Self-Running Ambient Heat Engine

[Lutherman]

John Dewey Houson of Prineville Oregon

[QUOTE=Vortex;40044]I have many questions, but I just now found
John D. Houston's patent 1,781,062 from 1930



RANDY,
This patent is interesting and the comments about the machine that you can read at Rex Research are even more interesting. I don't know what to make of the patent itself, but then patents weren't written for ease of understanding and I have little patience with purposely bad writing. Leave it to attorneys to make bad writing "correct".

I have been looking into John Dewey Houston of Prineville, Oregon just for the fun of it. The neighbor or acquaintance who wrote in to Fate Magazine (quoted on Rex Research) remembered the dates wrong but Houston did die young, I think he was 27. His father owned a big stock farm (lifestock ranch?) in the arid part of Oregon where people still raise a lot of cattle. They had several servants or live-in ranch hands and so it looks like there would be no reason for him to dream up an exaggerated device, he had money. They travelled to San Francisco to show their machine, perhaps even to Rix Industries, which is still a big compressor design company. I tried to get Rix to look at one of my spreadsheets recently and they said, sure, just send us a check for $50,000 as a deposit on our fee...They're defense contractors no doubt and don't need to hear from us small fry.

Well anyway I think the idea behind Houston's patent is that he got ahead of the heat pump people who insist we need freon and then waste most of the work done in an expansion valve instead of an expansion engine. Houston probably had an air-to-air heat pump and defied the compressor status quo by putting hot air into a compressor, and basically just broke the law of do it like everybody else, and got good results. That is a very rough analysis I know but I hate reading patents, it puts me to sleep in five minutes.

If anyone out there has better info on John Dewey Houston I'd like to hear from them.

Scott

[Lutherman]

Check out the PULSE FUEL PUMP. Very clever and maybe relevant to those interested in the Neal Tank and its mysterious equalizer. A pulse tube leads from someplace where a pulsation already exists, such as in an intake manifold or crankcase of an engine, to a space behind a diaphragem. This is hot, pulsating air with a definite pressure differential. On the other side of the diaphragm is something that needs to be pumped, like gasoline. And two check valves. Like any pump, a pair of check valves tells the pumped fluid which way to go. That's it. Pretty simple huh?
Scott

[Lutherman]

Very nice book Scott! I read your old edition, but need to read it a few more times it has a lot, and look forward to reading this one too.

Sykavy,

Thanks, I'm glad you like it. The first edition was 12 pages long, now this is the third edition, and the main thing it has in common with the first is the title, Compressed Air Power Secrets. It is 374 pages long and I wrote it in 5 months, ask my wife if you doubt me, she already had the commitment papers drawn up when I finally got it online.

Trouble is, now having put that much focus on trying to understand how air works, I feel that I now understand more about how air works and it's possible that I might have become dangerous to the powers that were. I am thinking about turning myself into the oil companies for safekeeping but then I heard they are no longer operational, they have gone home and left the computer running, we're still paying for their gas.

Well seriously now, I think you've mistaken the springs in Bob Neal's check valves for spirals of some kind. It's a very simple patent really and as a Nigerian inventor pointed out the other day, maybe it works exactly as pictured. Doubtful but possible. The key to it might be that Bob Neal for some reason has his air being slammed against the check valves 28 times in one cycle, that's a 28 cylinder compressor. Not likely to be a coincidence or just for fun. I believe he is generating a huge hammering wave in the intake pipe. His son said it worked with half that many cylinders. Seven double acting cylinders, that's 14 total.

Thanks for the other references too, I will look them up.\

Thanks to everyone for the big welcome on this site and I wish I had more time to spend here but I'm up to my elbows in new research.

Scott

[Lutherman]

screw compressors in a series?

I think he may have used 3 screw type compressors

Speaking of screw compressors, air car inventor Bill Truitt was apparently using them, he called them "hydraulic air pumps with worm drive" but I'm guessing that's what he was talking about. If someone knows about a technology that matches this description please let me know.

