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Inductance Energy Corp perpetual motion machine

Pooneil

Critical Thinker
P
Joined
Oct 3, 2011
Messages
268
The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything column has a long winded, low density and credulous article on a new "generator" by Inductance Energy. Invented by their science and technology officer, Dennis Danzik.

The article is behind their paywall. This is the main claim.

IEC says its first commercial model, the R32 Earth Engine, hucks two 900-kilogram flywheels at speeds between 125 and 250 rpm, generating 240V or 480V at 100 amps. On the high side, that’s 48 kilowatts, about what a small backup diesel generator puts out. But unlike a diesel generator, the company says, the R32 produces no emissions, no noise (the unit comes in a vacuum-sealed, tamper-proof housing) and uses no fuel.
Click to expand...
The feature they say that differentiates them from previous tries at free energy is the use of must of course invoke Nikola Tesla. " “Tesla didn’t have rare-earth magnets and digital machine control,” Mr. Danzik said."

The article goes on to say they loaned one out.

An R32 test unit installed at his facility in January ran for 422 hours, IEC says, averaging 4.4 kW output, before it was brought back to the lab for analysis.
Click to expand...

The company has a supposedly working model on display in a transparent lexan case. The article contains some speculation about how the unit may be externally powered. There is no patent filing nor are outsiders allowed a close examination of the generator.

This is almost certainly a hoax. It will either quietly disappear from view or we will find out there is some power mechanism needed to keep the demonstrator it running until the last "problems" can be figured out.

I'd be interested if anyone has more information on this.

It reminds me of the WSJ article that brought Fleishman and Pons cold fusion claims into wide public view.
 
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Here's the incentive:

>> With about 30 employees, a $100 million valuation and about $16 million of investors’ money in play, IEC has plans for another round of fundraising,

As an investor/entrepreneur friend once joked; We're looking to take in a few more investors.

More money than brains out there.
 
Here's the company's webshite.

From their FAQ, under "Is this a perpetual motion machine?"
Earth Engine is not a perpetual motion machine. Earth Engine uses the force created from two opposing magnets. Magnets are a depleting resource that requires “recharging” every three years. If the engine is shut down, it will stop rotating the drive system.
Click to expand...

Okey Dokey, then!
 
Earth Engine, Earth Engine
Will you be mine?
My darling dear
Love you all the time
I'm just a fool
A fool in love with you ...
 
Well, if the thing runs in such a way as to demagnetize the rare earth magnets over time, then it should be able to yield... about 45 kJ per kilogram of magnets (with conversion losses).

A box full of alkaline batteries should be able to outperform that, in kJ per kg, by about four orders of magnitude.
 
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From their web site:
Earth Engine operates on the same principle as the ‘Slingshot Effect’ space travel phenomenon, which enables a spacecraft to increase velocity via a gravitational assist.
In 2009, Dennis Danzik, an industrial engineer, scientist, and graduate of the MIT product development program, postulated that the same effect might be replicated on a smaller scale using magnets containing rare earth.

The problem Danzik faced was that a magnet’s ‘push’ is always equal to its ‘pull.’ But in the summer of 2012, Danzik succeeded in altering the ‘polarity’ of a magnet. He made one pole stronger than the other, inventing an Asymmetrical Magnet array, and the applied science of Magnetic Propulsion was born.
Click to expand...


Slingshot effect. That magically accelerates spacecraft without an energy source, right?

Nope.

Still, making a magnet with unequal poles must be a major physics breakthrough. When does Danzik get his Nobel prize for that?
 
Myriad said:
Still, making a magnet with unequal poles must be a major physics breakthrough. When does Danzik get his Nobel prize for that?
Click to expand...

If only he had invented it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array

The effect was discovered by John C. Mallinson in 1973, and these "one-sided flux" structures were initially described by him as a "curiosity", although at the time he recognized from this discovery the potential for significant improvements in magnetic tape technology.[3]

Physicist Klaus Halbach, while at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory during the 1980s, independently invented the Halbach array to focus particle accelerator beams.
Click to expand...
 
Here's the article from E-Cat World comment section no less!

https://revolution-green.com/one-mans-unlikely-quest-power-world-magnets/

https://e-catworld.com/2019/05/17/w...s-covers-dennis-danzik-and-iecs-earth-engine/


The biggest riddle involves the conservation of energy. Conventional physics holds that magnets have nearly zero inherent energy. Mr. Danzik believes that is because we calculate magnets’ strength by how much current they induce in a loop of wire. He argues that with the emergence of anisotropic, rare-earth magnets, we need a new set of equations to calculate a new physical quantity, which he describes as ‘’the resulting center shaft torque produced from angular momentum derived from the force of paired magnetic fields.”
Click to expand...
 
