How much electricity can 4 million pounds of pressure produce?

Question

4 million pounds applied everyday and how much does that translate into dollars? The weight would be from top to bottom and not all of the 4 million pounds would be applied at once. Most likely it would be on a average of 50,000- 75,000 pounds per minute.

I was thinking a hydralic pump would be a good distributer to (some mechanism?) that produces energy.

This energy is free

Answer 1

1.  Nothing worthwhile is 'free'.

2.  Are you talking £ or lbf or lbm?  Each has the same probability of producing energy. 0

3.  ÃƒÂ‚£ to $ conversions change daily and are available online.

Answer 2

4 million pounds is  a measure of static force. Pressure is force distributed over an area. Either of them amount to 0 energy unless they can move. To generate electricity, continuous rotary motion is ideal, though you can also work with reciprocating linear motion.  Force x distance = energy. In practical systems, you also have to factor in the overall conversion efficiency.

Answer 3

This is already being done with the HOOVER Dam in Nevada.

Answer 4

This is a very old idea dating back to at least 1884. Hydraulic power used to be piped around London over 100 years ago to power elevators. The infrastructure is expensive with all those tunnels for the pipes.

Answer 5

pressure alone has only potential energy and can't produce any electricity unless it is allowed to do work.

pressure (in a gas) has to be allowed to expand and make something move to produce power, as in a steam engine.

Perhaps more details would make this understandable.

Answer 6

let's assume that we have 50000-75000ppm moving 1 foot that would be 50-75k ft#/min

44.25 ft#/min = 1 watt

so we take 50000/44.25 = 1130 watts

75000/44.25 = 1695 watts

This assumes also that you have 100 % efficiency in converting the pressure to watts.

Answer 7

4 million pounds equals 1.818*10^6Kg

Force=1.78*10^7newtons

4640 newtons/second

63.9 minutes to go through the entire force at that rate.

Energy = force * distance

Wattage=Energy/second

Current costs are typically based on Kilowatt hours.