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Daniel Griscom
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If my understanding is correct, you are hoping to design a tubing configuration that, once started (by a temporary boost from an electric pump), will pump water uphill without additional power input. Unfortunately, that would never work, as it would be a perpetual motion machine of the first kindperpetual motion machine of the first kind, and would violate the first law of thermodynamics. Were it to be possible, then you could take the water flow out of the end of the pipe, use it to drive a turbine, and then generate electricity forever.

Now, if you are only hoping to briefly drive water to a higher elevation than you started, then that's quite likely possible with your system. Absent large amounts of friction in the pipe, if you start with it empty and fill it up from the lower end, the water will be moving fairly quickly once the leading edge had returned to the height of the entrance, and the momentum of the moving water would likely drive some of the water up that last 50 feet and out the upper end. However, inevitably the water flow would slow, stop, and reverse until the level equalized. A system that does this repeatedly is called a ram pump.

If my understanding is correct, you are hoping to design a tubing configuration that, once started (by a temporary boost from an electric pump), will pump water uphill without additional power input. Unfortunately, that would never work, as it would be a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, and would violate the first law of thermodynamics. Were it to be possible, then you could take the water flow out of the end of the pipe, use it to drive a turbine, and then generate electricity forever.

Now, if you are only hoping to briefly drive water to a higher elevation than you started, then that's quite likely possible with your system. Absent large amounts of friction in the pipe, if you start with it empty and fill it up from the lower end, the water will be moving fairly quickly once the leading edge had returned to the height of the entrance, and the momentum of the moving water would likely drive some of the water up that last 50 feet and out the upper end. However, inevitably the water flow would slow, stop, and reverse until the level equalized.

If my understanding is correct, you are hoping to design a tubing configuration that, once started (by a temporary boost from an electric pump), will pump water uphill without additional power input. Unfortunately, that would never work, as it would be a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, and would violate the first law of thermodynamics. Were it to be possible, then you could take the water flow out of the end of the pipe, use it to drive a turbine, and then generate electricity forever.

Now, if you are only hoping to briefly drive water to a higher elevation than you started, then that's quite likely possible with your system. Absent large amounts of friction in the pipe, if you start with it empty and fill it up from the lower end, the water will be moving fairly quickly once the leading edge had returned to the height of the entrance, and the momentum of the moving water would likely drive some of the water up that last 50 feet and out the upper end. However, inevitably the water flow would slow, stop, and reverse until the level equalized. A system that does this repeatedly is called a ram pump.

Source Link
Daniel Griscom
  • 4.1k
  • 4
  • 21
  • 35

If my understanding is correct, you are hoping to design a tubing configuration that, once started (by a temporary boost from an electric pump), will pump water uphill without additional power input. Unfortunately, that would never work, as it would be a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, and would violate the first law of thermodynamics. Were it to be possible, then you could take the water flow out of the end of the pipe, use it to drive a turbine, and then generate electricity forever.

Now, if you are only hoping to briefly drive water to a higher elevation than you started, then that's quite likely possible with your system. Absent large amounts of friction in the pipe, if you start with it empty and fill it up from the lower end, the water will be moving fairly quickly once the leading edge had returned to the height of the entrance, and the momentum of the moving water would likely drive some of the water up that last 50 feet and out the upper end. However, inevitably the water flow would slow, stop, and reverse until the level equalized.