Elagabalus said:
Earth Engine, Earth Engine
Will you be mine?
My darling dear
Love you all the time
I'm just a fool
A fool in love with you ...
Click to expand...

Yup.

This has a better chance of becoming reality...


mrfusion.jpg
 
Seems there's something about magnets that attracts cranks and they seem to be able to talk investors into fronting a lot of cash.

My first boss's first job out of college was to help this guy that had financed several million dollars (well over 10M today) for a guy that had a rotating machine that flipped magnets at "just the right time" to create energy out of nothing. But it seemed his designs had problems. So my boss's job was to help the inventor perfect it. He gave his boss the bad news and promptly quit.

This stuff never gets old and apparently there's plenty of fools and their money.
 
Magnets, how the **** to they work?

Not mentioned so far in this thread, from the WSJ article:

As the flywheel rotates, small battery-powered motors move the tower magnets’ orientation at moments of highest drag. This allows the magnets to accelerate as they approach and not slow down as much when they pass.
Click to expand...

So, accepting everything else at face value, the claim to use no fuel isn't quite accurate. And it leads to the question of why these motors are battery-powered, rather than powered by the generator.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
...And it leads to the question of why these motors are battery-powered, rather than powered by the generator.
Click to expand...

Obviously, if all of the little kinks (like needing a battery to power it) had already been worked out then there would be no need to ask for more investment capital. And in the end further investment is what this device is actually intended to generate!
 
marting said:
Seems there's something about magnets that attracts cranks and they seem to be able to talk investors into fronting a lot of cash.

My first boss's first job out of college was to help this guy that had financed several million dollars (well over 10M today) for a guy that had a rotating machine that flipped magnets at "just the right time" to create energy out of nothing. But it seemed his designs had problems. So my boss's job was to help the inventor perfect it. He gave his boss the bad news and promptly quit.

This stuff never gets old and apparently there's plenty of fools and their money.
Click to expand...


That's essentially how the "Earth Engine" is supposed to work too. It's a pretty old concept. They don't work because the stronger the pull of the magnet on the rotor, the more work it requires to flip or pull the magnet away at "just the right time." Using magnet arrays adds complexity but in the end all the forces are just the sums of the forces on each individual magnet in the array.
 
Trebuchet said:
Here's the company's webshite.

From their FAQ, under "Is this a perpetual motion machine?"


Okey Dokey, then!
Click to expand...

...has nobody asked them where the magnets come from? Even if rare earth magnets had a usefully high energy density, all the energy stored in their magnetic fields was put there when they were manufactured...

"Left running, the machines, known as Earth Engines, will eventually exhaust themselves. He just isn’t sure when."

If only there were some way to calculate the amount of energy available and compare it to the rate at which energy was being removed...
 
cjameshuff said:
...has nobody asked them where the magnets come from? Even if rare earth magnets had a usefully high energy density, all the energy stored in their magnetic fields was put there when they were manufactured...

"Left running, the machines, known as Earth Engines, will eventually exhaust themselves. He just isn’t sure when."

If only there were some way to calculate the amount of energy available and compare it to the rate at which energy was being removed...
Click to expand...


It's not very much energy. There's less magnetic field energy per kilogram of magnet than alkaline batteries have per kilogram of battery, by about four orders of magnitude.

Maybe if in addition to demagnetizing the magnets, the machine also oxidized the metals in them*, there would be enough energy converted to explain the claimed performance. But it's hard to see how this machine could be doing that.


*See also: SunCell
 
Myriad said:
From their web site:
Click to expand...
That "made one pole stronger than the other" statement suggests that this yet another crank "free energy" device.

A single magnet with different strength poles would be a major scientific breakthrough that a scientist (which Dennis Danzik says he is) would publish in the scientific literature. Multiple magnets arranged to give different field strengths between sides are already known (Halbach array).

The best that this device is a battery. Use the power grid to spin up some configuration of magnets. Extract most of the energy you used for the spin-up from the device. Calling this device a generator is a delusion.
 
At least the E-Cat World gets one thing right:

“These guys should get a fair shake,” said Dr. Lincoln, from Fermi Labs. “But a fair shake means handing a couple of copies of their gizmo to a group of snarky engineers and scientists and let them have at it.”
 
Myriad said:
It's not very much energy. There's less magnetic field energy per kilogram of magnet than alkaline batteries have per kilogram of battery, by about four orders of magnitude.
Click to expand...