His main compressor was a three stage piston compressor about 13 inches square that ran off two car batteries, 24 volts. So the fact that he could charge his tanks to 2000 psi in 14 minutes means he was up to something. I think it would take 75 car batteries to charge 3 welding cylinders to 2000 psi under normal conditions, in 14 minbutes. Based on preliminary estimates. But Bill Truitt was a race car designer, not a con man, so let's assume he was telling the truth and try to figure out what he did. It's top secret but the govt forgot to develop it like they promised Truitt, so we'll just have to reinvent it for them again and then challenge them to a race.

The electric compressor only ran a tenth of the time, about 700 rpm. The car's air engine sat next to the differential and ran through a "turbine clutch" (fluid coupling like a torque converter?). It was non-expansive, just dumping air through it at maximum power-to-weight ratio. So he had more extra air than he knew what to do with and the car was scary to drive, it accelerated so fast. He made the engine from an old refrigerator compressor off a big reefer truck.

The "hydraulic air pumps with worm drive" ran the whole time the car was moving and were powered by a shaft coming out of the differential. The pumps came in pairs that just slid on the shaft, and depending on the terrain he could add more pumps since more were needed in hilly areas. Maybe ten or twelve of them were needed. He said they put air directly into the tanks so maybe they worked in a series.

A big clue about Truitt's design is that his three "acetylene-sized" cylinders were not allowed to go below 1000 psi, 1200 psi, or 1500 psi, depending on terrain. Higher minimum pressure was needed in mountains.

I spoke to Bill at some length and that is one reason I never stopped looking at this stuff. He was for real, I am sure. More info available at air car access dot com, drop by anytime.

Has anyone had contact with Magnetic Air Cars? I can't tell if they are for real, hope so but they don't respond to my requests for more info. Their design has something to do with using a series of superchargers maybe like the Lysholm which is a screw compressor too. Problem is, they claim to be using info they learned from J M Custer from Piggott Arkansas, but they won't back this up. I think he was not an air car inventor so they need to answer my plea for documentation.

Scott

[Lutherman]

overshooting equilibrium, the surge equalizer

sykavy,

Lutherman (Scott) and I spent many hours on the phone, about 3 years ago, .....love to retire in Polynesia and sip coconut milk from fresh coconuts and lie on the beach.

Wow Peter, as someone who is afraid of the beach where I live in the Philippines because it smells bad and is covered with bits of plastic from the petro-economy we whities have foisted on these folks, let me recommend that you bring plenty of greenies because the only clean beaches are at resorts!

But then again, Maybe Polynesia is better at litter control than they are here.

Thanks Sykavy and all for support and kind words. Randy too, it is nice to know I'm appreciated in one small corner of the universe at least. I keep plugging away, the latest essay I hope to get posted is called Bust my Bubbles.

In case anyone has failed to keep up with the accumulation of information piling up at air car access dot com, here is the gist of it. I wanted to try and do away with in-tank mechanical contrivances run by outside high pressure and discovered something very basic to pressure equalization.

The process is sometimes called free expansion, and as Alana has pointed out it is thermodynamically irreversible, meaning it is not to be considered an investment.

But put something in the right context, and a disadvantage can be converted into you guessed it, sheer raw brute power.

Scuba tank filling stations know all about it: when you fill a heavy duty, high pressure, safety-factor-of-5, well made, correctly maintained scuba tank TOO FAST, you had better be hiding around the corner.

The idea behind pressure equalization is that there is no "work" done because there is no temperature change (Joule's first law). But that's only 1 thousandth of the story, because really it's referring to complete equalization, where there is no NET temperature change. On the way to that point, ask anyone who's filled scuba tanks, is big temperature change. Dangerous temperature change. Just by squirting air from a big tank into a smaller one, you risk life and limb if you do it too quickly.

By the way, this is an argument against the "conventional" air car like MDI which stops to fill its tanks about every 30 miles. Yes it can be done in a minute or less, and like I said, you'd better be hiding around the corner. The right thing to do is to put your small tank inside the big tank, call it an EQUALIZER, put a check valve on its intake and another on its discharge, hook up a supercharged intake pipe from atmosphere to the intake. Put a tee between the two check valves, and install a valve that opens suddenly to fill the equalizer with tank air. Let's say the tank is 2000 times the volume of the equalizer, not hard to do. The whole air volume of the tank, even if its temperature goes down less than a degree, contributes a vast amount of energy to the air in the little equalizer full of atmosphere. It gets very hot instantly and before the equalization process can complete and go back to thermal equilibrium, the atmosphere and the added tank air re-enter the tank together through the discharge check valve.

