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

Porcelain engine running on water

[wawannem]

Heh, This guy will soon end up in the oil company holding cell with the guy trying to make a porcelain engine that runs on water.

Just to be clear..

[TechyImmigrant]

"9.144 volts and 192mA output. 1.8 x 0.15 x 2 = 540mW input and 9.144 x 0.192 = 1.755W out. "

So there's nothing real to be seen here. Move on.

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:Just to be clear..

[Viv]

Not quite right -- in an AC circuit, if you take ALL power into account, you'll always get equal power in and out. The key is that when the current and voltage are out of phase (as in an inductive or capacitive circuit), some of the power is "real" and some of it is "reactive". The real is measured in watts and the reactive is measured in "VAR"s. You can't use the VARs directly because they're the power that gets stored in the inductance and/or capacitance in the operation of the circuit.

If you get a higher output power than input or a higher input power than output, it means that you forgot to check the reactive power :)

Four laws of electrical science; there are no exceptions to these, ever:
1. Voltage is equal to current times impedance
2. The algebraic sum of all voltages in a loop is zero.
3. The algebraic sum of all currents in a branch is zero.
4. The algebraic sum of powers in a circuit is zero. (aka, power in = power out).

If your measurements ever violate any of these laws, you either f*cked up, or you need to file a patent because you just found a way to violate a _law_ of electrical science. That's a big deal, like violating gravity :)

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.

Porcelain engine running on water

[AtariAmarok]

Heh, This guy will soon end up in the oil company holding cell with the guy trying to make a porcelain engine that runs on water ...down the hall from the vault containing the Skynet microchips from the future, all those Tesla inventions that the government has been sitting on, alien car motors from Roswell, turbines that run on Orgone energy, and real working cold fusion.

By the way, the porcelain engine with water? I've got one in my bathroom. It turns on when you flip a metal lever.

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:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC?

[T5]

You! Back to physics class!

Exactly how did you think that an electric motor functions? The electrons don't line up all nice and pretty and start pushing the armature around and around. Their dizzying speed doesn't induce a partial vacuum that drags the armature around in its wake. No siree, Bob. They're enslaved to make a magnetic field that alternates attraction and repulsion against a set of fixed magnets.

Magnets! They're everywhere! Argh!

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.

Measurement error or fraud?

[Spamalamadingdong]

I could probably make a device that could take 16 watts in and generate 300 volt-amperes (AC) out - but the volt-amperes would be almost 90 degrees out of phase, and the power factor would be less than 5%. The real power out of the device would be substantially less than 16 watts. There is no way in physics to have more than 1 watt out per watt in, "magical magnets" or no. If the device was extracting energy from the magnets, they would be depleted and the device would run down after a while. That's 2nd semester physics, basic E&M.

Either the proponents of this device are complete incompetents, or they are complete frauds. I'm inclined to believe the latter, as incompetents tend not to have the sales skills evident in the article

Re:Right next to the disk drive...

[raygundan]

Is everybody here retarded? What did you think made your existing fan motors spin, Space Pixies? No, it's a freaking electromagnetic motor. Every single one of them. And there's that PC speaker up front with a big magnetic coil on the back that beeps everytime you turn your PC on, too.

I though you were supposed to be nerds.

Re:Amazing idea

[BobTheLawyer]

There are thousands of people sprinkled over the web who claim to do things with magnets that violate the laws of themodynamics; this guy is just one more.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence: this guy provides none.

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

Toyota Prius

[AtariAmarok]

The Toyota Prius already gets 60mpg in the city. Imagine the gas mileage these cars could get if they used one of these motor

If I calculated correctly, not a Toyota Prius outfitted with one of these motors would excrete 1.3 litres of gasoline every 20 miles. (it is beyond a matter of getting "great gas mileage": the car would put out more gasoline than it takes in).

This is perpetual motion in another guise..

[the_rajah]

I worked as a patent consultant briefly and in a short time saw a couple of perpetual motion schemes. The most elaborate was proposed by a bank security guard and involved a hydraulic pump and motor combined with an electric motor and generator.

I explained that energy in a system worked like a bank account (bank guard -remember?) You put energy in and you can take it back out, but you can't get quite as much back out as you put in because there was a service charge in the form of friction. He begrudgingly understood. I complemented him on his nice drawings.

"In this house we obey the law of thermodymanics" - Homer Simpson

Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC?

[ron_ivi]

Mod this guy up... This is a really strong magnet; and dead hard drives are an awesome source for refrigerator magnets.

To your "how a drive ... can operate next to it"... I think this is the explanation.

While a normal magnet

N---S

has a field that falls off at something like 1/R^3 or 1/R^4, you can arrange more than one that falls off even faster. I think like this:

N---S
S---N
N---S
S---N

And extend it to 3-dimensions and it'll fall off even faster than that.

