Naboo brought this up in another thread, so I thought I'd repost it to get some discussion going.
Old threads:
Time to start doing the unthinkable...
New Hydroelectric Generator from Gravity Force

The basic premise is that with 2 tubes of water connected to eachother at rest, the height of the water will be the same in both tubes, even if 1 tube is larger than the other. However, if you add a piston to separate the water in one of the tubes, the water on top of the piston will put weight onto the water underneath it instead of mixing with it.
Example (the other threads probably explain it better): you've got 2 tubes connected to eachother, one is 2 inches in dimater, the other is 1 inch. If you pour in a liter of water, the water levels will be equal and you'd have 2/3 liter in the larger tube and 1/3 liter in the smaller. Now, put a watertight piston on top of the water in the large tube and add another liter of water on top of that. Now that the weight of a liter of water is pushing down on the water via the piston, the water has to all go into the smaller tube to reach equilibrium. Now there's 1 liter in each tube with the smaller tube's water level being twice as high as the larger's.


About building, I've been trying to make on of these, but trying to make a large, watertight, low-friction piston has been difficult. A way that I'd hoped would make it easier to build was replacing the piston with a bag. By that, I mean think of a square plastic bag that's kind of like an accordian. It can expand and collapse easily. Now, put that into a box so it's restricted from expanding outward, only up. Then, put a hole in the top and bottom and a valve in the top and connect to the smaller tube at the bottom. Then attach a bowl with the bottom cut out to the hole in the top, too to catch the water and keep it from going down the sides of the box. It's hard to explain so I'll make a diagram in a bit. I think this might make it easier to build, but I can't make much of anything. Hopefully, this'll help anyone who's better at actually making things.

That's all I can think of for now. I hopee we can get a good discussion going on this.

The biggest construction problem is the creation of something that
can be used as a piston/cylinder without a machine shop and expense.

What material to use and how to seal it, this is the issue.

Yes, the bag idea is good, but that material and how to seal it.

Rubber car/semi-truck tire inner tube and pvc pipe. This has limited
size selections, but one could use multiple piston/cylinders working together
during a single stroke to obtain greater volumes of work.

With unlimited resources and money, you build your idea, otherwise you
need a redesign of the idea to fit limited resources and money.

This means a more complex design due to less expense and limited resources..
One machined part might have to be replaced by multiple non-machined parts.

You ask yourself, what can I make that works?
Then redesign what does works into your idea.

Looking at this image:
How does the design change if the piston/cylinder in the image above
is not a sealed piston inside that cylinder.

Just creating any kind of piston/cylinder is a first step.
Water does not compress, and thus it will cause a leak and a
blow out faster and easier than a piston/cylinder using air.
A water leak generally is harder and takes longer to fix than an air leak.

Transfer of force from air to water is easy using water as your piston.

The stoke of a closed valveless air piston/cylinder, can be used to pump water via two one way valves.
The force of the air is transfered to the water and the water becomes the
piston and the water pipe becomes the cylinder.

See what I'm speaking of here.
I'm looking at a single direction, upwards only, power stoke.
The down stroke does do work, but very little compared to the up stroke.
The container holding up/down float is not closed and is open
This simplifies design requirements.

I actually agree Vortex, I say actually because this is my drawing

But yeah I have began to understand the problem, and air can fix it perfectly!
It will then look much like Heron's Pump, which I think already gives us free energy.
With a two-cylinder setup where water will fall in down in one, in such a way as to build up air-pressure in the second, which then pushes on the surface of the water, this could have worked. Again it will then be something very close in operation of the Heron Pump.

But, still with the old design, I've heard that wood is actually possible to use as the piston material, and then it could be fitted with rubber around the its outer surface. I guess the tube inside a flattened bicycle wheel could worked as the rubber. But then if that could work, I think that the biggest problem still is the cylinders or containers. However, if we used air pressure and water without any pistons, meaning less work and less expense, then we could have afforded combining several cylinders together forming a larger surface. Seems it could be possible..
Bye for now,
Julian

Take a 1,2 or 3 liter, cut the bottom off. Attach a hose to the cap. Screw the cap on. Push bottle into bucket of water. Presto! Air Piston/cylinder.
No fitting piston to cylinder. No rubber seals. That's about as easy as it
can get. Of course this makes the over all design much more complex.
Everything is give/take. You gain some here.. you probably lose some there.

I will be thinking of how to make use these SODA Bottle air piston/cylinder.
This is idle for what I'm looking to do. Pump water.
The pumped air is in a closed system. None coming in and none going out.

A float provides all the power I need to move the piston/cylinders.
As I said, this makes the design more complex .. but relatively cheap and easy construction is what I think is obtained.
Most importantly, something that is doable.

