self powering air compressor

[jdcrete]

i have an idea for a self fueling compressor based on 3 existing patents. 2 from rudolf vuilleumier 1.275,507( vuilleumier heat pump) 1,321,343 which if inspected closely everyone will agree that it qualifies as a maxwell's demon. and the last one is a heat powered compressor 3,237,847 by f. wilson. all public domain i believe.

these three devices need to be understood then i can explain how i connect them into a system. i have no shop or funds all this is just models in my head. i have no pc right now so i can't even throw together any diagrams. if everyone is willing to read these patents and understand them i believe the explanation will be simple and then everyone could evaluate whether this will work. i see no reason why it shouldn't.

[jdcrete]

equally worthy of attention are 3 patents from vannevar bush 2,127,286 and 2,175,376 both variations of vuilleumier heat pump and 2,157,229 direct thermal compressor using heat without mechanical compression. this patent even has a figure which shows a system with a hydrailic/pneumatic motor.but the most important patent is the vuilleumier 'heat diferentiator'. this is the source of heat to drive the whole thing. this device concentrates the heat in the air in one portion and rarefies it in another(i.e. maxwell's demon) all with very little mechanical input.

[Uncle Buddy]

I have downloaded the Vuilleumier and Wilson patents. I'll take a look at them when I get a chance. Thanks for the heads up, they sound interesting. You should check out John Dewey Houston's patents too. He was a young man who lived in Prineville, Oregon and invented an air-to-air heat pump which he was told could not realistically be produced because it would put everybody out of work! In other words, it worked too well for the status quo to accept it. Unfortunately he died very young, because he was a real genius. There is still a scholarship fund in his name.

Do you know who Vannevar Bush was? He was a big time Washington DC insider, very very big. Not your average inventor. His calculation engine was a room-sized device that could perform calculus using gears and other mechanical means. This got him a very presigious medal in the science world. He was working on his mechanical heat production patents at the same time that Bob Neal and others were working on self-filling air tanks and the like. His patents are excellent reading material, though I don't spend much time reading because I spend most of my time with correspondence. Anyway, VannEEvar was huge. His work is credited with inspiring hypertext.

He wasn't really a scientist but a thinker, a true inventor. Oh and don't let me forget to mention...he spearheaded the Manhattan Project. Yes, it was Vannevar Bush who pushed the president to get the Bomb developed toward the end of WWII. The pres put him in charge of getting that done and gave him the scientists and resources to make sure it would happen.

I will take a look at those patents when I can, and feel free to expand on what you've said so far, as you're likely to get more response if you summarize it yourself. People don't like to read, they'd rather converse.

Scott

[Uncle Buddy]

I've taken a very quick look at the three patents and I am impressed. You have taken what appears (on superficial inspection) to be a solid scientific approach, and I think if you continue on with your effort, you will be rewarded for your trouble.

The first thing I'd like to see is a one page summary. We can hash that out when you're done with it, and then you'd need a more detailed description along with some easy math. From there it doesn't get easier and easier. It's hard work to arrive at something that someone is going to first understand, then appreciate, and finally, hopefully put money into. Very few unproven ideas are worth looking at, much less funding, but by starting with these well developed public domain patents, you might end up with something that someone will want to help you build.

I hope you'll stay with this, as I believe you have discovered some real gems of forgotten public domain technology.

Disclaimer: I could be wrong! But I like what I saw so far.

Scott

[Uncle Buddy]

Since this is related to a stirling cycle, one thing I'd like to hear from you is how you think it will work to extract ambient heat from the environment. Anything you can do to describe what you have in mind will help to get others involved in the discussion.

Here are some links about Vuilleumier in wikipedia. The French wikipedia seems to have more to say about him and it should be pretty easy to improve on the Google translation as French isn't hard for English speakers to translate, with a little effort and a good dictionary. You can download a dictionary from archive.org if necessary.

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froid_Stirling

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuilleumier_cycle

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_engine

Wurm, Jaroslav (1991). Stirling and Vuilleumier heat pumps: design and applications. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-053567-1.

My question is, if Vuilleumier was found acceptable by status quo science, is it possible he was talking about something so conventional that it could never be used in a self powering air compressor? If he had mentioned perpetual motion he would have been spurned by the status quo scientists but here we have a whole book about him by Jaroslav Wurm. So you should be able to state clearly what is unique about his stirling device, and how it can be used to get free energy where other stirling devices wouldn't work. If he had a heat pump, what was its maximum demonstrated and/or theoretical COP? Does it fall under that classical category "heat pump" which is limited by Carnot's equation (see my discussion in yahoo's airpoweredcars forum), or is it a heat pump only by analogy?