This is not terribly surprising when you consider switching power supplies in portable devices...the inductors of which have a capacity for perhaps an order of magnitude or two less energy per unit mass, but store and release it thousands to millions of times a second in the process of converting and regulating power from a battery that can keep the process running for hours on end.

You can get a jolt from a large inductor, but it's over in an instant and doesn't amount to more than a tiny amount of energy. Capacitors are better at storing energy, and they're pathetic next to batteries. Rare earth magnets have strong fields, but not *that* strong.
 
I'm reminded of a joke reputed to have been played in the EE department of my university: Charge a large cap. Toss it to an unsuspecting friend. "Here, catch!"
 
Trebuchet said:
I'm reminded of a joke reputed to have been played in the EE department of my university: Charge a large cap. Toss it to an unsuspecting friend. "Here, catch!"
Click to expand...
We used to do that. And quickly learned not to pick up any capacitors that were “accidentally” left out on a lab bench. They’re was also a story about hooking up capacitors to the steel “trough” style urinals in a uni toilet.
 
$5 Million loan approved by Byron Town Council for Inductance Energy..!

I can't post a link to the source (because I'm a new member here) but several local news outlets covered the story back in December. They typically begin..

Quote:

The Byron Town Council unanimously voted to approve a $5 million Private Activity Bond Tuesday, Dec. 8, which will allow Inductance Energy – a Wyoming based energy company that says it has created a magnetic energy generator that is a major breakthrough in science – to build a facility within the city limits.

End Quote.

Some articles suggest they intend to make magnets from local resources. I think one mentioned coal.
 
Wow there are some cretins in the USA to fall for such idiotic scams.
 
So. Are the Byron Town Council dupes, accomplices, or magnificent bastards?

Dupes: They think it's real and hope to revitalize the town's economy with free energy and an emerging industrial base in profitable cutting edge tech development m

Accomplices: They are cooperating with the con men, lending legitimacy to their con to help dupe investors. The con men are cutting them in for a share of the take.

Magnificent Bastards: They know it's fake, but private investment in their town is good, even if the investors are being conned. Buyer beware. Development is development. Doesn't matter if these guys go out of business. The facilities and infrastructure they paid for will benefit the town for decades to come.
 
CWatters said:
Some articles suggest they intend to make magnets from local resources. I think one mentioned coal.
Click to expand...


I wonder if their scheme to pull rare earth elements out of coal is as bogus as the Earth Engine itself. One would think, if it worked and were more economical than other sources, the company would just go into business selling rare earth elements. No need to even make magnets, let alone Earth Engines.
 
Byron, like most of Big Horn County, is Mormon territory. You'd expect LDSers to show good sense when it comes to money -- and ripe old guibility when it comes to science.

So no surprises here.

There's coal thereabouts, but hell, Wyoming is almost made of coal, soft, dirty, cheap stuff that will some fine day be worthless if not prohibited. Rare earths? Of value? Mebbe, apparently from coal ash rather than the raw material.

I very much doubt that poor little old Byron will ever be a center for rare earth extraction. Or anything else. Hope not.

Anybody here ever been through Byron? How long did it take you?
 
CWatters said:
$5 Million loan approved by Byron Town Council for Inductance Energy..!

I can't post a link to the source (because I'm a new member here) but several local news outlets covered the story back in December. They typically begin..

Quote:

The Byron Town Council unanimously voted to approve a $5 million Private Activity Bond Tuesday, Dec. 8, which will allow Inductance Energy – a Wyoming based energy company that says it has created a magnetic energy generator that is a major breakthrough in science – to build a facility within the city limits.

End Quote.

Some articles suggest they intend to make magnets from local resources. I think one mentioned coal.
Click to expand...

The 2010 population of Byron, per Wikipedia, was 593. They've committed their citizens to more than $8000 each. There's one born every minute.

sackett said:
Byron, like most of Big Horn County, is Mormon territory. You'd expect LDSers to show good sense when it comes to money -- and ripe old guibility when it comes to science.

So no surprises here.

There's coal thereabouts, but hell, Wyoming is almost made of coal, soft, dirty, cheap stuff that will some fine day be worthless if not prohibited. Rare earths? Of value? Mebbe, apparently from coal ash rather than the raw material.

I very much doubt that poor little old Byron will ever be a center for rare earth extraction. Or anything else. Hope not.

Anybody here ever been through Byron? How long did it take you?
Click to expand...

