Water Transformers
From Uncle Joe’s
“Funny Stuff About Electricity”

Recently on one of the forums I participate in, there was a short lived discussion on PMMs (Perpetual Motion Machines).  These rate right up there with flying elephants in my opinion.  In this forum someone made a statement about a waterfall being one version of a transformer.  I responded with something like, “I've seen this & I've seen that but, I ain’t never seen no water transformer.”  This drew a response from someone else about a dam being a form of “water transformer.”  I might consider a lake as being like a battery with perhaps the dam being the negative terminal but a transformer?  No, not lately.  In the analogy to prove this dam transformer theory, the usual comparisons were made about voltage & current being like  flow & head.  It was said that since the head was zero at the top of the dam, the flow (current) would be zero because “water doesn't move” in his words.  I suppose he meant it didn't flow at the top.  Well partner, it ain’t flowin’ at the bottom of neither!  Actually I told him it might, in a  J.R.R Tolken story or poem from Poe.  Of course his feelings were hurt (he must have been a Democrat) & he responded with the usual calling of names & how it was not possible for someone like me to understand.  I on the other hand being a wise & kindly old curmudgeon, just let him go.

However………….      Being one interested in “Hi-Fi” tubes amps & power production, thefirst mental impression of a transformer I get is it's core.  In the talk of dams & water transformer, the natural progressions of thought for me lead to a transformer with a concrete core.  This struck me  rather funny so I decided to have a little fun with it.  So without further a-do, I'm going to use a little Lewis Carroll logic and build an experimental transformer using concrete & flexible hose in place of copper wire & silicon steel.  I started out with a standard 16 inch concrete block which looks very similar to a electrical transformer core.  Around the center partition of the block I wound 8 turns of my garden hose.  This will be the “primary winding”.   I connected one end to a hose bib (here to for referred to as “The Master Shut-off” and the other end was connected to a brass nozzle used as a load resistor.  This brass load resister (BLR) was to protect my well from an open circuit, since we do not know the resistance or the reactance of the primary winding at this point.
Using the alligator counting method, you know…...One alligator, Two Alligators, Three Alligators etc., we established the rate of flow at 3.267 gallons per minuet.  I suppose this would equate to Watts.  The accompanying photo shows my son Igor adding mud to the measuring pail for clarity as Algonquin, our pet alligator counts off the seconds.  To calculate the pressure without walking all the way down to the pump house to look at the pressure gage,  I developed the formula below to determine this.  After knowing the pressure involved we may now determine the rest of the junk needed to to equate flow, amps, volts & stuff like that.
 
 

With this formula I determined that the pressure behind the nozzle was 42.5 PSI or Volts & using Ohms Law I determined the current to be .076 Gallon  or Amps thus equaling the 3.267 GPM or KWH measured by me & Algonquin.  After the initial test were done I positioned the nozzle, where else but to “ground”.  For the “secondary” winding I wound 6 turns of the same type hose over the primary winding.  One end of this hose was inserted into a bucket of water & “ grounded” the other end as before through a variable BLR.  Now it's was time for the “smoke” test.  Or should I say the “bubble test" in this case?  I put on the required safety gear. You know, my son's safety glasses from shop class, a face shield borrowed from the Roto-Rooter man, my wife's Playtex gloves & my Dads hip waders.  I then manned the The Master Shut-off and turned it on fully.   Nothing!  Not a darn thing came out of the secondary.  Like any good service tech, I checked the connections & tried again.  Nothing!  Then it hit me like a CFM of water.  I probably need to prime the secondary hose.  After 5 minutes of fiddling with that I was ready to try.  This time…..the secondary pulsed out about two teaspoons of water.  Hot-Dang, were cookin’ with gas now.  However after several more tries I could never get any more then a few drops to come out of the secondary.  I tried removing the primary resistance but even less water came out.  At one point the concrete core was saturating because it was getting wet so I felt some sort  of “field” was developing but I thought because there was no air gap in my core that  heat generated by eddy currents would evaporate any moisture present.  However we discovered the wet core was caused by nothing more then a pinhole in the primary hose.  Remembering  the “Red Green” show, I repaired the hose with about 40 inches of duct tape.  Next I thought & would play with the “reluctance” of the core.  I unwound the hoses from the concrete block & fashioned an “air core” transformer using wire ties to hold the two coils of hoses together. After reflecting on what I had just done I went to the hardware store & bought several 10 inch hose clamps to replace the wire ties with.  I thought that only prudent.  This time even after priming the secondary hose absolutely nothing came out of it.  Well I obviously went the wrong way on the reluctance so now what?  Aw, Wood!  Yes!  I grabbed a two foot piece of hickory off the woodpile on which I very carefully wind the hoses.   This time some water came out but not as much as with the concrete core.

