1852 A Different Kind Of Sand Battery 

I've had this long going idea of building a man sized hour glass with a turbine in the center. The whole piece would be suspended on a stand with a swivel and a pin lock so once the sand drained down you'd pull the pin and swivel the hourglass bottom side up and let the sand flow resume. No doubt the power generation is small for the amount of space it would take up but would no doubt make an interesting piece of practical furniture.

It reminded me that I’d seen something similar before. So I went scurrying to my bookshelf and soon came upon my copy of a book called ‘101 Things to do in a shed’ by Rob Beatie. Project No.88 is a Model Sand Motor and gives instructions on how to construct one in wood. Mesmerising watching one in action. Splendid.

I think because of the way you would have to store sand in a steeply elevated reserve that couldn't spread out from the center as far as water while still easily flowing back, this is roughly equivalent to what you would get by lifting heavy weights on a cable. Storage capacity is limited to the size of tower you can build. I think the good which might come from an idea like this is if you could figure out how to cheaply suspend sand or silt as a very heavy liquid that can still flow like water in and out of a reservoir. Perhaps like a deflocculated clay mixture. If you can prevent the particles from settling you may get a lot more energy density out of a given reservoir size.

In a desert location with lots of dust, like Palm Desert near me; I could see a high-up windcatcher also collecting and storing the sand up high. It would pair great your windcatcher turbine idea.

As for lifting the working "fluid-like material" an auger (Archimedes' screw) comes to mind but from my experience with malted barley (and I would hazard the guess that it would be likewise with sand) a vertical screw elevator is more efficient and I wonder if one in the style of Olds' Elevator (where the screw is stationary and the cylinder turns) would be the simplest to direct drive from a vertical-axis wind turbine. Rob, as ever, your joy is contagious.

As soon as I saw it making a volt, mobile phone charger popped into my head. This channel never disappoints. 👍

the only limit to its run time is the size of your sand hopper at the top, you could easily use one of those bottles for a water dispenser full of sand and have a spare standing by, then the first can be refilled from the sand dropped, in fact if the spare bottle is at the bottom collecting the dropped sand, all you would need to do is keep swapping the bottles. it could be like a giant hourglass with the mechanism in the middle.

I love it, Rob! The magnets also make it a smooth running flywheel. You should be able to increase the momentum of the sand by positioning the sand hopper higher up. I think gravity will add to it.

Interesting one Rob! Looking that sand flow immediately reminds me of an hourglass. Maybe designing the device as one could enable it to be recharged by simply flipping it? Not an easy design task I reckon, but very user-friendly and with few moving parts...

You could make it taller and add more whells so that the same "battery" of sand is turning multiple wheels as each wheel dumps sand onto the next one below it instead of straight into a collector. Theoretically the same sand battery could power however many wheels the device is tall.

It might be that sand doesn't receive widespread use over something like water because it is highly abrasive to pump and when the rain hits it, then it tends to clump, so it will be less likely to flow.

And another outstanding idea that I would never have thought of! I suspect this could be a good alternative to a crank generator as it's a lot more enjoyable to fill a large tube with sand once than cranking for minutes. Thanks for this great inspiration!

Don't know if they still are, but those plastic sand wheel toys you pictured were very popular with children here in the US on beaches & in sand boxes for many many years going back as far as at least the mid-1960s. Spent many hours as a child making one turn and watching it go.

Its very impressive to me how stable the velocity of the wheel seems to maintain a very constant speed. pretty neat. I actually think this is an excelent idea thanks a lot for sharing it mister, i might build something like this i love it.

Yay! I found you again. I spent all last summer learning all sorts of cool off-grid stuff from you, and now here we are again! I pray you’ve been well these last 365 my friend!

Thanks Rob for the mention. lol a great use already.

Very nice, along with gravity.. I also think bouyancy generators are a fascinating idea.

