Air Lift Turbine Generator

Discussion on Stirling or "hot air" engines (all types)
Fool
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Fool »

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Tom Booth wrote:Fool doesn't seem to understand that cooling air as it is being compressed makes the compression much easier.
Tom doesn't realize that to cool a gas while it's being compressed requires heat rejection to something colder.

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Fool
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Fool »

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The more Tom promotes this, the more I see it is just a scam.

Tom, invest heavily into that system. You will learn your lesson from their failures.

I wait for a working system.

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Tom Booth
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Tom Booth »

Fool wrote: Fri Nov 22, 2024 12:56 am .
Tom Booth wrote:Fool doesn't seem to understand that cooling air as it is being compressed makes the compression much easier.
Tom doesn't realize that to cool a gas while it's being compressed requires heat rejection to something colder.

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Fool also doesn't realize temporarily "moving" heat with a heat pump, storing it and utilizing it to generate power is not "rejecting" or "wasting" it.

"Hotter" and "colder" are relative and "heat" can be intelligently controlled and directed to useful purpose, like refrigeration and air conditioning.

Fool thinks heat pumps are "impossible" and a COP of 3 violates the "Carnot efficiency limit". He thinks the drinking Bird is a scam. LOL ..
Tom Booth
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Tom Booth »

Fool wrote: Fri Nov 22, 2024 12:59 am .

The more Tom promotes this, the more I see it is just a scam.

Tom, invest heavily into that system. You will learn your lesson from their failures.

I wait for a working system.

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I might pay them a visit. It's not that far from here where I live. Just across the state line, within easy driving distance.

That's you're problem. To you everything is a scam. Everything is "impossible". Everything is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, including life itself, so you want to destroy life, destroy ideas, destroy creativity and deny God.

(I hope you noticed I spelled YOU'RE "correctly" for you. LOL)
Tom Booth
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Tom Booth »

Fool wrote: Fri Nov 22, 2024 12:59 am .

The more Tom promotes this, the more I see it is just a scam.

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The sad truth is, though a perfectly sound invention in principle with a working prototype, the chances of success are minimized do to the influence of people like you.
Tom Booth
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Tom Booth »

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Tom Booth
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Tom Booth »

It's basically a giant "drinking bird" in principle. A combination of a heat pump and heat engine that generates power from the surrounding ambient heat.

"Fool" can't understand it any more than he can understand the dippy bird, heat pumps, heat engines or anything else that requires half a brain.
Tom Booth
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Tom Booth »

More details about the working principle:

Edited for length and relevance: focus on the technology (without the global warming/climate change hype)

Generating Renewable Energy Out of Thin Air:
Jan 15, 2022


(....)
Understanding this new renewable energy technology requires a brief history lesson featuring two great minds. In 1662, Robert Boyle discovered the relationship between the volume and pressure of air and, later, temperature. What soon became Boyle's Law underpins the almost unbelievable amount of energy our planet holds in the air. The sun stores its energy in air, which makes our planet the largest solar collector possible - and we didn't even have to build it. The earth accesses the air's energy regularly through wind, storms, and rain. The question is, how do we tap into that energy?

Thanks to Archimedes, we understand the reason that ships float: the displacement principle, which relies on the pressure and volume of the air.

Boyle meets Archimedes

The first step on the path to this new renewable energy technology required building a device using air to displace a liquid, thus creating the force to drive a turbine to - Eureka! - make electricity. The device, using a tower, passed proof of concept testing in 2015, demonstrating that it is possible to convert energy in the air into electricity.

This proof of concept also identified three areas that needed to be addressed in order to produce enough electricity to be considered a viable energy source.

1. Compress the air using less energy

2. Make the tower shorter and less expensive

3. Keep the system running in a continuously steady state


The first change - making the air with less energy - was the hardest. As it turns out, the solution to the first challenge also solved the third challenge. Using Boyle's Law as a reference, removing the heat from the air after compression helped reduce energy. It had to be more than just passive cooling to ambient temperatures. The energy saving happened post-compression. This new solution performs only a little work at a time: It cools the air to near freezing, and then passes the energy savings on to subsequent compression cycles. This process shifts the work of air compression to a heat pump which, thanks to the Coefficient of Performance (COP), delivers higher efficiency with less power consumption. This cascading compression system uses 50 percent less energy.

Choosing a heat pump as the means of removing the heat solved the third problem e.g., keeping the system running in a continuously steady state, and required determining how to return the heat back to the air after passing it through the tower.

The heat can return to the air as it re-expands in the tower; the heat pumps can collect the heat, which is then removed from the air compression process (adiabatic). Using the same cascading idea in the heat pump also significantly lowered energy cost in the heat pump system. The cascading heat pump has a 300 percent increase in the COP.

The solution to the second challenge - lowering the height and cost of the tower - involved making the fluid heavier. Doing so created a larger displacement force that mimicked the conditions of a taller tower without the costs associated with actually building one.

(...)

