Slashdot Mirror
Self Contained Power Source?
McOSEN writes "Your Server Cabinet could have a 100% self sustained power source. It's called Parallel Path Technology and it's being coined as a revolution in the magnetic motor industry. From Segways to Vacuum cleaners to Server Cabinets. The article talks about the technology but doesn't exactly lay out specifics."
From TFA:
1. It's a motor, not a generator. It sounds like it could be a neat motor, but it's still not a generator.
2. "The technology claims to be able to increase magnet motor efficiency substantially, even over the 100% barrier."
That's right folks! It's perpetual motion machine!
So, this is about a motor that makes claims that are pretty universally accepted to be impossible. The poster, of course, is affiliated with the site hosting the page, so he really should have read the article the same way I did. Even if he didn't, maybe ScuttleMonkey should have.
I would be more annoyed, but this fits ScuttleMonkey's past science articles. Could someone send him a few pop-sci introduction texts, so we can stop having the Electric Universe, perpetual motion, and other fringe theories on the frontpage as science?
Although the summary seems to brand it as such. RTFA submitter, all they claim it to be is a higher efficiency electric motor. No self contained power source....
Why is it that every new PMM for the last two decades has involved permanent magnets? Is there some kind of mad-scientist cabal that decrees these things?
Wikipedia's entry on Perpetual Motion Machines has a good explanation of the obsession with permanent magnets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion
Take a look at the "techniques" section. The core mistake in these theories is that work done by permanent magnets doesn't weaken the magnet.
Sailing over the event horizon
Like many here, I read the article and got the idea that they were talking about a perpetual motion machine (could be the "The technology claims to be able to increase magnet motor efficiency substantially, even over the 100% barrier." at the beginning of the article that gave everyone that impression...), but the only place that I can find such a claim is from the author of the article...From the way it's written, it just doesn't appear that he knows what he is talking about.
I glanced through the patent at USPTO and it appears to me that what this is is a more efficient electric motor, not something that outputs more energy than is put into it.
-R
I really wish these kooks could separate the perpetual motion crap from reality here. They are not "over-unity", perpetual motion, or what have you. The do in fact obey all laws of thermodynamics. These motors are real and can deliver as much as 98% efficiency. We've seen them, they work. I was at the presentation recently by Boeing Phanton Works that featured these things. ..Chuck..
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
I don't know if this is exactly the same concept I read about some time ago, but I heard about a patent using similar terminology. And while the claim is over unity power output (the patent I read involved no moving parts) the fundamental idea was to harness the degradation of flux in permanent magnets.
In other words, they are using a permanent magnet as a type of high-density chemical-free battery, releasing the energy that was required to magnetize the material in the first place. The magnets would eventually need to be replaced, and this was mentioned in the patent I read.
While I have doubts regarding the energy density of magnets compared to chemical means, and wince when beyond-unity is mentioned without special attention to the fuel source, I think that certain aspects deserve a little consideration, at least until we determine that it's infeasible to harness the demagnetization of a permanent magnet as an energy storage material.
Current electrical motors/generators are up to 99% efficient, and the loss is mostly in resistive loss in wire.
/. readers: You have one C++ programmer, and you need more work done. Just hire one more programmer, and to your surprise, you get 4 times as much done.
There is no room for any meaningful improvement unless you claim to have more than 100% efficiency, and they do. Lunatic bin right here!
Current electrical motors/generators are up to 99% efficient, and the loss is mostly in resistive loss in wire.
There is no room for any meaningful improvement unless you claim to have more than 100% efficiency, and they do. Lunatic bin right here.!
I was curious as to what they based their claim on?
First, go to http://www.flynnresearch.net/ to se some details on this.
The answer is:
Just doctor up formulaes: Force is proportional to magnetic flux. Se http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/ Look up 'amperes law', 'magnetic force' and 'Lorentz force'. As you can see they are all _linear_. I.e. F=B*k. (Force = Field times some constant. Flynn makes the relationship quadratic: F=B^2*A/2u.
