The world has been waiting patiently for a solution to the perpetual motion machine problem. Leave it to the Chinese to solve it. Now, where the hell is my flying car Popular Science has been promising me for 50 years? I want mine to be electric. /sarc
From SkyNews –
Wind-Powered Car ‘Could Cut China’s Smog’
Holly Williams, China correspondent
A Chinese farmer has invented a wind-powered electric car that he says could save his country from the pollution caused by its rapidly growing car market.
…
But in a small tractor workshop, 55-year-old farmer Tang Zhenping has invented the prototype of a car that he believes could revolutionise China’s auto industry.
Mr Tang’s model – built in just three months for around £1,000 – is electric.
Its engine uses scrap parts from a motorcycle and electric scooter, while its steering wheel, upholstery and headlights all come from a Chinese-made Xiali hatchback.
But what makes the one-seater special is the turbine on its nose.
When the car reaches 40mph, the blades spring into action and begin generating pollution-free power.
“It works just like a windmill,” said Mr Tang, who claims the turbine gives his vehicle three times the battery life of other electric cars.
Full story here
h/t to Bishop Hill
UPDATE: This comment on the Facebook page was too funny not to share.
Rik Magers commented on wattsupwiththat’s post.
Rik wrote: “Not only does it defy the laws of physics by powering itself, but he picked up a chick in it! Hope this is the prototype for the new Chevy Volt.”
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Yet another comic moment.
I love WUWT- best comedy on the net.
Erny72 says:
May 16, 2012 at 10:36 am
Hmm. This makes sense to me, at least enough sense to give it a try. My daughter’s cat is right here….
… wait for toast, spread jam, tie to cat with string, go to bathroom for bandages …
Umm, no. It appears thermodynamics wins again. I’m unable to attach toast to the back of the cat. I should have first tried the non-sticky plain toast as a control baseline, but I fear it would provoke the same repelling forces I encountered.
I might try again, but I gotta find me a declawed cat, or at least trim the claws first.
“”It works just like a windmill,” said Mr Tang, who claims the turbine gives his vehicle three times the battery life of other electric cars.”
So, taking the same battery the other electric cars (which of course are normal-sized) use, his midget-size car gets 3 times the battery life. Well, duh. Of course it would. Once he scales it up in size, his magic windmill on the front isn’t going to increase the battery life one whit.
dscott says:
May 16, 2012 at 9:29 am
dscott, no, he is not “recapturing some energy from the wind turbulence”, at least no net energy. There is absolutely no net gain from his scheme, whether he puts it in the back, the front, or the side. The loss in speed more than offsets the gain from the turbine.
Let me pick some numbers to illustrate. Suppose it takes 40 watts of power to drive the car at 40 km per hour, and 60 watts to drive it at 50 km per hour.
Suppose he gets up to 50 km/hr, and kicks in the fan. Perhaps he can draw 10 watts of power from it, but the extra drag from the fan slows the car down to 40 km/hr …
So now, he’s going 40 km/hr, he’s burning 60 watts of power, and he’s getting 10 watts back from the fan … which means it’s taking 50 watts of power to go 40 km/hr.
But without the fan, it only took 40 watts of power to go 40 km/hr …
So you don’t get to say “perpetual motion aside”, because the claim that he can get more power out of the fan than he is putting into the fan is indeed perpetual motion.
You can stick a fan out of the window of a car and draw power from it, that part is true. But the inexorable Second Law of Thermodynamics says it will be a net loss, it will cost you more to in extra drag (and thus fuel consumption) than you can recover from the fan.
I suppose you could just use the fan when you are coasting down a hill, and consider it a type of regenerative braking … but a hugely inefficient type of regenerative braking, you’d be much better off to just put regenerative brakes on the car. And hey, guess what, that’s what they do …
w.
Frederick Davies says – “This must be a joke; not even a journalist would fall for a Perpetual Motion Machine.”
Are you so sure? Most “journalists” fell for Anthropological Global Warming, Bush memos (Rathergate), Obama’s birth certificate, and the Chevy Volt …
Holly Williams is an idiot.
more soylent green! says:
May 16, 2012 at 10:54 am
Here’s what you do: Mount the fan so it blows air onto a sail mounted out front. Viola! Wind-powered car!
To boost power, the wheels could wind the rubber band and the rubber band drives the engine.
======================
The Mk II version could also have a sidecar with room for a donkey, and a carrot on a stick.
If he stowed the fan while driving, and erected it over the car when parked, eventually, the wind would recharge the battery. But that’s not what he’s claiming is it?
Turn the blades around and put Al Gore at the wheel and it just might work ….
Under direction of the US Department of Energy, General Motors has been instructed to purchase prototype and produce 3,000 vehicles which the government will purchase.
