You should look into LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions). I don't say this often; but mark my words, it's going to change the world.

There's also https://lppfusion.com/ . They will be game changers too. It's a matter of time who makes it to the market first. I think LENR will appear before lppfusions device is ready.

Not the first time hearing of cold-fusion (though I'm new to the term LENR) but I thought it was a white elephant. It has certainly gained theoretical ground but has quite a ways to go in experimental analysis before the average mind can have some faith in it. However, how many of us here are average? I love it.

A quote from: https://greenfiretimes.com/2017/07/low-energy-nuclear-reaction-lenr-a-promising-emerging-energy-technology/

LENR has the potential of generating thermal energy and electrical power. Eventually, LENR generators could be used in residential and commercial buildings. With a localized electrical power source at hand, how much longer would we have to rely on the grid? According to Dr. David Nagel, a research professor from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., “Homeowners now have considerable control over their electrical consumption. If they have their own LENR power generator, they will also have much control over their own electrical generation.”

I'm just getting acquainted with LENR but I think it's good to hope that we can develop that much in terms of affordable personally owned power generators. Fingers crossed.

There's also https://lppfusion.com/ . — Posty McPostface

This is completely new to me. Will need time to understand it.

How about the self-sustaining hydro-electric power plant? Think it's possible?

There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.

How about the self-sustaining hydro-electric power plant? Think it's possible? — BrianW

No, it takes a substantial flow of water with a large head to get significant power.

What about the process requires external energy input?

So it should be built on/next to a large body of water?

According to your figures, you can only get substantial head from an insubstantial quantity of water. Since you need both, substantial head and substantial quantity, it won't work.

Very tall trees, sequoia or redwood, manage to lift a lot of water from their roots into their canopy. You might investigate how they do that. (It's capillary action, of course. Could one duplicate the area of a sequoia's surface, under its bark, devoted to upward bound capillary action?

A piece of information from Wikipedia

"The water pressure decreases as it rises up the tree. This is because the capillary action is fighting the weight of the water. ... Scientists have found that the pressure inside the xylem decreases with the height of the tree, and similarly, the size of the redwood leaves decreases with the decrease in pressure. May 6, 2004"

It would be impossible.

It would violate conservation of energy.

Anything doing work (like exerting a force over a distance) must be powered, or have been powered by something...which itself, in turn, must be powered, or have been powered by, something. The energy has to come from somewhere. You can't make energy that wasn't there in some form. You can change it from one form to another, but typically, you lose some of it when you do (Some of It leaves the system in some form, such as heat, sound, etc.).

That's something that's always true in general. In particular, you can look at any perpetual-motion proposal, and get an idea of why it doesn't work.

With your proposal, what raises the water, with capillary-action, is that the capillary exerts an upward force on the water, of course. The walls of the capillary attract the water, which experiences an adhesive attraction to that surface. Do you think the capillary won't still have an attractive force on the water when you want to remove the water? Getting the water out will cost you as much energy as the capillary gave to the water, as gravitational potential energy, when it raised the water. Same force, same distance, same amount of work done, same energy. Nothing gained.

Michael Ossipoff

Hey, I just thought of another impossible perpetual-motion machine using capillary-action:

You have this huge cylindrical piece of material that's full of little capillary tubes running axially.

You stand it up vertically, which is easy to do because it's so light. You let it attract water up it by capillary-action.

Then you push it over, and as it falls, it pulls on a cable that works a generator.

Now you roll the old cylinder out of the way and stand up a new one, which doesn't weigh anything to speak of yet...

It would still violate conservation-of-energy, and therefore it would still be impossible.

But now it isn't quite as obvious why it wouldn't work.

I offer it as a puzzle.

Michael Ossipoff

Do you think a design alteration of the capillary tubes may help to decrease water pressure as it rises? What would the design be like? What if the radius decreased with rise in height? Or instead of using cylindrical tubes, 'rectangular' tubes with thinner slits were used instead? Would the increased surface area and reduced volume be an improvement?

Of course energy must be expended to make the capillary material for the capillary-tubes in the cylinder. If you grow the material, solar energy is used, which could have been used for another purpose.

But there isn't any obvious relation between the energy needed to make the capillary tube material, and the energy gotten by pushing the water-filled cylinder over.*

So, in principle, if you had a really energy-efficient way of making the cylinder full of capillary-tubes, what would prevent this perpetual-motion machine from working and producing energy.

*Or is there?...Well, if it's from a plant, then the plant-material was probably, at some time, wet. So you let it dry first. In the sunshine? That solar energy could have been collected in a more conventional manner, by some sort of solar-collector.

