.
There is a shower that does that already. i looked a one for installation on a Solar powered narrow boat. they are extremely expensive, but for a full shower it uses only 9l of water which it then dumps after the shower is complete.
@@MrCarlRobinson Too funny it would be marine equipment. I was living on a sailboat in Keywest when I thought of this idea! Any idea what it's called or a brand name maybe? Thanks
... Keeping a grey water tank in your home also allows time for the heated water (tub, dishwasher, clothes washer , etc) to be transferred back into the home. A big waste of energy going straight down the drain.
What is it exactly that makes using the mains illegal? If the law is to stop contamination there's ways to use the mains so that it can't contaminate the drinking water.
battery can be 90% efficiency,but if the price of the battery you are getting les than 50% return, water battery can be circle 50 times a day for 20 years, plus large tanks get cheaper per KW unit as they get bigger.
7+ liters of water for one toilet flush? Yikes! For us here in the water starved Western U.S., that's an outrageous amount. We are limited here by law to have a toilet that uses a maximum of 1.6 liters per flush, and even less on a #1 flush. (There are 2 different buttons on all new toilets for flushing #1 or #2)
If city sets the flow rate to make sure in flats sewer drains then u can tag along. If the city only "flushes" the system in flats problem areas & waits to do it at 1 time per day say after building pressure so sure a power flush why not tag along 1st. How well if u hve special water high pressure connection at each house it is out of your control/input. If they need a special flush they can oh 2 times a day on shitty days.
the water going up and down, the wind turbine / solar energy storage pumped hydro, the sand battery, concentrated solar, it seems to me we should put it all together, your a smart chap, use the sand battery to store excess wind or solar as heat and also concentrated solar, but that is where my mad idea starts..... use the wally minto designed wheel. water on one side of a diaphragm and butane on the other for the heat conversion to pressure lifting the water to rotate the wheel and spin a big generator ( about 11 hp I would guess) as needed to charge/ power stuff. Am I mad or what,.. but if you have a big sand battery the generator could run all night, not really sure on the calculations (not my strong hand) also I do not have reliable data to calculate from. I would like to try this but in my rental flat it is certainly not possible.
If you were to lift a square square meater of say waters up a meater . Allowed to drop trew a winch. How much energy could be harnes by having a genrator on the winch .
Bear with me. Velocity of wind/water scale to output. As slow rotating windmills have relatively faster moving tips. Is it effective/efficient to add smaller turbines on the tips, that face into the oncoming flow, so they spin faster than the main blades?
@@ThinkingandTinkering Me neither, to be honest these days just breaking wind can be a bit of a gamble. I don't want to get too technical about it. ;-) Cheers.
In hastings ( I don't know if it still there) they had two trams by the castle that road on water pumped to top tram lowering it then filling the other just on water transfer
I once thought we could have water resistance gyms, where everyone works against the resistance of water being fed into a cistern. That water is then released at the end of the day, through a turbine, when we need the power in the evening!
nice idea
Gyms have so many moving things that they should be able provide a good chunk of their own energy.
Or one could use that energy to cut the lawn instead. Invite your mates over and make it a competitive environment. 😉
@@hahaha9076 or get a goat
I looked at a similar idea except by lifting a weight. Problem is that a decent workout by the average person will only run a laptop for about an hour.
Reminds me of a water wheels and solar storage video from the TH-cam channel Quint Builds where he stored water pumped to the roof as a “Battery” which ran a water wheel at night to charge electronics.
Our future will likely contain lots of small solutions like this so keep the excellent videos coming!
I like that video. He showed footage of a large water battery built by a city.
Yea localised solutions using old and new technology
Water accumulators are still used to boost the flow rate in houses fed by long small bore pipes. They fill up slowly at mains pressure, then when you run a shower they deliver the flow rate you need. They work very much like the smoothing capacitor in a DC power supply.
now that is interesting thanks for that mate
Capacitor is more like an incredibly short pipe of enormous bore :P
@@John-rw9bv I dissagree. Water is not significantly compressible so the pipe you describe cannot store a variable volume of water and deliver it in the form of increased flow rate when needed. The water coming out of the pipe is the same as that going into it. The Accumulator I described contain a bladder that can store a variable quantity of water. The analogy with a capacitor isn't perfect because the more charge you put into a capacitor the greater the voltage, where as the pressure in an Accumulator is more or less constant.
A close mate of my Dad in 1964 made a trickle charger grounded to the fender or body of car to stop the rust from forming. It was sold to Chrysler and they put it away for over 30 years. Planned obsolescence is built into our lives to Feed the Greed! Old is Gold. Sweet is Simple. Thank - You Robert....!
the things some folks do is just astounding mate
The dissimilar metals in a vehicle is a rolling battery isolated from the ground by the tires. Electrolysis is not a good thing for a vehicle.
@@D-B-Cooper IRC at the time cars were mostly iron-based
That works for ships, which are in salt water and have a conductance path. Not gonna work for a car, although such things are sold.
