as a kid i came up with a radial 8 engine with a magneto but instead of a spark the magneto powered some torrid type magnets that drove the pistons. it was all in my mind but some day when my 3dp skills move from materials and technique to design and fabrication it is still on the to do list. i see i was not alone and others have done actual working models,, only to be quashed and buried. tesla and a lot of others much smarter then me have done work on getting more out then you put in. more powerful magnets and efficient solenoid/torrid designs also inch this closer to my grasp. of course most are not piston driven but the concept is similar. any one monkey around with free energy concepts, designs? Bedini Wheels and Energy from the Aether | Greg Reese
Right on, I often thought of some sort of squirrel cage fan collecting air as you drive spinning a charging machine for the batteries. The size would have to possibly be to big??? And magnets spinning a alternator??
The law of energy conservation is a bitch. But...we could be doing much more to improve our lives with technology.
Over unity would almost be impossible, but I firmly believe in near-unity. Imagine 99% of the fuel energy from your vehicle instead of the 30% you actually do get.
on the show "how its made" they showed a radial steam engine that would run off a wood stove ex pipe. it recycled its water so no pressure tank. guy was gonna sell them then no word. i really wanted one.
The only continuous "Free Energy" would possibly be GeoThermal or Hydro. Free heat and falling water .. lots of usable power there plus co-gen byproduct. Solar and wind could also be considered free but intermittent. Again, you need gear that isn't free to harvest. Friction and fluid dynamics are the bane of all 'Free Energy' devices. And as Brokor noted, Physics in general.
Energy in=energy out minus losses. Until we break this law of physics over unity cannot happen. However, someone will eventually see the light and develop gear that runs off of the Earth itself. We aren't covered by 70% ocean for no reason. In the 90's I worked with another guy to build a hydrogen generator. We built a dual chamber plexiglass box with electrodes powered by solar, and pulled hydrogen from one side and oxygen from the other. The plan was to upscale this to a huge floating apparatus that would float out on the ocean and pipe the H and O2 back to land. We were too poor to upscale it and having no rich investors the project died on the vine. We estimated 60% energy usage and 40% surplus fuel for an additional internal combustion generator. The solar would power the electrodes but compressing the Hydrogen for use was more of a power requirement than the solar we had could handle. Anyone care to invest?
TANSTAFL = "There Ain't No Such Thing As Free Lunch"... from the "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" Robert Heinlein <spelling? pretty good story IMHO
Holy Moly! Really, only 30%?!?! I didn't know that... BTW reference your hydrogen generator... I read the German's being so anti-nuke built a military submarine running off hydrogen, not sure what happened to it but it was supposedly ultra-quiet. I need to google around and see what became of it... EDIT: Here it is, there are a total of 6 subs in service with 2 more in the que, first was launch 2002. "The German Type 212 class, also Italian Todaro class, is a non-nuclear submarine developed by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG (HDW) for the German and Italian navies. It features diesel propulsion and an additional air-independent propulsion (AIP) system using Siemens proton exchange membrane (PEM) compressed hydrogen fuel cells. The submarines can operate at high speed on diesel power or switch to the AIP system for silent slow cruising, staying submerged for up to three weeks with little exhaust heat. The system is also said to be vibration-free, extremely quiet and virtually undetectable." Type 212A class Submarine German Navy Deutsche Marine
I have been looking for free energy for nearly 40 years. Closest things I've found are firewood, burning trash, tires or junk mail and solar panels.
Fuel cells are only about 50% efficient when running pure hydrogen and pure oxygen to them. Air breathing fuel cells struggle to better than combustion engines. Alcohol or hydrocarbon fueled air breathing fuel cells are only as efficient as international combustion engines on a good day. Major advantage is no moving parts, major disadvantage is they can be poisoned by dirty fuel and become useless.
its impossible, until it isn't. maybe free is the wrong term. how about considerably more efficient then what we are allowed to have now. i believe much better battery tech exists. i believe much more efficient engine designs exist. ( i.c.e, electric and steam) i believe more efficient methods of separating water into hydrogen and oxygen exist. i look forward to playing with all of them.
Ah, cracking water into hydrogen and oxygen is a known energy cost. X number of joules of energy are required to split it. And it's more energy that we can currently get out of using hydrogen and oxygen. We just need to make the energy (heat or electricity or both) to split the water into hydrogen / oxygen components cheaper. But there are still huge losses in heat the reaction that could be used as co-gen byproducts. Anyway, juice isn't worth the squeeze as long as other sources of energy are available.
Actually, if you know the right frequency the molecules will split, under far less energy than previously thought. I watched it being done years ago.
Yep, this is how they make electrolytic hydrogen AKA green hydrogen. Problem is, it still takes more energy to produce than energy that can be generated by the hydrogen that is being created can produce. It's that law of energy conservation. Energy produced can't be greater than energy used to create it. Until we figure out how to break the immutable laws of nature and physics .. it's going require more inputs than we will receive in outputs (we consider waste heat and light as a loss). So, there isn't any free or surpluses coming. Folks will always hawk their inventions. Maybe there is some alien technology out there but until then as OP4 noted .. closest to free is firewood if you consider your time/labor to be worthless.
