Magnetic Flux

The most important factor concerning the production of electricity is magnetic flux. Magnetic flux is what causes current flow. I should say that the change of magnetic flux is what causes current flow. The greater the magnetic flux and the faster the change of magnetic flux across a wire or a coil will determine the output. So a good understanding of magnetic flux will determine the success of your Alternator / generator.

Importance of Magnetic Flux Being that the amount of voltage and current your alternator will produce is directly proportional to the gage of the wire (for amps), number of turns in your coil (for voltage), the amount of magnetic flux and the speed your coil cuts across that magnetic flux, you can see that knowing where the poles are located on your magnet is very important because the greatest concentration of magnetic flux in located at the poles. Magnets are made from a variety of materials which determine greatly the strength of the magnet and will greatly effect the output of an alternator. Click here to read about the most common magnetic materials. We will assume that you will be using NEODYMIUM MAGNETS because they are the strongest magnets produced to date. They have an incredible amount of magnetic flux for their size. NEODYMIUM MAGNETS are so strong that great care must be taken because they can crush fingers and even break bones.

Above is a photo of two halves of a sphere magnet with a gap. The middle of the two magnets would be the best place to pass your wire or coil because of the concentration of magnetic flux.

Above are a few examples of different magnetic shapes to get an idea of where the greatest concentration of magnetic flux.

The photo above shows two bar magnets next to each other with a gap and you can see the concentration of magnetic flux in the gap between the two. The more flux involved the greater the effect on the wire or coil. Many times metal that attracts magnetic fields like soft iron will be placed behind the coil to attract the magnetic flux through the coil. The problem with this is that any conductor placed in a changing magnetic field will produce a current flow and cause an opposing magnetic field. These are called eddie currents. These eddie currents can adversely effect your design. This is why unless you are very learned in the design of magnetic circuits it is best to keep your design very simple.

Wiring Your Coil

How you wire your coil will determine how much magnetic flux you cut along with the voltage and current your alternator / generator will produce. The number of windings and the gage of the wire will directly effect your output. If you have been reading from the beginning there is a common theme you have been hearing over and over and that is that such and such will determine the output of your alternator / generator. That's because just about everything talked about is equally important when it comes to output. How you wire your coil is important because it's the relationship between your coil and the magnet that causes an electrical current flow.

How to Wire Your Coil The type of wire used in motors and alternators is called magnetic wire. This type of wire has a varnish type of isolation. .If you have ever seen the windings on a transformer you know what I mean. The length and gage of the wire used in your coils will greatly effect your output. The greater the number of turns in the coil will increase the amount of magnetic flux cut by the coil which will increase the electrical output. Also the thicker the wire the more amps the wire will produce. But here's what happens, very thin wire can have a greater number of turns per amount of space then thick wire and the closer each winding will be to the magnet. The closer the windings to the magnet the greater the amount of flux which will be cut. But the more thin the wire the less amps you can get from the wire with out cooking it. But the thicker the wire the farther the outer turns will be from the magnet i.e. less output per wire turns. -- Large companies have spent millions in R&D to over come these problems by employing magnetic circuits. In other words they put a core in their coils that will evenly distribute the magnetic flux to the windings. These magnetic circuits require a good working understanding of the science involved as well as software to model the design and the ability to have the cores manufactured to be effective; Something a home brewer may not have at his disposal. That why I'm going for simple but max output on the design. In the design of your unit it must be taken into account that just an inch from the magnet one looses as much as 90% of the magnetic flux found on the surface of the magnet. There are ways of increasing the flux that flows through your coil. Soft iron laminates or even other permanent magnets can be used to draw more flux through the magnets. This will involve a lot of experimenting to see what ways can be used in your design to draw more flux through the coil but will increase the output and lower the losses to inefficiency.

If you notice the diagram above you will notice that the current on one side of the coil is flowing in one direction relative to the magnets and in the opposite direction on the other side of the coil. This allows the current to flow in one direction through the whole coil. This is accomplished by having one side of the coil traveling in one direction and the other side traveling in the other direction.

