The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades?...

[Hermit]

Just for a start, the fuel hasn't even got potential for producing energy, without the oxygen in the air.

Actually fuel does have potential for producing energy. All you have to do is to add oxygen. That turns its potential energy into real, usable energy. Put a match to coal, wood, diesel, petrol, oil, ethanol or some such substance and see what you get. You'll find it is produces heat, which when coupled to a suitable device such as a steam engine, internal combustion motor, turbine or whatever is designed to use it for various purposes such as making machines accomplish things we could not accomplish without it.

[mistermack]

Well, all of that is obvious, and not disputed.
But this discussion is about how to take energy from a vibrating tube, and turn it into electricity.
Potential for creating energy through chemical means isn't relevant, and the statement ''fuel is energy'' is what I refuted, because it's categorically wrong.

In a system like this, where you generate kinetic energy in the pole, by taking kinetic energy from the wind, you want the most efficient mechanism to transfer that energy to an electrical generator. Every bit of lost energy reduces the electrical output, and puts up the unit price of the electricity.

In conventional wind turbines, the blades produce rotational motion, which is fed through a gearbox of rotating gears to a generator.
In this bladeless one, you start with a reciprocating pole, and need to turn that reciprocating motion into rotation.
I still think a con-rod and crankshaft would be the best and most efficient way.
If it's good enough for a billion motor vehicles, it should be good enough for this.
Nobody's found a better way of transferring the energy from a piston to a car gearbox.
And that is doing the same job, moving energy from a reciprocating source to a gearbox.

Anyway, I doubt if this will take off.
The materials would have to be incredibly durable, to survive all of that constant flexing back and forth.

They might improve it, by mounting the bottom end on a bearing, and making the pole stiffer. It could then reciprocate on the bearing, instead of flexing.

[Hermit]

... the statement ''fuel is energy'' is what I refuted, because it's categorically wrong.

It takes energy to move anything. I know how far my car will get without fuel.

[Svartalf]

how far will your car get on a tankful but without spark plugs to launch the chemical reaction that turns the fuel into energy?
how much energy do you get from wood or coal if you don't have a fire to set it alight?

[mistermack]

... the statement ''fuel is energy'' is what I refuted, because it's categorically wrong.

It takes energy to move anything. I know how far my car will get without fuel.

And that's about all you do know, by the look of it.
You and Seth and Pisc need to learn some physics, if you don't want to look stupid.

But that's all right I guess, because you don't know enough physics to REALISE how stupid those posts are.

It doesn't take energy to move everything. A photon can travel right across the universe, without any energy input.
As could you.
The Earth doesn't need energy to move round the Sun. The Sun doesn't need energy to circle the centre of the Milky Way.
Your car IS moving without fuel. Rotating with the Earth's rotation. Moving around the Sun.
Orbiting the Milky Way. Moving through the Universe.

It's just that what you know seems to stop at the end of your drive.

[Seth]

They might improve it, by mounting the bottom end on a bearing, and making the pole stiffer. It could then reciprocate on the bearing, instead of flexing.

I don't think the stalk actually flexes. According to the description it uses strong magnets which repel each other to erect the stalk when it's pushed off center by the wind. It also appears that it does not turn to face into the wind. Rather it can wave in any direction on the horizontal axis. I envision a U-joint bearing like that used in a joystick with the stalk through the vertical axis. At the bottom of the stalk is an arrangement of magnets around the shaft, which has magnets on it. As the stalk is pushed off of the vertical axis the permanent magnets on the stalk and surrounding it repel one another, trying to force the stalk back upright. By carefully controlling the distance from one another and the strength of the magnets the resistance of the stalk to being pushed can be controlled. If the magnets on the shaft can be somehow placed within a copper coil a current will be produced as the stalk moves back and forth.

As to "energy", we are talking at cross purposes. "Potential energy" is a better term.

[mistermack]

They're pretty sparse with the technical details, which make me a bit suspicious that they are just touting for investment money.
What you said is similar to what I posted earlier. It would involve a bearing right at the base.
But they were claiming it had practically no moving parts, in which case it could only move by flexing.

Whichever, I have my doubts that it will be economic. It doesn't have much wind hitting it.

By the way, ''potential'' energy wouldn't do at all. That has a specific meaning in science.
Potential energy is energy that's available in a system because of the situation of some of the objects.

The classic example is the potential energy of an object due to gravity.
If you hold a brick above your foot, it has potential energy relative to your foot, because of the force of gravity, and the distance it can fall. Release the brick, and that potential energy is converted to kinetic energy as it falls. Which you will discover, when it hits your foot.

Another example is the energy stored in a spring, when it is stretched or squeezed.

Fuel has the potential to react with oxygen, and the reaction can release heat energy.

