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Energy From Raindrops
conlaw writes to share that according to Discovery.com scientists have found a way to extract energy from rain. A new technique could utilize piezoelectric principles of a special kind of plastic to generate power from falling water in rainstorms or even commercial air conditioners. "The method relies on a plastic called PVDF (for polyvinylidene difluoride), which is used in a range of products from pipes, films, and wire insulators to high-end paints for metal. PVDF has the unusual property of piezoelectricity, which means it can produce a charge when it's mechanically deformed."
we learned how to extract power from raindrops, and still no one is extracting power from gyms :P
well, that's not exactly the galt engine, but it sure smacks of that sentiment.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
One for the floor of your shower.
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
The amount of rain we get here. :-)
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Seriously though, Portland is trying to gain the title of the renewable energy capital of the United States and this would be awesome in the whole Pacific Northwest as they slowly ween themselves off the major dam systems they build up over the past 80 years.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
These things don't generate much energy, but should be enough to power a perpetual tiny rendition of Gene Kelly' 1952 hit film.
Or just collect the water and run it through a water mill. WTF??
Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed
Nothin' seems to fit
Those raindrops are fallin' on my head, they keep fallin'
So I just did me some talkin' to the sun
And I said I didn't like the way he got things done
Sleepin' on the job
Those raindrops are fallin' on my head, they keep fallin'
But there's one thing I know
The blues they send to meet me won't defeat me
It won't be long till happiness steps up to greet me
Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin' red
Cryin's not for me
'Cause I'm never gonna stop the rain by complainin'
Because I'm free
Nothin's worryin' me
[trumpet]
It won't be long till happiness steps up to greet me
Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin' red
Cryin's not for me
'Cause I'm never gonna stop the rain by complainin'
Because I'm free
Nothin's worryin' me
Whatever happened to water wheels? We have been using them for thousands of years.
If they put this stuff on the floor around the urinals at my local bar, we could meet Canada's energy needs for the next hundred years.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Anything that moves can produce energy. The point is how much and at what cost to capture and reuse or store. I can solar panels on my roof for about 15K that averages about $120 a month. About a 10 year payback. A wind turbine that generates about 20% of my needs would cost 5K and have a payback of 15 years. Strapping a motion generator to myself and family to produce enough power to charge cell phones doesn't appear to ever justify the initial cost. Raindrop system.... call me when it costs the same as a shingle.
"Unfortunately, the US is tapped out on hydroelectric."
Would that be pre or post global warming after the ocean levels have risen?
... but whether this means it really produces power from water vapour, or is an idea they cannot implement is unclear.
Let's build a very large vat. I mean it has to be huge. Then collect lots of rainwater in it, and stick a mechanism that changes outflow into something that can be used to spin a generator. Boom, electrical energy from rain!
Of course this is still just indirect-indirect-indirect solar power, as always. But jeez, do you have to make things so complex by default? Is this the "innovation-promoting" effect of patenting?
I have one powered by a generator attached to my knee joint. One to a string vibrating in the wind outside. One to my hamster. I'm seriously running out of cell phones by now. I'm starting to feel guilty not using more of this green energy.
Hey asshole, it's spelled "loser". Looser is the opposite of tighter. Jackass.
... my arse. I can collect the power of farts and even patent the method.
sew it into flags and power your house by being patriotic. make it into windows on skyscrapers and power them from wind turbulance. pave the streets with it and recoup energy from vehicles passing by. replace windmills that kill birds with fluttering strips of it in pretty colors. make strips of it that look like kelp and line tidal areas and river bottoms with it to help the fish and generate power at the same time. there are lots better possibilities than waiting for it to rain.
Can it be used to run Linux?
I would think the most obvious application would be as a lining for highway and rail beds, maybe even sidewalks and streets in some places. True, the variations in traffic load would determine your capacity for a C/B analysis to decide where to install the systems but if the carbon cost to manufacture the material is offset by the by the "carbon-less" power generated (discounting vehicle consumption), then why not take advantage of all that free vibration? I can see where this might be able to generate substantial amounts of power in major metropolitan areas either for direct consumer consumption or to run latent and ubiquitous powered infrastructure like traffic signals (with a grid back up, natch).
This energy is just drops in the bucket compared to what they could get from lightning.
...this breakthrough comes after failed attempts to generate power from roses, whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.
These are a few of those researchers favorite things.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
THE RAIN
--found in Architect's Creek Hut, Westland Nat'l Park, New Zealand
It rained and rained and rained
The average fall was well maintained
And when the tracks were simple bogs,
it started raining cats & dogs
After a drought of half an hour
We had a most refreshing shower,
And then most curious thing of all,
A gently rain began to fall!
