I was trying to do one of those back of envelope calculations but the numbers I came up with are depressingly low. IIRC the formula for power in watts is (Kg*m^2*s^-3) So for a sample calculation I considered the following; 25mm of rain will fill my cistern which consists of 8, 50 gallon drums or roughly 1600 liters of water. If I had placed the cistern on stilts (strong ones) at roof level (roughly 10 m) I would have 1600 Kg at 10 m head. If I released all this water and it went through a 100 % efficient turbine in 10 seconds I could generate 160 watts during that time according to the above formula. Did I do something really dumb here or is that realistic?
I feel like I missed something....I hope. Joe Evergreen Solutions wrote: > > > 7. In high school I had visions of a device for recharging batteries > that went something like this: captures rain in a funnelled system > (big opening = more rain), rain travels downhill turning a series of > wheels/cogs that via a system of gears works down to a very tight > ratio (one spin of the first wheel = ~10 of the smalll wheel) which > spin alternators to generate a charge to the batteries. The higher the > system starts aerially, the more primary wheels, the more kinetic > energy. Never built it, but...seemed reasonable. Then you could use > your captured rainwater for your crops/drinking/whatever. > > > _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
