Capacitor to store lightning?

[BennyF]

1. Your knowledge of electronics is limited to basic dc theory by your own admission, which only includes resistors, capacitors and inductors.

I think you misunderstand me. The school I graduated from taught electronics, not just electricity, but in my humble opinion, the solution to the problem of extracting useful energy from a lightning bolt doesn't require any electronic devices. Most electronic devices can't handle lightning's high voltage and high current anyway. Simple electrical components are all that is necessary, but that group includes a wide variety of relatively simple devices.

Besides resistors, caps, and inductors, the components used by electricians include shunts, diodes (including Zeners) varistors, thermistors, and variable resistors. If you've ever stood in front of a television set and turned a volume knob one way or the other, you've been using a variable resistor. Some of these "other" components could be used by an imaginative circuit designer to collect, store, and use the electrical energy from one or more lightning bolts.

Benny

 

[BennyF]

If you think a patent means your idea works, or will make you money, you have it exactly backwards. A patent is just the right to sue, nothing more. It does not make your idea work, does not confer prestige, and does not make you any money. (And I should know - I have a half dozen, and I'm still not famous or rich!)

1. You may not want to be famous. You may have a list of personal priorities that puts fame low on the list and something else, like a sense of personal satisfaction, a happy family life, a dedication to God, or perhaps a high military rank, higher on the list. You could even be working for an employer that prohibits anyone, as a condition of employment, from publishing any details of his personal life.

2. I completely understand your point about the purpose of a patent. Someone could patent the design of a new atomic weapon, but that wouldn't give him the right to build it.

3. Prestige can exist solely in your own heart, if you're humble enough. Some of these people have dedicated their lives to doing jobs that offer very little pay, very little fame, and very few visible honors. Some of them, in fact, are employees of churches and other places where God is worshiped, and it is God that offers the only reward that they care about.

If you are serious about your invention, build it and test it. If not, don't bother with a patent; spend the time and effort on something that will help you in the long run.

As I said yesterday, I have built a rather large "breadboard" out of a wooden pallet, and I have some of the components I'll need to do the testing that you mentioned. A complete set of tests will have to wait until I have a complete set of components.

 

[Billy T]

... A patent is just the right to sue, nothing more. It does not make your idea work, does not confer prestige, and does not make you any money. (And I should know - I have a half dozen, and I'm still not famous or rich!)...

Welcome to the club of owners of worthless inventions. Typically only the inventor thinks his invention may be worth money, useful, etc. and worries that some one may "steal his idea."

In 99.9999% of the cases* of privately owned patents NO ONE ELSE is even interested in the invention, so even the right to sue is totally useless except in 0.0001% of the cases. Even in that 0.0001% of the cases, it typically is long after the patent has expired that some one else becomes interested in the idea (or you can not afford the court cost to defend your rights). I.e. 99% of the patents that some one else will want to exploit, they can for free as the patent has expired or you just cannot afford to stop them. Thus your chance of making any money on your patented idea is approximately (converting % to decimals): 0.000001x0.001 = 10^(-9) or in words one in a billion! I don't know of even one recent** invention owned by person that has ever made any money (unless it is so simple he can make and sell it to the public himself). Do you?

Like you, I have several patents and have never made a dime on any. I did have the engineers at Shell oil very interested in one. - About 40 years ago, we exchanged three or four letters, both ways, until they started talking to Shell's legal department (presumably to see how a licensing agreement / contract could be drafted). Their next letter told me they could not discuss the idea further as Shell might have related ideas and Shell's lawyers said they had already violated Shell policy. There is a huge and very powerful corporate resistance to outsider's ideas. It is called the "not invented here syndrome."

If you want to make money with an invention, it should be something simple and cheap to make so you can market it yourself. Something like a plastic disk with a monkey face on it to hang on your key chain, etc.

--------------
*For corporate owned patents probably up to 1% are useful and occasionally even legally disputed as they do have value.

** Many years ago, before the "not invented here syndrome" was universal policy, some did*** make money with their invention but I think no invention in the last decade has made any money for its private inventor.

*** If you are old enough to remember fountain pins and the ink bottle that had an inclined piece of glass on one side so you could use almost all the ink in the bottle by tipping and filling that side well, you still may not know that simple private invention made its inventor about a million dollars. (As I recall he got a tenth of a cent royalty on each bottle sold.) And that was back in the day when a million dollars was a rare and huge fortune!

 

[BennyF]

If you want to make money with an invention, it should be something simple and cheap to make you can market it yourself. Something like a plastic disk with a monkey face on it to hang on your key chain, etc.

I once met a man who made a lot of money from a patented idea that was later put into mass production. As his own way of remembering the sacrifices that he made prior to his sudden accumulation of wealth, he ate bread and water once a week instead of the expensive meal that he could easily afford. That was a humble man.

 

[phlogistician]

That was MY research and MY effort to educate the board, done for the benefit of all the readers of this board, even you.

