I saw a tv programme 2-3 weeks ago, maybe more, that featured a project for a machine using a water wheel to produce power. The efficiency of the wheel was supposedly revolutionary, pun not intended. Does anyone here recall what the programme was or better still have a link? No, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel either.
Many thanks
GS
Here you go:
Jon N
If you mean the one about the size of a sewing machine with the 8 inch head, I started a thread some weeks ago.
The conclusion, after technical consideration seemed to be it would work fine if it was 200 meters wide and at the bottom of Niagara, or the electrician who had invented it, who didn't have any electrical appliances at home, had been let out for the weekend.
I didn't see a program about it, but it was reported on the BBC website about 2 months ago - IIRC he started off using yoghurt cartons then scaled up - you might be able to search on a number of keywords to see if you can find it :-}
Try this...
Great Scot expressed precisely :
I think you have the revolutionary mixed up with just a program which showed an ordinary one being built and put to use.
The idea seems sound in that the efficiency is multiplied due to the fact the weight of the water stays at optimum far longer than in a circular wheel.
The shape of the mechanism/lever? is that of caterpillar tracks. Thus all the water in the down section is accelerating at:
1 Kgm per litre x the force of gravity.Each bucket is tipped out at the bottom and is raised empty. Thus the thing is similar to the wheel in that the weight of one part is countered by the weight of an opposite part.
But it can only provide the power take off that has to come from the head of water in the first place. A turbine or set of turbines, running in a downtube would be just as efficient I imagine.
The idea was sweet in that no-one else had thought about it. Yet the idea has been the basis of countless methods of raising water since men began to use chains.
What would be interesting is finding out if something like it could be instituted in a generator. Instead of having 4 or 6 magnets revolving about a stator or however they work, how about a chain of them?
Sort of replacing a standard motorcycle chain with a combined drive and electricity generating combo. I wonder if that could work.
Its been thought about AFAICR.
Its like putting a chain with a set of paddles along a stream bed (you would do the opposite and have the chain above the stream for maintenance reasons). The flow moves each paddle and each gets pushed by the water behind. You have about 20 of them in the stream providing power at any one time. I don't see how its better than having a wheel with big buckets other than it may work at lower heads.
(In the one shown in the BBC pictures it would return a hell of a lot more power if you tilted it up (and built a short channel and used the full water drop.)
It would be an interesting idea to put a linear motor along the bed and put the moving magnet part on the chain. It reduces the moving parts so should make it more reliable.
Reliability is where its likely to fall down.. a moving chain drive is not as reliable as wheel so the returns will be less when you take maintenance into account. I can't imagine having any chain wheels that last a few hundred years like wheels do.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "dennis@home" saying something like:
No water wheel ever built lasted a few hundred years.
They need regular maintenance and frequent rebuilds or they just fall apart.
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