To translate for
"Fix it"
http://www.flynnresearch.net/Parallel_Path_Technol ogy.htm
As I understand it, the claim of above unity energy utilization in the articel summary is (of course) false and not being made for this motor.
What they are saying is above unity torque production. And here unity simply means the ratio with respect to a particular arbiratrily chosen standard. It's not a magic number. Just a way to avoid using units in the discussion.
Now what appears to be happeing is that if the rotor were stopped and one measured the torque on the rotor (or linear actuator) then you would find that this force was four times as high as a motor without the parallel path technology, running at the same current and the same number of windings.
Now we can see that this is sort of misleading. If we kept the current constant and the windings constant then the force or toruqe is higher in a non-moving rotor or actuator. But in a non-moving system one can, for the same current always increase the number of windings to increase the force. The ultimate limit comes from several practical realities. 1) increasing the windings increases both the impedance and residual reactance of the motor making it lossy and limiting it's frequency response. 2) The upper limit is reached when the magnetic flux is no longer contained by the ferrite. Both motors probably have a problem with #2 but the parallel path motor has fewer windings for the same level of force as a conventional motor.
Okay but that is still begging the question since were talking about non moving motor. adding in a permenant magent to boost the force is a lot like adding a spring to boos the force. You pay for it by the energy it took to load the spring.
Once this motor starts moving then one has to do a dynamic anayis to the flux collapsing as the rotor or actualtor moves is drawn into the field. What does this do the current in the motor? What does this do to it's complex impedance? I don't actually know the answers to those questions. The static analysis is simply bogus for concluding that. But if one were to maintain the "spring" analogy then it seems like one could not possibly be getting any net gain.
what this device does seem to be doing however is to make an assymetric pull on the acutator. that is it pulls on one arm of the motor with 4 times the torque and the other arm with no torque at all. That might possibly lead so some sort of alteration in the lead-lag curve of of the phase response of the motor at different speeds. If so it might somehow make a motor with a given amount of windings and ferrite optimally usitize it's material content better.
So if there is any gain at all here I suspect it lies with this latter effect. But I cant' do the analysis to be sure.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
90% isn't that good for a motor, most run between 92 and 98% efficient.
.... nut jobs would go back into the woodwork. They make the life of engineers frustrating.
But definitely aren't going to go over 100%
I really wish perpetual motion, free energy
The energy stored in a permanent magnet (from rotated domains held from returning to their equilibrium condition) is called magnetic energy density, and is given in SI units of KJ/m^3. A more common unit used to be the Mega Gauss-Oersted (MGOe). T [1 MGOe = 8 kJ/m^3]. For most nifty permanent magnets, the KJ/m^3 value will be in the 20's to 30's. Now consider the volume of magnets that would fit in a motor you could hold in your hand, and thence calculate the energy density. Then calculate the effect of releasing ALL this energy in one minute, say of a 100mm x 10mm x 10mm magnet, releasing its 0.3 J in 60 seconds, for a whopping 0.005 Watts of power, leaving an unmagnetized lump of metal. Impressed?
It's "The Big Bounce" by Walter S. Tevis, written in 1958. It's in the great short story collection "Where Do We Go From Here?" edited by Asimov.
s imov.html trstvs.htm
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/books/a/a
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/books/t/w
Nonsense. The inventor clearly claims that the motor produces more energy than is supplied - see http://flynnresearch.net/tests_%26_results.htm
Given that the same page confuses force and energy, there's no reason on earth why anyone should take this seriously.
With current motors at around 80% efficiency I doubt there is room for the claimed x4 improvement. The math does not make sense to me. How can you have 220% more power ouput than your input?
a sp
r _efficiency.html
Just using the right motor for the right job is more important.
There is a nice write up of it here;
http://www.psnh.com/Business/SmallBusiness/Motor.
and here;
http://www.advancedenergy.org/progressenergy/moto
(Another five minutes of my time wasted on google because some fool posted something without doing a bit of research first.)