I may have been through it on the way from Johnson County to Yellowstone. Probably didn't notice.
Note that Wyoming's coal is:
A)Mostly on the other side of the Bighorn Mountains; and
B)While sub-bituminous, and thus low in heating value, is pretty low in sulphur and thus somewhat desirable; and
C)Extremely abundant.

ETA: Nope, not been through. It's a bit far north, I start out at Buffalo!
 
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sackett said:
Anybody here ever been through Byron? How long did it take you?
Click to expand...
I may have driven through Byron in 2011; I certainly drove through Lovell, which is about 8 miles east of Byron. I don't remember a thing about either town. (I've been in the Big Horn Basin on quite a few occasions, but 2011 is the only time I've been that close to Byron.)

picture.php


Here's a small part of the northern Big Horn Basin, photographed from the road leading up to Bald Mountain and Medicine Wheel National Historic Site, roughly 20 miles east of Lovell. I doubt whether Byron and Lovell were visible from that spot, but if so they would have been on the horizon above and to the right of what you can see in this picture.

picture.php


ETA: My maps of Wyoming show no towns at all between Lovell and Burgess Junction, a distance of 58 miles by road. That road is closed in winter.
 
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if you read the news story in the link up thread you will find details as to how a Private activity Bond "works". It may be the town is "smarter than the average bear" and on to something with some upside and no downside for it.

Joey Darrah, who serves as legal counsel for Byron, said that after studying the bond proposal, he can confirm that passing the bond does not bring any financial risk to the town.
Click to expand...
 
theprestige said:
So. Are the Byron Town Council dupes, accomplices, or magnificent bastards?

Dupes: They think it's real and hope to revitalize the town's economy with free energy and an emerging industrial base in profitable cutting edge tech development m

Accomplices: They are cooperating with the con men, lending legitimacy to their con to help dupe investors. The con men are cutting them in for a share of the take.

Magnificent Bastards: They know it's fake, but private investment in their town is good, even if the investors are being conned. Buyer beware. Development is development. Doesn't matter if these guys go out of business. The facilities and infrastructure they paid for will benefit the town for decades to come.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure?

"According to Richard Hawley, who manages equity and investments for Inductance Energy, the federal government requires that the bond be passed by a governmental entity, but Byron will only be used as a pass-through.

Byron will take on no financial responsibility, nor will it spend any taxpayer money nor suffer any repercussions in case of default. We get the money, and we have to pay it back. The town is not liable for anything. Joey Darrah, who serves as legal counsel for Byron, said that after studying the bond proposal, he can confirm that passing the bond does not bring any financial risk to the town."

Can someone explain to me like I'm five how this works? It sounds like a scam. Who gets holding the hot potato and takes a loss when the company eventually goes bust?
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
if you read the news story in the link up thread you will find details as to how a Private activity Bond "works". It may be the town is "smarter than the average bear" and on to something with some upside and no downside for it.
Click to expand...

Some info about this:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privateactivitybond.asp

The bonds are exempt from federal taxes, so in that sense they get some preferential treatment. But taxpayers don't seem to be on the hook in case the bond issuer is unable to make payments. It's only people foolish enough to invest in these bonds who are taking a risk.
 
Puppycow said:
Some info about this:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privateactivitybond.asp

The bonds are exempt from federal taxes, so in that sense they get some preferential treatment. But taxpayers don't seem to be on the hook in case the bond issuer is unable to make payments. It's only people foolish enough to invest in these bonds who are taking a risk.
Click to expand...

"A Fool and his Money are soon Parted"? But the town may get some cash spent there.
 
I'm not good with economic stuff. Tell me if I am getting this wrong.

Town approves the Private Activity Bond. Investors invest in the bond think it is a safe government bond, and the interest is tax free so it seems like a good deal. Company gets a low interest $5 million 30-year loan. That $5 million has to be spent in this town of about 600, so that's a lot of money coming into the town.

Company builds a facility. Then probably borrows on the value of that facility to get money to make the payments on the bond loan.

Company runs some shady deals to keep up appearances and reduce losses for a while. Get some new investors. Pay some people to keep the scam working, but less than what was originally promised. Buy some rare earth materials from the town, then sell them off for a light loss.

Maybe sell some "free energy" batteries in their "tamper proof housing" and when they stop working charge for "repairs" while they recharge the batteries. Basically selling energy at a slight loss.

Company owner pays himself maybe $250,000 per year. Make minimum payments on the loan. Milk it for maybe 10 years for $2.5 million in salary before the company goes bust. Town gets the facility for pennies on the dollar. Investors along the way take the loss.

Does that sound right?
 
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