In fact, of course the plant used solar energy to make the material in the first-place, though (as I mentioned) there isn't an immediatelly-obvious relation between that energy-requirement and the energy obtained by the capillary-action.

Well, photosynthesis involves using solar energy to, make cellulose, a carbohydrate, requiring that oxygen be removed from what it's initially chemically bound to, and released as molecular oxygen. Might not the solar energy required for that be greater than the energy gained when water becomes more weakly adhesively-bound to the carbohydrate? It certainly seems plausible.

Suggesting that this perpetual-motion scheme amounts to just a less-effiicient use of solar energy.

Michael Ossipoff

I don't think it would matter. The important thing is that getting the water our of the capillary-tubes would take as much energy as was gained by letting it adhere itself to the tube in the first place (which provided the energy to raise the water). Same force over the same distance, same energy.

My push-over scheme is more difficult to find fault with, but I think I might have succeeded (at least in a rough way). Growing the cellulose material for the capillary-tube cylinder, and drying it, might, very plausibly, use more (solar) energy than the amount of energy that the adhesion in the capillary-tubes would release and make available to raise water. ...and might very well amount to a less efficient use of solar energy than ordinary solar collectors.

Michael Ossipoff

Anyway, if now, with the pushover capillary-tube cylinder, we're using solar energy to make new cellulose to attract and capillary-raise more water, it's no longer a system with no energy coming in. It's a use of solar energy.It's no longer a violation of conservation-of-energy.

It's now just a question of whether it's a more efficient way of using solar energy, as compared to ordinary solar-collectors available today. It seems to me, for the reasons I mentioned in previous posts here, that it would have low efficiency, because the amount of energy needed to un-bind the oxygen and release it, in photosynthesis, plus any solar energy needed to dry wet cellulose from a plant, seems likely to be far more than the amount of energy gained by letting the water adhere to the cellulose.

But I'm just guessing.

Michael Ossipoff

When you separate and free that oxygen in photosynthesis, you're breaking a very strong bond. Oxygen is a highly electronegative element. You're taking molecules apart, prying oxygen loose from what it's bound to.

What about when the water is allowed to adhere to the cellulose in the capillary tube?

You're letting two molecules get fairly close, but real chemcial binding isn't happening. You're only partly allowing some re-assembly of what you very energy-expensively pried apart.

Then there's the solar drying of the cellulose if it's wet when you get it from the plant. If that's necessary, it's obvious that getting water out of the cellulose is would take as much energy as letting water adhere to it. ...except more, if the cellulose that you get from the plant is more finely-divided, and in finer contact with water.

So, for those reasons, it doesn't look efficient. But, as I said, I can only guess. There of course are people who could say for sure.

Michael Ossipoff

Additionally, if you have to grind-up the cellulose to then form it into the tubes, you're separating cellulose CH20 units from eachother. They're obvious much more tightly attached to eachother than their weak attachment to the water that goes into the capillary-tube. Look what it takes to get those CH2O s apart.

So that would be another needed energy input that would further reduce the efficiency of that pushover capillary-tube cylinder system.

And don't think that you can just use the capillary tubes that a tree already has. You have to first get the water out of it, which of course costs you the same amount you'd gain by letting it re-take water.

Michael Ossipoff

You've lost me a little. I'm not implying the use of plants or plant material, it doesn't have to be cellulose or organic. I mean to imitate the capillary action in plants by constructing industrial grade (metallic or some high strength synthetic fibre) capillarity tubes. I understand the need for sufficient hydraulic head and that's why I'm trying to figure if an alteration to the tubes themselves will help in compensating for it.

You've lost me a little. I'm not implying the use of plants or plant material, it doesn't have to be cellulose or organic. I mean to imitate the capillary action in plants by constructing industrial grade (metallic or some high strength synthetic fibre) capillarity tubes. — BrianW

The point that @Michael Ossipoff was making is that capillary action is a result of molecular attraction between water and the dry surface of a tube and, hence, the work that it performs while water rises against gravity into a tube is equal to the work that is requited to dry up the tube. That's because, in order to dry up the tube, you have to work against the molecular attraction force that has made the water rise into the tube (and thus increased its gravitational potential energy) in the first place.

You may be picturing a continuous loop process in which the water circulates in the tube, such that you never need to dry the tube up. But in that case, after the tube has been initially filled up, there is no more capillary action. You would need a pump in order to maintain the upward circulation of water against gravity, and this pump would consume as much energy (at least) as you thereafter extract from the water flowing down around the turbines of your hydroelectric power plant. What plays the role of this powerful pump, in the case of living plants, is the solar radiation drying up the upper parts of the tubes within the plant leaves.

