Water Turbine Project

[Ted Ewert]

Initial tests with the Archimedes screw are promising. I used a drill motor for a test and got a head of about 6". Volume was not prolific, but it was steady and certainly enough for priming. I added another 6 washers and will give it a full test tomorrow.

Cheers,

Ted

[Inquorate]

Spiral tubing

Excellent ted :-)

I've got the spiral tubing set up for a (rough as guts) test to see if that works too. Will post findings tonight.

[Inquorate]

6 inches of head

How long is the archimedes screw above and below the waterline?

Thanks

[Ted Ewert]

At what degree did you set you washers? This will have a bearing on the efficiency of the pump. The Tesla turbine works good, but I think if Tesla had angled the disks, he would have had an even better turbine. A Tesla-Archimedes hybrid could possibly be the most efficient design of all turbines. Good Luck. Stealth

That thought also occurred to me since it looks similar to a Tesla turbine. The only problem I can see for this type of application is once the turbine is primed and starts to draw water, the Tesla turbine might present too much resistance to a higher flow rate. I'll bet it would make a good pump though.
To answer your first question... I don't know. I just bent them as far as they would slide down the shaft. I originally wanted more of an angle, but the washer center hole is pretty tight and the shaft wouldn't fit with too much angle. So, I just bent them as far as I could and welded the next one on.

Ted

[Ted Ewert]

How long is the archimedes screw above and below the waterline?

Thanks

Just so long as the tip was below the waterline it seemed to pump well. This was with the screw attached to the PVC pipe so they were both rotating. How it works in a turbine will be tomorrow's adventure.
I think your spiral tube should work well too. I liked your idea of a tube glued inside a cone or a funnel. That way there wouldn't be any drag while it's rotated through the water, and it would give the tubing structural support.

Ted

[sykavy]

Just so long as the tip was below the waterline it seemed to pump well. This was with the screw attached to the PVC pipe so they were both rotating. How it works in a turbine will be tomorrow's adventure.
I think your spiral tube should work well too. I liked your idea of a tube glued inside a cone or a funnel. That way there wouldn't be any drag while it's rotated through the water, and it would give the tubing structural support.

Ted

I know you have been given a lot of suggestions but I don't know if you have heard of the Clem Engine. Richard Clem Engine He was working along the same lines as you but with cooking oil. more info here

Your "screw' also reminded me of another invention to produce heat by mechanical energy. While it isn't free energy it can be a very efficient space heater:
"PLOWBOY: That's great. But how do you heat this greenhouse? It's 1,500 square feet, and winters get pretty harsh up here.

REX: We use a friction flow heater that Ron McMurty, a friend of mine, developed. Ron's got a patent pending on the design, so he doesn't like to tell too much about it. Basically, though, it uses a five-horsepower electric motor that spins a grain auger in a cylinder full of hydraulic fluid. The heat caused by that friction goes through some exchanger coils. Then 120°F air gets blown out into the room.Actually, I can't explain why the thing works. We've had people from the Department of Energy look at it, and they've said that according to engineering formulas, it shouldn't work. But it does. It kept this single-paned greenhouse warm last winter for just $3.85 a day. And we put one in a friend's house to replace his gas furnace. The previous November, he'd spent $286 for gas. This November was the third coldest on record up here, yet with the friction flow heater, he paid only $63.50 for electricity.

We even had the electric company come out to check it. They've put four or five meters out here to see if their meter readings were off, but they didn't find anything.

PLOWBOY: That sounds almost unbelievable.

REX: I know, but I'm convinced that it works. If it's 20° below zero outside and you come inside and the greenhouse is so warm — 60° or 70° — that you have to take most of your clothes off to be comfortable, you know that the thing works." REX OBERHELMAN: $27,000 (Net!) from Five Organic Acres

I spoke to Rex a few years ago he was 72 years old then and said the heater works.
Hydraulic friction heat generator - Google Patent Search it again used oil not water.
Just interesting

[Ted Ewert]

@Sykavy, Thanks for the info. I'm familiar with the Clem engine, but I hadn't heard about the screw heater. Interesting stuff. If my water starts to get hot at least I'll know why now.

Ted

[Inquorate]

I think it worked, but can't be sure

I had air pump tubing (for a fish tank)glued 15 to 20 times tightly around a funnel. And the funnel glued to a chopstick, with the chopstick in my drill-bit.

Needless to say, it didn't last long.

BUT

There was only one tube, thus one exit point; when I sucked water into that tube and immersed it, it was primed.

Then I spun the drill until the water had flown up the inside of the funnel, and over the edge ( so even that may work) - until it started getting death wobbles.

For about 10 seconds, the tube appeared to be squirting a stream which I could hear and I could see it congealing into droplets in one place at a time travelling around the edge of the container.

So this weekend I'm going to buy a wider diameter hose / rubber piping, and figure out how to make a well balanced cone spin smoothly from the centre.

Love and light

[Inquorate]

P.S.

the water wasn't hitching a ride up the tubing (which really should be INSIDE the funnel / cone) - because the 'screw' motion of the ridges of tubing would want to guide the water downwards..

And I had about an inch of clearance between the coiled tube and the tube end, which was the height it seemed to be spraying..