Not sure if this is a good idea or not, but I thought I'd mention it in an area where smart people are likely to read it. A gravity battery with a water counter-weight system. It would basically be a very long vertical pipe with a bucket surrounding it attached to a pulley with a counter weight. The pipe would be filled just to the brim with water but as the bucket gets lower the water is drained into the bucket via some kind of extending pipe that would travel with the bucket. Once the bucket reaches the bottom, a valve is opened that travels the entire length of the pipe, draining the water back into the pipe as it rises up thanks to the counter-weight. Once it reaches the top, the cycle repeats and the bucket keeps travelling up and down this pipe. I feel like this probably would not work due to water levels or something, but I just thought I'd mention it.

It reminds me of the same principle used in an old Grandfather clock, Pull the cord and let the weight drop which in turn moves the wheel.

I remember playing with these “sand” toys at the sand pit & troth at primary school ~ pouring dry sand into the funnel, opening the valve and seeing the wheel spin. Having seen other variations of sand & water toys ~ my favourite being the Archimedean screw based one = dry/damp sand is poured into a funnel at the handle end, and the handle is turned in the right direction and the sand goes down the funnel and eventually comes out the other end 😀

Sand has the added issue of abrasion. It flows but also abrades. It will destroy anything it touches while moving.

So simple..yet so elegant. Only the wear of the sand on the scoops etc that would be a hassle. Also, perhaps putting the magnets on the side of the wheel will allow the coil to be placed closer and generate a higher output.

I was thinking of something the size of the Eye of London. If all the chambers were full of sand and the sand would release as the chambers approach the top. The sand gets funneled to a pipe and is feedback to the paddle wheel. After the work is done, the sand then refills the chamber's polar opposite chamber. The ferris wheel would never stop. I would be very cool if it could make more power than it consumes.

Look up a video of a "trapeze autamaton" for an example of how they use this to power the motion. You only have to turn the box clockwise once, which fills the resevoir. The resevoir then powers the daring young man on the flying trapeze so your love he can purloin away.

We can now harvest energy from large sand dunes! I realy think we can stretch giant tarps across sand dunes to collect windblown sand and use the potential energy to produce energy. Thanks for the videos!

Sand is very abrasive, so moving it around, especially with speed and especially for a long time will cause many issues.

I just love this channel. Thank you Robert. I am looking forward to your solution to transport the sand up again. 👍

this could be done with small bearings or maybe plastic bb's (if they are heavy enough) and they could easily be lifted back up to the funnel with a screw elevator. wintergatan's marble machine channel has ton's of inspiration on moving the bearings back to the top. he has experimented with different methods.

Leverage. Long lever, big buckets of sand. Human movement and hourglass for slow release. And towers of wheels using the same sand. Multiple buckets of sand, multiple towers, multiple hour glasses. Tall towers, at least within reason. Leveraged pulley system to use human power to elevate the sand to the top most bucket.

Moving sand is also abrasive, breaking material eventually if you think of a larger project. But it seems a nice kids' toy i think

Such an inspiration. Thank you

If you use water, you could use the sun to evaporate the water to the bottom side of glass to collect the condensate. At an angle the water drops slide back into the top reservoir. When collects enough, opens gate on funnel to let run again.

Use a magnetic conveyor to return the sand to the top. Use black ferromagnetic sand. Lots of mines have mountains of the stuff.

You could use an archimedes screw powered by a gear reduction linked motor at low speeds and high torque to take the sand back to the top slowly over the course of say 12 hours or so, using solar, and then drop the sand at the same rate to recover power at night

Thanks, Rob! It’s amazing how you operate. It’s like you step into dog poop on the street and instead of cursing like anyone else would, you generate electricity out of it. Gotta love this channel ❤

Thanks, my youngest daughter was looking for a possible science project to research and develop! Much appreciated always!

in clock making there's a spring called the hairspring. if that device had 3 cylos with one of them capturing the sand and a hairspring without the palette it should keep spinning until it reaches its resistance point you could make a locking mechanism that lets loose and uses the unwinding force of the hairspring to rotate to the next cylo. you'd obviously need more parts like gears just like a clock but i have no idea how to write it in theory.

