How to Develop a Technology Contest for a Heat Engine, Ala the X-Prize?

Noitartst · December 2015

You'll likely think my idea is holey, but instead, I'm actually trying to develop it, figure out how to make it viable.

I'm looking to creating a technology-developing contest, and am trying to figure out how to do it. Specifically, I'm trying to develop a specific idea of mine for a vortex engine, and am trying to work through the logistics. Realistically, I figure all I'll need is $50,000 as prize money.

How to do it, though? I have some ideas, but without being able to develop them myself, I'll need others to do that. As to patents, they won't be worth anything if they never reach market, and in the innovative process, assigning credit is counter-productive to synergy. Instead, it is best, in my reckoning, to document my creative insights thoughout the process, and then patent, bolstered in my claim.

Essentially, I'm trying to create a vortex engine, and figure a minimal $50,000 prize would be good incentive for $100,000-a-year salaried engineer to make a working prototype, and more than one at a time, too. As the one doling out the funds, I'll be at the the center, the point of aggregation, and if I can't leverage that position for profit, then I'll really be an idiot.

Aguarancher · December 2015

I see you making the solar forum circuits. Looks like garbage in, garbage out to me.

BB. · December 2015

Here is one company that has some funding to design/test a Vortex Engine:

http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml

An atmospheric vortex engine (AVE) uses a controlled vortex to capture mechanical energy produced when heat is carried upward by convection in the atmosphere. A tornado-like vortex is produced by admitting warm or humid air tangentially into a circular arena. Tangential entries cause the warm moist air to spin as it rises forming an anchored convective vortex. The work of convection is captured with turbines located at ground level around the periphery of the arena. The heat source can be solar energy, warm water or waste heat.

Not sure that I would spend any of my own time/money on such a project--But there are people doing it. It is very difficult to get much energy from such systems (that have very low thermal/energy differences between two "heat sources/sinks").

-Bill

JoshK · December 2015

The problem with this idea is at best it will run, but there's no significant power to take away without stalling the machine.

Noitartst · January 2016

Thank you for you input; I'm reading up on it, and appreciate these points. At this point, i am asking a lot of questions, and my most basic one is, "Why are man-made vortices are so much weaker than the ones in nature?"

That is my biggest, most important one, at this point, and for that I seek input. If you're wondering why I haven't replied sooner, keep in mind, I am focusing on a lot of other things, and Sunday's the day I focus on things like this.

BB. You said: It is very difficult to get much energy from such systems (that have very low thermal/energy differences between two "heat sources/sinks").

Okay, then; in other words, we are talking for lack of a better term, "air polarity," are we not? Either we can find ways to make the cold air colder, or else we can find ways to make the hot air hotter. Or we could do both, but making air hotter seems more doable if you ask me, and therefore more profitable to focus upon.

Nature achieves greater polarity between hot and cold, yes? Therefore, her vertices are more potent, yes?

Making sure I get this, correct; assuming that I have, the next thing is how to heat air.

One way I was thinking, was to energize the vortex via adding to it with oxygen. Don't know how to do that effectively, but it would increase heat, and if efficient enough, it would increase polarity, opposites.

Just throwing out ideas, at this point, and I've never heard anyone bring up the idea of combining a machine that splits water with a vortex engine. Why? Well, my thinking was like this: Heat is power, so instead of using it to form a sluggish vortex, why not make a stronger one using hydrogen supplements?Might not work, but once again, I'm tossing out ideas, here.

Vortex engines suffer from finding a sufficiently strong heat source, and nature has it up on us because she has the whole atmosphere to play with, basically. We can't scale up to her level at this time, but as much a possible, we need to co-opt her systems. It starts, I think, by figuring out how to create a siphon that makes the upper atmosphere wish to fall into. Explosives for pump priming, anyone?

I have a half-baked idea for this, basically, for a suction cannon. It works like this, basically. Imagine two long cylindrical objects, one within the other--two cannon barrels, one within the other, with the interior one bearing the payload. Why? For the following reason.

Fire another cannon identical to the interior cannon without the exterior cannon, and you will get inferior height on the cannon fire. Why? Thanks to suction, friend--thanks to suction. The suction cannon, when it fires, diffuses not just the air in front of it, but also the air around it, and that means, essentially, that you are using an extended cannon barrel. As hot air from the interior barrel pushes the projectile up, the air and projectile will find themselves surrounded by air rapidly swirling down, trying to fill the vacuum created by the initial explosion, ala push-pull if you wish it that, even if I find that misleading. In any rate, instead of just being pushed up by the heated air behind it, the projectile is also being pushed up by the air pushing down, trying to fill the internal vacuum. Beyond that, the downward-swirling air has the add bonus of keeping the projectile pushing straight, i.e. up; make the interior barrel rifled, throw in a knowledge high math that I don't really get, and we're not just talking science project material, but weapons research.

Just my two cents, but that is what I'm thinking of. Call me crazy all you like.

