Jul 4, 2007
Free energy with magnetic reluctance
As I think I’ve mentioned before, I get a lot of emails from people claiming to have solved all the world’s environmental problems through some perpetual motion device or similar. These are not the usual run-of-the-mill spam messages, they are usually targeted at me as a science journalist and talk of big solutions.
Some of these claims seem to reach global proportions as we saw with the Steorn research, which didn’t bear fruit. In fact, I created a new section on SciScoop to cover and discuss just such controversial conjectures; I highlighted several odd scientific claims some time ago on Sciencebase too.
Anyway, Thane Heins, of Potential Difference Inc, contacted me recently with the claim that he has developed a device based on a bi-toroid transformer prototype that in tests proved to be 7000% efficient. Just for comparison’s sake, engineers operating everyday electrical apparatus usually see efficiencies of a few dozen percent at most. 7000% is an outstandingly high value of efficiency and one might suggest way beyond the realm of known physics.
“This past weekend we gave a product demonstration (generator and transformer) to an international transformer manufacturer,” Heins told me, “Our transformer used 0.2 Watts in the primary and produced 14 watts through a 180 ohm – 25 watt resistor. We will be producing 1 – 7000 Watt toroids in the near future and even larger industrial ones.”
Heins claims to have reproducible evidence to support his claims. “We have third-party data,” he told me. Moreover, “the power dissipation calculations are very simple and can be verified by anyone.”
Heins confessed that he is still trying to get the physics aspect of the technology, which he refers to as the Perepiteia Transformer, evaluated and published by a university.
Heins also sent me comments from various academics who have looked at the work. One of them states, “Your claims seem to violate the law of conservation of energy and Maxwell’s equations of electro-magnetics.” Heins perceives this as a positive statement, “It is very positive and rare for someone to actually put that in writing – very brave in my book,” he told me. However, Heins adds that the academic in question has not been able to take physical readings on the transformer prototype, and to my mind it sounds more like a skeptic’s voice rather than a supportive comment.
Another academic describes the technology as “a new source of electric power” but then goes on to advise Heins: “Do not explain the physics – stay with explaining ONLY the electrical POWER measurements – it will keep you out of a lot of media trouble.” That sounds like a sneaky and cynical response, if you ask me.
That correspondent “was responding to the press release not the transformer data or diagrams/explanations,” retorts Heins, [he] did not understand at the time that the back EMF that would otherwise couple back to the primary is now diverted into secondary coil 2 doing real work, I assume that [he] thought that I didn’t know where the extra power is coming from but I do and designed things to work as they do.”
Heins talks of how the technology is “Based on the unique theory of leveraging back EMF and upsetting the power balancing mutual coupling coefficients”, his company has apparently “developed and produced an operational transformer which exceeds 100% efficiency.”
“Any skeptic can recreate the same transformer in about 8 hours and get virtually identical results,” Heins adds, “I wound ours by hand so I know.” He concedes that it is hard to comprehend and says he was skeptical at first. “For a transformer the Law of Conservation of Energy can ONLY APPLY if mutual coupling exists from the secondary back to the primary. The Bi-Toroid diagram shows how this cannot happen and how the Law of Conservation of Energy is violated by simply employing Lenz’s Law and Maxwell’s Equations and controlling flux path magnetic reluctance.”
Heins adds that he has “coupling from the primary to the secondary. The reluctance flux path in the secondary is lower because either the secondary core area is greater or because we employ core material with a higher relative permeability which results in a decrease in reluctance. When the secondary reluctance is lower – back EMF induced flux from secondary coil 1 must follow the path of least reluctance into secondary 2 and not back to the primary. The primary operates only at magnetizing current levels (reactive current only) and does not draw any non-reactive current from the source. The law of conservation of energy for a transformer requires secondary back EMF to be able to mutually couple back to the primary – but if this flux path is higher it will not be able to do so.”
I’d be interested to see comments on these claims from the physicists among you, although better still it would be educational if someone were to reconstruct the device, test it and post their results. Can the laws of physics cope with a 7000% efficient transformer? Can we really get more energy out than in by diverting magnetic reluctance? I suspect that this really is simply one for the Controversial Conjectures folder once again.
