Imagine you had a river and you wanted to
convert the kinetic energy of the constantly flowing water into electrical
energy. You had a huge pile of hollow Styrofoam balls and a pile of steel
balls that could fit inside the Styrofoam balls. You stood by the side of
the river and every couple of seconds you would...
1) Connect a wire to one of the steel
balls.
2) Put the steel ball inside of a Styrofoam
ball (with the wire still attached and sort of hanging out).
3) You'd place the ball-in-a-ball assembly
into the water next to a big, stationary positively charged ball.
4) You'd yank out the wire and let go of
the ball-in-a-ball and let the current carry it downstream.
5) Your friend would collect all the
balls-in-balls downriver.
6) He would take the steel balls out and
drop them into a metal bin which was connected to a wire.
Your wire and his wire would connect up to
a power station somewhere in the middle of you two. According to my totally
ignorant theory of electricity, there should be current flowing through in
power station as a direct result of the force of the moving water. Here is
the sort of explanation...
When you put the ball-in-the-ball into the
water next to the big, stationary positively charged ball, negatively
charged electrons will be attracted to that ball and flow down the wire into
the ball-in-the-ball. When you yank the wire, the electrons are trapped
inside the steel ball that is inside the Styrofoam ball. This (now
negatively charged) ball-in-a-ball assembly itself is attracted to the big,
stationary, positively charged ball, but the flowing water is strong enough
to pull it away and downstream. Once downstream, when your friend takes the
ball out of the ball it is now far away from the big, stationary ball so the
electrons in the steel ball he is holding want to exit and get back to being
near the big ball so they flow into the metal bin and down the wire.
If you understand that, you understand the
solid state windmill. Replace the river with some moving air molecules (i.e.
wind) and replace the balls-in-balls with ionized air molecules. Here is a
picture...
Basically the high voltage connected
between the sharp point and the ring generates the ions (the
balls-in-balls). The wind (the river) carries the ions downwind when they
are picked up by the "catcher grid". The electrons flow back via the wire
through the load and start over again. Current is flowing as a direct result
of the wind flow.
There are a LOT of details missing, but
this is the basic idea. In fact the actual product would be millions copies
of this system, mass produced out of very cheap materials in very big
pieces. I also think there are switches in there to turn parts on and off
very at just the right moments so that the ions go where they are supposed
to and you can milk the most energy out of their movement. It is also
probably in the shape of a doughnut with the points in the middle so that
the wind can blow in any direction.
Check back soon for maybe a movie that will make this more clear. A
(hopefully) working prototype to follow.
Updates
11/23/2007 - Initial posting.
2/20/2015 - Just saw this on Elktor:
A Bladeless Wind-Powered Generator. "Now a consortium of Rotterdam-based
companies are planning to build a massive wind-powered generator structure in
Rotterdam harbor that will generate energy without using rotating blades. The
innovative ‘Windwheel’ will work on the EWICON (Electrostatic WInd energy
CONverter) principle developed at TU Delft and Wageningen University backed by a
government economy/ecology innovation program."