Except I didn't give a rat's ass caps that big were available, because I simply didn't need to know. I'm sure had I had a pressing need to know, I could have Googled it like you did.

Googling shit doesn't make you a researcher.

 

[BennyF]

Are you sure you haven't been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia?

I haven't been diagnosed with any form of schizophrenia. If anything, I simply may be gun-shy about committing my idea to an administrative process (the US Patent System). I've already had some experience in other "competitive" areas, including a lawsuit, and I've seen some nasty surprises handed to people who didn't deserve them.

 

[Billy T]

I once met a man who made a lot of money from a patented idea that was later put into mass production....

What was the invention? Was it years ago, before the "not invented here syndrome" made corporations not interested?

 

[BennyF]

I'm sure had I had a pressing need to know, I could have Googled it like you did.

Googling shit doesn't make you a researcher.

The results I got didn't come from Google. They came from following an idea from one website to another, recording the results, reading the results, understanding the results, and then producing the results when they were called for.

That's what I call research, Phil. Let's see YOU do some.

Benny

 

[phlogistician]

Moving back away from the patent thing, I don't think anyone has covered a very basic but also VERY important fact regarding an idea like this : The RC Time Constant involved.

Odd you should bring this up, because I was musing as I was having my morning dump that Benny needed to over spec his capacitors, because the pulse is so short, he hasn't got time for them to charge.

But then,. you know, it's the weekend, so I had a coffee, walked the dogs, did some shopping and lived in the real world for a while, instead of Bennyland.

 

[BennyF]

What was the invention? Was it years ago, before the "not invented here syndrome" made corporations not interested?

His invention was a piece of plastic. The shape was similar to a pair of tweezers, but each tip was about a square inch, and it was about an inch and a half long from the curved part that joined the two tips to each of the two tips. It was used for squeezing the water out of a hot tea bag without burning your fingers.

Imagine something like this made out of a single piece of plastic.

 

[phlogistician]

1. Lightning is very short bursts of HV DC. There are no sine waves in the voltage levels or the current levels.

No, but there are curves:

2. The simulated circuit may or may not be necessary. My process for charging a cap isn't that complicated.

You could create the circuit using software to test it, there are free prototyping tools available, although I doubt these tools will effectively simulate the failure of your circuit due to arc over.

3. I've already drawn the cap-charging circuit on my computer.

And kids draw space ships on their PCs. Doesn't mean they can make one. You need to have prototyped the circuit in software, not just dawbed in in MS Paint.

 

[phlogistician]

The results I got didn't come from Google. They came from following an idea from one website to another, recording the results, reading the results, understanding the results, and then and then producing the results when they were called for.

That's what I call research, Phil. Let's see YOU do some.

Benny

That's called surfing the web, Benny.

Oh, and I showed you the results of my research, apart from passing a written exam, we had to design AND BUILD a project to gain that certificate I showed you. And yes, it had to work.

 

[Billy T]

His invention was a piece of plastic. The shape was similar to a pair of tweezers, ... It was used for squeezing the water out of a hot tea bag without burning your fingers.

Yes that is exactly the type of thing I said could make the inventor some money:

{post 663}... If you want to make money with an invention, it should be something simple and cheap to make so you can market it yourself. ...

 

[BennyF]

Note to Phil, who still hasn't remembered what I've said about my circuits or about me:

1. I'm a graduate of an electronics school.

2. Lightning is "an underrated killer", according to the National Weather Service.

3. Simple lightning rods, if properly designed, properly constructed, properly located, and properly grounded, can reduce the danger of human deaths and injuries, and the risk of damage to personal property, corporate property, government property, and forested areas that are often burned by lightning-caused wildfires.

4. If the right equipment is inserted between a cloud with a high voltage potential and a conductive object on the ground, the possibility exists for the collection of useful electrical energy. Think of a 19th-century waterwheel, which was inserted into a small waterfall. If it was properly designed, properly constructed, and properly located, it could collect energy from the weight of the falling water and convert it into mechanical motion.

5. I have read the text of every issued patent in Class #320, Subclass #166, which is the US Patent Office's area for patents that charge (or discharge) a capacitor. None of the patents they've issued to anyone else, with the possible and unlikely exception of patents that require a security clearance to view them, are the same kind of circuitry that I wish to send to the office as an application for a US Patent.

6. My patent application is almost complete, and I have drawings ready to send to them.

7. Nobody (I said nobody) has seen any of my drawings or any of the text of my application, still waiting to be sent in when it's complete.

Benny

 

[BennyF]

That's called surfing the web, Benny..

Surfing is what happens when you simply glance at a page here and a page there. My research involved a lot more. I saved the pages I looked at. I read the information that was on them. I understood what was on them. I saw links on some pages, and I knew that some of those links were relevant to my research goals, while other links were not.

