Jonesy

I came up with this idea a while ago. It's simple, easy, and inexpensive. It seems like a perfectly good, clean, renewable energy-thing. It can be placed anywhere (with gravity, at least). It can be made any size (within reason).

I never did the math, but I did test it to make sure it was possible to create a water-cycle using siphoning. Here's a world-class diagram, to give an idea of how it works:



What you're seeing are two cylinders. One filled with water, the other has a rotor, and an opening near the bottom. The siphoning tube takes the water out of the left cylinder, dropping it onto the rotor in the right cylinder (thereby turning the rotor). The water then drops to the bottom and goes back into the left cylinder to be recycled (for this part, you might need to also use a hinged-door, which opens the way you want water to flow and closes if water tries to go the other way).

You can make these things very big, and they grow up mostly, like skyscrapers, so they don't take up much room.

Jonesy

To get the most out of this structure, you could also attach solar panels to the exterior. And use water funnels on the top, for rain-water generators (a few carefully constructed 'drainage' systems and rain turns into waterfalls or rivers). Why stop there? Might as well throw on some wind generators.

Jonesy

Actually, you could use like four secondary-cylinders (currently the 'right' cylinder), surrounding one central (the 'left'). It would be easy enough to fill (with water), each secondary like a quarter of the way, with all four combined, the water amount would be equivalent to the total amount in the central cylinder. Combined with gravity, it should do the trick.

Also, water might not be the best liquid for this device, since it freezes.

GurnBlanston

Your diagram is not showing.
Euclid played with a water syphon and found that you could strike a balance of the syphon powering itself in order to maintain flow but as soon as you add a load (use the energy for something else) you lose the delicate balance needed to maintain the constant flow. i.e. you lose momentum.

Ouroboros

Instead of a rotor, I would use a Tesla Turbine.

Jonesy

Of course, you could always use only two cylinders, and simply increase the diameter at the bottom of the secondary. If you didn't make it a pure cylinder, it could wrap around the primary, to save space.

Depending on how tall the device is, you could conceivably get more electricity by having the waterfall turn multiple rotors.

Titanium Cat

How do you get the water back up in the first cyclinder?

GurnBlanston

Correction:

It was Archimedes, not Euclid and his study was Heron (who invented the first steam engine in the BCE period). It was his "inexhaustible goblet" that perplexed Archimedes. The EG was essentially a continual fountain like you are talking about.

Titanium Cat

Well it is perplexing because it goes against the laws of physics.

GurnBlanston

I was wrong, the "inexhaustible goblet" uses a float and now all toilets use this design. This one is called the Magic Fauntain.