Allowing dry desert sand in gulf surge through huge silky pipes make generators run to produce electricity?

Question

Arrange to allow dry sand, from the sand dunes in gulf region, in huge quantity, to slide through huge silky PVC or Tin pipes from a very big slope/height to gain tremendous force, and allow it to fall at the end of huge sized shafts of the Generators. Each end of the shaft arm is designed so that it should be able to receive minimum of 1 Ton of such surging sand and the arms should be able to withstand this weight and the force. Will it not rotate the mechanism giantly? Wherever labour force is required, it is cheap and aplenty -- to remove the accumulated sand or to reach the same sand to the said height. Sounds Don Quixoteic? Will not save Diesel here?

Answer 1

Sounds feasible. I would implement it in desert areas first and design a system that recycles the sand . What would move the sand with enough force though?? Fans?? Suped up conveyor belts??? Way to think outside the box!!! Peace.

Answer 2

Okay, I wasn't going to answer this but the first two answerers have clearly misunderstood your question. You are talking about a static electric generator, right? dry sand through silky PVC pipes. Right.

Okay, the problems with that are the following: the very high voltages generated by static machines are too high for our devices. It would cause transistors and computers to short out and fail. We don't have any practical ways of reducing the voltage. We don't have any practical ways of storing the voltage, or we would be able to hook up storage devices to lightning rods and put the natural power to a useful purpose!

But I like the way you are thinking. Sometimes looking at things from an unconventional direction will lead to new ways of doing things. Good luck in the future!

PS, you might want to check out a site called spark buzz bang and other good stuff; they have some cheap and easy static generators using PVC pipe on there that you can play with.

Answer 3

Sand would work no better than water, and water is more easily moved through pipes. That is why there is so much hydroelectric power and no sand power in the world.

But, in theory, the problem is that the labor to raise the sand back to the top of the pipe is not cheap or plenty at all. The work needed to raise the sand to the high end of the pipe again would be at least as much as the power it would generate by falling back down the pipe. It would be no different than using a tank of water to feed a pipe and then pumping the water back up to the tank. That is a perpetual motion machine, which conservation of energy says is impossible.

Answer 4

I believe that conservation of energy and entropy give us the answer here. You have to get the sand to the top of those pipes, and in terms of altitude this takes exactly the same amount of energy the sand gives back as it falls down the system. Unfortunately, there are losses. You have to overcome more than gravity to get the sand up the hill. On the way down, there is friction, as well as losses in the generating system. This system will always take more energy to run than it produces.

Human power doesn't change the answer. Their work doesn't use fuel directly, but it takes fuel to feed them!

Your system is a lot like hydroelectric power generation, but with hydroelectric we can rely on the earth's weather to get the water to the top of the system.

Answer 5

This is a fragile Idea, it takes a lot from goverments and cientist to do it, a lot of money...that's whay you dont see too much of these, remember that .