Next day but one was fairly dry
Save for one deluge from the sky
Which wetted the party to the skin
And then, at last, the rain set in.
A typical raindrop has a fall velocity of about 8 m/s. Assuming a pretty healthy rainfall of 10cm (4 inches) we get 100 liters of water per square meter of land. 100 liters of water weighs 100kg, of course, and plugging that into the equation for kinetic energy gives us 6400 joules. Spread out over 2 hours, that's a whopping .89 watts per square meter.
All of that assumes 100% conversion efficiency and no losses due to standing water absorbing the impact of the drops. If the overall efficiency is, say, 50%, then you'd need something like 30 square meters to light a single compact fluorescent bulb. To generate a megawatt would require over 2 million square meters (over 500 acres).
Given that in most places it rains less often than the sun shines, this seems like an astonishingly inefficient way to generate electricity. There just isn't that much energy in rainfall.
Just imagine: if this stuff panned out, it would not only be rain that could deform it. It could be deformed by say birds walking on it (toughen it against claws). So instead of cities trying to actively chase pigeons away (some places chase them on the ground with dogs and in the air with falcons, etc.) and the "don't feed the pigeons" signs - you would instead see "feed the pigeons right HERE." (where the special plastic is). Hopefully they get some of that rain working for them to, to wash the pigeon poop off the plastic though.
This is more newsworthy as an arcane Rube Goldberg method of extracting energy than as anything remotely practical. You could extract more power by implanting braces of dissimilar metals in the mouths of two teens, then forming a battery when they kiss.
Collecting the heat energy of the gasious output of your local politicians would gain much more energy for free. You only have to convince them to speak into the pipe of your selfmade heatcollector instead of the microphone.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Now, if they could get energy from steam, THAT would be vaporwa... oh wait, nevermind.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This stuff would be great for my lighted clear plastic raincoats!
www.clearplastic.com
Cleara
Um, don't we already do this? I mean hydroelectric dams harness the power of rain as it flows from higher elevations to lower elevations.
Do you mean hydroelectric power isn't renewable? Hydro power *is* energy from raindrops, where do you think the water in the rivers came from?
It seems quite possible to harness power from rain. We can harness the sun on a sunny day for solar energy. We can harness the wind on a windy day for wind energy. We can harness the ebb and flow of the oceans based on the moon's position for tidal energy. So why not harness the rain on a rainy day, the snow on a snowy day, or lightening on a stormy day?
Two things to consider is location and time of year. Imagine solar and wind energy powering much of Arizona during the dry season and weather energy ("Meteorelectricity") durring the monsoon season.
It sounds good in theory.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
I thought about using piezo material years ago. Weather dependent energy devices are iffy at best, wind and solar are too intermittent. Why not harness all the sidewalks, roads, dance floors where vehicle and foot traffic abound. Feet pounding the pavement seem more reliable that raindrops.
Oh Amen to that one!
somebody tag this story "watervaporware"
The rainiest place in Europe is near Inverness - that's why Loch Ness is so big.
Going back to the story though, wouldn't it be much better to put this stuff in the sea? Somewhere where waves crash a lot...
No sig today...
"the unusual property of piezoelectricity, which means it can produce a charge when it's mechanically deformed"
... microphones and speakers. Oh wait, been there done that. Or use it to light natural gas/propane stoves. Oh nevermind.
What, never had a crystal radio? Kids these days. Piezoelectricity isn't so unusual. You can go buy many products using it. Even at outfitters (read: outdoors and camping stores) you'll find plenty of devices using piezoelectricity. Given that we've known about it from the late 1800's that isn't unusual either. Some sugars, bones (let them dry first), ceramics, and many crystals are piezoelectrical. Oh and get this we can reverse it. Maybe we can use it to make
A while back someone (MIT?) tried to use this precise method (and material IIRC) to make power from floors at subway stations.
I could go on, but perhaps you should try Wikipedia. If they don't already have a nice article on it, I'm sure one will follow fairly quickly.
Nothing unusual about either piezoelectricity or the material used in the story.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Everything has energy, and that can be converted to electrical energy.
Electricity and water.
What could possibly go wrong?