Brilliant! It is my humble opinion that a big part of the solution to having a green energy future will be for every household to have the capability to generate a portion of its power needs locally. You continually present some very fascinating approaches to filling this need that are not only applicable but, more importantly, achievable by the average Joe. Kudos to you for providing this valuable information!
But that's not gonna happen in masses, because governments are not gonna allow you to have anything they don't have control of.
Japan is an example of it already happening mate
thank you mate and thank you for taking the time to say that
Agreed and improvements in efficiency overall.
just so. i saw a handful of new-builds in an Oxfordshire village, and every one has a solar array flush fitted into the roof from the off.
Years ago I made a crane from Meccano driven by a teaspoon Pelton wheel. It ran purely on water falling into the sink from the tap, and could lift a 20 lb weight. My daughter's primary school teacher tried it and didn't heed the warning about the splash on startup - of course as speed built up the splashing died away, but when the wheel was stationary it was an entirely different matter!
water has a nasty habit of getting everywhere lol
As an experiment for the past few years, I’ve been dumping all my shaving water into the loo cistern (which includes the otherwise wasted water I have to run before the hot tap gets up to temperature). It exactly matches my requirements for flushing the loo. My cistern has never been filled directly from the mains supply, and curiously the cistern never gets manky either? It’s maybe not saving a lot of water, but it suggests that recycling bathroom sink water is viable. Eventually I’ll divert the water directly to a small holding tank and then pump it to the cistern from there.
You can actually buy a small WC with a wash basin built into the top of the cistern. Think it is intended to fit in the corner of a small bathroom.
30% of water consumption is in flushing the loo - so it saves quite a bit mate
Don't forget in a drought, to put your bath water in your garden, you're plants (temporarily) will be fine with it.
i lived in many european houses recycling water for use to flush the toilet and it is very viable.
Shower water can be easily recycled too.
It does not require any filtering, and toilet smells nice with detergents you use .
@@contradictorycrow4327 If I lived in Manchester, that would be a great plan 👍
Looking backward is key in that our ancestors were more connected to the natural world and analog. Austrian Naturalist Viktor Schauberger studied water extensively and his work decades later is being studied extensively.
Thank you for this video. It may just be the answer as you are spot on with looking back at systems that have proved being successful in the past. I'll be watching in eager anticipation for more on the accumulator and water generator. Greetings from South Africa.
A way to use rainwater is to install a storage tank at gutter level piped directly to the toilet cisterns. This saves not just 30% of your water but the energy used to pipe the water to your house.
Japan has a cool and efficient way of reusing their waste Water..for example their Bathroom sinks drain into the Toilet cistern.
I've been reflecting upon these accumulator systems for many years now. I totally agree there is something to it, and it's far greater than expected! Using weights, with water pressure and air pressure combined.
it is fascinating and has possibilities that's for sure
Add liquid air as the source of pressure (plus use a Stirling to slowly heat up the air) and you could put it in car 🚗
i had the same idea when I visited 'Cragside'' (Lord William Armstrong's house in Northumbria) who made his initial money on Hydraulics (later guns) in 2019; then Covid 19 got in the way.
I though about using rain water off the roof to create the 'weight'' - i.e. filling up tanks at zero pressure - to charge it up and a 'System Liquid' in a closed loop that could use a Pelton style wheel.
Pelton wheels being more efficient than reaction turbines (i.e. use the rain water flow directly) and it saves the infrastructure needed to support heavy tanks of water high up in a building or the hassle when they leak: all the 'business bits' are accessing at ground level.
@@ThinkingandTinkering Nod to my comment: fill tanks of rain water at ground level to create the pressure; system liquid for the Pelton wheel (water likely, but conceptually hydraulic fluid and so all the standard fittings and pistons work) to extract power at high efficiency.
Yes, water is a very old battery. The problem is that the amount of water needed is extremely high to actually achieve any significance in constant power. Plus, one would have to pump the water (recharge the battery) with solar or something, thereby negating most of the benefits. By the time you add up the cost, you will find that the better option is solar or something equivalent with current battery technology. Much cheaper and the system takes a lot less space. I've run the numbers as I actually live off grid and experience the reality of energy storage. The real solution is USE LESS POWER.
I've been thinking about something similar to this for weeks! Thank you for your wonderful content
me for years!
as a pure energy storage device, I've been pondering the idea of a weight thats winched up a pole by a motor-generator when there is excess energy and then released when there is excess demand. the power of the motor-generator, length of pole and size of the weight are all variables according to the scale required.
another reason to look back is sometimes really good ideas get patented and then sit in some greedy back pockets for 70 years before the rest of us get to play with it, so it aint our fault we gotta wait for old ideas
yeah I agree
@@ThinkingandTinkering Criminal Monopolies have gotten away with Monetary Murder for far too long...Tesla tried to correct this but was banned from all science books in our schools here in Canada. Now Big Pharma is at the Hog Trough to fill us with false hope and poverty. Now my Rooster needs his monthly Booster! Rock on Robert!