To say that fuel is energy is wrong. It's matter.
If you were talking about atomic physics, you could make a case that EVERYTHING is energy, in that E=MC2. So all mass is ultimately energy. And that would include you, me and fuel as well.

[Seth]

They're pretty sparse with the technical details, which make me a bit suspicious that they are just touting for investment money.

Well, yeah, of course. There's patent issues as well. They may not have filed yet as they have a year to file after public disclosure.

What you said is similar to what I posted earlier. It would involve a bearing right at the base.
But they were claiming it had practically no moving parts, in which case it could only move by flexing.

I think that's what "practically" means. Unless they are actually mounting the stalk on magnetic bearings, which is also possible and all but frictionless. I could envision a sphere at the base that has magnets all over it with a "cup" with magnets of the same polarity that it sits it and is suspended against gravity by the magnetic forces, similar to a maglev train. That would be even more brilliant if it works.

Whichever, I have my doubts that it will be economic. It doesn't have much wind hitting it.

It doesn't have to if there are enough of them emplaced at a cheap enough per-unit cost.

By the way, ''potential'' energy wouldn't do at all. It has a specific meaning in science.
It's energy that is available in a system because of the situation of some of the objects.

The classic example is the potential energy of an object due to gravity.
If you hold a brick above your foot, it has potential energy relative to your foot, because of the force of gravity, and the distance it can fall. Release the brick, and that potential energy is converted to kinetic energy as it falls. Which you will discover, when it hits your foot.

Another example is the energy stored in a spring, when it is stretched or squeezed.

Fuel has the potential to react with oxygen, and the reaction can release heat energy.

So what would you technically call the energy stored in fuel? Fossil fuels are the product of sunlight and organic processes that sequester solar energy through chemical reactions that can be released by other chemical reactions, both aerobic and anaerobic.

I think we're niggling over technicalities since you obviously know what we mean.

[Hermit]

how far will your car get on a tankful but without spark plugs to launch the chemical reaction that turns the fuel into energy?
how much energy do you get from wood or coal if you don't have a fire to set it alight?

How much energy do you get from wind without a windmill or some such device?

[Hermit]

It doesn't take energy to move everything. A photon can travel right across the universe, without any energy input.
As could you.

Right. I'll just sit on a photon then, and see if it gets me to the shops.

[Svartalf]

how far will your car get on a tankful but without spark plugs to launch the chemical reaction that turns the fuel into energy?
how much energy do you get from wood or coal if you don't have a fire to set it alight?

How much energy do you get from wind without a windmill or some such device?

wind is energy in motion, the mill is there to catch it, it's not the same as fuel wich has energy potential but needs pretty forceful treatment (literally being set on fire) to release it.

[mistermack]

So what would you technically call the energy stored in fuel? Fossil fuels are the product of sunlight and organic processes that sequester solar energy through chemical reactions that can be released by other chemical reactions, both aerobic and anaerobic.

I think we're niggling over technicalities since you obviously know what we mean.

It's energy in the molecular bonds. All matter has energy ''stored'' in it, but some is easier to get at than other.
In the case of combustible fuels, it's only because of the free oxygen in the air that we can release energy by burning it.

Methane is a fuel on Earth, but on Mars it's just inert snow and ice. It only has available energy because of the oxygen.
You could say that a quantity of fuel and oxygen, taken together, have available energy stored.
That's molecular bond energy, some of which is released, when they combine and form new bonds.

[Hermit]

how far will your car get on a tankful but without spark plugs to launch the chemical reaction that turns the fuel into energy?
how much energy do you get from wood or coal if you don't have a fire to set it alight?

How much energy do you get from wind without a windmill or some such device?

wind is energy in motion, the mill is there to catch it, it's not the same as fuel wich has energy potential but needs pretty forceful treatment (literally being set on fire) to release it.

Correct. Fuel and wind provide energy in different ways. "Common energy forms include the kinetic energy of a moving object, the radiant energy carried by light, the potential energy stored by an object's position in a force field (gravitational, electric or magnetic), elastic energy stored by stretching solid objects, chemical energy released when a fuel burns, and the thermal energy due to an object's temperature." Strange notion to some, I know, but somehow I find it difficult to believe that petrol is not a fuel that provides my car with the energy needed to travel at a considerable rate of knots for rather long distances if necessary.

[piscator]

[JimC]

mm is technically correct to say that it is the combination of a hydrocarbon fuel and a given quantity of oxygen that can be said to have a certain amount of chemical potential energy. However, the availability of the correct amount of oxygen is usually taken for granted, and the energy value of the fuel is simply expressed as kilojoules per kilogram. Thermodynamic considerations then determine the percentage of useful energy that can be extracted from the total.