A Working Brownian Pump...

There is an ATS thread titled Perpetual Motion in Subatomic Particles.

It raises the question of the possibility of harnessing this motion for energy production.

I believe I may have found a way to extract useful work from these particles, using water molecules as vacuum energy collectors.

I am putting this idea out here for the benefit of all.

I have a raised bed cornfield that is flood irrigated. I have noticed that while the level of water in the irrigation ditches reaches one foot, the raised bed becomes wet well above the level of water in the ditch.

I am always looking at nature for inspiration, and this 'anti-gravity' effect intrigued me. Drawing upon my scientific training, I knew the lift was being provided by capillary action.

Now capillary action can draw water located tens of feet below the surface up to the top of a 400 foot redwood tree using molecular energy alone.

So I began to search for capillary pumps and found this: Capillary Motor.

They say it couldn't work.

So I built one.

But using my understanding of biology- specifically, how trees pump fluids to extremities (limbs and leaves)- I added something to the design.

In effect, I stuffed a rag in the hole.

The even tinier capillary fibers of a twisted cotton string draped through the perpendicular hole are capable of redirecting and 'boosting' the water raised in the water column up, over and down the outside of the tube as drops of falling water.

A working model of this capillary pump is sitting on my desk right now, sealed in a bell jar to isolate it from evaporation losses.

It has been recirculating water without any external power input other than brownian motion of the water molecules own latent heat.

Could this device be scaled up to raise massive quantities of water hundreds of feet in the air to drive electric generators using gravity alone?

I don't know.

Try it and see. Stick a wet string in a full glass of water and hang it halfway over the side. Put the glass in a dish and see what happens.

Enjoy...

[edit on 21-5-2005 by Chakotay]

There's a large step missing between capillary action and energy. I don't know exactly what you have in mind, but the water molecules wouldn't push a generator on their own; they'd need some outside impetus to be added.

there IS an outside force that can work on water to use in powering a generator. GRAVITY.water pulled up inside say a straw (just as an example), this carries it upwords,(slow but free), now that the water is "up" it needs to go "down". so create a pathway, with some sort of turbine type of generater (probably with aplicable gearing). free energy!

now i don't know how effective a large vesion would be, but it is worth looking at. even if the water being drawn up needed to be staged, as long as no energy (say electric pumps were used), then ANY energy created on the way down would be a gain. it would be well worth looking at.

there is also the possibility of useing a siphon to get liquid up. just as in siponing gas (don't suck on gas it is bad for you. 0or that you use when draining a water bed, (done that a lot in the past and it works pretty well, provided the damm hose dosn't pop out).

[edit on 21-5-2005 by drogo]

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer
There's a large step missing between capillary action and energy.

The water molecules go up the capillary column without outside impetus. That is the free ride up. They reach the over-the-side wicking material at the top and form a drop that 'drips' in freefall. That is the free ride back down. Potential energy becomes kinetic energy that can drive a turbine. That simple falling drop is the same stuff that powers the generators at a hydroelectric plant.

Gather together a lot of these columns, and you have a closed-cycle hydroelectric system without the need for external power input (so long as it is located in an area above freezing).

This is a tiny, elegant perpetual motion machine driven by random molecular motion.

[edit on 22-5-2005 by Chakotay]

You have voted Chakotay for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have used all of your votes for this month.


I'm blown away, truly and completelly blown away. As it is 1:41 in the morning I can't head to the hardware store until the morning, but I gotta check this out.

I knew this couldn't work, just couldn't place my finger on it.

Turns out you're not the first to think of it. Some guy tried back in the late 1800s. here's why it no work.

www.lhup.edu...

The 'Capillary Motor' on the site is completely different from the one Chakotay is describing above, if I'm reading what he wrote correctly. I think what he's trying to describe is basically a tube stuffed with a rag/sponge that 'soaks' the water up through the bottom, discharges it at the top and continues this process.

But getting anything like that to shift enough water would probably mean creating these small 'stuffed' capillaries on a microscopic level and packing millions together.