Whenever you get interested in a patent you should also get interested in the inventor. It is seldom impossible to learn more about the inventor by googling his name. In this case we have good news: he was mainstream science, his invention is still remembered. And maybe bad news: he was mainstream science...

Good luck and I hope to see you continue your project. You might check you tube for a working model, there are lots of stirling engines on you tube.

Scott

[jdcrete]

all heat pumps are already accepted by conventional science as free energy devices they just disguise it by calling it cop. a cop of 5 just means that for one unit input you get 5 out. how? it's materials science. you pay only to pump the refrigerant around and to put it in unstable conditions. the refrigerant does all the work for you by reacting and trying to find equilibrium. when the refrigerant flash evaporates it over reacts and goes past equilibrium in the opposite direction. then the only way for it to find equilibrium is to take heat out of the enviroment. same with tesla coil the make and break on the spark causes sharp gradients which over react and throw everything out of equilibrium. then the electrons and protons in the wires suck what they need out of the zero point enviroment.

as far as the vuilluemier heat pump goes it is only superficially related to a stirling device. vuilluemier is constant volume no mechanical compression. pressure changes are induced by heat input and the displacers only move the gas from one temp zone to another. this process requires very little mechanical input. vannevar bush even shows the displacers being powered from the pressure inside the device.

the vuilluemier heat differentiator is most important it requires very little input because most of the compression energy is return to the piston minus pressure losses from the heat being taken out of the air, friction losses and whatever other losses there might be. when the heat taken out of this device is used as the input to the heat pump the heat gets multiplied by whatever the cop is. a heat pump is an amplifier. then you use 1 unit of the heat pump output as input on the cold return side of the heat differentiator making up for all the losses increasing the pressure and driving the piston instead of the piston driving the gas,producing net work output. then all the rest of of the output heat units can be used to drive any heat driven device. the wilson patent shows a heat driven mechanical compressor.

all waste heat should be returned to the front end on the cold return side where the heat will be differentiated out and multiplied by the heat pump.

[Uncle Buddy]

Yes, heat pumps can have overunity Coefficient of Performance. But they don't have to. No doubt your idea would produce a high COP. Can you start at the beginning and say how? You don't have to say "this is from this patent" and "that is from that patent" because reading patents that people tell me about would erase what little time I have to work on my own stuff, and the patents are all expired. Thanks for the initial reference to them, now take credit for your work and just say what YOU want to do. Try to organize your thought, describe step-by-step, one idea at a time. It isn't easy, I know. It isn't just for me and others, it's for you. By drawing a picture with words, you might find voids in the theory where improvements are needed.

[jr]

Agree, a sketch could go a long way.....even a simple block diagram.

Man, I wish I could understand patents!

[jdcrete]

i have to disagree about reading patents. you yourself have said that everything you ever learned about compressed air came from textbooks. a patent is nothing more than a textbook.

i'm not a scientist...and math...not my bag. i just see processes and systems of processes. i will try to put together a diagram. i have no pc so i will have to hand draw it and take a pic of it.

[Uncle Buddy]

I'm not against reading patents, I just don't have the time! I have a lot of correspondence to deal with because of the website and related projects. Also I am virtually uneducated, so reading anything technical is very difficult because I have to stop and look everything up.

Patents tend to be long-winded, repetitive and obfuscatory. That is not the fault of we who WANT to read and understand them. I used to read patents all the time and at some point I just stopped reading and kept collecting.

So my message to you is that I WANT to read those patents and if you manage to motivate me with a lucid summary and diagram, there's even a chance I will do it! But ultimately the one who has to do the hardest work on your invention is you. I want to encourage you without taking on your burden.

Scott

[jr]

Agree!

In another thread we lament the 'powers that be suppressing true innovation'. Regardless to what extent this is true, boards like this and sites like Kickstarter really show promise to put power back in the hands of common folk.

To this end I would gladly offer my services to anyone who has a vetted and viable idea.

I have access to a small machine shop and rapid prototyping (RepRap) and am quote innovative with common materials.....

[Uncle Buddy]

Thanks for the offer. I wonder where this word "vetted" came from? I never heard it before and then suddenly it's all over the place. I guess it means "proven" or something?

Anyone out there have a proven concept? jr says he can get parts made...

Kickstarter's good for some stuff but I don't think they go for making prototypes, even of proven stuff. I think it's out of their scope. What they would be good for is making a documentary or a book project or something like that.