If you were to just run the magnet over the coil or vic versa the current, as the magnet passed over the center, would push against itself. So whether the coil will be turned or the

magnets it must be setup so as to have one side of the coil cutting the flux in one direction and the other side of the coil cutting the flux in the opposite direction.

Above is an example with the magnet rotating with a stationary coil. A better design can be found in the photo below.

With the design above you could ether have the coil on the inside turning as displayed or have the magnets on the inside rotating with the coil on the outside and stationary.

These hand rules will help you determine the direction of current in a generator and the direction of force in a motor. The direction of the field is the magnetic flux from north to south poles. Both forces are in play whether it's a motor or a generator. In a perfect generator the force applied to the shaft to turn the rotor of the generator would be met with equal & opposite force from the magnetic field created by the current in the coil's winding . Theoretically no force would be great enough to turn the shaft. The same would hold true for a motor, once an initial current was applied to the windings of a motor it would spin for ever without needing additional current. We just don't live in a perfect world.

Faraday's Law
It's Faraday's Law that you need to employ when trying to determine how big your coil needs to be for a certain voltage from your Alternator / Generator. I have found it a common question, how big does my coil need to be. Faraday's Law will answer that question, but you will soon find that getting the data needed for Faraday to answer your question will be very difficult because getting exact numbers will be next to impossible. At most I've found is that you can get a ball park figure. The biggest part of inventing is trial and error. But a ball park figure will cut that down a bit.

Formula for Output of a Coil In the forums there is a common question, asking how many turns does my coil need to produce X amount of output. That depends on your design, how close your coils are to the magnets, how strong your magnets are, what size of wire your using, and how fast your coils are cutting the magnetic flux. A question not easily answered. You really have to experiment to find what works best for you(The way Thomas Alva Edison did it.). I can tell you this, the higher the RPM's of your alternator the less the number of turns needed there by allowing a heaver gage of wire that can be used giving higher Amperage output. Or we can do it the way Tesla would do it, and that was with mathematics. The Formula for output is below: Faraday's Law

V = -N * change in (( tesla * area meters squared)/ seconds) I use the TI-89 Graphing Calculator for all my calculations which has symbolic manipulation ability.

Lets change this formula so we can use it to determine the number of turns we need for our coil. We know we are going to need around 14 volts to charge 12 volt batteries. We will change the 14 volts to a negative 14 volts to account for Lenz's law. So with the use of a little algebra we get. N = -1 * (-V/ change in (( tesla * area meters squared)/ seconds)) Now lets plug in the numbers. V = 14. Now lets figure the tesla. You will need to know how much Gauss or tesla you permanent magnet is rated for. This will give you something to work with because each winding will have a distance from the magnet that will determine the gauss or tesla that, that winding will be cutting through. The shape of the magnet plus the design of your coil and what your using to draw the flux through the coil will all determine the average gauss or tesla you will use in this formula. I have a rare earth magnet rated for 6325 Gauss so I'm going to cut that in half and use the number 3162 Gauss just to get an idea of how many windings I'm going to need to get my 14 volts. I'm cutting this value in half because the 6325 Gauss figure is taken very close to the magnet, the windings of my coil will, on average, be farther from the coil. 10,000 gauss = 1 tesla 3162/10000 = .3162 tesla Tesla = .3162 Now lets figure the meters squared. My magnet is 2" by 1". So I need to convert meters square to inches square. One square meter is 1,550.0031 inches square. My magnet is 2 inches square. 1,550.0031 = one meter square 2/1,550.0031 = .00129 meters squared (more or less) Meters squared = .00129 Lets figure 5 turns per second, that gives us 300 RPM. If we do a good blade design we might be able to get 300 RPM in 3 to 5 mile winds. 5 turns per second gives us one turn every .2 seconds seconds = .2 This gives us the formula

N = -1 * (-14/ (( .3162 * .00129)/ .2)) N = -1 * (-14/(.000407898/.2)) N = -1 * (-14/.00203949) N = -1 * - 6864.5 N = 6864.5 We get 6864.5 windings we need for our generator to give us 14 volts. Of course with that many windings we are going to have to lower our estimated value of tesla we have, because with that many windings we are going to have to in crease the average distance the windings are from the magnet, which will mean that we need even more windings. To make this thing work we are going to have to increase the RPM's or the number of magnets. You will probably have more then one magnet in your design and more then one coil. So this number divided up between a number of coils and magnets can become more manageable.