[edit on 22/5/05 by Creative_Seeker]

Microscopic? Try Nanoscopic, the same rules apply to the Microscale as they do to the Macro scale. The Nanoscale however is very different to what we are used to. This could be possible, but I would like to see some peer-review studies first.

I see. I did find a site that mentions this idea, along with many others, on a list of duds, but it doesn't explain why it doesn't work.

A later link from the same page as before shows another example. Again, not the same, but I shall search.

I have a link to the Museum of Unworkable Devices on there. Look at the picture of the capillary pump where there is a tube with a hole in it with water gushing out. This is what I built. As described in the Museum, surface tension prevents the water from gushing out. Then I put a twisted cotton thread in the hole, so it hangs about halfway down the inside of the tube and halfway down the outside. This acts as a 'boost pump', siphoning water up through the meniscus and over the side of the tube. It then 'latches' onto the glass outside of the tube and runs downward under the influence of gravity. Once it reaches the reservoir (dish) at the bottom of the tube, it is sucked upwards again by capillary action.

Under my sealed bell jar, it just circulates, well, forever.

I don't have a digital camera; if someone else tries this before I get pics, please post them here.

My first thought was 'Patent!', but my previous experiences with losing money on patents made me decide to just give this away to you all.

Try it. Plants do it every day before our eyes, but they let the moisture evaporate after being raised instead of dripping it (unless you cut off a branch, but they 'heal' quickly and the capillary pump stops dripping).

The source of energy is not mysterious; it is using molecular-scale random thermal fluctuations (brownian motion) in a directed way.

The cotton thread does have nanostructure; it is the shift of scale at the air-water and glass interface that does the trick.

You could probably make this practical by using genetic engineering to create 'dripping trees'...

[edit on 23-5-2005 by Chakotay]

I APOLOGIZE!

SORRY! I must have been high yesterday to not have said this, I don't know what was going through my head. I was bored in AP Chem today was reminded of this. Took about three seconds.


Ok. The rag brings the water up, the water turns the wheel, you get energy, jah? Jah. You'll lose energy in the turning of the wheel, and also in the collision of the water and the wheel. Also some water will stay behind on the wheel, probably relatively a lot of it. The rag must also do work to get the water up, and will eventually get saturated.

Once it drips, however, fine, you get electricity. Not exactly 100%, but oh well. What happens, though, after a while? Your water level will drop, and less and less water will climb up the rag. Eventually, none will go up any more because there is no more water to climb. End of perpetual motion.





I'm kicking myself for the brain freeze, honestly I am.

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer
Once it drips, however, fine, you get electricity. Not exactly 100%, but oh well. What happens, though, after a while? Your water level will drop, and less and less water will climb up the rag. Eventually, none will go up any more because there is no more water to climb. End of perpetual motion.

Amory, this device is sitting on my desk in front of me right now. It pumps about 250ml of water in 24 hours, every day, day after day. It is a closed system, sealed in a Bell jar. There are no water losses.

It will, of course, stop pumping when the Sun dies. Or an earthquake shatters the Bell jar. Or we experience another Ice Age in the Temperate Zone.

Build one, man! You can pull the capillary tube from a piece of 1/8" glass tubing with a Bunsen Burner. You can hang the 'wick' in the tube, over and down. You don't need to bore a hole in the capillary. You need an armature (mine is bent glass rods) to hold the capillary in a large watch glass filled with water. Use a Bell jar that fits inside the watch glass (this geometry allows evaporation loss to condense and flow back to the capillary pickup). The Bell Jar-Watch Glass interface is sealed with waterproof epoxy. The entire device is set in a dish of Plaster-of-Paris which hardened around the rounded bottom of the watch glass to prevent tipping.

Use distilled water with a little formaldehyde to prevent mold/bacteria growth on the twisted cotton string 'wick'.

This gadget makes me smile. Its like one of those 'water dipper birds', except it works all day and all night. In fact, it makes my teeth itch. That is Test Pilot for 'way cool'.

The answers are out there. On ATS...