It seems that one possible explanation of Heins’ observations is that his device is simply a brake and that when the circuit is shorted the brake is released and the wheel accelerates. “The changes in mechanical drag are due to changes in inductance and hysteresis,” explains Peter Lindemann.
In February 2008 Lindemann explained: “I have reviewed all seven video links. In all fairness, I would like to say that Thane has built some nice demonstrations and spent a lot of time running experiments. That said, the films show nothing important. First of all, the films do not show enough detailed information to evaluate the demonstrations. Second, no free energy is shown. In fact, the generators are never shown producing any useful outputs. They are either shown producing voltage in “open circuit” mode, or they are shown in “short circuit” mode, where the generated voltage drops below one volt. So, ZERO WATTS are produced in either case.”
I’m closing comments on this post now.
I believe we have found our source of contention: These devices you speak of are ALL closed systems. You can’t create a properly working model of a device without a closed system. A key phrase:
“it is ALWAYS about added energy in an unseen or not yet fully understood form: Hence OPEN”
There is no such thing as free energy, hidden energy, or unseen energy. THAT is where we differ. Every thing else is a moot point.
Overall, in the BIG PICTURE, there is NO SUCH THING as an open system. It really doesn’t exist. It may be a very BIG closed system (as large as the universe), but it’s still closed.
There are some minute amounts of energy from things like the cosmological constant, or CMBR, or other cosmic particles (or antimatter, for that matter). But it will never power my 3096lb car. Any “hidden” energy source powerful enough to move my car is easily detected by our instruments. Not much is hidden in modern day science unless you are trying to look inside of a quark for evidence of strings.
Which means you are looking for energy trapped in matter. Fair enough. Those models have been well developed for decades. E=MC^2 and all that jazz.
I’m all about getting closer to 100% efficiency in electrolysis or engines, but it can never happen. You seem like a smart person, so I hope I’m preaching to the choir here, but energy is lost in the form of movement (heat) and light. Our whole world is slowly running down, slowly becoming less energetic with every passing day. Every failed experiment continues to use up more and more of this very real, very non-free energy. Our universe will eventually be at or near absolute 0K when it winds down completely. This is commonly, presently, accepted as fact (unless you have evidence that you accept which shows a corresponding big crunch!).
2H2O(l) → 2H2(g) + O2(g); E0 = -1.229 V
No matter how much you try, you will never be able to burn the hydrogen gas molecule and the oxygen gas molecule and be able to recover those 1.229V.
Water does not contain energy (I’m not counting the minute energy in its vibrations). Hydrogen is not a renewable energy source. That’s why the hydrogen is in the water in the first place – it’s at a lower energy level! Where do you think all of the water on our planet came from? Much more energized hydrogen from stars. Now the sun, with all of its hydrogen, is at a higher energy level. THAT’s where you need to get your energy from. But it too is running down, and guess what that hydrogen will one day turn into? Water. Water is the lack of energy.
Q.E.D. Science class over.
Moray’s device can’t be debunked because it doesn’t exist. it was destroyed in the 30′s. Either way, he claimed to get energy from a large antenna. Nobody has been able to get energy from a large antenna, and our technology is quite a bit better than in the 30′s. I can browse the internet from an antenna, but the radiated power is less than a watt. If there was 50kw of radiated energy flying through our atmosphere that could be captured by an antenna, I’m pretty sure we would have seen it by now on our VERY sensitive equipment (damn Moray knocked me off the internet again!), orders of magnitude more sensitive than was available in the 30′s. (I used to be a wireless engineer, I’m quite familiar with how one receives energy via an antenna)
Coronal Mass Ejections / geomagnetic storms are powerful, maybe that’s what he was picking up. In the 1850′s I believe they even shorted out a telegraph line (which is a really long antenna).
I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. You already know everything I’m telling you. You just choose to believe in something else, some X factor that we don’t know about. Belief isn’t scientific, so I would start with writing theories OR recording natural phenomena. Start there and work backwards. But don’t claim that free energy exists but is presently undetectable without evidence to back it up.
You don’t create energy, you discover it.
