Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
..., Sun Feb 11 2007, 05:12PM

I don't want to offend anyone or anything, but I would say that having charged up a few J worth of capacitors from that huge collector system isn't all that huge of an achievement. I mean I have 2" square solar cells that put out 1w under normal sun... (although those are space grade surplus, but in general solar panels are $5/watt)

I would say that your biggest problem is that there is 1kw/m^2 of energy from the sun, but the amount of energy available from ionic fields is order(s) of magnitude less.

But then again, a lot of nasty chemicals go into building solar cells (it seems weird that no one ever brings that up)...
Although I can see a new 'end of the world' movie where we all are using atmospheric charge collectors and throw off some balance between the atmosphere and like totally screw with the weather. Sure it probably won't happen, but no one would have guessed burning this black goo we dug out of the ground would screw us over either.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
CM, Sun Feb 11 2007, 05:24PM

Orville, quit messing around with that gasoline engine and glider, it won't amount to anything! Your brother Wilber.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
Steve Conner, Sun Feb 11 2007, 05:55PM

The total potential of atmospheric electricity, including all lightning worldwide, is estimated to be about 500 megawatts. The world's electricity consumption is a couple of million megawatts.

I forget the source. But that means you'll never solve the world's energy problems, even if you harvested all atmospheric electricity with 100% efficiency, and are starting to court pseudoscience if you claim to do so.

If you want to be taken seriously (by me at least) I challenge you to find us some evidence disclaiming the 500 megawatt figure by several orders of magnitude.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
Marko, Sun Feb 11 2007, 06:14PM

with the assistance of qualified engineers and phyisists to impliment my ideas for improvement, I am confident ionic energy will become one of the front runners in energy production of the future as well on other planets (Mars has much greater ion density than earth). CM

The very simple and fundamental problm is, that there isn't closely enough atmospheric electricity on entire earth at time to produce usefully large amounts of power.

The total potential of atmospheric electricity, including all lightning worldwide, is estimated to be about 500 megawatts. The world's electricity consumption is a couple of million megawatts.

Lightning strikes occur about 100 imes per second, and considering average energy of 500 megajoules this gives 50GW of power just from lightning.

Some other sources estimate total available atmospheric electricity even in terawatt range, wich is probably exagerrated, but it's still very puny amount of power, considering poor efficiency of collectors and humanity's power appetites. Entire earth covered with most efficient possible collectors would probably produce as much power as a dozen of bigger nuclear plants.

Other thing about this idea, is that it resembles building a rube goldberg machine.

All electricity in lower atmosphere is produced by movement of air itself. Some wind turbines would perform many orders of magnitude better.

And even the most direct way, solar cells (1kW per square meter!) still aren't considered efficient enough to be useful.

So, no matter how fun they are, such atmospheric collectors aren't going to provide free energy to the world any time soon.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
Eric, Sun Feb 11 2007, 07:22PM

Who knows, they may find some niche applications. As others have pointed out the big drawback for most applications is that it is such a low density source. You need a lot of area to obtain a small amount of power. I wish you'd spent that $100K on some kind of solar devices... humanity is going to need them soon.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Sun Feb 11 2007, 08:40PM

Don't worry about the solar stuff, I'm playing with it right now.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
ShawnLG, Sun Feb 11 2007, 09:30PM

You spent $100k on a device that only would put out minisule power. Wow, a $100k power source to light up an LED. That's brilliant! You should of invested that money and go to college and study some physics and electronic courses. Then you would see that ion collection is not a plentful source for energy. You would then use your gained knowlage from college to do some research that would have real solution to our energy crisis.

Some examples of research:

Solar cells approaching 100% efficiency.
Organic solar cells which are safe for the environment.
Any other means of efficiently harvesting the energy directly from the sun's rays.

On the contrary. Some research can be put into using less energy such as:

Light weight aerodinamic vehicals.
Bright efficient LED light bulbs.
Better insolating materials for homes and buildings. Aerogel has excellent insulating qualities.
Geothermal heating and cooling systems.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
CM, Mon Feb 12 2007, 12:50AM