It sounds unlikely: use tank air to put more air into tank. No outside pressure needed. If the tank was 200 psi and the equalizer was 1 psi then equalizing the two pressures you'd get maybe 199 psi. That air would not go in without a bump up. But that's complete equalization. The equalizer doesn't allow complete equalization, it's called unbalanced expansion (or free expansion) for a reason. It's like anything elastic that stores potential energy, you pull it back (store tension in it) and release it, and does it return immediately to equilibrium? No, it returns eventually to equilibrium. Before that we have this thing called a wave, which is just the periodic oscillation or the overshooting of equilibrium as the tension gradually dissipates, overshooting equilibrium in both directions till finally it comes to rest at ambient temperature and 199 psi.

But it doesn't have that kind of time, and the closing of the valve prevents thermal equalization. Fill the equalizer suddenly with tank air and the heat generated would be extreme except that as soon as the heat-generated overpressuring of the equalizer overcomes the spring tension of the check valve, all the air blasts through into the tank and due to the Kadenacy Effect (like 2-stroke engine tuning), a suction is left behind that is easily filled by the mechanical compressor. Well that should sort of start to get somebody thinking, I got to go. I'm busy trying to do background checks on air car inventors, why they all come from the Eastern US where the AIR BRAKES are, stuff like that, bye for now, no time to talk, thanks again for all the encouragement.

Scott

[Peter Lindemann]

Another Possibility....

Scott,

Awesome stuff. I love how much you have shared here. It has really gotten me thinking about this again. And along the lines of the idea that Neal's Patent shows everything, WHAT IF.....

From an analysis of the valve system of the engine, we have assumed that the two drive cylinders run at full pressure, and are not operated by air expansion. These give us four power strokes per revolution, which equals a V-8 ICE. So, we have lots of mechanical energy available.

We can also see that the other 14 cylinders operate as the compressor part, with pressure regulated, passive valves controlling where the air goes. And finally, we have the "equalizer" compartment in the tank, separated by two more passive valves that operate automatically as the air pressure changes on either side.

One thing we have not looked at carefully, is the volume of space between the two equalizer valves. What if that is important? What if the space between the equalizer valves is equal to the volume of air at tank pressure that is also equal to the volume of air in one of the cylinders at atmospheric pressure? What if the "equalizer" operates on a "spacial resonance" and an "acoustic pressure wave"?

The other interesting thing is where Neal says in the patent that the compressor cylinders only compress against the equivalent of atmospheric pressure (14.7psi) and not full tank pressure. The question has always been, "how does he accomplish this set of conditions"?

One recent thought has been that the air that is compressed in the cylinder that does not leave the cylinder during any particular stroke, will simply act as an air spring, returning that much mechanical energy to the system. This means that only air that eventually enters the equalizer is air that must have energy invested in it by the compressor. 98% of unused mechanical energy is returned to the system as mechanical energy.

More and more, I am beginning to believe that Neal actually showed almost the complete design, even if he didn't make a full, written description of it in the patent. The only feature clearly missing is where the high pressure air goes after it leaves the power cylinders. Everything else may be there.

Peter

[Alana]

Hi Scott,
hi everybody,

I am deeply impressed by the documents Scott/you shared. I take my hat off to you. You/he could be an example for others. But what we see: People who hide there researches after descovering peanuts.

But back to the topic.
The idea Scott shared sounds very logical and easy to replicate or to built. But is it necessary to make it/manufacture it? Doesn't exist such devices as a part of other devices (equalizer)? I found out that it isn't always necessarcy to make devices. Sometimes it is only someones job to put things together.
So everybody out there: Who know such parts Scott descibed to put together?

Alana

[Alana]

Scott asked in one of his last posts if anyone has contact with Magnetic Air Car. I try it but never got any reply.
They hide there invention. In one of his interviews (for everybody to read on their homepage) Mr. Donovan said that they go back to the patent of J.M. Custer (1932). Has anyone found this patent? I couldn't.
I think that they don't work with pistons. They create (with some batteries) a special air flow. With this few informations it's hard to believe that this invention works.