Motors and Generators

This lesson explains how coils and magnets are used to create Motors and Generators / Alternators. We will looking at how wires and magnets interact to create power, both mechanical and electrical. It is the interaction between these two forces that need an over hall to counter the effects of global warming and pollution. With the higher cost of energy, the efficiency of these devices need to be tuned. We need to get closer to 100 % efficiency so as not to need to waist so much natural resources to create the power we need to run the thing that give us pleasure.

Now lets put coils and magnets together. Relationship of coil and magnet Now we get to the meat of my problem. I've got the magnets, I've got the coils now what do I do? It's like making bread. You can have everything needed, the water, the flower, the yeast; But to make a good tasting bread that doesn't come out like a brick? I've yet to be able to do it. This is where one has to do a bit of reading and learning. A painful process for us "no brains scientists". Here's the problem I was having. Take a look at these photos below. Do you see anything that causes you concern?

The coils in the photo above on the left are going to be fixed and placed on top of the magnets in the photo on the right which will rotate. Here is a larger photo of the coils.

Now the magnets are placed with alternating north and south poles facing up which will create alternating current in the output of the alternator. Sounds great, but I intuitively felt there was a problem. And this is where I had to do some learning about magnets and coils. And what I found out was that when the magnet passes over the coil, as it first approaches the coil the current in the coil begins to flow in one particular direction. As the magnet begins to pass over the coil, half of the coil's current is trying to move in one direction and in the other half of the coil, current is trying to move in the other direction. Nothings going no ware. Now as the magnet exist the coil, current begins to move in the opposite direction of when the magnet approached the coil.

This means you only have current flow, and only a little at that, when the magnet is entering or exiting the coil. As it passes directly over the coil, when max output would be expected, close to zero output would be realized. Many of the more popular alternative energy sites on the net are using this particular design. The reason I suppose is that the magnets are rotating rather then the coils. If the coils were rotating then you would need some kind of a comutator. Which for the home brewer would be difficult to manufacture. But don't take my word for it, lets look at how magnets and coil relate to each other. Lets start from the beginning. Check out the photo below.

The photo above describes a wire with a current flowing through it. The wire develops a rotating non polar magnetic field that has direction. Doesn't seem too important now but later you'll find out that this magnetic field is what keeps us all in chains. Now lets look at the magnet. Check out photos below.

This is how the so important magnetic flux is in relation to the magnet. Now to create electrical power we need that wire or coil to cut threw those lines of flux. But we also need to understand what happens when it does. The first thing we need to understand is that depending on how the magnetic flux is cut will depend on how much power is developed and in what direction current will flow. The way the coils above were cutting the magnetic flux you had current attempting to flow in both directions at once. Not a good design because you don't get much net power.

Above is an example of what I'm talking about. Here the magnet is inside the coil with the north pole effecting one half of the coil and the south pole effecting the other half of the coil. Here, in the photos below, is an example of coils rotating inside a magnetic field. This is a great design because the magnetic flux is drown from the north pole threw the coil to the south pole. Normally the coil would have a core of some kind which would further draw the magnetic flux threw the coil, which would cause magnetic cogging between the magnets and the core, which would require greater torque to turn the alternator.

Now lets look at the interaction between the wire and the magnetic flux a little closer. Below is a photo that shows what's going on in a motor. This is called the left hand rule. This is for a motor where a voltage is applied to the wire. For a generator, the current flow created would flow in the opposite direction. So if you were attempting to create current flow you would move the wire in an upward fashion(for this example) which would cause current to flow counter to the direction of your middle finger.

