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Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 8:00 am
by deleted-71552
persian2845 wrote:To Briiguy,
Im still waiting for a response from them.
Anyways,when I told my freinds and family about the fan they said it wasnt that interesting since it would create enough electricity.
Can you help me with making it more interesting and more powerful or should we refer to the guys who posted that idea.(There names were at the bottom of the page,maybe they could give us help)
I really dont have anyone willing to help me around except on the web...
Hello, persian2845!
The amount of current you get out of the fan will be small, so building something that does something *BIG* will be difficult. If there is eough current to light an LED, however, you probably can trickle charge a NiCad battery. So this invention makes life better by reusing the energy from a vaccum cleaner's air exhaust to charge a battery. If we charge a battery, we reduce pollution by throwing away fewer batteries and we conserve energy because we aren't going to use electricity from the wall outlet that gets its power from some kind of huge generator.
So, I think you should do a web search for simple battery charge circuits that you can build.
If you have other ideas, you should consider them as well.
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 6:49 am
by persian2845
To Briiguy,
Is there any other way that i can get another powerful air source?
I didnt really get how i can charge the nicd battery with this low kind of energy i get.
And if i succeed in making this, how can i present it to the judges?take a vaccum cleaner with me??
Thanks again...
conservation of energy
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 11:16 am
by hhemken
OneBriiguy, I have an issue with this statement in the context of using vacuum cleaner exhaust:
"...If we charge a battery, we reduce pollution by throwing away fewer batteries and we conserve energy because we aren't going to use electricity from the wall outlet that gets its power from some kind of huge generator..."
I do not think that this necessarily applies here. If you put a fan at the vacuum cleaner exhaust port you may risk producing backpressure and therefore increase the load on the vacuum cleaner's motor. In this case, you would probably be wasting more energy than that recovered by the fan. The collection fan would have to be far enough away so as to be spun by the airstream and not produce a load on the vacuum cleaner motor.
Also, this only works when someone is vacuuming, which is not often enough to be a practical source of energy.
I do think that the idea has potential. I like the part about charging batteries. I see that you are in the UAE. Is it flat and windy there? If so, an inexpensive portable battery charger driven by wind sounds like an excellent idea, and possibly a marketable product. If you could somehow get it to charge cell-phone batteries overnight, it could be a hit.
There are several things you can fiddle with. Fan size and shape to capture wind better, collapsible fan for protability if the fan is large, swiveling base to adapt to changing wind direction, conversion of the current generated to something that can be used to plug in a standard cell phone charger (such as an intermediate storage battery that can be used to provide 120 VAC or whatever is the voltage in your area), provide the option of charging rechargeable AA and AAA batteries, etc.
That would keep you busy for sevral science fairs, and could potentially make money down the road.
What to show the judges
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 11:19 am
by hhemken
At the fair itself, you can show photographs of the device at work, and perhaps have it actually running in the parking lot if it is windy enough. You can have a voltmeter/ammeter connected to it to show how much current is being generated in real time.
Re: What to show the judges
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 11:49 am
by deleted-71552
hhemken wrote:At the fair itself, you can show photographs of the device at work, and perhaps have it actually running in the parking lot if it is windy enough. You can have a voltmeter/ammeter connected to it to show how much current is being generated in real time.
What Mr. Hemken has written in his two posts makes good sense. It is nice to have another expert chime in on this long thead. When searching for ideas, it's often best to have different presepctives. Thank you!
Re: conservation of energy
Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:43 am
by persian2845
hhemken wrote:OneBriiguy, I have an issue with this statement in the context of using vacuum cleaner exhaust:
"...If we charge a battery, we reduce pollution by throwing away fewer batteries and we conserve energy because we aren't going to use electricity from the wall outlet that gets its power from some kind of huge generator..."
I do not think that this necessarily applies here. If you put a fan at the vacuum cleaner exhaust port you may risk producing backpressure and therefore increase the load on the vacuum cleaner's motor. In this case, you would probably be wasting more energy than that recovered by the fan. The collection fan would have to be far enough away so as to be spun by the airstream and not produce a load on the vacuum cleaner motor.
Thanks a lot for the ideas...
Also, this only works when someone is vacuuming, which is not often enough to be a practical source of energy.
I do think that the idea has potential. I like the part about charging batteries. I see that you are in the UAE. Is it flat and windy there? If so, an inexpensive portable battery charger driven by wind sounds like an excellent idea, and possibly a marketable product. If you could somehow get it to charge cell-phone batteries overnight, it could be a hit.
There are several things you can fiddle with. Fan size and shape to capture wind better, collapsible fan for protability if the fan is large, swiveling base to adapt to changing wind direction, conversion of the current generated to something that can be used to plug in a standard cell phone charger (such as an intermediate storage battery that can be used to provide 120 VAC or whatever is the voltage in your area), provide the option of charging rechargeable AA and AAA batteries, etc.
That would keep you busy for sevral science fairs, and could potentially make money down the road.