BB. · January 2016

Natural vortices cover miles (tornado) to 100's of miles (hurricanes). The amount of energy available and the mass of air is just huge compared to anything on a man-made scale.

Also, the energy goes into "making" vortices. You want to take the energy that would have gone into making a vortex and instead extract it with some sort of wind turbine. If you are sucessful in extracting a significant amount of power, then the vortex, by definition, has to be smaller/weaker than one that does not lose power to turbines.

-Bill

Noitartst · January 2016

And that's just fine if the energy pie is big enough, or the machine is sufficiently efficient. If not, then such is an obvious problem. The question, is so to get there from here. Also, what did you think of my cannon concept?

BB. · January 2016

As you will see from this youtube video (tank firing a shell):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWn_NhYzD_Y

The shell passes the expanding gasses a few feet past the end of the barrel. You can find a gun firing and see the same thing (just inches beyond the barrel the gasses pretty much stop moving relative to the velocity of the bullet).

Trying to channel expanding gases out to "help push" the shell (if I understand what you are suggesting).

Have you taken any engineering or physics classes? Conservation of momentum and conservation of energy equations--Very quickly you will see that the energy to accelerate the "extra gasses" in the direction of the bullet will be very difficult (i.e., take lots of extra powder/energy to accelerate the gasses "faster" than the shell--And how quickly the energy of the moving gasses dissipate when they are unconstrained by the barrel).

-Bill

OutsourcedGuru · July 2023

If you put a vertically-oriented set of paddles inside a jar with a white surface on one side and a black on the other and put it on a pivot, it tends to spin seemingly on its own. Ambient light which shines on these surfaces reflects more from one side versus the other and propels it.

Next, lookup some of the firenado projects involving glass. One might split a glass cylinder lengthwise, reposition the halves so that air can come in from the sides to create that vortex effect. Once spinning, it tends to keep going under these conditions and with just the smallest breeze to get it started.

So imagine combining these two. Instead of glass to constrain the vortex you're creating asymmetric heating to draw in and direct the air by differential surface treatments. Personally, I think I would take the exhaust air from the top and then cycle it back at the bottom a bit like a turbo in a car engine might. I remember seeing a YT video of some guy who put a burn-barrel cylinder of some kind on a truck bed, got it burning good and then had a turbo arrangement at the top which then pumped air into the bottom for a run-away effect. Apologies but I can't seem to locate that at the moment.

I will note that one of the hidden features of a tornado is that it's a dynamo (rotating magnetic field). I personally believe that this is the major reason why tornados continue to spin; it's not just the updraft of air. I would then argue that conservation of angular momentum of the spinning magnet field is what's at play here.

Although it's an interesting concept, I'm sure I could come up with ten more feasible ideas for producing cheap energy.

If I did play with this, I think I would combine the Aeromine wind turbine with a tesla turbine to generate power.

Graham Parkinson · July 2023

Always good to have ideas but the best way to develop technology is to fund and study science, the engine that fuels innovation.

Without understanding the physics of energy and weather systems it's futile to start spending money on developing an end product without any foundations of what basic principles a device is intended to exploit.

We have so much energy available from the sun in the form of solar - there's the place to get what we need. The real problem that needs ideas is making it normal to have every available surface contributing power and managing how we harvest that power.

Graham Parkinson · July 2023

Although tornadoes seem like intense energy systems, they are essentially concentrating small amounts of energy from over a large area (rising air off of large areas of the earth's surface warmed by sun). The vortex effect (increase in windspeed from focusing angular momentum into a twister by the "spinning skater pulling in her arms effect") isn't really a source of energy. The vortex action actually dissipates quite a bit of the warmed air's heat energy in turbulence and in the inevitable wind shear. To gather up significant thermal energy and funnel the resulting rising hot air into a "vortex engine" would require building a vast greenhouse heat collector covering many acres of land. Once you do the math on the quantities of materials required vs energy harnessed, you'd probably find that it'll be better in terms of economic efficiency to just collect that natural 1 kW/m^2 of solar energy directly with solar panels.

OutsourcedGuru · July 2023

Graham Parkinson said:

Always good to have ideas but the best way to develop technology is to fund and study science, the engine that fuels innovation.

Sorry to be the contrarian but in my experience in life the worst way of developing technology is to throw money at a problem. Money creates movement in the same way that a fire generates movement in the atoms of whatever you're heating. But movement isn't progress it's chaos. Passion for the outcome is what produces order from all this movement, always driving toward a practical solution to solve the original problem.

I worked in an organization funded by a billionaire angel investor which created a 40-person software development company to help rich investors manage their personal portfolios. Over a period of twelve years that company brought in less $ than my own 1-person corporation billed him in four years' time.

Some of the best, most productive efforts were those poorly-funded startups with perhaps five passionate people who believed in the outcome.

How to Develop a Technology Contest for a Heat Engine, Ala the X-Prize?

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