Originally posted by Crowleyraindrops are small ... so they have high frictional losses with the air ... their terminal velocity will be low ... they will not have much energy unless we can capture huge numbers of them. ... nice story - but not much energy.
Producing electric current from drops of water:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/07/raindrops-energy.html
Rain has has a lot of energy in it, from whitch we can harvest energy.
Let the rain flow, down the hill sides, down to a river. Block the river so you get a higher level of the water. Let the water flow down pipes with a heavy force. Lead the water into propellers and you have rotational movements. Align this with generators and you can get a lot of energy out of it. Starts with a rain, ends with a lot of electrical energy. Then lead the electrical energy to the cities, and voilá!
What? Not my idea? What? It is called hydrodynamic powerplants? Oh, I had no idea... I thought I came up with this invention...
Originally posted by FabianFnasyours is a more powerful invention .... in the link they talk about using the kinetic energy of raindrops before they pool together ...
Rain has has a lot of energy in it, from whitch we can harvest energy.
Let the rain flow, down the hill sides, down to a river. Block the river so you get a higher level of the water. Let the water flow down pipes with a heavy force. Lead the water into propellers and you have rotational movements. Align this with generators and you can get a lot of ener ...[text shortened]... called hydrodynamic powerplants? Oh, I had no idea... I thought I came up with this invention...
Originally posted by flexmoreThe article explains that the power 'harvested' does not meet even household demands, but their applications are perfectly suited for pipe flow-meters etc. where batteries can be a hassle.
raindrops are small ... so they have high frictional losses with the air ... their terminal velocity will be low ... they will not have much energy unless we can capture huge numbers of them. ... nice story - but not much energy.
Here is a better article from the same magazine:
MIT students build solar concentrator, 12 by 12 feet. It can produce 1300 degree C temps. 144 square feet above the atmosphere would collect 18,000 watts, enough for ten homes. On the ground, it would go down to about 5,000 watts and if that was sent to a high temp capable high efficient solar cell, 20% or so, would generate 1000 watts, at least in daylight. So cut that in half and say it would generate about 500 watts times 24 hours or about 12 Kw hours per day, maybe 10. Here is the link:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/30/solar-energy-mirror-02.html