I followed the relevant links and sometimes found other relevant links, which helped to broaden my understanding of the total picture. All you've done is to find a photo of a certificate, using Google, and post it.

Oh by the way, just in case you missed it, I was the first one to post a lot of the detailed technical information about lightning, water electrolysis, and fuel cells that has been seen on this page. That was MY research produced for the benefit of all of the readers of this thread, and it included the FACTS of lightning's average and peak voltage and amperage, with the links to authoritative sources like Georgia State University, Camp Blanding in Florida, and the National Weather Service.

 

[Billy T]

Benny claiming to have made your own "research" by quoting what other have published, sounds a lot more like plagiarism to me.

IF you were serious about subject and research tell the rought time constant of your RC circuit and compare it to the duration of a lightning pulse - that is original work - not just quoting from others.

Read-only gave you a link that will calculate RC in seconds for you and I gave you graph which will let you tell what fraction of the voltage applied to your capacitor they will charge to while the lightning is still present. But for reasons I have discussed in detail, the correct answer is:

"No charge stored in the capacitor" as the bolt just arc to ground form the bottom of your metal "attraction tower" around the glass (or ceramic) insulators it sits on. I.e. the lightning takes a very-short, low-impedance path to ground compared to your network of inductive wires leading to your physically large array of capacitors.

 

[Billy T]

BTW, Benny to make it very simple for you (as you know little math) this is the fraction of full charge the capacitor will charge to in time T (graphiclly shown in the charging curve):

1 – e^(-T/RC) or 1 – e^(-x) where x = T/ (RC) which will be very small compared to 1 in the case of lightning and the large R & C you always speak of (or C large enough to store significant energy and L of large wire distribution net only)

and this is the series expansion for e^(-x)
1 - x + x^2 /2 - x^3 /(3*2) + etc. but when x is << 1 all terms except the "x" term can be dropped.

Because X<<<1 in your case this becomes to a very high accuracy just 1 - x.

So essentially you will charge the capacitors to 1 –(1-x) = x = T/(RC)

I don’t know your planned R (you usually mention meg ohms) so I take R =10^6 = E6 and assume you have condenser bank of 0.01 = E(-2) Farad. Guessing that the lightning pulse lasts 10^(-3) = E(-3) seconds (a msec.)Then with these values here is the fraction you capacitor can charge to with T = 10^(-3) = E(-3):

T/(RC) = E(-3) / {E6 * E(-2)} = E(-7) or switching back to simple decimal;

You can expect to charge the condenser bank up to 0.000,000,01 V where V is the voltage you can apply to the condenser bank. But for reasons I have toughly discussed (the air arc to ground at the base of the “attractions tower” ) V = 0.

Summary: your condenser bank will charge to ZERO times 0.000,000,01 or in words: not charge at all. It is too bad that you are too poorly educated to follow this math proof and will just continue to waste your time and money, but it’s your life to discard on wild, easily demonstrated to be false dreams and ignore others trying to help you do something more useful with your life.

 

[Read-Only]

Summary: your condenser bank will charge to ZERO times 0.000,000,01 or in words: not charge at all. It is too bad that you are too poorly educated to follow this math proof and will just continue to waste your time and money, but it’s your life to discard on wild, easily demonstrated to be false dreams and ignore others trying to help you do something more useful with your life.

I too doubt that he will follow the math. Instead, he will most likely ignore it and continue to try to swim UP the waterfall. <sad>

And your main point here is exactly what I tried to explain to him earlier - I agree that he's wasting everything on this. Also, as I mentioned already, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of people who have wasted their lives and entire fortunes on such worthless ventures.

On a similar note, I'm not going to waste any more of MY time attempting to teach the apparent unteachable. Several of us have made a serious, good-faith effort to explain WHY it could never work - to no avail. At this point, he can seal away his idea in a time capsule for 1,000 years as far as I'm concerned - the world will not have missed anything. :shrug:

 

[wlminex]

BillyT, Post 663:

Yours ---> "If you want to make money with an invention, it should be something simple and cheap to make so you can market it yourself. Something like a plastic disk with a monkey face on it to hang on your key chain, etc."

Also . . . make sure that the item is expendable and needs periodic replacement . . . like soap . . . or toilet paper!

 

[Read-Only]

BillyT, Post 663:

Yours ---> "If you want to make money with an invention, it should be something simple and cheap to make so you can market it yourself. Something like a plastic disk with a monkey face on it to hang on your key chain, etc."

Also . . . make sure that the item is expendable and needs periodic replacement . . . like soap . . . or toilet paper!

Yep, in general that's very true. There are plenty of exceptions though, like Mr. Land who developed the Polaroid Land Camera. He made a fortune of the camera itself AND the rather expensive film packs. Also, consider the woman who came up with windshield (windscreen, for those of you in the U.K.) wipers.

Then there's the Jarvic artificial heart, etc. etc, ...