How the system works.
What we CANNOT explain due to the proprietary nature of the technology is exactly HOW we create the significant amount of Eddy Currents that we do using the limited power that we do. What we can tell you is that through over five years of research and development, we discovered a way to take common permanent magnets (instead of power intensive electromagnets), and increase the strength of their magnetic field and focus that into a specific area and rapidly shift the polarity of that field and create sufficient eddy currents by using an alloy steel specifically designed for electrical applications without requiring the additional power to create an electromagnetic field.
Eddy Currents: What they are and how they work.
Before we can even begin to explain how the system as a whole works, you have to understand what Eddy Currents are, what the do and how they work. Eddy currents are circular electric currents that form within conductive materials when they are exposed to a changing magnetic field. These currents loop within the metal itself, generating heat due to resistance and opposing the change in magnetic field that created them. Eddy currents are central to technologies involving heating, braking, non-destructive testing, and magnetic damping, and represent one of the most important principles in modern electromagnetism.
Anyone that has ever played with a magnet understands that magnet's have poles, called North and South and that the old phrase “opposites attract” applies here. A North and North pole of a magnet will push against one another but a North and South pole will attract.
Eddy currents happen when magnetic poles move or switch (like from North to South) near a conductive material. As this happens, the magnetic field passing through the material known as magnetic flux changes.
That change in magnetic flux induces an electromotive force (EMF) inside the conductor. EMF is like electrical pressure, it pushes the electrons in the material. According to Faraday’s Law of Induction, this pressure causes electrons to swirl in circular paths, forming eddy currents. The faster the magnetic field changes, or the more often it switches, the stronger those currents become.
Everyone understands that magnets have a certain strength and reach, the invisible distance around them where their pull can still be felt. But just because a magnet is stronger doesn’t always mean it reaches farther; it may simply pull harder within its effective range. It’s this “reach” the distance the magnetic field extends from the magnet that defines the volume of influence. That invisible zone is where the magnet’s changing field can create a loop or zone in space where eddy currents can be induced.There is far too much math to explain (in this section) exactly how Eddy Currents penetrate a material, however there are three factors that determine this.
1. The strength of the magnet measured in Tesla.
2. The frequency of the shifts from North to South, measured in Hz.
3. The conductivity or resistance of the material measured in Ohms.However, with that said, there is a very well known formula that will give the exact amount of Eddy Currents that will be produced when all three of these numbers are known and from that how much heat will be produced in that material. This formula is widely used in engineering applications such as transformer design, induction heating systems, and electromagnetic shielding.
Once we know how much heat can be produced, we can then apply that to the boiler and determine how much steam can be produced in a given amount of time, again there is also a well known formula for calculating this as well.
To understand the system as a whole, (Residential units) we can sum it up by saying we use our patented Eddy Current Disk to heat a boiler, generating steam to turn a turbine connected to a generator to supply electrical power. To do this we start with the one known factor and worked backwards.The Generator:
What we needed to know was the amount of electrical energy we needed to power a home. Since most homes in the US is supplied with 240 Volts at 100 Amps that gives us a total of 24,000 watts or 24 Kilowatts of power, while most average US homes only use a fraction of that, generally around 8,000 watts at any one time some use more others use less, however, instead of designing a specific system for each application, it is much more cost effective to simply provide the same power the home would normally receive from the grid.
There are numerous generators, or more correctly, what is called a Generator head unit, it is the part of a generator that actually produces the electrical power when turned, that can produce this quantity of energy on a long term continuous basis. However, they all pretty much have the same design and performance parameters so we go with a “Standard” ratings for input requirements and output capacity and that allows for a known minimum amount of power required to turn it.
The minimum power requirement to spin the Generator Head to produce the amount of power required defines the design of the turbine, because the Generator Head needs not only a certain amount of torque it also requires a certain RPM to operate smoothly and sufficiently.