That way the field will be super-strong next to the magnet, but super-week even a short distance away.

Re:*MAGNETIC* fans in my PC?

[hpa]

First of all...

The use of permanent magnets in motors has been common practice for over 20 years, since high-strength permanent magnet alloys became good enough.

A permanent magnet contains stored energy from when the magnet was made. An electomagnet uses electricity on the fly. Note that one of the two magnets in a motor *must* be an electromagnet (usually the stator, for convenience of wiring, but occationally the rotor, especially in DC motors) since the motion requires a varying magnetic field.

Speaking of DC motors: ALL motors run on alternating current in some form. In a classical DC motor, the alternating current is produced by the motion of the motor itself by having the electromagnet be on the rotor, and have the brushes leading the current onto the rotor brush against a "commutator" -- two half-cylinders back to back -- instead of slip rings. Unfortunately, this requires brushes, which wear out and are generally unpleasant to deal with. As a result, especially higher-power motors have generally switched to using brushless AC motors using electronic commutators.

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.

Easy.

[2names]

You just have to put in a magnetic field damper.

You can get them at Radio Shack.

They are on the same shelf as the Flux Capacitors.

Re:Right next to the disk drive...

[flamingweasel]

Is everybody here retarded?

You're new here, aren't you?

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

[microwave_EE]

I suppose that if he's quickly depleting the stored magnetic field on the permanent magnets that he could get out more electrical power than he put in, but that would only work for a couple rotations of the ol' motor. Aside from that, it don't matter which of the "four fundamental forces of nature" you harness, there ain't no cheating the laws of thermodynamics, even in convenience store cooling fans...

Judge for yourself

[Martin Blank]

US Patent 4,751,486

US Patent 5,594,289

Note that I'm not speaking for or against his claims, but if you want to see how it works, there you go.

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."

Re:Quiet PCs?

[rco3]

No, no, no. See, you just don't understand. He's using magnets. They have powers that you just don't understand.

What'll happen is this. You'll have a 9-volt battery that you take with you when you leave for work in the morning. You use this battery to run a little half-watt motor (540 mW, according to the article). Now, clearly this isn't enough to move your car - but wait! This motor drives a generator, which makes 1.755W of output! (from the article). This still isn't enough, but we might be able to work something out...

The 1.755 W drives a 1.7 W motor. This motor, in turn, drives a generator. This generator can generate 5.525 W of electricity. We'll use this energy to drive a 5.5 W motor. That motor will turn a generator, which thanks to the mysterious power of magnets will generate 17.875 W! Amazing!

This still isn't enough to move your car very fast - but wait! We're not done! If we use our 17.875 W to drive a 17.5 W motor, it can drive a generator which produces 58.09 W!!! That's a lot of power! It's almost 1/10th of a horsepower! Next, we'll use that electricity to power a fancy 55 W electric motor, which (because the magnets have eternal power forever) can turn a generator producing 178.75 watts! Clean! Cheap! Quiet! With this power, we can operate an electric motor which in turn drives a generator generating an awesome 580 Watts of power! Using this electricity to drive another motor / generator pair, we can generate 1.888 kW of clean, wholesome electric power! It's amazing!

Now, let's say we've got a 1.8 kW motor in the trunk. This motor drives another generator which produces 5,850 W of power - that's 7.842 HP in your trunk. We'll use the electricity to drive another motor, this time a 7.8 HP motor - notice we're allowing for (I^2)R losses - which in turn drives a generator. This generator puts out a whopping 18.85 KW of power - that's as much as 10 hair dryers! But, rather than dry all 10 of our passengers' hair at once (can't do *our* hair, we're driving!), we'll use that electricity to drive a 25 HP electric motor. This is a big motor, but not as big as it would be if it didn't use the amazing power of magnets! It can drive a generator that makes 61.26 kW of electricity, which let me tell you is quite a bit! This electricity will be used to drive an 82 HP electric motor - as much as a small electric car. But you don't want a SMALL electric car, nosiree Bob! We use that dinky-assed commuter-car motor to drive a honkin' big generator, which pours out a torrent of electrons - almost 200,000 watts worth! Yikes! That's enough electricity to drive a 265 HP motor! Wow!

But why would we want a pitiful little 265 HP motor in our car? We're carrying 10 passengers, remember? Let's keep going! If we use that 198 kW to drive a motor/generator pair using Minato's incredible magnetic technology, we can generate 644 kW of clean, efficient electricity! That's enough to drive an 863 HP electric motor, which thanks to its use of magnets, can be as small as a gallon paint can - and just as quiet!