Hats off brother. Your approach of looking at older proven technologies to solve our current problems are actually great. We wait for next episodes on water accumulator.
Thanksfor your series on this - its fascinating ( as are all of your videos) and that's mainly down to your presentation, knowledge and your passion, keep it up & well done
Something that should be on every home but you rarely ever see (especially in my area where we don't get enough regular rain for it to be of much use) are rain barrels. Most are designed just to catch run-off from your roof to be used for watering plants down the road, but somewhere where rain is a more oft occurrence, imagine how much water you could store in a giant tank, for instance, and later use to run a power installation or whatnot, let alone for drinking or using on ancillary devices when you don't need pure water for consumption.
Logical, logistical and I jumps my mind gap between watts and amps.
Simple explanations appreciated.
I absolutely love where you are going with this journey ❤️❤️❤️
May God this is what i am looking ffor my renewable project. Eureka! Thank you very very very much!
100 kg of water for 5 meter has a potential energy of 1.3Wh, assuming that you could get to harvesting 100% of that, it would still not be a lot. While usable for really low power devices, it would not make sense for charging a phone.
ONCE again Robert, you pulled a rabbit out of the proverbial hat. Job well done. Just hope all is well and will work out with this idea. Am having a hard time to understand that this will actually work. But a proven model and testing will probably make me look bad for sure.Nice work fella for sure again.
If we're talking about pumping water into a container at pressures above one atmosphere i.e. one bar gauge this would be a pressure vessel subject to pressure system design rules and inspections.
All that water could also be used for heating and/or cooling to save energy at the same time! Extra water on hand is good too!
absolutely
Heat pump efficiency decreases with temperature differential, having a body of water is much warmer than the ambient air temperature most of winter. Cooling can be a direct circulation.
I have a well water system, with a 1/2 horsepower pump. If it runs ten minutes a day total, it costs me less than one cent per day.
You gotta do the math to see whether things are practical. That's the difference between dreaming and engineering.
I am very much looking forward to your video on accumulators. It has often been a thought of mine that the ephemeral sources of green power (wind/solar) could simply do the function of pumping as much water up into as high a cistern as possible. They you let it all down in the dark quiet to generate smooth consistent power in the 500 to 1000 watt range as necessary. Scale to your needs, and don't forget to recycle the same water each time. Peristaltic pumps are the BOMB for this.
NICE again! For saving water, I think a gravity pulse wheel. Bigger wheel needed for a 1 second pulse... Just my thought about this Mr. Murray-Smith.
Water, gravity, compression. So much potential for energy storage.
i just love your ingenuity Robert. taking ideas and showing that they can be achieved is what i love most..I'm toying with Battery updates for my camper this winter in Oz and I've been following the Lithium batteries but today i discovered a new push into the world of Sodium-ion batteries and wondered if you have broached this subject previously or indeed if you may in the future. I know a guy who generates his household DC power needs from a small stream and some paddle wheels fitted to a washing machine motor and has been doing so for years. There is just so much to explore isn't there? Hi from Oz mate.
I'm liking where this series is going. There's an easy method to calculate roughly how much energy you can expect in water:
At 50psi of water pressure that's 35m of head pressure. If you used 150l of water that's 14,3Wh per person per day. That's enough to charge your phone a couple times.
Edit: the easy method is to convert your water pressure into head pressure and use m.g.h to get joules (watt seconds). 1000kg of water ~=100Wh at 50psi.
14,3 wh cant charge 1% of your phone's 3000wh-ish battery. but it could be used to power the light of your bathroom for an hour, which is pretty good.
@@iiiiicp A phone battery is around 10watt-hours. You've confused energy with milliamp-hours (mAh). Do you think that a phone contains enough energy to run a room sized lamp for many days?
@@AORD72 You're right. We've got a house and an air-conditioned wooden cabin (badly insulated) on our property here in Durban and I've been measuring our consumption to be ~60kWh a day. I think it's worth doing a quick calculation about what pressures you'd need to store enough energy in a few thousand litres of tank for that sort of demand, or how big your tanks would need to be. I'll see if I can run some numbers.
edit: power -> energy
Well after a lot of poking around in a spreadsheet and thinking it seems not very practical to store energy in compressed air with water in the tank. Compressing only the volume of air in a 5000l tank to 30 bar gives you ~0.5kWh. If instead you compressed atmospheric air into the tank you could fit 30 * 5000l in the tank at 30 bar. That gives you 15kWh. Formula is E = nRT(ln(V) - ln(v)) where:
n = moles of air you're squeezing in. 1 mole of gas is 22.4l at standard temp and pressure
R = Gas constant (8.3)
T = Kelvin temperature (293)
V = Uncompressed volume in m^3 (150)
v = Compressed volume in m^3 (5)
Don't think I'll be replacing my 14kWh LIFEPO4 battery anytime soon then!
I've thought of using gravity batteries but this is very interesting, maybe combine the two to harvest not only the energy by water pressure. Thank you for the video.
