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Location: planet octupulous is nearing earths atmosphere
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i have this concept that i've posted on other web sites.... all right here it goes' the earth has alot of stored energy in mountain ranges and or any land that is above sea level...and the earth has millions of cubic miles of land above sea level.. so all they would have to do in theory is build massive conveyers from highly ellavated tarrain like mountains down to valley areas or into the oceans to generate power.. by loading the conveyers with spoil dirt blasted rock etc at the top of the conveyers gravity would do the rest the converyers would be connected to the turbines and wela you have power..
hawaii is a realy good spot for an example the big island is like 13 thousand feet in elavation and probably has 100's of cubic miles of terrain above sea level... from the top of the big island to the ocean it's like three miles all down hill straight to the sea..
i guess the bigest problem about the concept is getting rid of the spoil.. if you dump it into the sea it would rase sea levels over long periods of time. but i think it has huge potential for generating power... just look at nature gravity and time with the elaments will wear entire mountain ranges down..
It's not so much that the sea levels would rise, although from our perspective it would seem like it. The amount of water in the seas would still be the same. But by lowering the land surface and disposing it into the sea, it would eventually lower the land surface elevation as well as displace the water in the seas by the amount of material disposed into it. By lowering the land surface, the seas would simply fill in the area where the land once stood. We'd end up with a windy water world.
While the process you mention may generate energy, it might require more energy to break up the land mass and transport it to the conveyer. Also, as mountains, hills, etc., are reduced in size, the angle of the conveyer would have to be readjusted closer and closer toward being level. Any energy generated from the process would become weaker and weaker until the conveyer would no longer be able to move by gravity.
Also, although mountains are reduced because of erosion and weathering, they are also being built up because of the collision between continental plates.
Location: planet octupulous is nearing earths atmosphere
13,621 posts, read 12,733,455 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NightBazaar
It's not so much that the sea levels would rise, although from our perspective it would seem like it. The amount of water in the seas would still be the same. But by lowering the land surface and disposing it into the sea, it would eventually lower the land surface elevation as well as displace the water in the seas by the amount of material disposed into it. By lowering the land surface, the seas would simply fill in the area where the land once stood. We'd end up with a windy water world.
While the process you mention may generate energy, it might require more energy to break up the land mass and transport it to the conveyer. Also, as mountains, hills, etc., are reduced in size, the angle of the conveyer would have to be readjusted closer and closer toward being level. Any energy generated from the process would become weaker and weaker until the conveyer would no longer be able to move by gravity.
As mountains are reduced by erosion and weathering, they are still rising because of the collision between continental plates.
i know it's just a concept but the big question is would it take more energy to load the conveyers than they would produce..it would depend on the terrain and how much mass is at a certain elevation.. and how steep of an angle and how long it is to the bottom.. an example if you took a mountain that is 2 miles high and you toped that mountain to about half way and dumped the spoil around the mountain how much energy could that top half of that mountain produce.. and for how long... it realy depends on local conditions like whether the elevated terrain is made up of solid rock that would have to be blasted or loose rock and earth or if the terrain is softer material like dirt or sand.. there's places in some of the deserts around the world that have sand dunes that are up to 1700 feet in elevation thay would not require alot of energy to load the conveyers and those areas are probably the best places to test such a concept..
i got the idea one day when i was on a small hill about 800 foot high and had a slope of like 45 degees... me and some friends rolled a five ton boulder down the face of that hill and it did not take much energy to get that sucker going that rock was flying down that slop at 100 mph.. thats alot of energy that that one rock alone could have produced... if it was on a conveyer geared to move slowly it would have generated way more power than it would have taken to load it on a conveyer system
they would need to test different areas to get an estimate on how much energy you could get out of one cubic mile of terrain hard rock-- soft rock --rubble rock mixed with earth--- dirt and sand etc..
but the big question is would it take more energy to load the conveyers than they would produce.
Exactly. That's the question.
Using the 5-ton boulder as an example, there is energy that it could produce rolling downhill, even more down a mountain. So let's say, a mountain high conveyer is used. To keep generating energy, you'd need a continuous supply of rock on the conveyer. Since it all works thanks to gravity, once the rock reaches the bottom, its job is finished. What then to do with all the rock piled up at the bottom? Toss it in the ocean? Probably not, because not only would it have to be transported to the coast, but it would have to be further transported far enough out in the ocean to reach areas where it's deep enough to dump it. All that would consume more energy.
Sure, just leaving the debris at the base of the mountain would pretty much reduce the energy needs as opposed to dumping it in the ocean. Certainly topping half a mountain is going to scatter a LOT of debris below. But to accommodate that much material below, would mean discharge end of the conveyer would have to be shorter, as it wouldn't work having it go right to the foot of the mountain.
Although it might still work out for an isolated mountain. There are some around the world, but very few, and most of those are volcanoes. Mountains are generally part of an entire range of mountains. As you top one mountain, a lot of that debris will be trapped by adjoining mountains. That means most of the debris, more often than not, will never make it to the foot of the mountain.