Now you roll the old cylinder out of the way and stand up a new one, which doesn't weigh anything to speak of yet...

It would still violate conservation-of-energy, and therefore it would still be impossible.

But now it isn't quite as obvious why it wouldn't work. — Michael Ossipoff

Of course, the work that is being produced by the falling tube is extracted from the gravitational potential energy of the water that rose into the tube, and this gravitational potential energy had been produced by converting the electromagnetic potential energy from the attractive force between the water molecules and the internal surface of the tube.

Oh, I kind of got ahead of myself and assumed that part. Suppose at about 90% the height of the tube there's a groove to drain the water. A narrow enough groove such that while water is still trying to rise to full height of the tube, the groove constantly drains it off the side. Can that work?

Suppose I infuse a needle-like intrusion to break the water's surface tension to prevent its meniscus from settling on that level of the groove and to direct water out of the tube as well? (Bear with me, I'm trying to see if I can cook a solution to these possible limitations.) — BrianW

Rather than using a needle, you could also lay a bit of paper towel across the top of the edge of the tube. That would break the surface of the concave meniscus as well. That would achieve the same result as a self priming siphon directing the water out of the tube.

So, maybe what you're picturing, now, is some sort of a self priming siphon continuously emptying up the top of the tube.

If you have two buckets of water at different heights, you could dip the end of a thin dry siphon into the higher bucket until it has spontaneously filled up (by mere capillary action) and starts dripping into the lower bucket. At that point, you could even sink the lower end of the siphon onto the lower bucket and the water in the higher bucket will keep flowing though the now completely wet siphon into the lower bucket until the water levels have equalized, right? But after the initial priming has occurred, the siphon never is going to carry the water from a lower level to a higher level. Furthermore, it will not self prime for carrying water from a lower to a higher level.

So, likewise with your meniscus breaking machine. You are effectively siphoning water though the meniscus, and out of the tube. But it's a self priming siphon that will stop working (or fail to start working) whenever (or if) the outside mouth of this siphon opens up at a level that is higher than the water level at the bottom of the tube. The tube and the siphon dipped in it, with the help of the surface tension of the meniscus, will effectively join the tube and the small siphon into one sigle siphon unable to carry water to a higher level.

The grooves will not drain the water down to below the level where the grooves begin. — Pierre-Normand

Suppose I infuse a needle-like intrusion to break the water's surface tension to prevent its meniscus from settling on that level of the groove and to direct water out of the tube as well? (Bear with me, I'm trying to see if I can cook a solution to these possible limitations.)

Suppose I infuse a needle-like intrusion to break the water's surface tension to prevent its meniscus from settling on that level of the groove and to direct water out of the tube as well? (Bear with me, I'm trying to see if I can cook a solution to these possible limitations.) — BrianW

I've edited my response and it may answer your question.

Thanks, I'll keep working on it.

OR you could just get a big honking diesel pump and be done with it.

Very tall trees, sequoia or redwood, manage to lift a lot of water from their roots into their canopy. You might investigate how they do that. (It's capillary action, of course. Could one duplicate the area of a sequoia's surface, under its bark, devoted to upward bound capillary action?

A piece of information from Wikipedia

"The water pressure decreases as it rises up the tree. This is because the capillary action is fighting the weight of the water. ... Scientists have found that the pressure inside the xylem decreases with the height of the tree, and similarly, the size of the redwood leaves decreases with the decrease in pressure. May 6, 2004" — Bitter Crank

It is not likely that capillary action alone is responsible for pumping water up the trees. In the case of maple sap a substantial pressure which cannot be accounted for by capillary action is built up within the tree. In this case there is a need for alternating freezing and thawing temperatures and it is hypothesized that CO2 is absorbed when it's cold, then expands when warmed up. However, the quantity of CO2 required has not been found. The process is known to be mysterious and not well understood. There is probably numerous physical processes involved, none of which alone can account for the phenomenon. In any case, it is probably naïve to think that simple capillary action is responsible for moving a large amount of water from a tree's roots to its canopy.

Just one more obvious thing about the proposal I described, in which the capillary-tubes cylinder is tipped over, to use its gravitational potential energy via a cable to a generator, and then replacing it with a new capillary-tubes cylinder. ...made from cellulose.

I should have mentioned that, of course, just burning the cellulose instead of making capillary-tubes with it, and thereby reversing the solar-powered photosynthesis by converting cellulose and oxygen back into CO2 and water, and using the heat to power a heat-engine such as a steam-engine--would obviously recover (minus losses) the solar energy that made the cellulose.

I mention that as another way to emphasize the inefficiency of the push-over capillary-tubes cylinder proposal.that I suggested.

Michael Ossipoff