What? A clean energy source that works around the clock anywhere in the world, day and night, in good and bad weather??? Heresy! Call out the conformity police and burn him at the stake! Hehheh, just a bit of jesting to lighten the mood. There’s nothing to get upset about fellas. Progress sometimes happens when we intentionally (or otherwise) ignore the status quo that tell us what things are, and aren’t possible. Been doing it all my adult life. As a young man in the 80’s I was heckled by financiers (yes, respected bankers in suits and ties) when I told them that I was developing a professional wireless microphone for entertainers with no cord and no visible antenna. They more or less told me I was nuts saying “who’s gonna pay $1500 per microphone just to get rid of the cord?”. Maybe I was a bit nuts, but after my 1st patent issued, I opened manufacturing in the USA, then Europe and China and sold US$20,000,000. worth of my nutty idea in over 90 countries. Nowadays, all the major audio companies have followed suit. No doubt you’ve seen my wireless mic on TV as well as my other unrelated products I’ve developed and manufactured, sold through WalMart, Sears, Disney, Spencer Gifts to name a few. I like tinkering with new technologies and products, keeps me out of trouble. Okay, enough of my bloviating. Facts are… I have a system operating right now around the clock that proves ionic energy can be harvested and used to produce hydrogen. A patent application was filed in 2006 and I’m waiting for Washington and then PCT to let me know it’s approved worldwide (think good thoughts for me please) before spending the real money to hire the EE’s and physicists to refine what I’ve done. My existing circuit is collecting only a small fraction of the EM and electrical power from each spark, there is tons of room for efficiency improvement to be made by talented pros. Concerning the total energy guestimate provided by some authorities for the total atmospheric ions, I wonder if they remembered to include the plentiful source under our feet? Yup, my system also collects electrical energy when the potential of the earth becomes stronger than the potential of my HV collectors. Those who go strictly by the atmospheric energy estimates are missing a piece of the puzzle, there’s more to this than just atmospheric energy, the earth itself can be construed to be eminatating energy when it goes to a greater potential than my HV collectors, my system also collects in that mode too. Arggg… I’ve already said too much, I can hear my patent attorney snapping his pencil from here. In summary, what possible good could be realized from a pollution free technology that harvests a never ending supply of ions to produce hydrogen? Or from a system that could provide electrical power for Martian colonies in the ion dense Martian atmosphere? Geee, I dunno, but maybe someone will think it’s useful someday, meanwhile, I’ve had lots of fun developing it. CM

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Mon Feb 12 2007, 01:58AM

Free energy...Mars.... sounds like CM wants to be the modern Tesla to me.

I wish you luck.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
Alex, Mon Feb 12 2007, 02:22AM


On the contrary, you have written a lot but said very little. This is a scientific community, it is a place for sharing knowledge. Secrecy and patents have no place here.

So far, you have rambled about several projects in the realm of pseudoscience, and have provided very little data. You need to stop asking questions and fill us in. If there is any worthy science in what you're doing, perhaps people will start taking you seriously.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
CM, Mon Feb 12 2007, 08:27AM

Alex:

I must have missed your new rule about there being no room for patentable topics on this site, where might I find your new rule? Kidding aside, you might be right, I may have already said too much. Someone who's taken the time to actually grasp the concepts I've mentioned (which include concepts Tesla pioneered, earth being a conductor of electricity, sound familar?) could figure out what's in my 3rd patent application. My mistake for not being willing to make public domain, display schematics, and fully disclose the technology that I've spent years and lots of money to develop before my patent issues, pretty selfish of me actually. Bad CM, bad CM. (Note to self: According to Alex, don't mention any projects I'm working on unless I'm willing to disclose the trade secrets and patentable aspects of it). Experience shows that its the established intellectal status quo (and often times religious communities) that sometimes resist advances in technology and forward thinking, at first. I've witnessed it all over the world including from EE's that have worked for me, the intellectual statu quo who supposively champion free thinking are all too often the very ones who resist progress by insisting certain things simply can't be done... until someone else does them. Mark Twain said "The fellow with the new idea is always a crank... until he succeeds". CM

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
Steve Conner, Mon Feb 12 2007, 10:52AM

Well, let's see you succeed, then. Sure, you've proved that you can harvest atmospheric electricity, but that was known since the days of Ben Franklin. What you haven't done is prove that you can harvest it in useful quantities. Like a previous poster said, you have a $100k contraption the size of a football field that can light a LED. If I wanted to light an LED with renewable energy, I'd go and buy a $20 hobby solar cell from Radio Shack and put it on the window sill.

So by all means report on your progress, but please don't claim to have solved the world's energy problems, unless you have a 100 kilowatt prototype to show us. I mean, you can buy 2 megawatt wind turbines off the shelf, and people who advocate wind power are still dismissed as cranks. Everyone laughed at the Wright brothers until the plane actually got off the ground carrying a useful payload.

BTW, this article says the total worldwide potential of atmospheric electricity is around 200kV at 1000A. So 200 megawatts. Also see Wikipedia on atmospheric electricity:

The biggest claim of atmospheric electricity harvesting I could find was several kilowatts, by Hermann Plauson in the 1920s. But I don't believe it.

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
Marko, Mon Feb 12 2007, 02:10PM

BTW, this article says the total worldwide potential of atmospheric electricity is around 200kV at 1000A. So 200 megawatts. Also see Wikipedia on atmospheric electricity..

I'm not sure what this applies to, since this information simply contradicts the fact that approximate continuous power generated just by lightning seems to go in gigawatt range.
Most articles seem to circle the number of lightning strikes to earth per second to 90..100:




Considering average energy of each lightning, 500 megajoules, it's already 50 Gigawatts of power.

But, even an order of magnitude more power wouldn't be a lot of use considering 174.0 petawatts received by earth from sun.. wich still doesn't seem good enough to make us use solar cells

Re: Ionic energy - the next power revolution?
Alex, Mon Feb 12 2007, 02:16PM

There's no rule against it, you'll just find that everyone laughs at you when you post a picture of a glowing LED and say you spent $100k to do it. Your claims of patents and trade secrets are no replacement for true science, and judging by your previous posts, there's none to be found in your work anyway.

I'm locking this thread before it degrades any further. In the meantime, you might find this site to be geared more toward your interests.