[edit on 23-5-2005 by Chakotay]

Having a rug/cotton stuffed into a tube don't change a thing. Capillary principles are the same. The space between the finbers in the rug acts in the same manner as capillary tube.

Brownian motion is not a source of free energy. For that matter, when I drive my car, the pressure on the pistons in the engine is exerted by the molecules moving in a brownian motion, and of course the source of energy for such violent motion is burning gas.

When trees evaporate water, the energy is taken from the air at the point of evaporation (it cools down; look at cooling towers, same thing).

And... Perpetum mobile is not possible.

Originally posted by Aelita
Having a rug/cotton stuffed into a tube don't change a thing.

Aelita, it changes everything.

Brownian motion is not a source of free energy.

Yes, it is. Molecules in solution move at random, driven by ambient (free) energy. The trick is organizing this random motion so that useful work is done. In this device, capillary action and gravity provide this organizing element- without the need for other input.

And... Perpetum mobile is not possible.

Tell that to a hydrogen atom.

I'm guessing then, that your design reuses the water instead of wasting it? Good idea.

Except, when the water lands again, even more energy is lost, on top of what I listed, in the collision, heat, sound, light, and other waves.

Tell that to a hydrogen atom.

Wha? What's that supposed to mean/be hinting at?

Originally posted by Chakotay

Originally posted by Aelita
Having a rug/cotton stuffed into a tube don't change a thing.

Aelita, it changes everything.

No it doesn't. Capillary is a capillary.

Brownian motion is not a source of free energy.

Yes, it is. Molecules in solution move at random, driven by ambient (free) energy.

Where does the brownian motion go when you chill water? Right... It's not free after all. But it's immaterial as the brownian motion isn't what propels water up the capillary. It's not directed, that motion...

In this device, capillary action and gravity provide this organizing element- without the need for other input.

Nah.... I doubt you understand the capillary force. It's only active on the surface. There is nothing to "organize" the brownian motion in bulk matter.

And... Perpetum mobile is not possible.

Tell that to a hydrogen atom.

Well perpetual motion per se is obviously possible, as is evidenced by the stars and planets moving around. Same with atoms. However, you can't make energy off it perpetually.

Here is a schematic, just for you Aelita:



Build one and watch it work. Then criticise

Amory wrote:

Except, when the water lands again, even more energy is lost, on top of what I listed, in the collision, heat, sound, light, and other waves.

This energy is replenished from the ambient free energy in the environment. The device is a molecular antenna- it gathers ambient energy and uses it to do useful work.

I am curious if a similar principle could be extended to other fluids on a nanoscale- such as liquid helium or mercury- that could work in extremely hot or extremely cold environments in the depth of space.

ATS Points are the dollars you would have made if you spent your time selling on Ebay...

[edit on 23-5-2005 by Chakotay]

Originally posted by Aelita
But it's immaterial as the brownian motion isn't what propels water up the capillary. It's not directed, that motion...

And that answers your question, Amory, about my comment about hydrogen atoms.

This little gizmo locks right on to nanoscale quantum processes at the electron level and provides a visible power output.

I know you guys can go farther than I can with this.

Good luck.

Originally posted by Chakotay
This energy is replenished from the ambient free energy in the environment. The device is a molecular antenna- it gathers ambient energy and uses it to do useful work.

That defeats your entire point right there. If it's taking ambient energy, it's not perpetual at all. You're putting energy in to get energy out.

Hydrogen? Do you mean the fact that the electron is orbiting, constantly?

Who said it was a particle?

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer
That defeats your entire point right there. If it's taking ambient energy, it's not perpetual at all. You're putting energy in to get energy out.

Not at all. I am not putting energy in. The Universe is.

Picture the concept: a device that extracts quantum fluctuations.

And it will work- given a proper working fluid and materials- forever.

Back to the hydrogen atom questions. Do you have a theory for what sustains the orbitals and prevents charge unification? Beyond the abstract words 'exclusion principle'?

[edit on 23-5-2005 by Chakotay]