Wow-is-me, what's a feller to do?  I remembered something from Church about the “living waters” & “felt led” to wind my hoses on a living tree.  I first tried a “Live Oak & then a Water Oak.  Nothing!  I then tried an olive bush, a palm tree, a date tree, a partridge and a pear tree!  Still nothing.   ….Damn, damn & double damn!  In desperation I reassembled the water transformer using the concrete block core and re-tested it again.  It worked as before but why did the secondary have only have a single pulse of water come out of it?   While pondering the situation I was leaning on the hose windings with bare hands when my assistant Igor turned on the Master Shutoff.  Instantly water shot out of the primary & hit me in the face.  I recoiled instantly thinking I had been water shocked.  I remembered however that the instant when Igor cut on the water, I thought I felt the coil “pulse” and grow slightly.  After a thorough scientific investigation we found that the primary hose was swelling when the valve was cut on.  Further scientific investigation also found that it was swelling at a rate proportional to the amount of BLR resistance at the end of the hose.   The pulse was  squeezing the water out of the secondary. Sort of like milking a cow.  Now I had something to go on.  I thought what I need is a “harder” water conductor or softer water.  Should I use copper tubing or ………………  Wait I dad-gum minute now!  Water in its natural state is sort of like electricity.  Its DC & transformers can't operate on DC.  Dahuh   I need to do one of two things.  Since a transformer can only operate continually with pulsed DC or regular AC I needed to make the primary water supply do one of these two things.  I wonder if I replaced the spray nozzle on the primary hose with in impact irrigation head, would that superimpose a pulsating DC water current on top of the straight DC water?  Mmmmm………Let me sleep on this.

Now that I've slept on it & "thunk" it over, I believe there is something that can be done. It would not be feasible to make the primary supply "AC" as this would involve an expensive set of computer controlled high capacity electric solenoids.  Since I'm still in the theory stage rather then the hypothesis stage, I'll hold off on that expense unless further work in this field deems it necessary.  What I believe I can do is try to induce or superimpose simulated AC in the primary line with waterhammer.  I've considered several means of doing this.  I thought the simplest way would be as mentioned somewhere above, is to use an impact irrigation nozzle to induce waterhammer.  However this would not work as well as one might expect.  You see the "impact" in a sprinkler head is caused when the swinging arm contacts the anvil which causes the head to rotate a few degrees.  Since the deflector on the swing arm is roughly .35382731 inches from the nozzle the induced pressure is quickly dissipated within that space.  This can be proved by plotting the pressure wave using a Smith Chart.  One will quickly find the modulus of elasticity for water when normalized for the Smith Chart is -j45.  If one doubts this just observe the head during operation using a thermal imaging camera and you'll see the heat plume generated dissipating shock wave.  Set the camera sensitivity to peak at 932 angstroms and a bandwidth of 45 and cutoff at -2.3 dB.
 
 

There are several other ways of generating waterhammer into the primary but the most intriguing is the use of a single quick acting solenoid valve.  This need not be driven by a computer but may simply be driven by a 555 timer circuit driving an SCR are a Darlington power transistor.  While thinking about this problem I believe I've come up with the perfect solution which buy the buy uses true AC water for the primary.  We've all seen a hydraulic like those on say a front end loader.  Ever watch the guy shut off the machine with the bucket still raised?  It just stays there until the spool valve is pulled.  The bucket then drops.  So what if we applied this same principle to generate AC water?  We have a closed loop system consisting of a hydraulic cylinder and a water transformer & sufficient hydraulic hose to connect the two.  We'll use an electric motor with a crankshaft and connecting rod.  of course one end of the connecting rod is connected to the crank shaft and the other to a clevis on the cylinder shaft.  As the motor turns the crankshaft the rotary motion is converted to reciprocating motion to push the cylinder shaft in & out.  This of course would cause the water to reverse every 1/2 rotation of the motor shaft thus forcing the water to reverse every 1/2 cycle & Va-walla!  AC water. The only problem using this method is a slightly distorted wave form.  Actually the wave itself is not really distorted but if offset.  This effect is caused by the fact that one side of the piston in the cylinder has a smaller area due the the push rod shaft being attached to it.  This effect could of course could be eliminated by using two cylinders with one physically reversed but have there hoses paralleled & in phase with each other.  This would require a slightly more complicated linkage arrangement but the elimination of the off center sine wave.

Now that the water transformer theory has been proven, what benefit will it be to us?  Well I can't think of any practical applications my self but I suppose Albert Einstein may have thought that about E=MC^2.  Maybe our PMM friends can find a useful application.  The water transformer's output could be rectified to drive a hydraulic motor.  The rectification of AC water is not a difficult as one might think.  A full wave bridge rectifier could be fashioned from bits of pipe and check valves which are commonly available at most hardware store plumbing departments.  The hydraulic motor could drive the crankshaft mentioned above directly.  However all of the available power produced by the water transformer would be consumed by the conversion from rotating power to reciprocating power.  I propose solving this problem by using the hydraulic motor to drive a 60 Hz generator.  Part of the power produced by the generator could be used to drive the motor that drives the crankshaft.  The surplus energy could be used to supplement power communities or small towns.