A Potential Source of Clean, Limitless Energy

[rfeecs]

It uses graphene.  Must be legit.

[tszaboo]

I cannot watch the video. If I would click on it, I would get countless free energy videos as recommodation from youtube.
It's like this: I watched a Lenovo Yoga review, and for months I got recommended "Young lady stretching in Yoga pants videos"
It is just not worth it.

[rfeecs]

Well, based on the video description, it sounds like they put a charged graphene sheet between two metal plates, and it vibrates back and forth from thermal energy.  This induces an (apparently AC?) voltage on the plates, generating 10uW for a 10 x 10 micron square piece of graphene.

It's not clear how this could be scaled up to make useful energy.

[donotdespisethesnake]

Graphene is still climbing the "Peak of inflated expectations" hype cycle.

[duak]

Didn't watch the video either.  With my luck I'd end up with videos on free energy from yoga pants.

But on to the experiment in the video.  Could this thing be converting Brownian motion into electrical energy?  If so, I'd think the modifier "infinitesimal amounts of" should be edited in.  Also,  I wonder if it's as efficient as a resistor is in converting thermal energy into electrical noise?  In the end, I suppose it may make a spiffy microphone with amazing bandwidth and fragility.

Cheers,

[rfeecs]

...Could this thing be converting Brownian motion into electrical energy?

No, obviously that's not it.

Here's an article:
https://www.sciencealert.com/graphene-levy-flights-limitless-power-future-electronic-devices

Here's his paper:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.06301.pdf

Sounds like: researcher detects repetitive thermally induced "buckling" in graphene using a tunneling electron microscope and theorizes, based on calculation, that this can be used to harvest energy if this whole setup can be scaled up millions of times.  So ... an unlimited source of clean free energy is here! 

[f4eru]

Yeah.
What a load of rubbish.
In the animation, you clearly see a "-" charge go towards another "-" charge, they should rather repel themselves.
But basically this would be using the power of the boltzmann noise of a resistor. That wouldn't work.

[Cyberdragon]

I cannot watch the video. If I would click on it, I would get countless free energy videos as recommodation from youtube.
It's like this: I watched a Lenovo Yoga review, and for months I got recommended "Young lady stretching in Yoga pants videos"
It is just not worth it.

A. sign out
B. Incognito/private window or whatever your browser uses for cookie-less browsing (IE you won't be signed in)

[cdev]

I'm similarly afraid to click on it.

 But, I do have to comment about one property of carbon (in this case fiber).

Ive brought this up before. I have a very strong very light photo tripod made of woven carbon fiber.

When I am near high tension wires, the long pieces of carbon fiber tubing of my (Manfrotto-like) photo tripod tingle to the touch. That doesn't happen with metal. If you simply run your finger lengthwise on the tube, its the tactile equivalent of 60 or 120 Hz. It feels very very strange.

Its easy to verify that there is a lot of electricity in the air there, just bring along a fluorescent light bulb and stick one end in the ground. It lights up with a sort of flickering light. 

Of course this isn't 'free energy', its energy which is traveling along the power grid, a by product of its magnetic field.

[IanMacdonald]

I cannot watch the video. If I would click on it, I would get countless free energy videos as recommodation from youtube.
It's like this: I watched a Lenovo Yoga review, and for months I got recommended "Young lady stretching in Yoga pants videos"
It is just not worth it.

I use a separate browser, and have it set to delete all cookies when closed. A downside is that the damn cookie notices and so forth will reappear each time you launch it, so I use uBlock Origin to get rid of those. This arrangement works quite well for stopping Google/YT from tracking you.

Since with most browsers you can only have one instance open at a time, it's useful to note that Seamonkey and Pale Moon are much the same as Firefox, and SRWare Iron is arguably a better version of Chrome, with less bloat. You can run these at the same time.

These days I find a blocker is more or less essential anyway, to stop those damn sliding banners that WordPress sites always seem to have.

HTH.

[rhb]

I wish I had not seen this thread.  I took two degrees there and recently served on the external advisory board for the department where I got my MS.  I declined to continue after my initial 3 year term.  The entire operation has  become a scam.   Unfortunately, this is true of the vast majority of universities, but this is over the top.

I did not and will not watch the video.  The entire premise is so illogical it beggers belief.   It *was* a good school 35 years ago, but now it is embarrassing. 

As a member of the external advisory board, the *only* thing the faculty wanted to discuss was how much money I would give them.  They'll not ever get another nickel.

[chris_leyson]

If you made the graphene membrain oscillate at 10's or 100's of kHz then you would have the perfect ultrasound transducers for energy transfer... Self winding mechanical wrist watches are probably 50 or more years old now. if you are going to harvest energy at least make some sort effort to make it easy and cheap to manufacture 

[TerraHertz]

Ive brought this up before. I have a very strong very light photo tripod made of woven carbon fiber.

When I am near high tension wires, the long pieces of carbon fiber tubing of my (Manfrotto-like) photo tripod tingle to the touch. That doesn't happen with metal. If you simply run your finger lengthwise on the tube, its the tactile equivalent of 60 or 120 Hz. It feels very very strange.

Its easy to verify that there is a lot of electricity in the air there, just bring along a fluorescent light bulb and stick one end in the ground. It lights up with a sort of flickering light. 

That's very interesting to hear. I think I understand what's happening. But first, did you ever try wandering around at night under 330KV lines, holding a full length fluoro tube by one end? You can 'map' the shape of the E field by where the tube glows. One thing you'll find out is that trees 'short circuit' the field. The gradient lines slope up and go over the top of the tree, so there's a dead spot around the base of the tree.
I guess trees, containing sap with salts, are fairly conductive. A metal rod will be the same, so there won't be much field near the rod, and so the voltages induced in the rod will be tiny. A low impedance short, in a high impedance medium.

But if the carbon fiber tripod is quite high resistance, it won't short out the field so much. Resulting in some charge mobility, but with a significant fraction of the volts/meter of the free field between the HV wires and ground. Say 50m, 330KV, that's over 6KV/meter. Plenty enough to punch through the dry skin barrier.

PS. I'm not watching that video either. Mainly because it's 100% certain to be infuriatingly stupid. I bet you could sell toilet paper by dying it black and calling it 'miracle graphene super wipes.'

[LukeW]

It sounds like the classic old thermodynamics-violating machine that extracts energy from thermal vibrations whilst being in thermal equilibrium with that environment - unless it’s colder, you can’t.