could you mount expanding fabric thing (similar hot air balloon) to the chimney stack, fumes/smog coming fills up the balloon......
could be mounted in loft....-- undecided888, May 24 2009 Nasca Balloon http://www.nott.com/Pages/projects.phpsooty fire, wool balloon. [loonquawl, May 25 2009] I'd have to ask the same question as [21 quest]. What purpose does this serve? Is it just an aesthetic thing? Are you sure you'd want an expanding fabric? That suggests it would contract too, and return the fumes from whence they came.-- fridge duck, May 24 2009 I thought it was a failsafe for the whatsis... baffle(?): put it in the chimney, blow it up and it stops cold air from coming in. For days when you don't have the fire going, obviously.-- FlyingToaster, May 24 2009 I think the idea is to capture emissions (smoke, soot, etc) from the chimney in question.-- phoenix, May 25 2009 (+) I don't remember where, but I read one time about the pictographs which can only be seen from the air being attributed to alien visitations until someone proved that by suspending a large enough course woven sack above a continuously lit fire for long enough the soot and smoke would gradually fill up all of the gaps in the fabric and that whomever happened to be the ruling family at the time could go for a primative hot air balloon ride to view them.
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just sayin.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 25 2009 [2 fries shy of a happy meal] Ah, prehistoric ballooning and the Nazca Lines in Peru. Certainly a more credible explanation than the one that Von Daniken provided.-- Aristotle, May 25 2009 Just found the [link]. Incredible - i am not yet totally convinced.-- loonquawl, May 25 2009 Regarding these prehistoric ballon flights such flying could be seen as a worthwhile demonstration of magical power and the task of creating the Nazca lines as a cultural wonder. Given the probable risks of flying then I would be slightly more convinced if there was a half-finished one due to all the people who knew how flying worked having been killed in accidents.-- Aristotle, May 26 2009 :-) phoenix - you got it.
lets say in the industrial revolution, these existed, we capped chimneys with expanding balloons to capture fumes. lets guess their was a way to process..breakdown fumes in the balloon....? or..fill with helium and let it rise into the galaxy?
What if we had this device for regular car's/buses/trucks - to capture their own fumes..?
I like this idea. but i;d love some brain storming/input on how to breakdown the fumes inside the balloon.....
:-)-- undecided888, May 26 2009 problems ahead: the energy you won from combustion came from the 'fumes' forming, either via heat, or by the expansion, or both. to hold the exhaust from a car, you'd need 10m³ of bags (or one bag 1m x 1m x 10m) for every liter of fuel you burned (about 30km of voyage in a modern car, or 7km in a SUV). or you could compress it, using some of the energy you just won. or you could try to break it down, using all of the energy you just won, and then some.
But you are right: if we had captured all the gases from the beginning of the industrial revolution, we might be able to one day start working on it via 'free' energy, ie. solar. I found no good numbers to work with, but a very rough estimate would put the size of the all-time balloon at 10^4 km³, (1km high, 1km wide, stretching 1000km) - this seems a bit small, by the way. could someone come up with a better estimate? (-> 100ppm since industrial revolution, so 10.000th of atmosphere, so an orange-peel slice of the atmosphere 4km broad, which is way bigger than my estimate, and still only counts the stuff that stayed airborne...(?))
Helium-filled balloons do not go into space, they stay in the upper atmosphere until they crash from accrued ice or leaks.-- loonquawl, May 26 2009 A chimney is not just a long tube that the smoke climbs of its own accord. The principle of the chimney is that air currents at the top create a lower pressure and efectively drag the smoke out. If you block the chimney opening with a balloon, the chimney would stop working.-- Veho, May 26 2009 ok - so not a good idea. i can handle that.-- undecided888, May 28 2009 Non no, cool idea. You just need a gap between the lower lip of your balloon and the chimney so that the stack can still do its thing. You might not capture all emissions this way especially once the balloon fills up like [21 Quest] suggests but if there were some sort of conveyor like balloon inflating filteration system...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 28 2009 2 fries shy of a happy meal - nice
i wonder how gases could be broken down inside the balloon - how can we purify them..? i saw breifly how P&G worked on substances to purify water for africa....can we do the same..but with air?
any thoughts?-- undecided888, May 28 2009 So this is a chimney filter that happens to be inflated by the rising gas? Cool; I somewhat like this idea.
// What if we had this device for regular car's/buses/trucks - to capture their own fumes..? //
I've seen corks that you can stick in your exhaust pipe that purport to do that (while still allowing the gases through so it doesn't stop the engine).
*cars-- notexactly, Dec 28 2015 A catalysing balloon material which has increased efficiency because molecules try to hit through the walls. Maybe an onion scenario for a greater conversion.
Really just a catalyst filter trying to use some of that expansion pressure in the conversion.-- wjt, Dec 31 2015 random, halfbakery