One of the biggest advantages over other renewable technologies is that this new system operates 24/7 and requires no large battery storage. ...

In summary, this new technology converts a small amount of energy from the surrounding ambient air into electricity. It then returns the same amount of energy back into the air - minus the amount of heat energy that was converted into electricity. This occurs through a combination of highly efficient compressed air, isobaric heat collection, and weight displacement.

Collectively, these processes require less electricity to operate than the energy being moved in the system. ...
https://www.nacleanenergy.com/alternati ... e-change-1


From this article, it appears that the system operates exactly as I imagined and previously described.

The heat is removed from the air via the heat pump to make compression of the air very easy, then the heat is reabsorbed by the air as it expands in the air-lift columb increasing the flow rate.

It is not mentioned but it seems axiomatic that the flooid is also the cooling fluid for the compressor, though perhaps not. The heat could be transfered back into the air in some other way, perhaps via heat exchangers or as "fool" suggested earlier, back into the air as it is reinjected back into the tower.

It appears however, that the air absorbs the heat as it rises up in the tower, absorbing heat directly from the "flooid". The simplest arrangement, then, IMO would be to use the "flooid" itself as the compressor intercooling fluid.
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Fool »

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The power tower may be feasible, but much lower powered than any claims being touted.

Flooid Power's claims are a total scam. Sorry. Their fraudulent claims would break both the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

Everyone's scepticism should be raised at first inspection by the claim of using a super efficient compressor. Claim/promise made, we are waiting to see how this mythical compressor would function, and for a functioning contraption.

It should be the center of their description and patent.

Of course if we had a super effective mythical compressor contraption, we could generate free energy with other devices than a 100 foot tower. The grandiose tower is just a sales distraction to baffle potential investors. Pump that free pressure into a piston engine with proper valve timing. Duh!

Did you all notice, they've already spent $5 million. I could have built ten 200' towers for that price. And had ten working models. What do they present?????

I'm still waiting.

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Fool
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Fool »

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Tom you seem to have a flair for following scams of over unity. Haven't you learned by now how to determine fraudulent, too good to be true, claims? Go ahead invest in Flooid. Loosing money in the scam may just wise you up.

I'm still waiting for data, and a working model. I'm not holding my breath, nor wasting any time, other than entertainment.

LOL people.

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Tom Booth
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Tom Booth »

I just got off the phone with the president of the company.

The demonstration tower cost a little over 2 Million to construct, including all materials, labor, payroll etc.

He said the power output was over 10kw using 12" pipes.

A successful "proof of concept" but at $200,000 or so per kilowatt, the cost would have to come down to be practical, but IMO that's largely beside the point.

He also said they have had numerous offers wanting to buy them out which they have refused.

They have some kind of agreement with the utility if and when they can produce a utility scale unit, but that would cost millions more they don't have.

That was what killed INFINIA. They went into debt to meet the utilities minimum megawatt requirement. When they did, by taking out loans, the utility reneged on the deal forcing them into bankruptcy.

He said him and his partner put their own money into building the prototype tower.

Relatively low cost for R&D IMO

The INFINIA engine development involved at least 50 million, I think hundreds of millions in all over some decades, including prior companies, for a 3kw engine.
VincentG
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by VincentG »

Well this would be pretty easy to build at smaller scale. If nothing else it would make a cool piece of functional art.
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Tom Booth »

VincentG wrote: Fri Nov 22, 2024 1:43 pm Well this would be pretty easy to build at smaller scale. If nothing else it would make a cool piece of functional art.
That's more or less how I feel about it.

After all, I'm sure millions have been made from the "dippy bird" as a novelty item.

A desktop "perpetual" lava lamp type nightlight that bubbles and lights it's own LED would be cool.

If something like that can work, then so could something bigger.

The biggest obstacle is overcoming skepticism.

People like "fool" on a crusade to prove you are a scam artist with a hidden battery.

That's why I don't care if it cost $200,000 per kilowatt if there is demonstrated proof that it works, if it is supposed to be "impossible".
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Fool »

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Can we go see it?

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Tom Booth
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Re: Air Lift Turbine Generator

Post by Tom Booth »

According to statements made by the inventor, Mark Maynard, (in a video attached to an old version of tbe website) there were "laboratory size" experimental working models by means of which the technology was worked out before moving up to the larger demonstration models.

So, VincentG,... like you said. A small model should certainly be possible.

I think I may have been mistaken regarding some of the information I thought I had been told on the phone. From what I gather from the old website the tower did not cost millions, more in the range of a few hundred grand. A lot of emphasis is put on the relatively low cost compared with other technologies on the older site.

Maybe the 2 million was an estimated cost per megawatt, not the actual cost of the tower.

Maybe I'll be able to get some further clarification

There is also: "After spending $350,000 of his own funds to validate the Flooid Power process through proof-of-concept..."

https://www.f6s.com/member/benschwartz1#about

What I'm passing along is/has been mostly. all unverified second hand information so, probably best to talk to the inventor himself directly if possible.
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