[Ted Ewert]

I tried the screw in the turbine and it didn't work. I thought it was the intake port so I tried a few different configurations and still nothing. I thought- what the hell??
Before my trials, I had noticed a small gap (1 mm) between the screw and the wall of the PVC pipe. So, I wrapped some duct tape around the screw to make it a tight fit. I didn't want any water leaking down between the screw and the wall.
After it didn't work, I took the tape off and readjusted the screw. Then it worked just fine. It was the tape that screwed it up.
This screw works much more like a Tesla Turbine than I thought. Instead of leaking down, the water leaked up around the screw. The centrifugal force of the water as it comes off the blade is enough to pump a fair amount of water up the pipe.
Of course, now a hundred new questions pop into my head about what kind of configuration is optimal. Should I use a hollow center to draw the water up? How much of a gap can I have between the screw and the wall? Will it work with straight blades? Etc, etc.
I have some 3" fender washers that I'm going to try next and see if there is any difference. The way it is now (with 2" washers) the flow is not very good. I may cut some vertical grooves up the inside of the pipe to see if that increases the flow rate.
(Warning, theory ahead)...
After studying the Bernoulli effect, and reading DePalma again, I have some new thoughts on how the Tesla turbine works.
I don't think the Tesla turbine works with the "skin effect" of water. I think what pulls the water towards the blade is the Bernoulli effect.
The Bernoulli effect is generally used to describe pressure differentials in gases or liquids. However, there is no reason why the same effect can't occur with solids.
When a blade is spinning in a liquid such as water, according to this principal, it creates a low pressure area around it it direct proportion to it's angular velocity (the higher the velocity, the lower the pressure). As the distance from the center of the disc increases, so does the angular velocity. This means then that a low pressure gradient, starting from the center of the disc and radiating outward, is developed. Surface pressure on the disc would get progressively lower towards the edge of the disc. This means water would be pulled from the relatively higher pressure area around the center, to the lower pressure area around the rim.
This makes a lot more sense to me than surface tension adhesion. This force would also account for the higher pumping potential that this type of turbine has.
Anyway, my two cents.

Cheers,

Ted

[Ted Ewert]

the water wasn't hitching a ride up the tubing (which really should be INSIDE the funnel / cone) - because the 'screw' motion of the ridges of tubing would want to guide the water downwards..

And I had about an inch of clearance between the coiled tube and the tube end, which was the height it seemed to be spraying..

Congratulations, nice work. Now we have another alternative.
How about a multi cone Tesla turbine instead of discs? The water would be propelled up instead of straight out. I bet it would work.

Ted

[ren]

wow this thread is blasting off. Nice work guys.

In regards to bending PVC pipe Ted, you were spot on with the spring idea. Ive seen it done with a flexible spring of correct diameter fed into the pvc tube. It requires no heating, bend it on the spot. Super easy. You can get the springs from electrical wholesalers I was told.

I mentioned earlier I would post some pics of my friends device. This is what remains of it. I am not entirely sure of its operational methods. I believe compressed water was fed up the center and forced out through the vortex discs. If you look closely on the housing you may be able to see serrations around it also.

I did also have a photo of what it did to his roof when it exploded. But thought it was a bit off topic. Hope they help somewhat.

[Ted Ewert]

Thanks for the pics Ren. I assume that whole thing was spinning?
Damage pictures are never off topic and always encouraged. I love watching stuff get blown up.

Ted

[Inquorate]

Tesla turbine

I'm beginning to suspect that like all of Tesla's inventions, the tesla turbine may also have been grossly misunderstood..

If tesla understood the inertial properties of the superfluid aether - and I have to believe he did - then his turbine and our variations and future designs will all be quite counter-intuitive..

thanks for the pics ren !

I see how it works now.

@ted, we've been thinking of making it in two stages; up, then out. Perhaps the distinction between the two can be blurred somewhat..

I'm changing my plans - I will now buy a bunch of thin plastic breadboards and cut out circles.

The circles will have thin washer spacers in one design, and curved bits cut radially in another..

A drum rotating in a drum

Will report back

[ren]

Ted as far as I can tell the picture labeled "Vortex" was the part that spun. It was housed in the picture labeled "Device". Water was forced up the central nozzle of the device and into the center of the plastic discs. Its only path of escape was out the vortex shaped channels, which radiated out from the center.

They can be seen faintly on the "vortex" picture, as the plastic used to make them was translucent somewhat. The "slots" picture shows where they were expelled under pressure.

I cant get a total overall picture of the device as half of it is in pieces. Weston cut those discs by hand, each one has probably 30 or 40 of those spiral channels and there is at least 10 separate ones. He narrowed the fault down to this disc, one of the laminations became unstuck at high speed.

Photo attached is of where the PLASTIC parts hit the HARDWOOD floor, which is the roof of his workshop. Looks fairly placid, but the upper spot on the right has actually cracked the floor board. The photo doesnt really do it justice.

Im constantly amazed at this chaps work. I watched him cut out an acrylic disc the other day, put it on his lathe and it needed no machining to make it true, just a bit of sandpaper on the edge. All by hand with a bandsaw. Hes and old draughtsman/tool maker, and has all the old calipers and mechanical means for measuring and drawing/making stuff. Truly a wonder to watch at work, things like computers put this sort of talent to rest in the common world unfortunately, he used to make a living with his many skills before them.

Regards