Great point mate thanks for sharing
@marthale7 I'm fascinated by that thought as well. 👍
Newcomban steam engine
Sort of a piston pump and steamed water.
Piezoelectric chains
A band name worst case
Piezoelectric staff with a knob to elicit different modes of radio wave that open a garage door like an egyptian
That is a good point. Modern toilets have a float in it to shut off the water flow and can scavenge the tank fill as it is filling. One side to this is that your own tower tank, filled with rain water, can also be used with the issue of filling it. Have you looked into hammer pumps or cold alternatives to the system in the fire heated coffee maker? You might find a way of having 2 tanks, top as the potential, bottom as an accumulation tank to be pumped back up in order to have potential pressure back down. I am not sure how the hammer pump works, however, the coffee maker has a very small diameter tube and one way valve that takes heat ( bubbles of steam ) to push the water above the water up the tube and brew your coffee. The whole system needs to have more added due to losses from splashing, leaks and evaporation.
there were some rotary hammer heaters used in fire station heating applications in the US if memory serves - not sure what happened to them - nice pointer mate - cheers
Brilliant! Really good thinking.
This vallue, just for free. Thank you man. You shure make me think about stuff to do.
regarding water for power/old ideas... In 1918, George Constantinescu published the book A treatise on transmission of power by vibrations. Covers an equivalent of alternating current but with water power.
thats why it is important to run the numbers !! People who create opinions prior to getting any data are optimists or pessimists. People who get data before making opinions are scientists.
Better check the license from your water supplier. "May not be used for other than intended use". (Just being cynical ;) ) The outlet of our washing machine goes into a 20L 'capacitor' where the overflow either goes down the drain (to kill the roots growing in the old pipe, as we learned the hard way) or optionally to a long tube to water anything in the garden in need (not much rain here over summer). The 20L then drains out the bottom slowly through a garden irrigation system. I have considered using solar to pump into a large diameter vertical drain pipe to recover the energy at night, but the solar production is just too good and the batteries last long enough, even in "winter".
I did cover that in the video mate
Have you done any anergy calulations to look at the energy potential of this? 1 cubic metre of water lifted 3 metres has a potential energy of about 30KJ. At 100% efficiency, that would allow you to run a 60W lightbulb for 500 seconds.
Shouldn't you have 3KJ instead of 30KJ in your calculation? The amount of energy that can be extracted from water supply is indeed about nothing. As Westerners we consume about 100 liters of water per day. Suppose it is delivered at 4 bar, it would give 4kJ potential energy per person per day. A phone charger at 4W would run for 1000 sec. Not enough to charge a phone!
I just got the idea of how we can harvest from water waste.
Fill the tank in the basement, but water waste or dump has to be clean (edit maybe we can use completely clean water), or filtered since we will store it in the tank. And use it for energy generation from buoyancy effect. That's cool idea. And as first, we will make a steel that is filled with air, you know that can float like ships.
And use steel wire that holds it from bottom of the tank until the tank is filled, we let it float and generate energy from it. And after that we lock the steel (that floats) in the middle of air, and dump half of water to the second tank through valve and again and rest to other tanks that has same things as we use in this tank. And last we use gravity to generate second time as the steel goes down to the bottom of the tank. That was long.
Small scale hydroelectric? I like it. I like the rainwater generator, no moving parts to wear out or seize up.
yes I like that too
@@ThinkingandTinkering I wonder if small scale utilities may be the way to go, in the future. Obviously, battery electric storage isn't working very well. Perhaps, storage is not necessarily the best idea for long term use.
It would still have moveing parts
There's a couple complimentary terms for what you describe that escape me atm. I think they're simply novelty and traditional fallacies respectively, but I generally try not to assume we're clever enough to name things that readily understandable. What you talked about, we have a tendency to get excited about the novelty of NEW and downplay or dismiss older ideas as inherently archaic, impractical, inappropriate for today's complexities, etc. After all, it's been around this long, why hasn't it caught on, solved the problem, etc? We see this in social psychology a lot. Justifications also jump into something about efficiency of old designs that fall back into the magpie's "ooh, new is SHINY" thinking. To me, I can't help but think about the kinetic sculptures sold as art these days weighted against Maillardet's Automaton.
interesting points mate - thank you
I love all these ideas you have … I have always been interested in this field of study. One thing I have always thought, in gymnasiums we have all of these resistance machines used to expend our unwanted calories. If instead these machines wasted all of this human energy plus the wasted energy of all the human body heat by use of air conditioners, lighting etc… all other topics to look at… but the resistance machines if we replaced the weights, the resistance wheel mass / resistance bands etc … with generators then think of all of the energy that could be generated. Instead of paying to use the gym, you get paid to use the gym, the gym owners then get a small percentage of the energy sold back to the grid. Or the energy could be used to charge a mass battery like you have described.
