Capturing Wake Energy Without Drag ?

.....Yupp, sort of missing Kistinie, at least he showed signs of humour...

 

I thought the thread was purposely a joke...a parody or tongue-in-cheek provocation.....until I read more..then I started to get that sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach that the author might actually be serious. I'm still not 100% convinced that he is serious....

 

If I told you what the educational requirements for licensing as a Wellsite Power Engineer were, you would probably fall out of your chair in hysteria. You'd probably also cringe in terror forever after every time you drove by an oilfield operation. Knowing what I do about the oil industry, I believe that you ought to be terrified at the site of anything pertaining to oilfield development.

Regardless of my grade 7 education I am licensed to operate power equipment , without site supervision, during temporary operations at oilfield well sites. If something tragic were to happen at a wellsite under my control that was attributed to either negligence or ignorance I could be held both civilly and criminally responsible.

Operations, like those that led to the Deepwater Horizon incident in Louisiana are quite common in the Sub Arctic Oilpatch, ( that is the realm of my experience ). It is quite common for me to arrive at a site that is crippled by frozen and or broken down equipment. During a typical 14 hour shift it is my sole responsibility to maintain ongoing operations while ensuring that all onsite equipment assigned to my care , is safely operable by the end of my shift. If someone like me would have been on the Deepwater Horizon prior to the blowout, the dead batteries and leaking hydraulic systems that the blow out preventer were dependent upon would have been repaired prior to any new operation or phones would have been ringing all the way up the chain of command.

 

ahh, I see. That kind of engineer. Sounds like a challenging field and I am sure it is. Some of my best friends are engineers in a sense different from what I and others meant earlier too; my friends are licensed engineers for vessel/ship operations.

 

I have no intention of insulting anyone. The steady march of progress is dependant upon a combination of PHD's and junk yard dogs like myself. Junk yard dogs like myself quite often create the unthinkable and impossible. The PHDs then come in and explain how our heretical contraptions work while they enhance the safety and efficiency of our creations.

 

Has anyone here heard of the Suntory Mermaid II ? It has successfully travelled almost 4,000 miles powered solely by wave action. This trendsetting inventor and adventurer has clearly proven the potential of capturing wave energy while overcoming drag resistance.

 

Sure..and we've helped design wave-powered electrical generation spars too. Has nothing to do with what you were postulating; your scheme is the same as Popeye blowing on his own sail to go ahead. The Suntory Mermaid, solar panels and wind generators all 'tap in to' and use energy sources that exist because of external energy inputs.

Huge difference.

 

The Suntory Mermaid II has proven the concept that a boat can return to the dock with more energy than it left with. Given that I have only begun my quest I believe it will be a long time before I can surpass those results. In the interim I do believe my wave arrestor technology is worth pursueing as a means of harvesting some of a boats wave energy while protecting both bathers from powerboat wave hazards and fragile ecosystems from wave erosion.

 

And I believe you are absolutely correct. A very long time indeed.

 

Of course boats can return to the dock with more energy than they left. Sailboats do it all the time. But they get that energy from the sun and wind.

Now, if your boat wake generator were fitted to a sailboat, and generated energy while sailing, then, in that scenario, you might come out ahead. But it would be way more efficient to mount a small wind turbine generator on the aft rail of the sail boat, or hook a shaft generator up to the shaft, and allow the prop to spin.

When I was at university, a "brilliant inventor" presented his concept to our professor. It was a conventionality powered power boat, with longitudinal tunnels in the hull. Inside the tunnels were turbines. The concept was that the energy produced by the turbines while under way would be used to power the engines.

You should contact that guy. 20 years on, I'll bet he's still looking for like minded folks. You could combine your concepts on one vessel and make enough power to light up Manhattan.

Oh, and FYI, there were lots of experienced hands on the Deepwater Enterprise, some of them had even complained to their management about some of the drilling practices going on. I find it fascinating that you know the root cause of the accident and how it could have been prevented. As far as I know, that makes you the only person with that knowledge.

 

My Anytec returns to the dock with sometimes 10 times more the energy conserved in her than when I left. Every time I fuel her up before returning.

Listen! As I wrote before. Maybe you get so in love with your own brain that you get confused here but I thank you because you made me interested in this subject.

I’ll save you some money by taping you into the conclusions from a 25mil $ wave research project to optimize energy recovery from small waves, up to 1m (or 3ft for you imperials).

I short 1m wave contains about 6kW per meter of wave front (compared to the aprox 30kW contained in a long 1m wave). After testing many shapes of buoys a drop shaped buoy was the optimal one able to recover about 10kW of energy. The buoy is about 5 m wide so by the 30 kW of energy (5m* 6kW) able to recover one third. To keep in mind that in order to do so a new generator technology has been developed that improved conventional generator technology with about 25%. Se more at www.seabased.com

So with that in mind bring out that dusty calculator and find out what it would take to power a boat that give you a 1m wave along a 1 mile strip. Assume also that you have these buoys set up on both sides along this entire strip packed along each other and let us also assume that packing them will not lead to any loss of efficiency at all. What will you get?

I’m too tired to start to look for numbers for boat and engine that can drive a 1m wave but perhaps anyone else can since it would really be interesting to know how much energy that could be recovered by the newest state of the art tech in wave energy from a plain boat.

You know, harvesting wave energy to power your boat is possible but harvesting your own waves is like lifting your self in the hair. Having a buoy filling the batteries of your hybrid boat while you are at home seems quite cool (I did not say economical).

Anyway, another more available technology for anyone that likes to spare bathers and beaches from waves and minimize the need of fuel to power your boat is to buy a sailing boat. No noise, no fuel and no waves.....
... (and no speed) ;-)

 

Do you understand that the Suntory Mermaid II isn't trying to harvest energy from waves it has created itself, as you would like to do with the wake of a boat? It's collecting it from ocean waves, that have already been put into motion by natural forces.

The best you can do with your idea is to recapture a portion of the energy your boat expends producing its wake. Nothing wrong with trying to do that. I doubt you'll collect enough to make it worthwhile, but I won't complain if you prove me wrong.

But expecting to collect more energy from the wake than you've spent making it would be just another version of the age-old chase for a perpetual motion machine.

 

I've invented a diesel engine that produces more energy than it consumes now I have to figure out what to do with all the diesel fuel it creates.

Since I can't dump it overboard I'm affraid the boat will sink.

 

I suspect a Poe but it has been entertaining anyway.

 

I do believe that there is more energy in a boats waves than is being used to move the boat but I don't believe that a boat could harvest enough of its own energy to propel itself . All I am attempting to do is to positively harvest some of that energy while reducing the impacts of wave creation.