Sort of like a solar nitrogen wheel. Several containers of activated charcoal, which absorb nitrogen, move one side into the solar heating area, which drives off the absorbed nitrogen, making that container lighter, so it rolls up. Moving another container into its place. With central collection plumbing, this also is a nitrogen generator.

What if...you used a geared assembly to create the electrical current. May cause extra drag but larger cups on your wheel to catch more sand would help. I like the idea and as others have said an auger to move the material back to the top of the silo or hopper could work.

grain silos are a good place to drop something like this in. you're not gonna get huge amounts of power, sure, but it's a piece of infrastructure that's already being used in exactly the way you need for this.

I've never seen one before either, we live and learn! 🤗 An obvious idea for an improvement would be to stick a tall pipe/tube in the funnel to create a bigger capacity battery?

Combine a Sand battery with the hot exhaust of the diesel heater, that heats the sand up to 200 degrees. The hot air from the diesel heater heats up the room, then you turn it off, and the hot exhaust heated sand maintain it for 6 to 7 hours, so you save even more fuel!

Would be interesting to look at the efficiency compared to a water pump battery.

It’s so brilliant, that you’d never think of it! I can see myself making something similar but on a larger scale as a way to offset the nightly power drain on my off grid cabin. A raised hopper with enough storage for say 6 hours over a wheel driving an alternator. 🤔

Thinking of a municipal scale, I imagine something like wind or solar powering a vertical belt full of scoopers at the low side of a cone, bowl, or valley shaped collector. At the top, not just a single hopper, but a set of hoppers on a rail loop of some sort, which varies in height a bit as it goes around, such that a hopper empties at the low point of a track, then the full hoppers behind it at higher points then push the empty hopper up to the high point, and then the empty hopper fills. This way, several hoppers can be filled as the belt scoopers lift sand, all functioning as an energy storage sink during periods of excess production, for release during periods of scarcity. Maybe on a medium scale, such a system could be made that breaks down to fit in a van or RV, can be set up, and use sand or maybe dry clay or fine gravel/pebbles, or who knows, spent ash, crushed nut shells, anything flowy. Augment daily power, to stretch fuel and vegetable or animal or alcohol or petrochemical energy sources further. The desktop model could be used to semi-automate the equivalent power of a hand crank, so you could do other tasks like mend clothes, cook, watch kids, fish, make hand tools, read, paint, etc. Every few minutes, grab a scoop of sand and repeat. Nice idea.

Great idea!

So how about putting it on top of a mine shaft and sieving the spoil heaps and pouring them into the shafts via the sand batteries system with roller systems sending the sand along the seams of the excavations to make the system last a longer time ? Hundreds of abandoned mines all over the uk ?. Using the same idea to fill in old sand and gravel clay lime quarries slate quarries old iron tin salt mines etc Lots of holes need lots of filling from lots of waste materials not only sand ? You could even use it to air-rate compost with a large shaft open at at the bottom end of the shaft to remove the finished materials or just off the edge of an old quarry with a road to take away the finished products ? Other products like mixed aggregate old road plannings scalping for bases for roads buildings etc old pulverised food stuff for fertilisers also with open bottoms to clear the end products this list could go on and on ? Mixing the products from two or more sand wheels for perfect mixes you could use an Archimedes screw again using gravity first to mix the products then drop it half way down the drop,to then put it into the sand wheel for the production of energy ?Truly a great idea with endless materials to use for the propulsion of the sand wheels and lots of holes to use them in ?

not sure if youd have seen it before, but you might be interested in heros automaton. i made a reproduction of one on my channel. its basically a ancient greek robot powered by falling sand, but instead of just the weight of the sand providing the energy it uses a heavy counter weight placed on top of the sand and then power is pulled off with rope tied to the weight. the whole thing is set inside of an hourglass like structure so it just skowly lets the weight descend. that way you can combine the fluid dynamics of the sand with the gravitational potential of a heavier weight

Watch out, Luke… he’ll be using this to power Raiders of the Lost Ark style booby traps to protect the biscuit jar!

