Air generator

[Joker medna]

I am planning on making many types of alternative energy sources,i got all the answers and materials needed for other sources,but i want to know if i can say,light a small LED diode by like releasing the air in 5 balloons or something? or just power by air in general so i dont have to build a windmill,but i get power from air thanks =)
EDIT:
im sorry i didnt say it clearly,i just want to know how to get energy from air without building a windmill,or waisting electricity

[OneBriiguy]

I am planning on making many types of alternative energy sources,i got all the answers and materials needed for other sources,but i want to know if i can say,light a small LED diode by like releasing the air in 5 balloons or something? or just power by air in general so i dont have to build a windmill,but i get power from air thanks =)
EDIT:
im sorry i didnt say it clearly,i just want to know how to get energy from air without building a windmill,or waisting electricity

Hello, Joker medna!

You will need some sort of converter to change the energy of the air into electricity. Typically that is done with a generator. Something like a windmill captures the kinietic energy of the wind and uses it to drive the generator to produce electricity. Hydroelectric power is produced in much the same way using water.

I am not aware of any way to somehow extract electricity from the air itself.

[Dr. Bruce Weaver]

Hi,

Energy is one of those things which can change form but the total amount of energy in an enclosed system stays the same. In the case of air, you can convert the kinetic energy of the air to other forms of energy, including electrical with the correct transducers. There are two kinds of kinetic energy air can have: net motion and heat. In the net motion case, a stream of air can cause something to turn (sorry, like a wind turbine) which is then attached to a generator/alternator. The heat case is a bit more subtle but if you have Peltier device and keep one side cold and the other side hot (either or both with air) then it will generate electricity without any moving parts.

I'm not sure either of these represents an alternate energy source. They're both fairly inefficient. You use a lot more energy to produce the electricity than you get out of it. It is a basic law of physics that all such conversions are pretty inefficient. I think that 'alternate' energy means only using something that is not normally used. I suppose hydroelectric is hardly considered alternative but, in that case, you're using evaporation by sunlight, the energy of the spinning of the earth, etc., to move water to a higher level (increasing its potential energy) and then letting gravity convert that to kinetic energy which is used to turn turbines for electrical generation.

So if you use electricity to run a pump to blow up a balloon and then let the air stream out to turn a wind turbine of some sort, the amount of energy used to generate the electricity for the pump will be vastly greater than the amount you'll get out at the end. You need a source, usually sunlight, which you'd have whether you'd use it or not. For example, generating ethanol from corn requires about as much petroleum (tractors, fertilizer, processing) energy as you get out of the end product. Dumb alternative energy source. On the other hand, converting the cellulose in the waste product of corn (the stalks) may be a net gain. It still starts with sunlight.

I hope this helps.

[Joker medna]

Thank you both, very much