Antigravity pump lifts water upwards with no power source

Carrying liquids up a hill usually involves a pump, or a lot of buckets. But now it seems water can do some of the heavy lifting itself.

Kesong Liu of Beihang University in Beijing, China, and his colleagues have developed a way to lift water with no need for an external source of energy. Although the technique only works over short distances at the moment, it could be useful for microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices that shift small amounts of water around to analyse diseases.

more…

CrazyNeutrino said:

Antigravity pump lifts water upwards with no power source

Carrying liquids up a hill usually involves a pump, or a lot of buckets. But now it seems water can do some of the heavy lifting itself.

Kesong Liu of Beihang University in Beijing, China, and his colleagues have developed a way to lift water with no need for an external source of energy. Although the technique only works over short distances at the moment, it could be useful for microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices that shift small amounts of water around to analyse diseases.

more…

Haven’t looked at it properly, but I’m sceptical.

> Haven’t looked at it properly, but I’m sceptical.

I’m not even going to bother reading it, until someone tells me to.

Molly, I suggest you have a look at this.

:)

They discovered rising damp?

roughbarked said:

They discovered rising damp?

Capillary action?

Tamb said:

roughbarked said:

They discovered rising damp?

Capillary action?

An easy way to water plants more efficiently.

It’s plausible but it comes a little too close to perpetual motion to make me feel comfortable.

Abstract here

roughbarked said:

Tamb said:

roughbarked said:

They discovered rising damp?

Capillary action?

An easy way to water plants more efficiently.

The point about capillary action is that you can’t get a cycle without external energy to either evaporate the water, or draw it off in some other way.

Capillary action results from the water moving to a state with lower total potential energy (gravitational + surface tension), so for the water to flow it would have to move back to a state with higher total potential energy.

But I don’t rule it out completely. Maybe it extracts thermal energy from the air or something.

It appears that they are using a superhydrophobic coating to create a wettability gradient up a surface that can cause very small droplets to self propel against gravity.

fsm said:

It appears that they are using a superhydrophobic coating to create a wettability gradient up a surface that can cause very small droplets to self propel against gravity.

using surface tension

CrazyNeutrino said:

fsm said:

It appears that they are using a superhydrophobic coating to create a wettability gradient up a surface that can cause very small droplets to self propel against gravity.

using surface tension

from the article

It may seem like magic, but it’s all thanks to the surface tension of water. When the droplet touches the larger column of water, this surface tension breaks and the energy used to keep the droplet spherical goes into lifting the water. “We thought, why not use water’s own energy to propel the antigravity delivery?” says Liu.

CrazyNeutrino said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

fsm said:

It appears that they are using a superhydrophobic coating to create a wettability gradient up a surface that can cause very small droplets to self propel against gravity.

using surface tension

from the article

It may seem like magic, but it’s all thanks to the surface tension of water. When the droplet touches the larger column of water, this surface tension breaks and the energy used to keep the droplet spherical goes into lifting the water. “We thought, why not use water’s own energy to propel the antigravity delivery?” says Liu.

Seem to remember “compression head pumps”? going back to the 50’s, the energy from the water flowing down hill was used to pump a small quantity of water higher than from where the water was collected from the stream. Before you scream
“impossible that’s perpetual motion !” an energy balance will show that this is not the case.

bob(from black rock) said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

using surface tension

from the article

It may seem like magic, but it’s all thanks to the surface tension of water. When the droplet touches the larger column of water, this surface tension breaks and the energy used to keep the droplet spherical goes into lifting the water. “We thought, why not use water’s own energy to propel the antigravity delivery?” says Liu.

Seem to remember “compression head pumps”? going back to the 50’s, the energy from the water flowing down hill was used to pump a small quantity of water higher than from where the water was collected from the stream. Before you scream
“impossible that’s perpetual motion !” an energy balance will show that this is not the case.

yeah, we sell them

stumpy_seahorse said:

bob(from black rock) said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

from the article

It may seem like magic, but it’s all thanks to the surface tension of water. When the droplet touches the larger column of water, this surface tension breaks and the energy used to keep the droplet spherical goes into lifting the water. “We thought, why not use water’s own energy to propel the antigravity delivery?” says Liu.

\

Seem to remember “compression head pumps”? going back to the 50’s, the energy from the water flowing down hill was used to pump a small quantity of water higher than from where the water was collected from the stream. Before you scream
“impossible that’s perpetual motion !” an energy balance will show that this is not the case.

yeah, we sell them

Thanks stumpy, so my memory and understanding of same is not totally fucked.

hydraulic ram. lived on a property where we pumped all the water via those.

ChrispenEvan said:

hydraulic ram. lived on a property where we pumped all the water via those.

works better than a merino ram…

ChrispenEvan said:

hydraulic ram. lived on a property where we pumped all the water via those.

By “hydraulic ram” do you mean a ram that fucks hydraulic sheep?

bob(from black rock) said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

using surface tension

from the article

It may seem like magic, but it’s all thanks to the surface tension of water. When the droplet touches the larger column of water, this surface tension breaks and the energy used to keep the droplet spherical goes into lifting the water. “We thought, why not use water’s own energy to propel the antigravity delivery?” says Liu.

Seem to remember “compression head pumps”? going back to the 50’s, the energy from the water flowing down hill was used to pump a small quantity of water higher than from where the water was collected from the stream. Before you scream
“impossible that’s perpetual motion !” an energy balance will show that this is not the case.

I used one here for years. They were called ram pumps & put up about 1 litre of water for every 10 litres through the drive pipe. Similarly 1 metre drive head gave approx 10 metres lift.
This is a more modern design: http://planetsafepumps.com/

stumpy_seahorse said:

ChrispenEvan said:

hydraulic ram. lived on a property where we pumped all the water via those.

works better than a merino ram…

Depends what you are pumping.

FWIW, liquid helium can do it.
Like this

Spiny Norman said:

FWIW, liquid helium can do it.
Like this

That just happens to be one of the properties of helium at that temperature, just like superconductivity.

sibeen said:

Molly, I suggest you have a look at this.

:)

Surface tension isn’t energy or power, it’s force. Transients quickly die out resulting in static equilibrium

Q: Where does steel wool come from?

A: Hydraulic rams.