Fantastic idea and information, you never fail to educate and create interesting thought. Thought I'd put out a fact about sand which has always interested me, in fact several of my inventions use this method: when you pump air under pressure in a container of sand (like aerating water using air stones) it actually becomes fluidic and flows while it's density changes as well. It's very interesting, there's many videos of people aerating sand and then swimming in it or floating and sinking objects. Just food for thought: thank you for all you do, your son is also a top notch creator and I appreciate you guys.

This is how many mines work to save energy instead of trying to store it. Basically a ski lift with sand scoops/dump buckets. The issue is distributing the sand with minimal energy. Possibly a siphon system at the top and bottom.

i once drew up plans for a water powered generator. it consisted on a body of water on top of a hill. the water flowed out of a pipe downhill into a set of ram pumps, that pumped water into an elevated tower with a discharge pipe that emptied onto a Pelton wheel generator that produced 14 or more volts dc to charge a battery bank. the waste water from the ram pumps would collect and power more ram pumps to fill the elevated water tank. at the bottom of the hill would be another pond/tank to store the waste water with a solar powered 12 volt pump to pump water back into the pond. it might have taken several pumps to get the water back to the pond as i was planning on using harbor freight utility pumps or the rv/camper potable water pumps. i only drew it on paper and not sure if i still even have it. but the idea was to power an off grid battery bank to supply power for a whole house or maybe even an underground bunker. anyway it was just an idea as i gave away the land in Montana because of becoming severely disabled from a staph A infection.

My thoughts are on how to clear sand after the wheel. Catch it in a bin lift the bin, store the bins, poor it from the bin. It's really all about the bins. But with a sand wheel, I'm thinking pouring sand looses much efficency moving air around around fast moving falling sand particles. And resistance being the cube of velocity. If only we could move the sand in bulk at a low velocity. Maybe one could load up bins with sand and load the bins onto carts with a motor/generator on each cart that sits on rail a rail road racks that complete a circuit from bottom to top and back, where bins are loaded at the bottom and stored on top of a hill to store energy, and the reverse of that when you want to draw energy out, and unloaded carts are returned on the return track. Maybe simply load carts into an elevator that lifts and lowers them to store or generate electricity. But Instead of a building it would be above ground and below ground storage for the carts and bins. Counting moving bins around at the top and bottom, It should have a round trip efficency comparable to or better than to pumped hydro. And geographically possible in a great many places without ground water to contend with.

Yeah, you could have the dropped sand fall in to auger conveyor (aka Archimedes' screw for dry stuff) that is powered by wind, solar, etc.

Hi Rob ,I feel a fly wheel may be a great next step,all the best 👍

Very nice! I'm sure some gears to make the magnets spin faster and an Archimedes screw hooked to an independent power source to push the sand to the top would make it actually quite useful.

Amazing project!! Last day I read about a battery of chitin and zinc. would be an idea using these instead of sand (gravity energy) and then extract chemistry energy of them at the end of the fall. Greetings!!

Like a non-hardening self levelling compound

I would imagine something like an hour glass that can be rotated to reset the device, perhaps with an electric motor powered by the sand generator with a float system to initiate the rotation when the sand levels get low.

ooo nice robert very cool i imagine a simple angled collector at the bottom there and then an easy clicker type bucket lift maybe so when the first sand bucket goes down it operates the clicker cog hehe ... bit like the slam effect from a water pump maybe. so you are in effect using the falling sand twice on its path.

You made an hour glass generator, an hour of power. I agree, brilliant.

It doesn't evaporate like water. Now combine that with liquid Mercury anti friction pool bearings as used in lighthouses.

One wonders at the future museum SMH/ ROFL potential of this lovely little thought experiment should the Thorium in that play sand is being used to power city blocks.