Alana

[Inquorate]

piston head

I only now have read this thread, and the ideas are rattling around in my mind..

Thankyou

I've got one practical suggestion for the home experimenters with small budgets; how to make a piston that fits a tube..
1: cut a piece of the piston case tubing - as long as you want the piston to be.
2: Take some glad-wrap or thin? glad-bag plastic, cut two rectangles that will cover the inside the piece of tube.
3: cut a piece of contact that is slightly larger than a cross section of the pipe, and press the pipe end onto it.
4: cover the inside of the piece of tube with paper glue - the clear liquid type (i used to let it dry on my hand all those years ago in school; it dries in a sheet that you could pull off, pretending it was skin) and let it dry.
//Alternatively, use cling-wrap or shopping bag plastic etc
5: mix up high temperature resin glue or jb-weld stuff found at auto stores - directly into the mould. Let it dry.
// possibly fix in the pivot arm for cylinder head before it dries, or drill a hole afterwards
6: pop it out; viola! Snug fit.

Love and light

[Lutherman]

Scott asked in one of his last posts if anyone has contact with Magnetic Air Car. I try it but never got any reply.
They hide there invention. In one of his interviews (for everybody to read on their homepage) Mr. Donovan said that they go back to the patent of J.M. Custer (1932). Has anyone found this patent? I couldn't.
I think that they don't work with pistons. They create (with some batteries) a special air flow. With this few informations it's hard to believe that this invention works.

Alana

The best info I've seen is from Paul Donovan who says he's using six stages of superchargers. Sounds like Bill Truitt's air pumps.

It looks to me like the J. M. Custer connection is fictional. The reason I say this is that Custer and air car inventor Roy J Meyers are featured on the same page of Modern Mechanix in 1932 but there is no obvious relationship between them, they're in two separate articles. It looks like a spurious connection expanded on by big talk and Magnetic Air Cars have not responded to my emails asking for documentation.

I hope they're for real but so far it doesn't look like it. They are invited to prove me wrong and I hope they will.

J. M. Custer lived in Arkansas and had a big family, his car was not an air car but a car made from garbage at a total cost of 60 cents. No connection that I can see to any air car. Meyers was from Iowa but spent most of his life in California. His patent is very interesting.

Scott

[Lutherman]

status quo must go

Scott,

One thing we have not looked at carefully, is the volume of space between the two equalizer valves. What if that is important? What if the space between the equalizer valves is equal to the volume of air at tank pressure that is also equal to the volume of air in one of the cylinders at atmospheric pressure? What if the "equalizer" operates on a "spacial resonance" and an "acoustic pressure wave"?

The other interesting thing is where Neal says in the patent that the compressor cylinders only compress against the equivalent of atmospheric pressure (14.7psi) and not full tank pressure. The question has always been, "how does he accomplish this set of conditions"?

One recent thought has been that the air that is compressed in the cylinder that does not leave the cylinder during any particular stroke, will simply act as an air spring, returning that much mechanical energy to the system. This means that only air that eventually enters the equalizer is air that must have energy invested in it by the compressor. 98% of unused mechanical energy is returned to the system as mechanical energy.

Peter, as always you bring new insight to this topic. If the 14 double acting cylinders are hammering a little air in, because of the heat that builds up right at the valve, then the air that doesn't go in might just help the crankshaft keep turning by re-expanding in the compression cylinder. That's the equivalent of a second stage compression cylinder or a booster with elevated pressure for the intake air.

The idea that this is an acoustic or resonance compressor literally inspired the thousands of pages I compiled that are availabale in my acoustic power library for download. It was first suggested by a retired mechanical engineer who said the words "pulse jet" and set me on a course of research that kept me slaving over photocopy machines in libraries for years.

It's all about going under the surface, to quote air car inventor, Bill Truitt, to learn "how air really works". Once we find the combination it will look obvious in retrospect. Like the way we now assume that the earth revolves around the sun. Not always was it obvious.

The status quo might be finished looking at compressed air, but I'm not finished with the status quo...