Looking back at the mountains, there are always rock and debris crumbling off due to erosion and weathering. I won't get into the larger picture of how all that debris ultimately makes a contribution to the ecosystem. But the material that loosens on the mountain tops, is only the outer "skin" of the mountain. Beneath it is a base of solid rock. So, to reduce the mountain top, you'd have to break it into rubble with sizes big enough to be used on the conveyer.
Let's say the object is to just use the upper half of a mountain. There would still have to be an ongoing process of adjusting the length and angle of the conveyer. Doing that would be another expenditure of energy. The energy output would also be reduced as the conveyer gets shorter. In fact, the conveyer would have to be shut down in order to make the adjustments, meaning no energy is produced during the time it take to make the adjustments. As the conveyer gets shorter in length, so too would the life span of the system, until it reaches a point that it's no longer usable on that particular mountain.
In theory, such a system could probably work. On the other side of the coin as a practical and efficient system, how well it would work and for how long is questionable. My bet is that it would ultimately end up consuming far more energy to operate than it would produce.
Even though I don't think the idea would be an application that would be efficient or realistic, I'm impressed with the fact that you even thought about it as a potential energy-producing alternative. It's coming up with different ideas that will eventually stumble across one that is a workable solution. Congrats! Nice going! That's exactly the thing that's needed!
Location: planet octupulous is nearing earths atmosphere
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nightbazar i never said it would be easy!!! but it's good to get some outside imput i'm all ways trying to think of new ways to generate energy i actually have like 20 concepts on how to generate enegy all kinds of methods.. i wish i had the money to build and test them.. it's frustrating!!! the worlds people need to focus alot of money and time to solve all our energy needs.. and we better hurry up or we are going to all be killing eachother over energy in the not so distant future.. it makes me sick when i here about all the billions of dollars being wasted on porkulous projects.. if i had just half the money that bernie maddof scammed out of all the thousands of people i truly think i could already have solved the worlds energy needs..
Location: planet octupulous is nearing earths atmosphere
13,621 posts, read 12,733,455 times
Reputation: 20050
Quote:
Originally Posted by JBrown
My question is
Can I get some of whatever it is you're smoking ??
dude the stuff i'm smoking is to good for you!!!! it might give you to many good ideas..but i do need laborers to load the conveyers!!!!! you up for the job????don't worry i don't think the'll be leveling a mountain near you any time soon.. it's just a concept
A lot of mountains are made of rock. (No, not THAT rock.) It takes a lot of energy to cleave rocks into a movable size. If you pile them up at the bottom of the mountain, the distance they travel gets less quickly. AND... the amount of energy you could get is actually fairly small for the labor involved. Alternate energy folks repeatedly come up with some sort of gravity energy storage routine and are nonplussed when they find out the amount of energy they can retrieve out of a ton of stuff on an elevator is less than what a car battery stores.
Most people have no clue about the relative amounts of energy in various materials and processes.
Location: planet octupulous is nearing earths atmosphere
13,621 posts, read 12,733,455 times
Reputation: 20050
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
Too funny.
A lot of mountains are made of rock. (No, not THAT rock.) It takes a lot of energy to cleave rocks into a movable size. If you pile them up at the bottom of the mountain, the distance they travel gets less quickly. AND... the amount of energy you could get is actually fairly small for the labor involved. Alternate energy folks repeatedly come up with some sort of gravity energy storage routine and are nonplussed when they find out the amount of energy they can retrieve out of a ton of stuff on an elevator is less than what a car battery stores.
Most people have no clue about the relative amounts of energy in various materials and processes.
in south americas andes mountain range there's 1000's of cubic miles of terrain that is 11 to 12 thousand feet in elevation ...that's thousands of cubic milles of land above 5000 foot elavation.. and not all areas of the world are solid rock!! it's a concept that needs testing!!!! and the same above method can work with water insted of blasting water thru a pen stock and down to a giant fan blade to generate power... water can be run on bucket sectioned conveyers that way every pound of water could be used for generating power... dams could be more efficient by using the discharg wather on conveyers.. that way you could get alot more power from the same water flow.. and the same method could be used in rivers directly by building a small dam wall to raise the water just enough to get the leed water on the conveyer system to generate power...so this conveyer method truly needs to be tested it will definitely will work at the bottom of a dam discharge... and the longer the conveyer is and the more angled and more sloped the more power you would get.. the big differece with the above conveyer system is if you have 1000 tons of water on a buket sectioned conveyer is all 1000 tons of water would prduce energy... and once the wather is on the conveyer if the conveyer is longer it will generate more power it's all about gravity and the conveyers do the rest.
Nah, what we need is to make some really big hot air balloons and paint them black to absorb the heat of the sun. Then we can make giant solar hot air collectors and pump the bags full of hot air. Once they are about half full, we load the basket underneath with rocks, and let the hot air send them to high altitudes. Once they are up there, we can drop them onto giant springs that will store the energy.
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