Maybe in the city, where a lot of energy is required, in a multi story building with multiple lift shafts, lifts descending could be used to generate energy too. Even take a lift out of its shaft and replace it with a huge mass so all of the energy saved elsewhere could be used to provide the energy to gradually lift the mass (use a lead screw arrangement or a ratchet system that lifts the mass as it rotates axially through captive nuts / bearings fitted to the mass). When you think of all the energy that as humans we use to do work that is wasted is phenomenal, we spend all our lives wasting money, our health, our time trying to lose all of the energy we store. When it all boils down at the end of the day, the best and most green source of energy is us, but the application is storage as for prolonged energy supply, as humans we can only sustain short bursts of energy but add it all up then we can save the planet (without it sounding twee) …. The other thing that isn’t discussed is we need to reduce the planet population to a certain amount (loads of social, economic, political issues there … ).
I wish I could quit my job and spend time doing stuff like this I’m a bit of a mad professor … you should see my garage haha but like wasting energy at the gym I wish I could put the energy that put into a job that I’m not really interested in into something that would be really useful…
Here’s another concept I saw somewhere…. why aren’t we using wave power more? Ok turbines are expensive and can cause a massive lot of damage to marine life and alter tidal flow etc… but someone (I can’t remember where I saw it) essentially built a concrete box on top of a sea wall and as the waves ran up against the wall, the water would enter the box at the bottom and the compression of the air was used to drive an air turbine. I have so many ideas that I’d love to try out …
Keep up the great work mate, your videos produce so much thinking material …. Maybe we need to get groups of like minded people together in a subscriber group and have scheduled Teams chats to discuss ideas and concepts maybe springboard projects that we all could collaborate on … maybe not, I don’t know as you get some people who are just in it for themselves and steal,ideas…
there are always a few mate - but they are the few - most here are a good group of colloborative and like minded people - it is one of the things I like about the channel how many ideas are shared - I read the comments and the things I learn from folks just willing to share - it is truly amazing - as for the few here to steal - they are pretty lazy - or they wouldn't be trying to steal - and have no idea what it takes to get an idea off the ground - mostly the ideas they steal have no benefit to them as they just can't do anything with them lol
@@ThinkingandTinkering yep I think you are right … they are called OBEs … other bastards efforts haha 😂
There is already a gym that does this with exercise bikes.
"Mad as a bag of kittens". Thanks for the laugh this morning.
I didn't know about h20 accumulator systems. I'm stoked to learn more about them!!!!
cheers mate - I will be doing something on them soon
I once had an idea to use a closed loop system utilizing ram pumps to pump water to a reservoir that would then feed into a downward channel and through a water turbine connected to a generator and back to the starting point.
The exit valve of the ram pump would spout the waste water into a container that would feed that waste water back into the start as well.
However, a few have told me that friction would eventually hinder the flow. By no means am I an expert in engineering so I'll take all the pointers I can get! Lol
Though perhaps with these accumulator systems you mention, that frictional force may be much easier to overcome..
What you are doing for the community is nothing short of amazing by the way. Thank you for being an inspiration! 🫡
I love this community. Let's get to space, guys.
Hello! When you mentioned water as possible energy storage I realized that there is an option to split water into O2 and H2 however instead of storing pressurised H2 it is possible to use H2 in thy hydrogeneration process and produce methanol in H2 + CO2 + heat + pressure reaction. What do you think about such method Mr Robert? Perhaps you could make a video about methanol production using this technique( I think a Copper Aluminium Zimc alloy cathalyst is used for this reaction). Best regards!
Mate; put a triboelectric collector in the tank so that as the tank fills it charges the battery/capacitor system.
Most tanks have a small fill system that provides a solid stream to fill the tank, and there is a way to modify the system to allow room for the triboelectric collector.
Same concept, different application. Your thoughts?
1) Use the water to fill a big tank . (2) Then use that water for the house needs (3) Before the water is used in the house run a energy device on it
Seems great for applying energy but do we still need too store it for use?
I bought a little 10 watt hydro generator from DX in China that was able to thread onto the same hose that connects to our shower head. The impeller and electric section were only magnetically coupled so there wouldn’t be any eventual leaking from a failed seal. I was thinking about using it for the kitchen sink at our off-grid cabin as a way of scavenging the little bit of power we get from the water system that’s set up.
This is very interesting, Doctor Smith. If you can get that much PSI from the accumulator, will that allow use of a Tesla turbine? And how does the turbine compare to the wheel for efficiency? Solar panels are becoming inexpensive. Batteries are the huge expense. In order to charge my future EV at night, I'd need a large battery bank. I'm curious to see what size of an accumulator system would be needed to make a comparable bank of energy.
Pumped hydro is not the most efficient conversion of energy, and usually only makes sense on a large scale. But you could calculate it, it all just depends on the capacity of your EV battery and the efficiency of your generator. The size of your tank would need to be something like
(battery capacity) * (flow rate) / (generator output)
100 kWh * (1 L / s) / 1 kW = 360,000 L = 360 m^3
And the time it would take is just (battery capacity / generator power), in that example 100 hours.