Filling that funnel with small metal bearing balls could get a way to get more mass hitting the wheel as they are denser, could play with different sizes balls and the wheel would prob have to be redesigned.

I have just been reading about the fact that they have to stop electricity production from wind farms often because the 'grid' can't take the higher power produced when its very windy. This it seems happens often with the off shore farms. So storage of 'power' in some form seems to be something we really need (as well as improving our national grid!). I often wonder (and if I was in good health and younger) about buying power off peak and storing it for use during the day. My parents did this with economy 7 and storage heaters. Perhaps they need to make a come back? Re the sand battery in the vid, damp in the air could be a big problem surely?

They pump water from the lower dam to the upper 3 dams at night when the power rates are low then generate electricity with the water on high price times.... in Phoenix salt river project. I was thinking of 2 tanks of water, using a solar water pump to get the water to the upper tank then make electricity at night with the water. It would be a sealed system so I won't loose water.

Robert, I would set up a tower of say a dozen tiers, each feeding a hopper and wheel below. I can’t however escape the realisation that walking upstairs with a bucket of sand will force me to eat more burgers.

As always an entertaining video, Problem with sand is if it gets wet, this won't work, water is a better idea as it can be easily pumped back up.

The only contraption I can think of to use sand effectively is to make a giant hourglass that takes 24 hours to drain on a crank system so you can flip it even if it's really heavy with very little effort and once a day flip it and you will have a steady charge that you can run through a capacitor Bank to make a live powerline to use depending on how many hour glasses you make and wire in series or parallel you could potentially produce your own power on your property by just going out into your shed and turning a crank over and let the sand drain and it would be technically a source of free green power and highly efficient you could even use a windmill and I weighted pulley system to do it automatically

Like it, would maybe "glass ball bearings" be a better battery material due to less wasted energy from friction when refilling the hopper.

Thank you Sir :)

I'm wondering if you use the heaviest dust (sand) you can find it will produce more force. Some minerals and elements are 3+ times more dense than water meaning it should be able to produce more power than water 💦. GL and TY!

Some obvious improvements. No need to have the sand drop in front of the wheel. Drop it closer to the top, and make the buckets broader to stop spillage Design the bucket shape to drop the sand later in the cycle. Replace the wheel with a vertical conveyer belt with bigger buckets. No need for symmetry.

It would perhaps be interesting to see how the wheel works with other bulk powder substances, sugar, cornstarch, salt, fireplace wood ash that has been dried and screened to a very fine dust. In that context, if you were to create a sealed system and attached a flywheel on the axle in the form of say a Tesla Pump coaxial with the sand paddles and the magnet wheel, you could generate air pressure (or vacuum pressure) to create a pneumatic stream which would convey the fine powder upwards back above the hopper level of the device. In this case, the undesirable effect of fine dust to become airborne and cause respiratory problems could be used to advantage to redistribute the material back to maximum potential energy. Of interest would be the comparison of the same mass of substance A vs substance B ( would you rather be smacked with a ton of rock or a ton of feathers?) and at various heights say up to 10 meters in 1 meter increments to measure how much torque they could impart to the axle. A separate but parallel experiment on the same sealed system that might be of interest would be how the conveyance tests would fare if you first removed all of the air and performed the same tests sous vide.

Sir You are a Gem. Keep it up.

This reminded me of an advancement of grain elevators that was given a patent recently. Instead of the auger in the center of a pipe spinning, the outer tube with a hole to intake grain, spins and at less energy while not harming the grain. It makes me wonder if the flywheel could be geared to power a form of return tube to a central basin for the sand at the top.

I do not have a 3d printer to experiment with this but I feel the best way to have this spin much faster is to have 5 or more sand wheels connected to each other (paralell alignment) with the same central rod (of course each with its own sand funnel) and have a half a crescent alignment of 8-10 copper wire 'pickups' for each wheel for maximum power generation.

If you've seen "Quint Builds" on RU-vid, he made a gravity battery by putting a large water barrel on top of a roof. When filled, the stored energy was roughly equivalent to a AA battery.

