Capacitor to store lightning?

[phlogistician]

Yeah, it tells me that I haven't sent in my application yet.

You missed the post where I told everyone that I had searched the patent office website, found the numbered class (and subclass) for charging a capacitor, and read the text of each and every issued patent, with the exception of any that require a U.S. Government security clearance to view them.

No Benny, but it's clear that you aren't that studious, and do not pay attention to the text you read, as demonstrated here, and that you think a few tweaks make your idea novel, and not covered by the broad strokes of an existing , or expired patent.

See, if your idea was patented previously, and it's expired, you cannot patent it again, have you checked all expired patents too?

But seriously Benny, with some major players involved, why do you think you have something novel, when we've had to drum some electronics basics into you here?

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Oh no - don't encourage him to do that. Then he will cease posting and what will we do for laughs?

No. After all this, we have got to see the patent.
Wouldn't it be ironic if we all had to admit he was a genius.

 

[Billy T]

... Wouldn't it be ironic if we all had to admit he was a genius.

Yes it would be, but that is less likely than three lighting bolts hitting my head from a clear blue sky.

 

[BennyF]

A great illustration of this is the early 1900s patent for an airplane with plano-convex cylindrical lens wings made of glass to be used on sunny days to fly over WWI's enemy trenches and at least blind, if not set on fire, the enemy troops.

With plano-convex lens wings it might be able to inefficiently fly (assuming the flex load bending the wings when they rather than the wheels supported the plane's weight did not break the glass), but I think at least one of the enemy would put a bullet thru them.

Please post a link showing the issued patent or some reputable news source announcing the issued patent, so we can all have a look at it.

 

[BennyF]

See, if your idea was patented previously, and it's expired, you cannot patent it again, have you checked all expired patents too?

Expired patents are still listed on the patent office website, which, as I said, I checked.

But seriously Benny, with some major players involved, why do you think you have something novel, when we've had to drum some electronics basics into you here?

One more time. I checked every patent in the appropriate numbered class and subclass, at least those that the public has a right to view. My circuitry for charging a capacitor isn't listed among them.

You might be interested to know that when Tom Edison invented the light bulb, major players were working on alternatives to the kerosene lamps that were lighting America's homes, but he didn't care. He simply made filaments out of every material he could think of, and tested them one at a time until he installed the filament made out of tungsten, which kept burning for hours, instead of burning out in seconds as the others had done.

Sometimes one man with an idea can outperform a hundred large companies.

 

[BennyF]

Clearly you missed the post about the patent on the glass aeroplane.

No, I didn't miss it. I didn't respond to it because there was no link to a reputable source.

 

[BennyF]

To show that this statement of yours is false and almost as silly and impractical as your capture and store lighting energy at high voltages ideas, consider my just written process patent for making hydrogen and drinking alcohol from two cheap ingredients (water carbon and methane) with my special catalyst in a high temperature (>1100 C) and high pressure (900 atmospheres) reactor. I.e. consider:

2CH4 + H2O ---> C2H6O + 2H2 (ethanol and hydrogen gas)

Now that you've had time to study this post twice, I can safely point out another mistake you made. You gave the wrong formula for ethanol. Here's a link to the correct formulas for it and methanol.

http://www.gcsescience.com/o36.htm

The correct formula for ethanol is C2H5OH.

Try not to look for the speck in my eye until after you've removed the log out of your own eye.

 

[MacGyver1968]

Benny,

Have you decided on what type of batteries your cap bank will charge?

 

[BennyF]

Benny.
Get this thing patented soon, so we can have a look and ridic... I mean discuss, your circuit diagrams.

Captain, until I began posting on this board, the best ideas that had been proposed involved a single capacitor the approximate size of a football stadium. The technical discussions involved various dielectrics, and nobody seemed to know that 200KV caps even existed until I posted a link to a catalog page that had some on it.

It was my personal contributions that have turned the discussion towards a bank of capacitors, with hundreds or thousands of current branches to reduce the current in each branch from a peak of 100KA to less than a thousand amps. It was also my personal idea to have hundreds or thousands of 200KV caps in each branch, thus enabling a few hundred MV to be divided up equally among those 200KV caps.

Again, this isn't higher mathematics, it's simply arithmetic using numbers with lots of zeros. Three thousand 200KV caps wired in series can store 600MV of DC electricity. The peak voltages I've seen for negatively-charged lightning bolts run from 100MV to 500MV. If you want to deal with positively-charged lightning, then double the number of caps in each branch, because those voltages can be up to 1GV, according to the estimates I've seen. Oh, and make sure that you know which of the two terminals of your thousands of charged caps is the hot one, that is, unless you want to install a very high wattage bridge rectifier.

Again, this is just the storage part of the problem. Now you have to collect the voltage, knowing that lightning is very dangerous.

# Lightning’s unpredictability increases the risk to individuals and property.

# Lightning often strikes outside of heavy rain and may occur as far as 10 miles away from any rainfall.

# "Heat lightning" is actually lightning from a thunderstorm too far away for thunder to be heard. However, the storm may be moving in your direction!

# Most lightning deaths and injuries occur when people are caught outdoors in the summer months during the afternoon and evening.

# Your chances of being struck by lightning are estimated to be 1 in 600,000, but could be reduced even further by following safety precautions

http://www.fema.gov/hazard/thunderstorm/index.shtm

 

[BennyF]

Benny,

Have you decided on what type of batteries your cap bank will charge?

I'm not planning on using batteries at all. Each of the charged HV caps will have its' voltage discharged gradually and linearly in a process I learned about in my school. The voltage regulation system will produce two steady DC voltages - one will be input to a high-wattage inverter, possibly a custom-designed inverter. The other current will go through purified water, turning it to hydrogen and oxygen.