The Turbine:
Steam turbines are machines designed to convert the energy of high-pressure steam into mechanical motion, the principle is similar to how a jet engine works. Instead of moving back and forth like a piston, steam flows in a constant stream through a set of curved blades arranged around a central shaft. As the high-pressure steam passes through these blades, it forces them to spin, which in turn rotates the shaft. Steam turbines are highly efficient, compact, and reliable. They remain the dominant technology used in power generation today. There are a lot of variables that come into play, such as angle of the blades, size and width of the blades and the angle of the nozzle injecting the steam against the blades that determines performance. However, because we know the amount of torque we need and the minimum RPM. It is a matter of taking well-established design principles by engineers specializing in turbine design to create the design and that design is what determines the required output from our boiler.
The Boiler:
Even though our system requires a Boiler, we are NOT boiler makers, that is a very exacting science and requires trained engineers to design, build, test and certify them. However, there is enough information available about boiler designs and software that can run detailed mathematical models based on established principles in steam engineering that we were able to set the parameters for our boilers that we can give to certified engineers for them to design it. We would like to note that this engineering also includes the safety systems designed to prevent overpressure, overheating, or mechanical failure. Multiple layers of protection are built into the system to ensure safe operation under all normal and expected conditions.
Once we had the required output, it got interesting simply because there are a lot of variables that can go into this design, however; the key consideration is that it needs to produce X amount of steam at X pressure continuously. In order to do that it has to be a certain size to have enough water capacity to drive the turbine until the condenser system could return water back to be reheated.
So, that required it to be a closed loop system, which means there is a system that captures the steam, cools it down so it condenses back to liquid water then that water has to be injected back into the boiler, something like a car radiator where the hot steam flows through it and is cooled. The larger the boiler the longer it takes to reach operating temperatures and pressure, however, that also gives us a longer run time before the water inside the boiler has to be refilled. The key is to reach equalization where steam can be condensed and injected back into the boiler then reheated back to steam before the boiler begins to run low on water. It sounds far more complicated than it is and is really dependent on how efficient the condenser systems is more than the size of the boiler. With large, efficient condenser the boiler can be very small. A car for example, the boiler would be small, but the condenser would be large and use a system similar to what cars already use to cool the engine could quickly cool the steam and condense the water. Once we have the boiler design, now we have parameters for the actual Disk that creates the heat in the boiler.
The Disk:
There are a lot of different parameters that come into play when designing a disk for any particular boiler even though the mathematical formula’s are the same and well understood. We have to know the material the eddy currents are required to heat because each material has a specific resistance and we have to know the thickness of the material. Once we know that, we know how strong our magnetic field has to be to penetrate to effectively cause the material to heat. The size of the boiler and the expected time to reach operating temperatures and pressures is what dictates the number of polarity shifts or frequency we need per minute. This shifting is similar to mechanical RPM, but in this case it is defined electrically as Hertz (Hz). With all of that, we can design the disk with the required magnetic field strength that shifts polarity the required number of time a minute. It can in some ways, be described as increasing both the “Torque” and the “RPM” of a motor to generate a certain amount of power.
The Other Parts:
Now we come to the other parts, such as the control system, there are a lot of things going on that needs to be constantly monitored and controlled. The control system controls the power going to the Disk, giving it more power to generate steam then giving it less power to maintain it. It monitors and controls the boiler valves and safety features, it monitors the steam flowing from the boiler to the turbine, how fast the turbine is spinning with that much steam. How much electrical energy the generator head is producing giving the RPM of the Turbine. If more electrical energy is demanded, the system sees how fast the turbine is spinning and opens the valve from the boiler to allow more steam, once and monitors the increase in RPM and electricity the Generator Head is putting out as a result. It monitors the water levels in the boiler and the condenser system and dozens of other parameters that keep the system as a whole working.
People ask, how does it start, well, there are batteries that power the system during start up procedures, some call it a “Bootstrap” system, like a car, the battery is used to start the engine, then when the engine is running it turns the alternator which provides the power for the engine, the car and recharges the battery. Same basic concept here, we use the battery to get the process going, generate enough steam to spin the turbine and Generator, once it is turning, it takes over supplying power to the Disk, the control system, recharges the battery and supplies the home with power.