hey
i was bulding one of my idea's that includes wicks to transport water up against gravity.i tried different materials like paper towels and some thin pipes.Water soaks the material very fast and i can get it go like 4-5 cm above the water surface and relatively big volumes of water in this coffie cup experiment (up to 5ml per sec).Has anyone an idea how to make water leave the wick on top?

I imagined it will just drip off to another cup and from there new wick will transport it next few cm up the hill etc. creating the cascade of the wicks i wanted to transport the water to the Kelvin generator main bucket to close the cycle.

Any idea?

Hi,

Perhaps if you let the upper end of the wick bend down say 5 - 7 mm (depending on its thickness), would look like the letter  J  but of course upside down.  Important thing is what you use for fixing the bend: it cannot be water-absorbing and probably should touch the wick the less area the better.
This way water could drop from the wick's ending by gravitation I think.

rgds,  Gyula

well i want this drip,but it just does not happen

@all
Thx for advices,i will experiment on it.

What are you wicking with?

maybe a tube such as one would find from a standard phone cable, just pull the copper out of one of the individual strand and you'll have a nice sleeve.  insert some smaller diameter fishing line in the copper's place and it might work as a wick.  the problem with any wicking setup is that it will get clogged easily and stop working, it's also vapor dependent.  now, if your working some sort of evaporator system, then if it's closed, alcohol may be a good one to work with.  you may not have to insert the fishing line all the way down, just far enough that it reaches around the "J" bend and sticks out the end.

untill now the best were the paper towels,rolled like a cigar.
I thought to use distillated water to solve the water impurities problem.If it will be in closed system it wont get dirty i hope.

In the last experiment i could soak the wick up to 13 cm.I tried to hang it over the edge of the coffie cup like gyula suggested but it didn't drip.I had to let it hang well over 5cm below the coffiecup water level to make a water drop :| i will try to reduce the contact sufrace by hanging the wick on the fishing line.But i think the water just loves the wick more than another cup

@Jardo i like ur idea of phone cables(u mean twisted pairs i guess ) will have to try this one.

@ResinRat2
Yep that is the idea.To transport the water from the lower cup up the hill to the main bucket of Kelving generator using capillairs.I thought it will be straightforward
U meant low amperage?voltages are high in this generator

Quite some time ago, I also had the idea of using the capillary force to "lift" water. But the problem is, the reason why it actually rises higher than your source water is also the reason why it doesn't drip from your capillary (e.g. towel): Surface Tension/Adhesion. Due to surface tension it will attract itself on the walls of the capillary and therefore climb upward. But you will not be able to get the water again out of the capillary at the top by itself, due to the same surface tension...
But with some tricks, there has to be a way to do it, as plants obviously do it. And on some plants (like a bambus) you can easily empty the "water chambers" which are quite high.
The other problem is the amount of energy you can get out of it. I once calculated what would be the expected energy you could gain with this, and it is very small.
You could also do it like the "water wheel" which is always shown on the left, namely let the water evaporate, when it has been sucked into the capillary. Like that, ambient heat will do the work. Like that you could get work 1st by the climbing of the water in the capillary which will obviously change the gravitational center point, and second by the mechanical deformation of the capillary due to water sucked in. (E.g. like a sponge which gets bigger, when it gets wet).
Unfortunately in the "water wheel" sold here the two forces are working against each other...

something just came into my mind.If the wick was very heavy it would squeeze out the water by itself when laying on a hard,thin surface(like fishing line).What do u think?

I don't know if this helps; but, the wicking is a matter of the surface tension properties of water.

The idea is to create a small space inside a tube with a large surface area, hence, placing a tube inside a tube...inside yet another tube even.

The increased surface area relative to the size of the gap between the surfaces is a major factor.

Once the liquid has risen to the top of the 'vein' then is can be dripped off with a leader line of some sort, or perhaps a continuation of one of the inner tubes.

I don't know if this helps; but, the wicking is a matter of the surface tension properties of water.

The idea is to create a small space inside a tube with a large surface area, hence, placing a tube inside a tube...inside yet another tube even.

The increased surface area relative to the size of the gap between the surfaces is a major factor.

Once the liquid has risen to the top of the 'vein' then is can be dripped off with a leader line of some sort, or perhaps a continuation of one of the inner tubes.

u la la wick u describe would require some precise piping .As for now the wick construction seams to be no problem,so i could use ur idea to build it on top of the paper wick if it would help to drip anything  .Can u explain a bit what u meant with leader line?

In the mean time i made a wick out of the whole toilet paper roll and hanged it on the fishing line hoping that it will squeeze some water under its own weight.It didn't happen..i punched through the top end of the wick with some graphite rods(used for mechanical pencil) and i hoped the water will slide down it ,also a deadend.

@ResinRat2

condensation is a way as u described.If it was using sun energy then it could pump nicely but slow as u pointed out :| Evaporating is basically creating some lower pressure and sucks the water out of the top of the wick. Once we see it like this it may be something good from it afterall.One idea just popped up.Having the water so high in a wick is also good if we rearange the system a bit.
Just think about the trees!under strict vacuum no water could go higher than 10 meters,but we have very hight trees around! If a tree created a total vacuum it still could not transport water higher than this 10m,so it means that other mechanisms work here also.Let us think ith through

if we put a wick in a closed tube that is under the water level of lower container and add some slight underpressure on top of the pipe,we may suck the water out of the wick top.It will probably be with very low work required compared to suck the water through the straw up to the wick top level.Just like sucking water with a straw to say 2mm hight above the water level in a cup .Why i think so?
As i see it,the water rises in the wick because the water adheres to the sides of the capillairs and sufrace tension can overcome gravity force that causes the hydrostatic pressure.When the water in wick rises to some level ,the gravity works on the whole column of water in the wick.It is like if we were sucking through the straw,but we dont have to suck it because capillair force does it for us.

So we got the water rised to some hight for nothing.Situation is in equilibrum.equilibrum means a slight force in one direction will be enough.
Now since the water in the wick is not rising anymore ,nor is it going down ,i assume the pressure on the top of the wick is equal to the atmospheric pressure.Atmospheric pressure is also working on the water surface at the lower cup.So if we wanted to suck water from the top of the wick we would not have to suck the whole column of water in the wick!Because every time we suck from the top,the wick replenishes the missing water level by caspillair force to establish equilibrum.
This could be something nice

I hope u guys get what i m thinking.This could mean that if we put top of a wick in a sealed tube(so only water from the wick can come through it and not air) and make small underpressure in it,the water will drip and wick will replenish its water from the lower cup.Now top of the wick can be put into the closed container(main container of Kelvin generator).Every time the water will drip out of the container,the slight underpressure will be present in main chamber.this underpressure will suck the top of the wick and equal amount of water will drip into the container..and again and again.

What do u all think?

I think like a tree  the main container would be then the leaf and driping water out of it would be equal to evaporating in a leaf.
 

need to grab my vacuume meter and test it 

thx for explanation.

I made an experiment.I put two ends of a flexible tube into the water.At one end there was a wick inside, pushed so no air could go through it.It was to test my hypothese  outlined in my post above.

With syringe i removed some of the air in the tube. Water raised in both ends of tube to the same height.I couldn't get water in wick end of the tube higher than not wicked end.

So i interpret it like the wick is a part of the tube.

I will try some experiments with onLy the part of the wick in the tube and tube not touching water surface.