As a motor, a voltage is applied to the wire, which is in side the magnetic flux of the permanent magnet as in figure 9, as current begins to flow, the wire is forced up by the interaction between the magnetic field created by the current flow in the wire and the magnetic field of the permanent magnets. As it is forced up a counter current is created which opposes the current flow in the wire. This is why if you stop a motor from turning while current is flowing, the motor get hot and begins to smoke. With out the rotation of the magnetic fields in the motor there is no counter force to the current flow and current flows freely and heats up the windings in the motor. So the more efficient the motor, the greater the opposing force and the greater the torque for less power used. This is the problem with the generation of electricity, as the generator turns it creates current flow in the wire, which in turn creates a magnetic field in the wire that opposes the movement of the wire. If you had a 100% efficient generator and attempted to draw 100% of the current created by the generator the shaft would not turn because an equal and opposite force would be created. This is why you cannot get over unity. More torque would always be required then you are applying to turn the shaft to turn the generator.

Ohm's Law Equations

The equations for ohm's law is the basic equation for electricity. An understanding of Ohm's Law is necessary for any understanding of electricity, batteries, alternative energy, your light bill. Ohm's Law is very simple to understand if it is explained in basic terms. Most study in any field of science starts out with the understanding that one is going on to be a scientist so very highly technical term and concepts are presented to the student assuming he or she has the back ground to understand these terms and concepts. But what if you just want to understand the basics of electricity? Well, here we will explain electricity in a manner that doesn't require one to have a degree in physics.

Ohm's Law the Formula

V = IR ------- I = V/R ------- R = V/ I Any thing that has to do with electricity has these three components. Voltage = V, Current = I, Resistance = R ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is Voltage?
Voltage can best be explained by referring to a water hose. Voltage is the pressure of the water in the hose. Not how much water in the hose but the pressure pushing on the water in the hose. We have all seen movies where a fire hose is used to push people back. A fire hose has a great amount of pressure on it. It's like the the wall socket in your house powered by a power plant. Touch it and your going to get knocked over. Your garden hose is not going to knock any one over it's like the battery in your car. Your car battery is most likely 12 volts, your wall socket is around 120 volts. Voltage is measured in Volts. The symbol for Volts is " V " --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is current?
Current, lets say, is the amount of juice in the hose. Say you have that same fire hose with all the high pressure but you had foam mostly filled with air coming out, people would be laughing and having fun as they were sprayed. But say you had rocks spewing out of the hose, that would be a different story. Current is what kills you when you get shocked. I once got shock with 25 thousand volts from a TV picture tube. It knocked me over and I was shaken up but nothing more. There was just a tiny amount of current. But there are videos of people being burned up because they came in contact with the high voltage lines from a power plant. Current is measured in Amperes, or Amps for short. The symbol for current is " I " --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What is Resistance? Resistance is the friction opposing the flow of current. It slows the flow of current down. It reduces the voltage or pressure on the current. This is how an incandescent light bulb works. A current is passed threw a filament wire and the heat caused by the resistance of the filament causes the wire to glow. An example would be when you rub your hands together the heat from the friction causes your hands to heat up. Everything that an

electrical current flows through has resistance. This resistance needs to be taken into account when building your alternative energy system at home. Resistance is measured in Ohms. The symbol for Ohms is " "

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And last but not least is " Watts " What are Watts? Watts are a unit of measurement that is used to calculate the total power available or used by a system or item in the circuit. You calculate Watts by multiplying the volts time the current. For example, if your system is 12 volts and it is using 3 amps that would be 36 watts. Watts are measured in Watts. The symbol for Watts is " W ". The formula for Watts is W = V x I That reads Watts = Volts multiplied by Amps. V = W / I ----- I = W / V So if you had a 100 Watt light bulb in your house and 120 volts you now can figure the amps it is using. I = 100 / 120 = .833 amps