YEAH??? Well... shit, you're right. U.S. beer *is* like making love in a canoe: Fuckin' close to water. Damn it, the truth hurts.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
This technology has wonderful implications for tapping previously wasted energy sources, but rain isn't the place they should be looking to harvest that energy. They should be looking towards the oceanic coasts. The currents, waves and tides of the ocean move astronomical volumes of water constantly and the energy of those movements is lost as waves on the shore. If you were to set out an array of piezoelectric generators (i'm assuming they are in some sort of panel form) at an angle to the horizon just a couple meters below the surface at high-tide, you could have a continuous supply of energy from the action of waves and tidal shifts throughout the entire year, regardless of weather. Sure, there might be the issue of storm damage, but if you put it low enough, they would be entirely unaffected but the extreme turbulence of the surface and merely harvest the increased, directional flow deeper down.
You could even anchor them below the surface in deeper water and harvest energy over humongous areas. I don't pretend to be able to do even approximate math for this since i don't know even rough figures related to current volumes and magnitudes, but this seems like an excellent (and more realistic) application of this technology.
No way. Vancouver or just about anywhere else no the Pacific Northwest would have unlimited power.
And by the way, my Dad is from Lincoln.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Vancouver or just about anywhere else no the Pacific Northwest would have unlimited power.
If you mean the westernmost part of the Pacific Northwest, that's true. But inland, across the mountains, the Pacific Northwest is very dry, with some parts seeing less than seven inches of rain per year.
Remember what they say about generalisations: they are generally wrong.
Oh, but that's right: electricity for my 52 inch plasma screen is more important.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Power Surge, baby. Power surge.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
so what would happen if a bird poops on it?
Isn't this a bit far fetched? How would one go about using this kind of thing practically, roll out the plastic sheet when it starts to rain? Why not just collect the rain from your roof, let it fall for a few meters through pipes and then run it through a small hydro turbine. At least that WILL produce some usable power. :)
What will they think of next?
...it would be far much easier to just build a dam and a waterwheel to harness the energy of rain.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Wouldn't the pressure of the wind (assuming flurries of wind instead of a constant wind) do pretty much the same thing as the pressure of a rain drop? Put it on an angled roof and you'd get solar power, rain power, and wind power all in one. Use these things instead of shingles. If we could make these things tough enough then we could replace all sidewalks with these things and also make use of walking energy.
Cow Cube
That's very interesting. Thank you for mentioning that. I actually designed a system for using falling hospital toilet flushes and all that to drive a generator, submitted it to the Department of Energy in the early 1990's, and they turned it down. It would have also worked for high-rise offices and other tall structures, towers but the reason I chose hospitals because they release a massive amount of water every day. They still turned it down. They said the horsepower being spread out over time defeated the waterfall equation based process. So I sent it back to them with an adjustment, having the falling increments of energy slowly raise a larger weight to the top, then dropping it all at one time, about 3 times an hour. The D.O.E. still turned it down. I guess that's why your teacher had to remain a teacher.
I remain convinced that all 3-story and up hospitals could turn a generator, saving one month a year worth of electric bill. But this is where everybody makes the big mistake, thinking the electricity produced has to be regulated and purified to main power grid-acceptable electric current. It does not! You don't send the electricity into the power grid; you run a straight wire carrying the variable current directly over to the hospital's water heater element. Hmm, as a picture this makes a good Record of Invention Update for 2/10/2008.
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
This is extremely silly. There's not much energy there, larger amounts can be gathered trivially.
Falling raindrops reach terminal velocity after aproximately 5-10 meters, assuming they're the large type. Tiny raindrops reach terminal velocity after something like -1- meter.
So, if you could somehow collect the entire energy (not possible most of it goes into heating the drop as it's vigorously stirred on impact) you'd have collected the same energy as for the water falling perhaps on the average 3 meters.
Let's say your house has a 100square-meter roof, and you install this magical capture-all-energy stuff on the entire roof. Let's furthermore say it rains 1000mm/year. You have now collected the energy of 100 cubic metres of water falling 3 metres. That is 100*1000*9.8*3 = 3000KJ. Or sligthly less than -1- Kwh.
Market-value for this power at grid-prices ? $0.10.
Market-value for this power from a solar-cell ? (say if there's no grid available) $2.00
Price for a wind-turbine that will deliver 1Kwh/year ? You'd take the smallest one you can get, probably one from a kids toy. We're talking an average of 0.1W here....
Adding insult to injury, the power comes at semi-random impractical times, not when you need it.
Conclusion: Even *IF* you wanted this tiny amount of power, and it MUST be from rain, you'd be better off installing a tank at your roof, and a small turbine in the downspout. That way you could drain the same power (assuming your roof is 3 meters up) and it'd cost less and work better.
Extra-conclusion: Everything is in reality atleast 10 times worse than I state here, because this all assumes the material can magically convert 100% of impact-energy to electricity, which is obvious nonsense, I'd be impressed if it could do 10%...