[ot][spam][crazy] Making Free Electricity out of a Water Bomb
When water freezes to ice, it exerts pressure and expands. This is a physical force that could be harnessed for power. The power available is probably a function of the temperature change available, the mass of material holding that temperature, and the amount of water available. If the temperature change does not cross the freezing point of water, a substance other than water could be chosen, in theory. Note: the planet is covered in water, and during winter something like a quarter of the planet's surface crosses below freezing. So there's potentially a lot of power available from this.
We've reviewed a phase diagram of water in another thread. Maybe it would be more interesting to build a generator. Ideally the generator would be geared so high, that it takes the entire winter for the water to fully freeze, and the entire summer for it to fully melt.
I visited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_actuator which describes and pictures some linear actuators. They use a screw to convert between linear and rotational force, and they are in media drives of computers. I also happen to have a DC motor that is geared for low. When a DC motor is forcefully turned, it becomes a generator with opposite gearing. So I might be able to try to make some kind of hijinxed form of this if I took apart a dvd drive for its tiny linear screw!
my broken dvd drive is outdoors :( it was exciting though! maybe later! maybe i'll order something that could help me generate electricity from a change in volume
google says water at 0 C exchanges 334 J/g during freezing, and that that's 0.0927778 watt hours. So you'd need about 10.778 kg of water to make a KWh of energy with perfect conversion. 1 kg of water takes up 1 liter, so you'd need about 11 liters of slush to hold 1 KWh of energy.
If a home takes 10 thousand kwh/year, and we multiple that by 10 so that the power never goes or if the conversion efficiency is poor, we might need a container of water that's 100,000 liters or 26000 gallons in volume per househould, and doesn't break at 0 C. we might need to put heat conductors through the container so that all the water reaches temperature, dunno. You could probably divide that number by 5 if your hardware is good. I websearched for this volume and an early hit from alibaba showed a tank for sale for $120: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/100000-liters-water-storage-tanks-bol...
I think they mislabeled it. The volume comes out to 1k liters, not 100k. This one looks right; my browser's having trouble with the page though, to find a price: https://www.kingspan.com/au/en-au/products-brands/water-tanks/water-tanks-ra...
I'm thinking here, a 5 gallon bucket would make you 22 KWh of electricity for a freezing cycle filling a 1.6458 L piston generator with ice: bbut then in the spring it melts again! The generator runs both ways! You get a total of 44 KWh of electricity! So to power the home, you'd only need a 10-50 thousand liter tank, not a 100k liter tank. Now, the reason I thought of this, is because as winter has happened this year for me, things have actually frozen and melted many times already. It might be a freezing and melting cycle in one single day.
if you use an ice expansion generator to heat your home, remember that there is heat from last summer stored in the middle of the tank, and you could add some insulation and put heat conductors into there to reduce your energy drain
4 in pvc pipe: 1.6458 liters fills 5 cm 2 in pvc pipe: 1.6458 liters fills 20 cm likely made many errors
oh here's the paper i guess: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-018-0139-z they made a vehicle powered by a water tank freezing.
On Fri, Jan 7, 2022, 8:44 AM k <gmkarl@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm thinking here, a 5 gallon bucket would make you 22 KWh of
I think I was looking at the wrong number and this is more like 1.75 KWh / 5gal bucket. unsure. electricity for a freezing cycle filling a 1.6458 L piston generator
with ice: bbut then in the spring it melts again! The generator runs both ways! You get a total of 44 KWh of electricity!
So to power the home, you'd only need a 10-50 thousand liter tank, not a 100k liter tank.
Now, the reason I thought of this, is because as winter has happened this year for me, things have actually frozen and melted many times already. It might be a freezing and melting cycle in one single day.
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