Subir – Page 12 – SmallDesign

the habit of trying to move mountains:
there are two types of people who can break stones, the first is the simple stone breaker, who sees the stones and takes a hammer and breaks them. and then there is another type, the ‘intelligent’ one, who wants to achieve more than the simple one i.e. break more stones than the simple man, with lesser actions/resources but more thinking….achieve more with one go…

the latter creates ideas, makes assumptions, measure resources and strategizes over how to be ‘efficient’ in breaking stones. he puts a lot of effort in thinking and researching other tools, with the ultimate goal of higher efficiency. after numerous experiments and years, he develops a design that can break 5 stones in one go, but requires additional resources, more metal, fuels and is costlier than the humble hammer. its requires time to manufacture and labour. so the tech guy see this as an opportunity, convinces 5 stone breakers to leave their profession and join a labour camp to make stone breaking equipment. the balance sheet is balanced, the prices, wages are fixed, etc. its a profitable business. u can build a 10 stonebreakers/month, each with a capacity to replace 5 stonebreakers multiplied with the ability to replace another 10 by working day and night, and thus the process is very efficient.

By the end of above paragraph, the ‘tech’ have ‘liberated’ 150 not-so-perfect-and-efficient-machines, the human stonebreakers, from the back breaking work, and gained a huge ‘profit’. so its is only ‘sustainable’ to continue and more such machines are built and distributed. profit is tastier and its a pleasure to have as much. however, what about the 150/month of free souls? well some are as enterprising as the tech guy, so they decide to compete, and you have another 150/month count of free souls. well not everyone is interested in replacing stonebuilders, so some start building the farm machines. more free souls. and so on….

free souls(humans) are not sustainable and peaceful in general and they start to create menace, so the government decides to employ them, create jobs. also one of the tech guy decides he doesnt want to just build some stonebreakers, but many and for that its would be efficient to takeover other companies. to do that it would be more efficient if force is used instead of buyin it out, so he asks the little government of ex-stone breakers and ex-farmers to help him take stuff from the other, and a new profession is born, the militia. after the takeover, the government is stronger, the military gets more men and funds are available to develop new industry of this war machines. other people are scared and they develop their own militia, and efficiency of operations increase globally.

then there are some subtypes of the tech people, who spend all life studying the stones and finding out how to break them more and more efficiently. they branch out into various techniques and stuff. some people get bitten by the bug of exploration and leave the trail that heads back to industry, and they delve into theoretical physics,maths…and yes, they are ofcourse fed by the government since now the governments know that there is chance that these guys may make the processes more efficient.

in all, tech is created to increase efficiencies and it also creates more free souls, who enterprise to create more tech and more free souls. just like a stack of cards, the only difference being that the cards are dynamic. this process of super efficiency : replace more with less, continues creating the world today. all to break simple stones…funny.

it seems greed and efficiency are quiet related. well we have examples right in our own brains. often we dream, and imagine of moving mountains, because you know that it is the most efficient of all thoughts. by moving mountains i mean being successful at first go, become the richest man on earth, become super intelligent, ultra cools and others…..well if you ask the question why do you want to move anything in the first place, then you must head back to the start of this story and understand why a stonebreaker was ‘inefficient’..we dont like inefficiency at all, its very annoying…so why try moving stones when you can imagine moving mountains. why do the ground work when u can see the sky…

the idea of ultra-efficiency is very lucrative and we fall for it. There are 2 side-effects of this persuit, 1)you spend enormous time dreaming 2)you build a virtual image of achieving the dreams and the feelings you will posses then(if you do). it is very tempting and so much that it becomes a habit. the images in your head become stronger and stronger and for you its is an unacceptable contrast to the reality around you. When the time comes for living in real life, u expect yourself to move the mountains you always have imagined you are able to, and you fail. the fall from the castle of dreams is so large that it dents you pretty permanently. however we try some more times, till we realize that we cant do this, that the world is not a fair place for you to be, that your life is doomed. however you still cant let go of the dream, its a habit now, years of dreaming cant be wished away. it would require years of practicality, of reality, and that to only when you accept that you are a stonebreaker by birth, you can only move stones rather than mountains. that efficiency is nothing but greed.

