Japanese Inventor's Motor Uses 80% Less Power

novakane007 writes "A Japanese inventor named Kohei Minato has created a new kind of motor. It uses magnetism to perpetuate the motor motion. As a result the motors uses 80% less energy than a conventional motor, while still maintaing the same horsepower. "Minato assures us that he hasn't transcended the laws of physics. The force supplying the unexplained extra power out is generated by the magnetic strength of the permanent magnets embedded in the rotor. 'I'm simply harnessing one of the four fundamental forces of nature,' he says." On top of the energy savings the motor runs cool to the touch and is significantly quieter than a tradtitionally powered fan. Sound to good to be true? Well he's already started selling the fan to a chain of convience stores in Japan. Hopefully soon the design will make it in to your home PC, allowing them to run much quieter."

Comments

Definitely a violation

[QuantumFTL]

This is probably already redudant, however the article says

" Minato says that average efficiency on his motors is about 330 percent. "

That's definitely violating thermodynamics. I do not understand how this is "news for nerds", however at least the editors should please put some kind of disclaimer that he is in fact claiming to break conservation of energy.

Cheers,
Justin

Re:Definitely a violation

[the morgawr]

The article is fubar'ed beyond belief. Ignoring for a minute the obsurd thermodynamics claims, based off of the description of the motor, it seems like he's invented a very controlable reluctance motor.

Asside: For those who arn't EEs you can use magents to spin things in various ways: induction, rotating fields generated by coils, reluctance, etc. Reluctance motors are 10-20% more efficient they their syncronous counterparts, but tend to be limited in size, hard to manufacture, and difficult to control. A lot of research has gone in to the different ways to make the magnetic stator to make the motor easier to make, control, and scale up.

At best he's invented a particular rotor/stator combination that creates a really odd magnetic field that he can actually control. My guess is that the motor he has made runs syncronous after spinning up and that his particualar arangement of magents makes it possible for the motor to get enough torque to spin up at non-syncronous speed (i.e. start when you plug it in, and possibly give it a spin).

IF this does work, IF he can get the reliability to the level of syncronous motors, IF it runs at a reasonable power factor, IF its reasonably EMC, AND IF it doesn't require complicated or expensive control mechanisms, he will have a good product on his hands. This would likely be used in a lot of factories, and in HVAC systems in cars. It's probably not that useful for speed control based applications (if it's a reluctance based motor, it's running at syncrous speed) so that excludes it from replacing induction motors and DC motors, unless it's so much more efficient that adding a variable AC supply to the control equipment leaves it still more efficient.

Honestly though, I think the countless posts here are probably right: he invented something and only THINKS it works.

Bullshit is this weeks magic word

[Ckwop]

"Mention of Over Unity devices in many scientific circles will draw icy skepticism."

Hmm.. Simple reason why. If you supply power to the motor using a carnot engine
and use the power from the motor to drive a carnot refrigator.
Then there will be an overall flow of heat from cold to hot..
Breaking the second law of thermodynamics..

Bullshit is word of the week.

Simon.

Re:Quiet PCs?

[s20451]

Hopefully soon the design will make it in to your home PC, allowing them to run much quieter

Actually I find it odd that this is the first application that occurred to the poster.

Gentlemen, this new motor design will make battery-powered cars a reality, reduce industrial energy consumption by a third, possibly save the world from global warming ... oh yes, and it will make your case mods mad 31337.

Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws

[Enigma_Man]

Still incorrect though. Using this logic, you could hook one motor to another, using one as a generator. Take the power from the generator, and use it to power the first motor, which makes more wattage than you put in, which spins the armature faster, which makes more current... Until you have an infinitely fast spinning infinite energy generator.

It's fake if this is true, I can't get to the article to verify myself.

-Jesse

Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC?

[Ralph Wiggam]

I can't be the only Slashdotter to have cracked open a dead hard drive. Those magnets are very very strong. Could someone with a better physics background than I please explain how a drive based on tiny fluctuations in a magnetic field can operate next to such a powerful magnet?

-B

Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws

[Golias]

"I'm simply harnessing one of the four fundamental forces of nature," he says.

This is the exact same argument every peddler of perpetual motion machines uses to claim that his invention is not a perpetual motion machine, but is somehow harnessing external power which is just hanging around out there to be used.

The Earth's electromagnetic field is a popular choice among these hucksters. With this guy, it's magnets.

The very fact that this showed up on the front page of /. shows that they've given up all pretense of caring what they publish here.

Re:Just to be clear..

[TechyImmigrant]

Yes, I read the article. It has all the signs of something that needs justly debunking.

The 'no formal training' genius.
Power out > Power in
Use of the words 'over unity'
A tale of skepticism from scientists
Little guy vs. big guyes woes
Failing to identify the 'fundamental force of nature' that is being harnessed.

But in the end, you don't need to look futher than the violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

Re:In this article, we do not violate the laws

[tverbeek]

The very fact that this showed up on the front page of /. shows that they've given up all pretense of caring what they publish here.

Or they think that pointing out incredible claims for scrutiny is a good way to test them. Note the "from the skeptical-eye-on-the-science-guy dept." tag on the article rather than, say, "from the holy-shit-give-this-guy-a-Nobel-quickly dept."