The basic idea behind harnessing the power of a permanent magnet is related to the similar phenemona associated with the electrostatic force in electrons/protons, the nuclear force, gravity and other such seemingly permanent forces. All of them give the full appearance of being able to perform useful work in perpetua.
For example, two electrons, through electrostatic repulsion, will accelerate away from one another. It is impossible to dismiss that energy was required to cause this acceleration. Yet, the electrons do not diminish in energy, they do not loose any electrostatic potential and are in fact capable of continually doing this same magical feat indefinitely. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it will take some serious evidence to say it isn't a duck. The electrostatic force associated with an electron appears to have an infinite supply of energy to exert accelerating forces on other electrons. It is trendy to say that the electrostatic force of an electron is coupled to ZPE (Zero Point Energy), and through this coupling, it is able to draw from ZPE to keep it's electrostatic potential constant.
A permanent magnet appears to have the same properties (e.g. it is capable of exerting force to accelerate objects without decreasing in apparent energy). It is true that a permanent magnet has it's properties because of the alignment of atoms and that over time the work that the magnet is doing does cause atoms to re-align and therefore decrease the effectiveness of the magnet. But this is in no way can account for the massive amounts of energy that the magnet appears to be able to use during it's effective lifetime. One could even say that the molecular bonds that are holding the magnet together and keeping the magnetic flux lined up are themselves generating the energy, since those bonds are countering the large magnetic forces that threaten to realign the magnet so that it is no longer magnetic. Those molecular forces themselves do not diminish and continue to exert strong accelerating forces.
In summary, it is impossible to dismiss this phenomena. A permanent magnet is capable of performing work, as is simply evidenced in many different ways (although it does not appear to have been commercially realized - who knows why? Anyone have a tinfoil hat?). Electrostatic forces, molecular bonds, nuclear forces and gravity all appear to have a similar property of endless access to energy to perform work.
If you reply to this comment, please don't hand-wave and say your physics professor knows more than me. Think about this subject seriously. The basic wheelworks of nature do give the full and blantant appearance of constantly violating the law of conservation of energy. That should be something that anyone who considers themselves a skeptical scientist would like to understand better.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
To elaborate on the magnet on the fridge analogy:
In its simplest incantation, work, or energy, equals force multiplied by distance.
Distance travelled: d = 0. W = F*d. Even lim(W, F->infinity) = 0 if distance travelled, d = 0. You can get energy out of the magnet only by moving it. Oh, sure - let's hold the magnet away from the fridge a centimeter, and let go. It moved - non-zero work! Except we had to expend energy to move the magnet that first centimeter.
And since I'm at it already:
- I won't mention the thermodynamics arguements many have already posted about
- It doesn't matter how many newtons of force a motor statically exerts - 1N or 1000000N - it's not linked to efficiency.
- The best way to measure efficiency is by a dynamometer. Versions I've worked with basically are generators which you directly hook up your test motor to. Knowing the properties of the generator (efficiency model, etc) you can figure out how much energy your motor is outputting versus how much energy you're putting into running the motor. You can find efficiency curves for any motor design you wish by spending some time with google. Why doesn't Flynn's website provide these? Don't give me any bull about patents; novel motor configurations are common.
- Despite its flaws, the peer-review journal system is still the most rigorous method of testing science. I don't need to search Science's website to tell you that "parallel path technology" will return 0 results.
- While racing solar cars, I've encountered motors running anywhere between 80 to 98% efficiency. That's efficiency defined in the traditional sense: mechanical power out divided by electrical power in. I found it funny that Flynn is trying to convince solar car teams to try out his motor design.
Give me some steel tubing, enough calculator solar cells, an electric lawnmower and my Swiss Army knife, and I'm sure I get farther in WSC2007 than Flynn. (Interestingly, the parallel path wiki says it can reduce solar cell surface area by 50%! Tell that to anyone who's raced a solar car and see how quickly they laugh)