Love love love your videos!! Have to ask, when will you have one or more completed solutions that can fully charge a 12V / 50-100Ah battery that can then have an inverter attached to run a refrigerator, lights, charge phones? My favorite is the gravity battery / generator because any adult can use their body weight to hang from rope loops to pull a weight up into the air… and let gravity do it’s thing! I would really like a reliable solution that doesn’t have to rely on wind, sun, or a stream of water I don’t have. I’d like to be able to recharge 10 batteries and have them in reserve… or use them for camping . Thanx for listening!!!!
I am sorry, but there is a big misunderstanding here. Although they generate high pressure, they can not store much energy. Energy is basically the product of volume and pressure. It is very simple to calculate the amount of energy, such a system can hold. Assuming a high density brick with about 2 kg/dm^2 (the double of water), a cube of 2m edge length would weight abaout 8t. If it's raised 2m in the air, the energy is E = m * g * h = 160.000 Ws. That is about 45 Wh (not kWh). You could power a 22W LED lamp with it for 2h. An average 4 person family with lean use of 3500 kWh (pure electric power) per year needs about 10 kWh per day. This is more than 200 times as much, as this thing could store. Even if you would lift your whole house (up to 240t, which is 30 times more), you would not be able to store the energy for one day.
Dear Robert,
As a fan of gravity energy can you do a comparison between the methods of producing gravity engery/battery storage and efficency for a 3/4 bed home (8 to 10Kwh per day). From all your knowledge and experience what would be your goto solution for setting up such a system. Kind Regards, John.
For a sense of how much power this type of system is capable of, the world largest artillery pieces weighed 100 tons and were each moved by a cistern system and a 1/2 hp steam engine.
Suppose you had two IBC containers held in a steel framework one 3 metres higher than the other, connected by belts or chains. The one at the bottom is full of water which over time gets pumped up a hose into the top one by a low power solar or wind powered pump. When the top one is full a float switch operates a solenoid which releases the brakes allowing the whole top tank to 'fall' driving a geared flywheel and generator as it falls. As the falling tank hits the bottom another switch is operated diverting the pump to fill the other tank which has now been pulled to the top. The same 1000Kg of water is used repeatedly. It doesn't really matter how long the cycle takes if the electricity is stored or fed into the grid. Rainwater could be collected in the upper tank speeding up the cycle.
so the natural pressure in the accumulator will serve as the motion needed to power a generator, I would love to see more of this
i did tell you to look into re-circulating the water back to a header tank .. bell syphons
lots of ways of re-circulating the same water
awesome mate - cheers
Huh, had no idea these even existed. Even a brief google search shows me they are popular for RV and marine water tank applications. Now I'm going to be thinking about how to convert these into an apartment sized backup power system.
I had no idea they were popular for RV either - nice pointer mate - thanks for sharing
Fracking uses chemicals to make water 'slippier' (less friction) and since the accumulator is a closed system, this could be considered to increase the energy conversion efficiency.
That’s really interesting.
cheers mate
I've been thinking of something like this lately but it fit to the waste pipe for the bath and sink, collected that water until a tank is full and use that water and gravity to drive something.
Much better to reclaime the heat b4 throwing it down the drain , seen it done the hot waste water preheating for a combi boiler !!
You could combine things couldn't you, some way of using the heat as your say either assisting a combinboilwr or a peltier device to utilize the heat, the weight of the water to drive some form.of generator and something inside the outlet pipes for running water to generate too similar to what Mr murray-smith has been doing.
To drive a wheel you need hi pressure and flow. To collect the hot wase water and allow that heat to heat say the floor i the bath room is relatively easy no moveing parts easy plumbing job realy
@@seanchadwick6182 yes you could but you dont have any real pressure or flow . The real cost is heating the water , then you are throwing that heat away !! , its low grade heat so to use it for back ground heating in the house or pre heating incomeing cold water is much more dooable
I was thinking of this, but with 3 long haired females in the house I'd worry about the system clogging up.
Hi everyone for as long as I can remember I have been a huge fan of alternative technologies but have never put them into practice I must have watch hundreds of TH-cam video clips on all sort of gadgets. Roberts recent videos have ignited an idea I have been contemplating that is to install Micro-hydro Water Turbine Generators to all the water pipes in our very small two bedroomed house. I have counted that there are eleven pipes plus the actual mains supply its self. I have found that you can buy "Micro-hydro Water Turbines" on eBay which might suit the purpose. Please note I am not promoting this actual produce I am just pointing you to the page where up there are dozens more similar items.
As a secondary thought I have just counted the actual two inch waste pipes out of the building and it comes to four and I was also thinking maybe I could use some kind of pipe reducers ??? to further get power from the waste water as well. I really like how Robert looks back on proven systems just think what this system would be like today if the original water system had been developed over the last hundred years. You can see why it was not developed as there was no MONEY in it for the water companies !!!