Naboo, this (what I'm trying to do) IS using gravity, just indirectly.
Gravity does cause upward movement TOO .

Oh, just a few holes in the bottom of the bottle, no need to cut the bottom off.

Me too! Yes, its all about creating an imbalance of forces (high resting water mass versus low resting one). Good idea to use the soda bottle, we have several walls of them in our garage Its hard to get rid of them...

My goal will now be to find an autonomous way of making the two cycles of air pushing water and then refilling again, like how I figured it out mechanically.
Hero's pump is definitely the way to go, I just need to modify it so that it can repeat.... Aha, valves will probably be the answer!
Cya later,
Julian

I just want to let you all know that I got the concept finished now in a sketch, its very much like a dual Hero Pump. I'll show it once I get it built in vector graphic

Update Edit:

The image is not done yet, but I thought I could just let you know how I picture this. To steer everything four valves are needed, they will flip-flop back and forth for every cycle, two open and two closed.

This is just like a dual Hero fountain, which also proves its free energy capability. I know some of you here don't agree with this, but please let me know just why it doesn't work.
Julian

The water pump uses 2 one way valves, but that's later after everything else.

To run one full cycle, I do see the need for a single valve.
I'm not worried about speed of action.
I'm ok with using auto siphons and let it run as slow as it wants to at this point.
To start a new full cycle after the initial cycle, it will require the water pump.

A simple auto siphon is a "loop siphon", it's only a loop in the hose.
Siphons - Aquaponicswiki.com MediaWiki

Or, it seems, a loop siphon can be designed using a U-Pipe.
YouTube - Affnan's Backyard Aquaponics - Swivel Valve 2/2 - Explained

This explains a using a Weir and how you design to keep your siphons primed
and ready for use when the time comes to kick into action.
NOTE: the design shown requires a manual prime.
Super Sucking Siphon - EvilWiki

See image of latest ideas
Hydrostatic Pressure & Buoyancy force

Okey, here you can see four different frames of the operation:









I'll also show some calculations soon, as it is pretty easy to calculate the height it will reach. When you have a normal piston with water resting above it it absorbs the weight of the water, but in this case that does not happen, it will just use the hydrostatic pressure. Still, when the surface area of the output-pipe is smaller than the surface area of the water inside the tank we get a leverage we can use to push the water higher up. If the surface area was twice that of the output-pipe, we would not only get twice the height of the source pushing, but it would also had have to be added together with the height of the water being pushed up, thus at a ratio of 2:1 we'd get about three times as much height.

Naboo

I can see that now. Looks good ... but
It still requires a means to extract work, other than what it is doing now.
And the question becomes, how much work will that be and at what cost?

I'm trying for cheap as possible and if it breaks, I don't have to purchase
a new part. I have to build a new part. That's my design plans.

Thanks! Hmm, yeah I was thinking about everything expect how to make it do useful work, but that is probably the common scenario for most of the new alternative generators. I've always thought that the idea of pumping water for gravitational power storage was a good idea, it means that we can use lots of power when we need to, and collect more when we don't.
Also it is some hundred time cheaper than a standard battery bank, they cost a whole lot!

But yeah I'm totally into your idea, recycle everything that can be reused and don't bother buying something we don't really need. So, one way could be (with a little hard labor) starting the construction of a large tank, or dam if you will.
It could have been a large hole in the ground on top of a hill with plastic inside, or it could be a container built with bricks, and if you have a whole lot of bricks just lying around for no use then it doesn't need to be that expensive.
It is simply about finding the project which is the least expensive and most practical, and then I've have always been fascinated with water so I would have liked that method. Some kind of turbine attached to the end should produce some power, that is probably where the investment lies.

But hey, if you want to produce electricity in large quantities then you have to pay something, if you aren't planning on winding everything by yourself


Also, what I wanted to use as containers was these buckets that has a cap on the top, meaning that if we drilled in a hole or two and just screwed tight some rubber it would work airtight. I know because this is exactly what Tommey Lee Reed did, and just think about the difference in surface area between a garden hose and normal bucket! The ratio will be huge!
Bye for now,
Julian

Hello guys, you have an interesting thread going but I am afraid this is not going to work. Let me explain why I think so. In your second frame Naboo you show all tanks being equally filled. I am thinking this is where everything will stop. If I understand you correctly you are thinking the water in the top left tank will flow into the bottom left tank causing the air pressure to rise in both tanks. This in turn will push the water out of the lower right tank into the upper right tank. I think you have missed the fact that when the air pressure rises in both lower tanks then it will be pushing back up on the water trying to come down from the left upper tank also. I think you can build a cheap model to check this out using some 2 liter soda bottles and some rubber tubing. You could hot glue the tubing to the bottles and use clothes pins or small clamps to pinch the hose together instead of buying valves. If I have misunderstood please accept my apologies. Just trying to save you some trouble and expense.

