The Buoyaninator
- First Year Engineering Project
- Physics
- Group Project
- 8 weeks
- Blender
- Python
- Arduino
- C++
How can the energy resulting from the buoyancy of objects in water be harnessed to create an environmentally friendly alternative energy source for generating electromagnetic energy?
Context
Renewable energy sources are scarce, while a lot of unused energy exists in simple physical phenomena such as buoyancy.
The Buoyaninator is a solution that makes use of buoyancy, the upward force exerted by a liquid on an object, caused by the pressure difference between the top and bottom of the object. Where there is force, there is also energy, specifically potential energy. The buoyancy of objects in liquids therefore contains usable energy. To capture this untapped energy, the Buoyaninator uses electromagnetic induction.
Construction
My team and I followed the design cycle: analysis, synthesis, simulation, evaluation, and iterations. We went through this cycle multiple times during the development of the final product. We analyzed our concept and performed calculations, but below I’ll skip ahead to the simulation phase and describe a few of the things I contributed to this part of the project.
Technical Drawing
For the technical drawing it was my job to develop the idea into a design drawing.
Tee fittings
Paddle wheel and coil
Bringing everything together
The paddle wheel turned out to be too weak to push the bottle with the magnets on top down into the water. That’s why we decided to abandon the paddle wheel idea and switch to a pulley system instead.
