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Steorn Orbo free energy scam - they're Still at it!
wbeaty:
--- Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on December 08, 2015, 09:32:59 pm ---It's a box full of batteries, with a circuit to limit discharge to their "one tablet per day" rate.
And a warranty that's slightly shorter then the battery life.
--- End quote ---
Ha, that was my guess too! A custom-built battery with enormous internal impedance. That way it's impossible to rapidly test the total stored energy (by heavy load etc.) You could short it, and it still might take a year to run it down to zero.
Actually this has a history.
It's the Alessandro Volta perpetual motion scam of 1802! Volta himself was a "free energy" believer. He was certain that his Voltaic Piles were based on "contact electrification" and not on chemical reactions, and they would operate forever if he could just get rid of that pesky corrosion problem. Many experts of the time were confused about this, especially after experimenting with dry-electrolyte batteries, the DuLuc or Zamboni "dry piles" using thousands of layers, with dry paper as the electrolyte. Such a device could put out microwatts and drive electrostatic motors. Simple calcs show that they'd do this for several centuries before their plates finally corroded away.
See, it's the same scam: immense series impedance lets the battery keep working, but it prevents any quick measurment of net energy storage. It's perfect for "powering the controversy." It might go for centuries!
Steorn just has to word their guarantee so that, if their infinite-life battery fails after ?months?, then it's the user's fault.
The central idea here is that there's no such thing as an insulator. Materials are either electron conductors (metals,) or they're ionic conductors (electrolytes.) Glass, plastic, rubber, if they have any mobile ions at all, and you deposit a thin film of the material between plates of two differing metals, you've got a battery. It's internal resistance might be megohms or gigohms, but it's still a battery, and can (slowly) charge up a capacitor etc., as long as the capacitor dielectric has higher resistance than the "electrolyte."
amyk:
You mean like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell
Charging a phone/tablet/etc. requires many orders of magnitude more energy though...
wbeaty:
--- Quote from: amyk on December 24, 2015, 04:27:36 am ---Charging a phone/tablet/etc. requires many orders of magnitude more energy though...
--- End quote ---
Not true, since the stored energy is proportional to the grams of metal in the active plates. Imagine a group of AA alkaline batteries with volume similar to the Oxford dry-pile. Of course the energy rate, the peak watts of a dry-paper electrolyte battery is many millions of times lower. But the energy density might not be that far different. Also, rechargable cells typically store fewer joules than primary batteries of similar volume, since the rechargables must include inert plate-supports which take up space. A primary cell like the dry-pile's (and perhaps Steorn's) can fill that same space with zinc, lithium etc., and let it be consumed entirely, running for twice as long in the process.
If the Steorn battery device is ?10x ? larger volume than a typical tablet battery, then we might expect to get at least that number of tablet-charges out of it before the active metal is consumed, the thing goes dead and the scam is revealed. Heh, I wonder if their batt-stack uses lithium thin films?!
Odd thought: what if the Steorn device includes a rectifier effect, and the electrolyte is inherently piezo? Whacking the thing down on the tabletop might inject energy of fractional-joules scale! :) In that case, carrying it around in a backpack for weeks might make it last far longer than if it was carefully supported on a soft pillow at home.
Stonent:
--- Quote from: Towger on December 08, 2015, 09:42:03 pm ---I know a couple of people who have spent about 2k euro on machines which raise the ph of drinking water.
--- End quote ---
Just put a teaspoon of baking soda in it. About 50 cents a box, probably good for 100 glasses.
amyk:
I felt like doing a little more back-of-the-envelope maths:
Assuming this device holds 10kWh of energy, that's 36MJ. Its volume is around 1L, so let's say its energy density is 36MJ/L.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_densities
Diesel fuel: 35.8MJ/L
Jet fuel: 37.4MJ/L
Gasoline: 32.4MJ/L
Lithium primary: 4.32MJ/L
Interestingly enough, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc%E2%80%93air_battery gives up to 35.21MJ/L... so it could be possible the Orbo is just a gigantic metal-air primary battery. That makes a bit more plausible, but still not completely believable...
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