Best wishes, citfta

No thank you for trying to help me, I have actually failed several times in other concepts which I thought could work, like the siphon tread you can find in overunity.com.

But here's what I think; basically you are right that the water will push back with the same pressure as the static pressure of water column will push, it's newtons third law of motion. However, this would only happen if the water didn't have any place to escape.

Think of your weight. If you stand on the ground you are applying a force to the ground, but the ground is also applying the same force back on you.
However if the ground had moved because of your weight, for example if you stood on a big lever, then it wouldn't apply the same force back on you.

In this case the water is allowed to travel up in the thin pipe. As all systems want to reach equilibrium, they will, as long we give them the opportunity, but here the way it happen is changed from the normal equal height/static pressure because a simple machine has been employed, giving leverage.
A simple machine is just another word for a gear,piston,hinge or whatever.
It chances the relationship between force F and distance D, but they equal to the same value.


Specifically about the air pressure, yes it will push back with the exact same force as from the water column, so they are equal, meaning that neither of them can push each other. What is not equal is the force from thin pipe because of it interaction with leverage. If you watch some of the youtube clips about Hero's fountain you will see that it alone at least work.

What I want to do here is to take it further, by combining two of them, each feeding each other instead of just sending the high squirt of water back into the lower tank, which I think is a complete waste. I want to use that high water for power!


But don't worry, I'll try the concept with soda-bottles before I try it with larger buckets, I have learned my lesson before
Julian

I'm having a hard time understanding the air piston. Rather than the weight of the water, it seems to rely on the the volume. I'm not sure, but is the full weight/power of all the water actually being transfered? I keep thinking it will stall when the height of the water in the tank matches the height of the water in the smaller tube. Is there an in depth explanation anywhere on how the air piston is supposed to work?

Please check out Hero's fountain, you can find an explanation on it on wikipedia, youtube and many other sites.

The answer to your question is partly yes, since it is only the hydrostatic force we are using now, but we are using the surface difference of the two cylinders to give the ratio of leverage by which we can multiply the distance with.

But you can say that a solid piston is better, because it will absorb the full weight of the water and turn it into pressure. In fact, if I didn't knew about Hero's pump I would probably never believed that this could work.

And i don't think the water flow will stop once every of them is seemingly at the same height, there is still a transformation of force and distance here which gives the source an extra helping hand.

But I must try this soon....

Here is my version..

I will use mechanical valves activated by position of the bucket and to get the cilinder back up i will use the power of floatation while the weight buckets content flows downwards into the cylinder.

Update1:

First experiment was to see if the piston would rise up again if water was added. It works. I added some foam undernead the piston. A one way valve and an airintake will make it able to go up again by itself. When you pour water on top of the piston. It will transfer automaitcally trough the piston head and the whole thing is in starting position again.

I did this to see if the floating would overcome the resistance from the watertight seals, so far ..so good.

Not there yet. I still need to see if this also works when i balance the whole thing out.

My setup is experimental so it goes very slow.. But i'm just testing the concept.


Next stept is to see what the minium weight/pressure is to rise the water to a point above the cylinder.

I'm aiming to balance the piston so that 1 kg will make the difference. ( = 1 liter )

I made a little movie of the floating cilinder

YouTube - Float1

Cherryman, great animation!
I also the saw the videoclip, so we see that the force of buoyancy can overcome the static friction of the seal. I wonder if adding a lubricant could decrease the resistance further and still make it watertight?

So "in essence" you have simplified the first design I made, as instead of using a long cylinder for both chambers you connected them with a pipe, thereby making the components more accessible for normal people.

I'm not sure if this is correct, but isn't the number of valves you would need here 3, one at the red dot, one in the piston and one somewhere in the return pipe, to keep the pressure of the water column from flowing in when the piston valve is open?


Purely by guessing, since you are using the force of the water's weight to push the long column of water up, you won't probably need that much of a weight to overcome the hydrostatic pressure, since you need something like 11 meters of water just to create 1 bar, or double atmosphere.

Btw I like your design ;D
Julian

Naboo. Tnx for commenting.

About the seals. Less friction would be good.
Maybe a pressure seal is even better.. only closed when on pressure, fully open on the way up.

I tried some some weight on the cylinder, to see at how much weight the the water is forced up high enough. So far no good.. A few kilo's did not do it. I have to built a more stable setup.

I'm afraid it will need a some dead ballast, problem is that dead ballest has to go back up also..

I share youre idears, still think you might get some usable hydraulic power out of using the water as a liquid weight


Tnx for youre comments.