You are wrong about people claiming closed systems, that is your ASSUMPTION that is not backed by anything. No one i know believes in “perpetual motion” in a closed system (including Thane Heines), it is ALWAYS about added energy in an unseen or not yet fully understood form: Hence OPEN. As for water, the energy is locked in the molecule. There is energy aplenty in Hydrogen… They question is releasing it from the Oxygen bond…. And frankly, that is NOT a “Thermodynamics Law” question, it is a question of using the most efficient means for electrolysis… Faraday simply tried some methods and said he had found the most efficient…. He was wrong about several other things in his long and illustrious career: Why is his word taken as ultimate Gospel on this, lol? Hehehe, in his defense, the guy did not even know about “atomic theory”.
And any public site “lets the kooks in” as you put it.. I would even allow you in, lol (you deserved that)… As i was allowed in here too hehehe ;). However the thing to note is whether i support and tout certain devices & technologies or not.. if you have a specific comment, go for it: Generalities meant to color with negative emotional response are worthless… And rather transparent in motive. And apparently from your apology, this backhanded dis-ing and deliberately trying to denigrate people in this field is so usual for you, that you no longer even notice that you are doing it (if we are to take you at your word on it anyway).
Your single comment about Moray and Free Energy was telling, you were not able to debunk him at all, which is not surprising as no one has been able to in 70 years. Nor is your comment about the debacle 4 months ago about LENR anything of real value in the debunking line (which must still be rather a painful subject for you guys, lol). The reason that exactly-20-years thingie happened with the Navy Research Lab, was “Energetics” of Israel’s great leap in efficiency with their “superwave” technology, which is reported to be “COP>25″ (well, that plus the fact that over 120 Universities all the world successfully repeated the experiment and documented them with Peer-Reviewed Papers.. Oddly enough, NONE of them in the U.S. lol). Actually, they do not count the amount of energy needed to concentrate Deuterium in the water in their figures, which they should,. imo. But if they used the freezing ice method, it is not that energy-intense and probably makes it around COP>20 and a little better in large quantity.
Regarding Suppression… Let’s follow the money here: If YOU were in charge of a hundred-billion Dollar a year in PROFITS ALONE corporate entity…. What would YOU do to remain so? What would you do to stifle competition that would quickly end your “easy-money” monopoly? If you were in a “Big Boy’s Club” with international bankers on your Board, and with some of your people on THEIR boards, as well as the car manufacturing corporations and the coal mining corps in a “musical chair ” arrangement on each others’ boards of directors; and with politicians by the score in your pockets…. And this good ol’ boys club had the wherewithal to insure oil was used on this planet as fuel as much as humanly possible, for as long as possible…. And also had the ability to completely manipulate the energy futures commodities markets to illegally fix prices and cause consumer price “bubbles” when ever you wanted via speculation schemes that totally rigged the Markets…. Would YOU not do so?
Each of us must answer that question for ourselves, but Human Nature being what it is, these people most certainly WOULD DO SO, because they can so easily get away with it. More and worse crimes have been done using the cynical excuse of “maximizing stockholder profits”, than in the name of crack cocaine.
Just answer why the Stanley Meyer system of ultra-efficient hydroxy efficiency (using pulsed DC high voltage in a “water capacitor” arrangement), shown to many scientific and engineering witnesses be up to 40 times more efficient than “Faraday Efficiency”…. Has never had an open university study done on it (the ONE highly questionable study done by NASA around 30 years ago on hydroxy hardly counts; it was not a “University”, and not Meyer’s specific system) .
Lol would not something that has the potential to eliminate gasoline as a fuel merit such a Study? Yet it has never been done in over 20 years… WHY IS THAT?
Answer THAT, because it gets to heart of the matter, and to our points. In the end, that is all we are asking: That these technologies be openly studied by our Universities.
You know, i’ve had this discussion many times… And i will now “cut to the chase”: I can always get the opponent to admit that there are “legitimate” reasons for suppressing technologies, if they could be used as dangerous weapons. In these cases, they also admit that the 3,000 cases of Patent Applications that were “secretized” by the military (as reported by Dr. Thomas Valone, former Patent Office employee), could logically have been done “for our national security”.
So right there, the notion that “suppression does not happen” is completely exploded. Knowing what we know about human nature again… Are we so sure ALL of those 3,000 technologies, such as the above mentioned, are really “dangerous to national security”?…. Or indeed are many of them simply: “Dangerous to energy cartel security”"?
It is highly naive and disingenuous to expect that they are… And that these people who stand to lose TRILLIONS in profits would not do all they could to hold on to this extraordinary power they hold over us all.