I re-checked my chem textbooks this morning. The minimum voltage level necessary to produce the two gases is 1.23v, but as a practical matter, that voltage often needs to be increased. No problem. My cap discharging circuitry is easily adjustable and as a bonus, it's not labor-intensive, either.

 

[MacGyver1968]

It was my personal contributions that have turned the discussion towards a bank of capacitors, with hundreds or thousands of current branches to reduce the current in each branch from a peak of 100KA to less than a thousand amps. It was also my personal idea to have hundreds or thousands of 200KV caps in each branch, thus enabling a few hundred MV to be divided up equally among those 200KV caps.

Oh really? My post #38:

I've been floating this idea of collecting lightning bolts in my head the last few days. I'm just an electronic technician, not an engineer, so my design knowledge is limited. I'm curious what you mean about "voltage multiplier"? I've heard of a voltage divider...in fact, I was trying to think of a way to make a super high voltage/current divider for this project...as a way of converting the thousands/millions of volts coming off your lightning rod into much lower, easier to manage, usable voltages.

 

[BennyF]

Oh really? My post #38:

When I used the term "voltage multiplier", I was referring to a current divider, and I showed it by my subsequent posts discussing the details of a current divider, especially the hundreds or thousands of separate branches, all carrying the same potential voltage, which produces a multiplication effect if the caps in each branch are re-wired in series.

 

[MacGyver1968]

I'm not planning on using batteries at all. Each of the charged HV caps will have its' voltage discharged gradually and linearly in a process I learned about in my school. The voltage regulation system will produce two steady DC voltages - one will be input to a high-wattage inverter, possibly a custom-designed inverter. The other current will go through purified water, turning it to hydrogen and oxygen.

I re-checked my chem textbooks this morning. The minimum voltage level necessary to produce the two gases is 1.23v, but as a practical matter, that voltage often needs to be increased. No problem. My cap discharging circuitry is easily adjustable and as a bonus, it's not labor-intensive, either.

Caps aren't designed for long term storage. They are far too leaky. It's the reason we use batteries to store energy for every single portable device, and not capacitor-based storage units. Try to find even one application that uses caps to store energy for long periods of time.

 

[BennyF]

Three thousand 200KV caps wired in series can store 600MV of DC electricity.

For the benefit of anybody who likes finding technical mistakes on my part, let me re-state that.

Three thousand 200KV caps wired in series can be charged up to 600MV of DC electricity.

 

[BennyF]

Caps aren't designed for long term storage. They are far too leaky. It's the reason we use batteries to store energy for every single portable device, and not capacitor-based storage units. Try to find even one application that uses caps to store energy for long periods of time.

This is part of the planning I'll do AFTER the patent office decides whether my application(s) are good enough.

Thanks for the information.

 

[MacGyver1968]

When I used the term "voltage multiplier", I was referring to a current divider, and I showed it by my subsequent posts discussing the details of a current divider, especially the hundreds or thousands of separate branches, all carrying the same potential voltage, which produces a multiplication effect if the caps in each branch are re-wired in series.

Actually, it was Billy in post #43 that brought up the rewiring of parallel caps:

a second way, commonly used when weight is important as it avoids the the transformer, is to charge many capacitors in parallel (say 10 for a 10 to 1 step up) and then rewire them into a series string. The "rewiring" is typically done with optically switched transistors. There is an obvious switch break down difficulty with the highest voltage capacitor in the series sting as at times it is at V (in the parallel connections) and at other times at 10V. -Optically switched transistors can avoid break down to the switching circuits.

At that point in the discussion, you had neither mentioned voltage/current dividers or rewiring parallel circuits into series. You were still talking about turning 100MV into 100GV, as if this was a major part of your circuit. When you couldn't answer direct questions on why you would want to do it, you have since backtracked, and said it was just to show it was possible, and not really part of your circuit.

Change history much?

 

[BennyF]

Note to MacGyver:

The patent office's class for electric circuits that charge a capacitor is the same for circuits that charge a battery.

Scroll down this list until you find class number 320 and you'll see what I mean.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/selectnumwithtitle.htm

I still haven't sent in my application yet, but my charging circuitry MAY be able to charge batteries as well. Charging a battery wasn't covered in my electronics school, but I should be able to find out whether I can modify my patent application for this purpose.

 

[MacGyver1968]

This is part of the planning I'll do AFTER the patent office decides whether my application(s) are good enough.

Thanks for the information.

You're putting the cart before the horse again. Real engineers consider all aspects of their design before finalizing it. Dreamers and woo-woo's ignore what could be wrong with their idea, and hand wave any evidence that proves it, regarding it as irrelevant. Which is exactly what you are doing.

 

[BennyF]

Actually, it was Billy in post #43 that brought up the rewiring of parallel caps:

At that point in the discussion, you had neither mentioned voltage/current dividers or rewiring parallel circuits into series. You were still talking about turning 100MV into 100GV, as if this was a major part of your circuit. When you couldn't answer direct questions on why you would want to do it, you have since backtracked, and said it was just to show it was possible, and not really part of your circuit.

Change history much?

I didn't change history at all. I didn't mention current dividers by name because I was still trying to preserve my right to earn a patent application. Any disclosure by publication of the technical part of the application jeopardizes it.

 

[BennyF]

You're putting the cart before the horse again. Real engineers consider all aspects of their design before finalizing it. Dreamers and woo-woo's ignore what could be wrong with their idea, and hand wave any evidence that proves it, regarding it as irrelevant. Which is exactly what you are doing.

All aspects of my charging circuitry WILL be considered before I send in the application to the patent office. Believe me, they will.

However, the capacitor-discharge process will not be any part of my application, and so, it can safely be examined after I receive the patent, assuming that my application is good enough to get one.