Fill up a water tank that lifts your accumulators' weight into position as a counterbalance lock the accumulators' weight in position shift/pipe the water over or fill another tank with more water and then lower the weight to pressurize crazy simple. Thanks Robert :)
cheers mate
@@ThinkingandTinkering Cheers mate :)
A thought popped into mind. Can a pump type, as used in a washing machine to feed and drain water, be use inline with inlet water pipe inverse to instead generate electricity? Logically it should work, but again, health risk from type product material and strength of handling the pressure come to question. I would appreciate your feedback on that.
I'd be very interested in seeing this further .
gravity and pressure are lovely. I wonder if theres some ingenius way of moving water with little input like a whick or how a tree pumps water.
Interesting stuff mate.
Like I just said in my comment you only need to have the water motors above the storage tank for them to drain into. Then they rain into the accumulator and the pressurised water feeds back up to the water motors.
@@stevetobias4890 phwoaaaar you're onto something there mate.
@@stevetobias4890 And you can buoyantly lift the weight :)
@@Barskor1 smart idea but wouldn't that also interfere with the weight creating the pressure by pushing down on the water reserve?
@@stevetobias4890 Three water tanks one above the second tank the #1 tank holds the weight that will compress the lower #2 tank that is where the weight gets lifted once lifted you lock it in place and drain the water to the #2 lower tank close off a valve then unlock the weight and pressurize the lower tank and then the #2 lower tank water goes up to the water motor spins it then the water goes to the #3 tank that will refill the #1 tank when the weight/plunger has reached the bottom of its stroke. The #3 tank is above the #1 tank and a valve is between them.
You could have a large open top tank and the weight buoyantly lifted inside the tank as water fills it lock it in at the top of the plungers stroke then let gravity fill a lower tank that the plunger connects to, close the valves, and unlock the weight thus pressurizing the lower tank. All done with a cheap low power water pump. Edit Steve Tobias brilliantly came up with simply putting the water motor above the first collector tank!
I haven't seen his suggestion yet - I will look for it
Theres a nice big accumulator in Wales called Dinorwig.
Three water tanks one above the second tank the #1 tank holds the weight that will compress the lower #2 tank that is where the weight gets lifted once lifted you lock it in place and drain the water to the #2 lower tank close off a valve then unlock the weight and pressurize the lower tank and then the #2 lower tank water goes up to the water motor spins it then the water goes to the #3 tank that will refill the #1 tank when the weight/plunger has reached the bottom of its stroke. The #3 tank is above the #1 tank and a valve is between them. Reposted for hopefully greater clarity and review by others of the design.
Imagine having a showerhead that has some kind of generator in it to heat up the water in a small element. Even if its an experiment it will be awesome to see.
Damn I wondered where you went. I was subbed a long long time ago and apparently unsubbed a while ago. I'm glad to see you're still putting out great content.
do you know what - I remember you - your name lol - welcome back mate
@@ThinkingandTinkering 😂 that's awesome! I look forward to your great ideas you always put forth! Have a blessed day!
I’ve often thought about nature and evaporation where water vapour is ‘taken up’ via the effect of sunlight. Imagine the weight of water rising within the air (warm air holding vastly much more than cooler air etc). What if we could somehow use nature to do the lifting and, at some position, cause it to condense into a container at height. There’s your water store and weight at height.
Also, re condensing, what about morning dew-point…..picture the tent with ringing wet fabric and water droplets running down the sides first thing in the morning….add your varnished capacitor and voila……works both in the rain and on days where there is no rain but the dawn.
……that’s some of the things I daydream about anyway 🙂👍
Like a boat in a lock..... float your weight on water
Let's say i have a 10 meter tower with a 100 kilograms weight. How long will take for the weight to reach the ground?
The maths is not in your favour here. An accumulator stores energy by lifting a weight - and unless you're using weights the size of your entire house, the amount of energy you can store is tiny - not even enough to boil a cup of water. It's true that you can use it to create a high pressure jet, but the amount of energy you can extract from that jet is just the same (the jet won't run for very long).
The amount of energy stored is easily calculated as m x g x h (m=mass, g=force of gravity, h=height lifted). So if you lift a tonne by 1 meter, you store 9,800 joules - or 0.003kWh. That's about 1/3 of an iPhone charge, or boiling about 1/100th of a kettle of water. A 1 ton weight is not a small thing, and lifting it safely is also non-trivial.
Just store rainwater collected from your roof in a tank in your attic, then use it to flush the toilets and harvest the energy using one of your contraptions.
You come up with some brilliant ideas & now have inspired me to get my thinking cap on! Every body has mains water coming into their houses why not put a small generator in at the point of entry into your house also the waterboard has these mega pipes they could fit large generators into them. Just a thought!! - Keep them coming!
cheers mate
Absolute brilliant, never heard of that akkumulators for pressured water - genius. Could you go into details about one of those devices?
Buena idea para utilizar agua de río, mar , etc 🤔 quizás un módulo transportable en combinación Agua + Aire a presión 🙄 pero debería disponer de un colector para recuperar / reciclar nuevamente la misma agua 💪.