Scott

[Peter Lindemann]

Spacial Resonance

Scott,

As you have continued to share your insights, I have come to the conclusion that the secret to the equalizer may be related to the development of the "acoustic wave pump" by Toribio Bellocq in 1929. Bellocq was granted three US Patents that I have been able to find. The first two issued consecutively in 1929, and the third one issued in 1934.

The first patent lays out the basics, and the second one adds another idea to increase the efficiency of the system. The third one lays out complex designs, and even electrical analogues to the system. The "essence" of the mechanism allowed Bellocq to lift water from ANY DEPTH with a simple piston oscillator at the top of the well, as long as the standing column of water was caught between two passive check valves! Efficiency increased if the pressure in the system could be modulated in a series of pulses.

The math in the first patent clearly lays out the relationships between the cord length and the frequency required to lift the water on the action of an acoustic wave that was transmitted by the water itself.

The later patents show improvements.

Here are the US Patent numbers:

#1,730,336
#1,730,337
#1,941,593

Check it out. I think you'll catch the drift!

Peter

[Vortex]

acoustic wave pump factoids

Parent web page link Quote Source Link
1 centimeter of motion in a 20-centimeter cylinder increases the pressure by 5 percent.
But the same peak pressure will result if the piston shifts back and forth
at the resonant frequency of the cavity by just 50 micrometers

Source
double the acoustic pressure amplitude in the thermoacoustic resonator, you get four times the power density!

Oh, I found out I can't post only the quotes without this sentence.

[Lutherman]

Acoustic Power

Peter,

Thanks for mentioning Bellocq. Mobius Rex aka Robert Nelson of Rex Research got me onto Bellocq a long time ago and it turns out there are at least three other inventors who used similar technology, Arthur Bentley had a few patents. Albert G Bodine had about 50 patents on the same kind of technology including what is basically a spherical Neal tank, a resonant compressor. George (Gogu) Constantinesco not only had a bunch of patents on doing work with waves in liquids, he wrote a textbook on it. He was a big deal, and I have actually found several copies of the textbook when I lived in Portland and had access to Powell's books. He was the Tesla or Edison of Romania and is a national hero, well known there. He lived in London I think. There is a big website on him, done up by one of his descendants.

These materials are described at Pneumatic Options Research Library

Maybe Neal's tank is just a receptacle for the hammering of his 28-cylinder compressor, the double check valve just a capturing device that builds up pressure caused by reflection of odd-quarter wavelengths. The overpressure part of the wave is all that goes in. The sketch of wave reflection in some of my books was drawn by the same engineer who got me started on acoustic power research by suggesting the equalizer worked like a pulse jet.

The problem with Neal's patent as it is written is that it is not convenient to build a many-cylinder compressor to test the idea, so everyone tests it without the many-stage cylinder and it doesn't work. I don't know of anyone who has tried to build what is actually pictured in the patent. It could be a case of "nobody will believe me if I just tell the truth" so there was nothing left out of the patent because people will assume there is some trick to it.

Let's say you have 28 pistons per cycle (Neal actually used only 14) hammering at a wee check valve in a tank. Those are positive displacement, real live waves, the sort of thing that crashes boats against rocks and blows down whole cities. It is certainly worth trying, to build what the patent says before we design a zillion ways to improve on it or make it work.

Scott

[Peter Lindemann]

I think You're Right

Peter,

The problem with Neal's patent as it is written is that it is not convenient to build a many-cylinder compressor to test the idea, so everyone tests it without the many-stage cylinder and it doesn't work. I don't know of anyone who has tried to build what is actually pictured in the patent. It could be a case of "nobody will believe me if I just tell the truth" so there was nothing left out of the patent because people will assume there is some trick to it.

Let's say you have 28 pistons per cycle (Neal actually used only 14) hammering at a wee check valve in a tank. Those are positive displacement, real live waves, the sort of thing that crashes boats against rocks and blows down whole cities. It is certainly worth trying, to build what the patent says before we design a zillion ways to improve on it or make it work.

Scott

Scott,

I agree. Until we actually build one, we won't know. It may just work, as shown! Wouldn't that be a laugh.

Peter