It would be cool to pair this with something like a grain elevator (maybe wind driven) to lift the sand back up to the upper reservoir

What you need is a bicycle-powered or wind-powered elevator to lift the sand and fill the hopper. I seem to recall seeing an Austraulian design that uses a fixed auger and a rotating shell. Was that Smarter Everyday? In any case, would like

Kinetic batteries are a nice touch.

you could use a vertical screw conveyor driven by a vawt and then an iris to control the output of the sand

It would be handy if you could harness the wind to blow the sand back up to the top.

Gods sake Robert I just bought two 40 pound bags of sand for sand batteries because of you, and now I guess I’m gonna make a sand wheel for those bags!!

Key word inspiration thank you...

Water can be piped long distances fairly easily. Shifting large volumes of sand, even recycling that used would be more costly I'm thinking. But happy to be wrong:)

I really like the idea of physical weight and gravity being used of lights or power. Somehow this reminded me of the gravitylight. It was a fantastic idea but BUT nobody wants to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 US for one. And they are always out of stock. I went off trying to remember the name, found it. Its upgraded to the NowLight. Still overpriced at $119. I'm not saying buy one but having gone through a few nights of blackout, something that just works is a great idea. Rob the things you are doing are not just fun but have very practical applications. That is besides being fun and great conversation pieces.

It might have some severe problems with abrasion Sand is really rough and hard

enough energy to run one of those ultralow voltage solar motors so it could show output as work, would make a complete educational toy.

Could you implement a leyden Jar into the workings of this to power the retrieval of the sand back to the top?. I've always wondered why the don't make Leyden jar tech in car tyres, especially now with the electric cars. On a side note, this is my favorite channel on RU-vid, and I watch a LOT of channels, Robert is a pleasure to watch and has very very good content. I'm also enjoying the comments section.

thanks Roberet you are BIG

Another great DIY project. Of course the sand could be returned to the top by an auger driven by a windmill or some other form of intermittent power.

Maybe consider using liquid metal , more dense and should be easier to pump. So PV can then be used to pump at day time and Gravity flow can then be used to balance power load...

Hey Rob, I know you said you had several thoughts on how to go about lifting sand. In case it isn't already in the running, an Olds Elevator might be a good pairing.

If the shaft was extended & flywheel added to run an augur (to lift sand back up by the flywheels motion/energy).. might have to start it going, I could see it being easier with a waterwheel & pump with check valve.. (a longer outlet tube would direct & increase force).. gets the brain going... Thanks Rob... Lol Stay Safe

I have to wonder, as sand piles in a cone rather than spreading like water the wheel is going to need to be held higher. As the generator is higher the potential energy of the system is decreased and the energy to "pump" the sand is to a given height remains the same as with water. That said it is the cost/wH stored that would be the kicker which I have no idea about. It may actually be feasible in deserts where there is abundant solar and sand.

I used to have one of those kids toys when I was a kid. So sometime in the previous millennium. The problem is that its operation is greatly compromised if the sand gets wet or even a little damp. Perhaps a larger device using small, smooth pebbles or even marbles or nuts or coffee beans would work better. Or basically any liquid denser than water and which doesn't evaporate, like oil. Mercury would be ideal except for the fact that it's very expensive and very poisonous :)

Most like an excellent idea

I wonder if there's some way of using the static build up from the sand to power a motor like the one you made recently to get the sand back to the top ?

MUST READ PLEASE Great idea that got me thinking. You are using gravity and the weight of the sand to generate electricity. Now if you reverse the idea back to water using the incoming tide. Submerse a fixed steel tube close to the river bed, seal the top of the tube except for a take off tube. Run this to a turbine and as the tide rises the water pressure will compress the air trapped in the tube and drive the turbine. using to same principal and a few vales you could take advantage of the falling tide in the same way, well that the basic idea, it would take a lot more to make it viable but it the thinking and tinkering that the start. Love your videos and the way you thing. Thanks Kingy