I just woke up a had an idea. That probably means it's wrong and besides that, I'm still tired. So I can't think too straight to know whether or not the following idea will work correctly, efficiently, or otherwise.

My idea is a big cylinder/tunnel that has a certain length and it would be at least twice as long that of its diameter, and...

-This tunnel's inside shall be of lower air pressure than outside of itself. This will be because the air outside, in an attempt to equalize pressure, shall flow through the tunnel. I try to recall how the Ontario Science Centre's sound tunnel works; alas, I cannot, so I may not also say with certainty this shall work.
(Even now however, I am starting to see complications. Also, as a note, I came up with this low-pressure tunnel thing after oddly thinking about the Ontario Science Centre's "sound tunnel," where you could here different tones/pitches depending on where you were inside the tunnel.)

-On the inside of the tunnel, the face of it shall be lined with many relatively small wind turbines (or Windbelts, if they come through with it). Thus, when the air rushes in to try to equalize pressure, they shall trigger the wind turbines.
(The problem here is: will the tunnel be able to always maintain a low air pressure inside of itself? If so, how? And if it cannot, then scrap the "tunnel" part of this idea, and just say "inside a naturally formed low pressure area," or whatever. Even if it does manage to always maintain low air pressure, does that mean the air outside cannot flow through? If it cannot, then the purpose of this low-pressure tunnel will be negated.)

-On the outside face of this cylinder/tunnel, photovoltaic cells shall be placed strategically on it so as to gather energy from the Sun's various forms of emitted wavelengths (I say this simply to encompass the idea that if a cell could absorb UV rays, then by all means, do it!). Thus, the inside and outside of the low-pressure tunnel shall generate electricity.
(The "solar panels on the outside" part seems to me to be able to work fine. This part is specifically so that I can increase energy generated per square [CM, inch, you name it] without forcing the tube/cylinder to take up more space. So, this part presents the "compact" argument, if not only in the form of energy per [area].)

-The tunnel itself, if it were to be unwrapped into a rectangular prism, could have a height that allow its wiring to flow through its inside, rendering the wiring itself mostly immune to the effects of nature.
(This, of course, is just an extra point. It would also probably be very hard to do. And even if it weren't, it would be a waste. Simply scrap this I suppose.)

Well, there are the points to my idea of a compact energy generator that generates purely reuseable energy.
What do you think of it? Will it work? How would it work (since I'm still somewhat mystified about the low-pressure part)?

There you go. Thanks for reading to the very end.

You would need energy to modify air pressure the air within the tunnel. You've basically cooked up a wind farm that is encased inside a bunch of solar cells.

Edit: Oh wait a second, I guess you can mess around with local air pressure without using too much energy, oh well.

Well, when the air moves because of the pressure, the pressure would equalize, so, yes, you're using energy to make energy. And it's less than 100% efficient, too. Remember, you can't make energy out of nothing, which seems to be what you're trying to do. This is basically a hyped-up solar panel.

i bet that there is a natural way to contral the pressure

i remeber reading about changing polarity of hydrogen molecules so that they will all collect and sink. if there was some way to that efficently there could be a method to mess w/ the air pressure.

though this sounds like a good idea, im not too sure how much enegry we could actually get from it.

You can't make any energy source 100% efficient as you'll always get energy loss from heat, friction, etc...

Regarding the first post: it's overcomplicated and the overall loss of energy will probably be higher than in the solar cells you're using, thus making the whole system less effective than it's subsystem... that is, if I understood your idea correctly; your post is a bit confusing.

Well, I think it's probably possible somehow . I was just pointing out that the system itself would lose energy, not gain it or even stay neutral.

Ew, sorry, I must have worded myself wrongly.

Here is the premise: At the Ontario Science Centre, there is a big long tube with holes placed at certain points at the top of it. If I remember correctly, the air moving around inside the tube causes people inside of it to hear certain pitches of very low frequency. Also, if I can recall correctly, it has something to do with air pressure and a constant attempt for the air outside to equalize, flowing through the big long tube and causing it to vibrate, creating low-frequency pitches.

My idea is to exploit the vibrations and air that passes through to create a generator. But, meh, I still need to keep thinking over this and ask questions, so yeah.



[2]: The big long tube. It has holes at certain points to cause the insides of it to be low pressure.
[1]: Because the inside of the tube is low pressure, the outside higher pressure rushes in but is constantly forced out.
Together, [1] and [2] are exploited by wind turbines.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 28 2009, 11:43 pm by New-.Hydrolisk.

So... explain how, exactly, the attempts for the equalization of air pressure fail? Seems to me like they ARE expending energy to create the effect.

My guess is that the air cools and heats inside the tube due to sunlight/ambient temperature changes. The whistling noise would be caused by the air rushing into or out of the tube, because the large mass of air would have to move through a relatively small hole.

There have been attempts of this nature before, with people making large rooms that heat and cool during a days cycle, and passing air from such chambers through turbines. However, the energy output of such systems is not better than a simple wind turbine.