On Fri, 27 Nov 2015 07:00:38 -0800 (PST), Christopher Tidy
wrote:

Hi folks,

This is a question for people with electrical knowledge, especially in the field of electrostatics. It's also spontaneous. I'm not sure if I'm going to build anything yet.

A few years back I built a Van de Graaff generator. It occurred to me at the time that it would be really cool to transport the electric charge using a liquid instead of a moving belt. I thought of pumping bubbles of electrically charged air into a column of oil and allowing them to rise under gravity. But then I did a few calculations and came to the conclusion that you could barely generate enough current from such a system to build a good generator, so I never built it.

This week I acquired one of these chemical pumps when a laboratory was being cleared out (in the 0.25 kW size):
http://www.schmitt-pumpen.de/en/prod...mp-series.html

So today I was thinking: would it be possible to impart an electric charge to insulating oil (no bubbles this time) and pump the oil up the column of a Van de Graaff generator to transport the charge? If it was all made from transparent acrylic, it would look really cool.

Are you thinking Jacob's Ladder/spark gap? If so, I'd think the
discharges would melt the acrylic tubing in short order.


Would it work? How could the oil be charged? Perhaps by pumping it through a stainless gauze connected to a high voltage power supply, I was thinking.

The oil, I don't think this guy would like it one bit.
http://tinyurl.com/bspfeaa


Anyone know? For now, it's just a train of thought. But it's interesting...

Not a clue. But how would you insulate the motor from the charge in
the first place?

--
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before
which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
-- John Quincy Adams