life is not doomed, it can only be worse. if you stick to the moving stones, you can move the mountains some day, but dreaming about ultra-efficiency is a disease. you must fight the illness or else fight the reality.

the state of world today, is a result of greed and we continue to participate in it. we value efficiency more than human life. we value concepts of our mind more than the lives involved. the question that must be asked , humbleness or efficiency?

I am currently trying this one out, so please let me know if you are interested in the results. So far i am just making it out of coke cans and stuff..
This is a stirling engine concept, a mix between FPSE and fluidyne engine.

As you can see, there are two chambers connected with a tube. in one of the chamber there is a displacer with a long rod dipped in the liquid piston(water). the unit may be hermitically sealed and pressurized.

You must get familiar with FPSE engines in order to understand the potential merits of this design. Assuming you have done so, i begin:

There is important difference between an FPSE and this VDSE(viscous drive Stirling engine). in an FPSE the displacer is actuated by its own spring or gas spring, independent of piston. actually the displacer is a leader. however in case of VDSE, the piston leads, actuates the displacer and completes its full expansion before actuating the displacer again. this is due to the viscous drag. in this way, the displacer would not obey a sinusoidal relation with time, and hence the PV curve would tend to be more boxy rather than circular, giving some potential extension of PV area.

so the cycle is as follows(from the figure)

The engine is supplied heat at the top, the little gas above displacer expands, pushing the liquid level A into the tube.
This movement of liquid, the speed in the tube would be a multiple of speed at level A due to difference in diameters, and thus will drive(viscous drag) the displacer rod at a similar speed.
The displacer moves and thus remaining gas below displacer moves to the hotter top, increasing the driving pressure.
The displacer and water level keep moving down, and after full expansion( due to momentum gained by heavy water column), the expansion process stops.
In case of an FPSE, the displacer would have reversed much before this complete expansion. This is so because the displacer is driven by an actuator(gas spring) different than the piston’s actuator. Thus it moves back to the top pushing the hot gases back to cold chamber even if they still have more potential to expand. This action stops the expansion of the piston and results in the corners of PV graph begin circular or clipped However in the VDSE, the displacer is driven by the same piston(water) and so the things are slightly different.
The water now flows back from reservoir through the tube into the engine. Only after this motion, the displacer is actuated by the viscous flow of liquid around the displacer rod, and the displacer reaches the top. The hot gases are compressed by the incoming liquid above water surface ‘level A’.
this compression continues till the momentum of liquid is reduced to zero. Again in case of an FPSE this would not have been possible as the displacer would have started moving downwards much before complete compression is accomplished.

So as you can see, the area under PV curve is potentially increased. the speed of displacer movement is different from piston which cannot be realized in conventional engines(hence the circular PV curve). this (ideally)discrete motion of displacer is what makes this concept very interesting.

As for viscous losses, we are lucky, that these losses dont scaleup with pressure, although the speed of operation must be kept low to minimize these.

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Updates:
Well i tried the above idea ..here are some pics

..Well the result was the following:

With the heat sources(hot air gun / propane flame) the flow of water to the other column was too slow to cause any drag. the reasons might be the displacer rod dia is too large, causing a large drag and hence slowing the water flow.
i have no idea how much water was filled in. next time i will calculate.
when i removed the green pipe, at the end of experiemnts, there was still some water left in the chamber, and this again proves the 1st point, the displacer rod dia must be smaller so as to permit free flow at high speeds..

well thats all, so i have to modify the dispplacer rod diameter…sorry i dont have the pics of these(displacer and rod). will post shortly.

thanks 🙂

Author: Subir

greed, growth and efficiency

Viscosity Drive Stirling Engine