[tommy]

Jul 11, 2012 14:35:17 GMT -8 jdcrete said:

equally worthy of attention are 3 patents from vannevar bush 2,127,286 and 2,175,376 both variations of vuilleumier heat pump and 2,157,229 direct thermal compressor using heat without mechanical compression. this patent even has a figure which shows a system with a hydrailic/pneumatic motor.but the most important patent is the vuilleumier 'heat diferentiator'. this is the source of heat to drive the whole thing. this device concentrates the heat in the air in one portion and rarefies it in another(i.e. maxwell's demon) all with very little mechanical input.

Sorry for the late response, 2 years!
It is interesting to WIKI Vannevar Bush, just to see who we are talking about here. If credibility was rated from 1 to 100, Bush scores 100, I would say.
One of his many patents that is applicable here is 2461032, and it is attached.
Notice the water pumping is only shown as one example of a use for the compressed air being generated. Note the air compression is only to 5 - 10 psig. There are a couple of earlier patents that lead up to this one, but this is the one that is most applicable. The input energy is heat radiated from the sun into a heat collector box. The amount of energy available is typical of other machines that use the sun's radiant heat as an energy source. The valving and compressed air pumping method is similar to Neal, except Bush is non-sonic and Neal is sonic, in other words Bush's oscillation is slow, whereas Neal's is operating at the speed of sound. Neal is not collecting the sun's radiant energy, instead, Neal is collecting the gas molecules themselves, that have been energized already by the sun's energy.
My only two points of interest here are 1. Bush's machine could be built and used to pump water or run a fountain, but higher pressures would require many stages, and would always be limited by the amount of the sun's radiant heat that could be captured. 2. In order to surpass Bush's energy harvesting limitation, a different method would be needed, which is where (I am theorizing) the sonic devices like Neal appeared.
Just to be a skeptic, Bush would certainly have known about this sonic method, but he does not appear to have pursued it. This could be because there is some "gotcha" associated with the sonic method. Although that might just be valve lifetime which could be worked around. Only active experimentation will answer that question.
US2461032VannevarBush.pdf (910.8 KB)

[Uncle Buddy]

Sept 26, 2014 11:24:56 GMT -8 tommy said:

Just to be a skeptic, Bush would certainly have known about this sonic method, but he does not appear to have pursued it. This could be because there is some "gotcha" associated with the sonic method.

Bush and Neal could have passed in the hall at the patent office, their efforts were pretty much concurrent. But Bush was a Washington insider, he's the guy who talked the pres into dropping the bomb at the end of the WW2. Head of the Manhattan Project, inspirer of hypertext, I have a big photo of him in his workshop from a Popular Mechanics magazine. I have yet to find any family link to other currently well known Bushes.

I'd guess his "gotcha" was the govt and its backers, don't want to get political but take John Houston for example, another very credible inventor--there is still a scholarship fund named after him--and he was told by the business types to whom he showed his self-sustaining heat pump that the introduction of such a device would destroy the economy, eliminate jobs, the usual scary talk that monopolists use to keep their jobs. As I was told by a guy who advertised his services as an inventor's helper in 1982, "They will never let you do it. Never!" This guy, the naysayer, is still in business, and I'm still plugging away at my hobby.

There is inertia in social systems too. Resistance to something new is not just some stray bit of discouragement that floats your way, it is a force to be reckoned with. I'd say Vannevar Bush was in a position to know better than to take it on. I'd say he knew all about Bellocq's sonic pump and Constantinesco's many sonic machines, especially the one that won the airborne part of the first war, the sonic logic device that allowed the pilot of an airplane to shoot bullets between the spinning blades of his own aircraft...! Amazing, Constantinesco and Bush occupied similar roles in regards to the two wars. Constantinesco almost got stopped, though. He was all set to get government sponsorship to develop his invention during WWI when he opened his big mouth and called water "compressible", then he was dropped like a hot potato for going against the grain of conventional wisdom. (Our educationsl system filters people out.) The military official who had introduced him ended up funding the machine's development himself, and once it was proven, the bigwigs produced it.

I think Bush was a better politician than the flamboyant Constantinesco, he kept his mouth shut about anything he knew about that would just get him ostracized.

Thanks for the patent Tommy, I didn't have that one yet.

[newt]

"They will never let you build it" - I'm sure you've said before that the way forward is for backyard mechanics to build their own and once enough are out there "they" won't be able to stop them being built.
I really like the story of ALL power labs: www.fastcompany.com/3027127/meet-the-radical-berkeley-artist-whose-company-is-turning-trash-into-electricity
DIY culture hacker biomass power. Article here on how they developed from open source experimenters. Apologies if I already posted this. I like the model of selling kits, starting very small and building a network of enthusiasts.