PDT: Antiguamente existía farol de Luz que funcionaban a querosene, mediante presión de una pequeña bomba se lograba pulverizar el querosene sobre una camisa/bolsa ignífuga que se encendía mediante un fósforo previo calentar el caño que transporta el combustible (pequeño recipiente anexado al caño al cuál se le agregaba alcohol).
En Argentina 🇦🇷 👋 lo conocimos con el nombre "Sol de Noche" 😊
Saludos desde Argentina
Do you have any reference material about the old water accumulators? I've looked high and low and can't find anything. It's probably just because I'm not using the proper search terms.
Is it worth the hassle and expense? If a person is using 150 litres of water per day and the head of the water is say 5 metres, the potential energy is about 7350 joules. If you can convert this to electricity at 100% efficiency, this is equivalent to the power required to run an electric kettle for just over 7 seconds! Not very impressive to say the least. Maybe I'm missing something.
Combine this logic with repurposing the source (filtration). The average shower loses 16 degrees of heat from the shower head to the drain in anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5 gallons/min. Why not capture and filter it, heat the 2-3 Gal/min by 16°/min.(which your average electric kettle can do). I just think of big families taking 5 to 10 minute showers each every day of the year with 120 000+ households in the US. We'd better change something sooner than later!
Showers use both hot and cold mixed so you only have to transfer the drain water heat to the shower cold side supply to recover that percentage of energy.
@@malcolm8564 Agreed but my point was to repurpose the 2-3 Gal./min. Shower water is clean and easy to filter so why not just reheat and re-cycle 4-6 Gal. especially considering 110V heater can handle it.
I do like your point of re-routing it back directly. That in itself would add up quickly.
There is a shower that does that already. i looked a one for installation on a Solar powered narrow boat. they are extremely expensive, but for a full shower it uses only 9l of water which it then dumps after the shower is complete.
@@MrCarlRobinson Too funny it would be marine equipment. I was living on a sailboat in Keywest when I thought of this idea! Any idea what it's called or a brand name maybe? Thanks
@@Nash4Nashville I’ll try to find it.
... Keeping a grey water tank in your home also allows time for the heated water (tub, dishwasher, clothes washer , etc) to be transferred back into the home. A big waste of energy going straight down the drain.
What is it exactly that makes using the mains illegal? If the law is to stop contamination there's ways to use the mains so that it can't contaminate the drinking water.
battery can be 90% efficiency,but if the price of the battery you are getting les than 50% return, water battery can be circle 50 times a day for 20 years, plus large tanks get cheaper per KW unit as they get bigger.
Been hoping you got into Pelton Wheels 😃
Cheers!
7+ liters of water for one toilet flush? Yikes! For us here in the water starved Western U.S., that's an outrageous amount. We are limited here by law to have a toilet that uses a maximum of 1.6 liters per flush, and even less on a #1 flush. (There are 2 different buttons on all new toilets for flushing #1 or #2)
Yes, excellent thanks, make a model using a water tower.
If city sets the flow rate to make sure in flats sewer drains then u can tag along. If the city only "flushes" the system in flats problem areas & waits to do it at 1 time per day say after building pressure so sure a power flush why not tag along 1st. How well if u hve special water high pressure connection at each house it is out of your control/input. If they need a special flush they can oh 2 times a day on shitty days.
just need to sausage links together so they flow right direction & slide thru.
Awesome! 👏
the water going up and down, the wind turbine / solar energy storage pumped hydro, the sand battery, concentrated solar, it seems to me we should put it all together, your a smart chap, use the sand battery to store excess wind or solar as heat and also concentrated solar, but that is where my mad idea starts..... use the wally minto designed wheel. water on one side of a diaphragm and butane on the other for the heat conversion to pressure lifting the water to rotate the wheel and spin a big generator ( about 11 hp I would guess) as needed to charge/ power stuff. Am I mad or what,.. but if you have a big sand battery the generator could run all night, not really sure on the calculations (not my strong hand) also I do not have reliable data to calculate from. I would like to try this but in my rental flat it is certainly not possible.
If you were to lift a square square meater of say waters up a meater . Allowed to drop trew a winch. How much energy could be harnes by having a genrator on the winch .
Bear with me. Velocity of wind/water scale to output. As slow rotating windmills have relatively faster moving tips. Is it effective/efficient to add smaller turbines on the tips, that face into the oncoming flow, so they spin faster than the main blades?
I don't know mate
@@ThinkingandTinkering Me neither, to be honest these days just breaking wind can be a bit of a gamble. I don't want to get too technical about it. ;-) Cheers.
In hastings ( I don't know if it still there) they had two trams by the castle that road on water pumped to top tram lowering it then filling the other just on water transfer
A typical home uses 10kWhours per day. That equates to a 1000 tonne weight raised to 5 meters in height.
Solar water heaters on the roof, reservoir battery/heat storage, Stirling engine. Electricity and heat for free
Excellent.
Wow, i was thinking about the same things.