Isn't this incredible? Using a single 9 volt battery - preferably an Energizer or Duracell - and 14 super-quiet, incredibly efficient electric motors along with 13 revolutionary electric generators, we're driving an 863 HP super monster screamin' machine with 10 passengers! We're passing Corvettes and Ferrarris like they're glued to the asphalt, and we don't need any gasoline to do it!

Tune in next week, as I show you how it takes only 20 motor/generator pairs - using Minato's incredible magnetic technology - to generate 1.21 Jigawatts - twice! You can send TWO DeLoreans "Back to the Future" at the same time, and STILL have enough electricity to run that bangin' DVD player in your sun visor!

Now, I realize that this all seems a bit hard to believe, but that's just because you don't understand the incredible power of magnets.

Re:Quiet PCs?

[sprintkayak]

From Gizmodo.com

JOEL JOHNSON -- After reading the story about Kohei Minato's super-efficient motor, reader Chris Drake wrote in with this explanation:

All Minato's power calculations appear to be wrong (apparently it's a common mistake many scientists make); you can't measure input power using a multimeter when the current drain isn't constant. You can see his workshop in his videos - all his calculations are done using common multimeters and a desktop calculator. Minato motors use an optical sensor to "switch on" the "stator" (electromagnet) for a fraction of each RPM, so he'd need an oscilloscope and some funky math to figure out how much current the motors are really sucking up (or a stopwatch; and wait for the driving battery to go dead, then estimate based on the battery capacity). It's still a super neat idea though - which seems to boil down to "drive motors from the outside using aligned permanent magnets and momentary pulses from the stator" instead of the traditional "sick the stator in the middle" idea.

whatever... it's a hoax

[slazar]

This guy is putting energy into the machine every time his magnet moves. Attach it to a fixed position say with a clamp and it would not work. Take a look at this video of Minato and then read the explanation here. You will need to search in your browser for minato because the page is long. Also you have to wait for the avi to completely download.

Prfft...

[adamofgreyskull]

A U.S. Patent? Shit, I got one of those in my cornflakes this morning. :o)

rasertech

[TubeSteak]

i watched the video and i'll give them credit for having a good PR dept. BUT I can't seem to find a decent explanation of WTF they're doing thats so special.

From the FAQ
Q. How does the Symetron(TM) technology deliver better performance?
A. Symetron(TM) motor technology is based on our work in advanced motor theory which is the basis for several proprietary design innovations that achieve dramatic increases in torque and power.

Q. Can the Symetron(TM) Motor technology be copied or pirated easily?
A. The Symetron(TM) motor technology is clearly unique compared to other electric motors. It is based on proprietary scientific principles with Patents applied [for]. No imitation motor can be built without direct infringement on patents.

Translation:
We know something you don't know
&
Yes, but we'll sue them

What worries me are phrases like "proprietary design innovations", "proprietary scientific principles", "strict confidentiality agreement", etc. I read their Press Briefing, which left me more and less satisfied. The best i can piece together is that they've got better cooling, some special design tweaks and a "means for increased magnetic energy storage" The deeper you go the curioser it gets...

Just for shits and giggles they make almost the same claims as our Japanese friend. "300% more power" anyone? Their SEC filings make for veryinteresting reading. they've only spent 600K on R&D since raser's inception, they haven't obtained patents yet (only applied for them), "Raser's auditor's report contains a "going concern" qualification", "Our officers have no long-term experience with electrical motor sales"... I just can't understand... If their tech is so mindblowing how come it isn't everywhere?

Re:Quiet PCs?

[srleffler]

As long as he's using a constant voltage supply, the average input power can be calculated from the average current, which is what a standard multimeter will show if the current is fluctuating quickly and periodically

This statement is wrong several ways. First, you probably mean RMS ("root mean square") current, not "average current". The average current in an AC signal is of course typically zero. AC multimeters display RMS current and voltage.

Second, you cannot in general calculate average power from RMS (or average) voltage and current, even if the voltage happens to be constant and the current is somehow time-varying. The familiar P=VI formula is for instantaneous power, i.e. P(t)=V(t)*I(t). It happens that if the current and voltage are in phase (i.e. the load is purely resistive) then the average power is the product of the RMS voltage and current. This is a special case.

Third, it is not that hard to get even a good multimeter to read a time-varying current incorrectly. They are designed for low frequency signals. If your current is time varying with even moderately high frequency (e.g. >1000 Hz) most multimeters will not correctly read even the RMS current. A poor multimeter might not even give an accurate RMS current for a low-frequency but non-sinusoidal signal.

This is not the first time someone has produced a free energy device scam based on the faulty assumptions that P=VI holds for average values and a multimter always gives an accurate 'average' voltage or current, regardless of how complicated the waveform of the signal is.