Secretary Chu announced that the prototype fits in perfectly with investment in wind technology.
“This is a game changer. Wind towers require wind, while Mr. Tang’s electric car generates its own wind when it reaches 40 mph.”
more soylent green! says:
May 16, 2012 at 10:54 am
Here’s what you do: Mount the fan so it blows air onto a sail mounted out front. Viola! Wind-powered car!
To boost power, the wheels could wind the rubber band and the rubber band drives the engine.
_______________________________________________________________________________There you go stealing my idea.
Interstellar Bill says:
May 16, 2012 at 11:21 am
The windmill has to be on top of the car, not in front of it, and be highly efficient.
The windspeed has to be at least 20mph to have enough power density for a car, which has to have very low aero drag and wheel friction.
===========================================================================There you go too, stealing my idea, also.
Luther Wu says:
May 16, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Seconded.
Power dissipated by body drag typically scales as the cube of the intake air speed (or worse). The fan would cause a relative drop in air speed over the body of the car because of power extracted by the fan. If you build a bad enough body for the car that produces a lot of drag, then you may pick up more power from the fan than would otherwise be dissipated over the body if the airspeed were higher. So, there may be a net gain from the fan under certain conditions, but not perpetual motion. For example, if you were trying to drive a flat surface down the road, it would make sense to put a fan/generator in front of the surface. The drag certainly won’t get any worse, and, you will get some of your power back. Speaking of that, how are Rossi’s fusion experiments going?
No. One of the unknown-unknown problems of the early airplanes (before the effective wind tunnels of the mid and late thirties) was the “flat” front of the radial and rotary engines of WWI.
That is, the propeller used the engine to pull air backwards (towards the flattened engine front) which opposed that airflow. Net effect? Smoothing the engine itself, trying to get smaller diameter engines, smoothing the corners of every part in the airflow (including rivets and exhaust pipes) and – most important – designing and re-designing the cowlings around the cylinder heads was a long and iterative process. Which failed many more times than it worked.
First, streamline the car itself. Add regen braking. Once that is done – which WILL work – the “propeller” effectiveness on gas mileage will be shown for what it is. Negative.
Rather than suffer all the conversion losses of Tang Zhenping’s contraption, you’d be much better off using the kinetic force of wind directly in a land yacht. I was quite surprised to find the world speed record for a wind powered vehicle is over 126 MPH (202 KPH). See here .
Of course, you’re then at the mercy of the wind, and if we’d been satisfied with that we would have stayed with sailing ships.
Use a big enough fan and it will produce more power than the sun.
May 16, 2012 at 9:43 am
Gail Combs says: @ur momisugly May 16, 2012 at 9:09 am
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Forget the spaghetti tree, I want money trees or a flock of golden geese or both to add to my farm.
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Matthew W says: @ur momisugly May 16, 2012 at 9:43 am
Or a herd of those Unicorns that crap out gold bricks to pay for all silly “green investments”
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I have my herd of golden unicorns… well four mares, but no gold bricks. They leave stuff better used in a methane gas digesters.
Willis Eschenbach says: @ur momisugly May 16, 2012 at 12:37 pm
….. no, he is not “recapturing some energy from the wind turbulence”, at least no net energy….
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Willis you do not understand his secret. It is the same one that allowed my VW pick-up to get 50+ MPG. Here is a photo from inside the hood (bonnet)
something to puzzle over.
California and New York just ordered 10000 each to show how high tech they are.
I remember the day a patent lawyer friend of mine (he is also an ex-engineer, so quite technically astute) told me that he had just received his first patent application for a perpetual motion machine. We celebrated with a beer or two.
What really annoys me about the Sky News report is the complete lack of scientific/technical knowledge on the reporter’s part. I’m not surprised, just annoyed.
thelastdemocrat says:
May 16, 2012 at 4:22 pm
“something to puzzle over.”
In the beginning, the car is not moving. The movement of the treadmill drives its wheels, though. The propeller could just as well be replaced by a sail. The wind pushes the car forward.
Could it be that the rotation of the fan, aside from powering a (small) generator, actually pushes air outward and as such reduces air pressure and thus air resistance of the vehicle behind the fan? Even if so, it would be hard to believe this would deliver more energy than the extra work that goes into moving air, turbulence effects, and conversion losses.
thelastdemocrat says:
May 16, 2012 at 4:22 pm
“something to puzzle over.”
Or looking at it from the reference frame of the moving “ground”:
v1 = speed of the treadmill
v2 = windspeed
v1+v2 = windspeed relative to a point on the rubber band of the treadmill
The relative speed of the car with regard to the rubber band is smaller than v1+v2; so that’s no impossibility.