Here's How to Get All Your Google™ AdWords Pay-Per-Clicks FREE!

The Fabulous Elixir of Life - Is It This?   The fat rats were given this 'miracle substance' and they did much better than the ones without it did! There are many people who struggle to lose their weight, but would like to live a normal life. Who would not? This page is giving you a valuable tip. You have a chance to live a better and longer life. If you have your weight under control, your health still needs to be supported. Who is totally healthy?  Look at the Resveratrol, a real new miracle substance, and find more via the link below the banner.   Click to the right to find the offer Resveratrol SELECT      A Really Ice Cool Book!   Thriller "Ice-Shedding of Ages"  Find the updated second edition at CreateSpace. Only $17.00.       What is the El-Brick, My Free Invention?   The El-Brick is an electric generating brick that gives a certain direct current and voltage when it is heated on one side, and kept cool on the other side. The El-Brick takes advantage of a phenomenon called heat electricity, not the photo voltaic one. When bricks like this are connected in a parallel, as well as in a series, greater currents, voltages and powers can be gained. Even entire brick walls could be built from them to absorb the electricity from the hot sunshine. For example, in the winter in an arctic area, a wall made of El-Bricks could stand tightly adjacent to an oven that is heated by firewood. I have not applied for a patent for the El-Brick because I am tired of doing the patent application documents, and cannot afford to hire a lawyer. The patent fees are also hefty. The poor private inventor is left to the discretion of the patent examiners who seem to favor the big corporations. The examiners　want to abandon your application on the basis of irrelevant arguments and formalities. In addition, the marketing of an invention is expensive and uncertain. Marketers easily take the money of the inventors and leave them even poorer than they were in the beginning.　 You are free to copy my invention that is presented below and improve on it. I cannot be sure if a patent has been granted to any invention like this one, although I have never encountered this kind of an invention anywhere. If you find such a patent, I would appreciate it if you would tell me about it by writing to my e-mail address: kauko.loukas@pp.inet.fi or writerkauko@gmail.com . You cannot apply for a patent for the El-Brick for yourself either, because the invention is published on this web page. So, it is your responsibility to find out if this invention is officially free, before you begin to do your own business with it. If you are successful in your possible El-Brick business or by using it otherwise, I only hope that you would remember me by sending an affordable donation via PayPal , using this email address: kauko.loukas@pp.inet.fi and my name Kauko Loukas, Finland. I need money to do more inventions, along with their experiments. To do my share in bridling the global warming or change, whatever is preferred, and especially to prevent the burst of the continental glaciers, which are threatening as I believe ( Home, CreateSpace), I have tried to invent a new method to create renewable energy. The burning of the fossil fuels is causing ever-growing volumes of excess gases, mostly carbon dioxide, to be dumped into the atmosphere. Even ordinary people should understand that the reckless burning that is done these days cannot be left without drastic consequences. One only needs to ask the inhabitants of the low coast lands and archipelago countries. I don't care about any political ideologies, as they are sliced brain thinking. I leave them aside and use my own brain. Donations    Pictures of the El-Brick In these pictures you can see my invention, the El-Brick. In the left-hand picture, Picture 1, you can see the front of the brick, and in the right-hand picture, Picture 2, the back of the brick. The brick does not look pretty because after all, it is a brick, and this is an experimental piece.

                 

 

In the spring of 2009, I invented an electric brick that I called El-Brick. It is able to generate direct current (DC) electricity when it is heated on one side and kept cool on the other side. The secret of the invention is a semiconducting mortar with electrodes on both sides. In my version above, the semiconducting mortar contains 4/5 of cement-mortar and 1/5 of pulverized haematite or ferric oxide (Fe2O3), which is a semiconductor. The cement mortar contains 4/5 of clean sand and 1/5 of Portland cement. The relations of the ingredients can be changed if you do your own experiments and want to make the brick more effective by changing the relations.

The measurements of the experimental El-Brick are about 100mm x 100mm x 50 mm or 4''x 4''x 2'', but as I said above, the measurements can be and have to be changed to usable ones. The semiconducting mortar seemed to harden well, but I have not studied its solidity and strength. Some other people have to do that. Before casting the brick, I put a squared, 100x100 (4''x4''), galvanized steel plate on the bottom of the box where I cast the mortar into. After casting the mortar, I put a 100x100 (4''x4'') steel net on the surface of the mortar and pressed it gently down, so that it sank under the surface of the mortar. The size and shape of the electrodes have to be equal to the sides of the brick where the electrodes are to be fixed. So, when the measurements of the brick are changed, the measures of the electrodes have to be changed accordingly.

I cast this temporary brick in a plastic box, the shape of which was not exactly rectangular, but a little like a cut-pyramid. Due to the shape, it could easily be removed from the box. However, when the brick is mass produced, the shape and size of it has to follow the plan in question or official instructions. Also, the manufacturing process sets its own requirements.

For the electrodes, I fixed a galvanized steel plate on the front or hot side and a piece of galvanized steel net on the back or cool side of the brick, in the casting, as stated above. I fixed a copper wire on one side of the steel net by crooking the loose wire-ends of the steel net around the copper wire, but I did not need to fix a copper wire on the steel plate, because the brick was a temporary, experimental piece and I could take the measures without it. Otherwise, for normal use, both the electrodes need a copper or brass wire for their connection.

Experimenting With the El-Brick

The surface or contacting area of the electrodes is an important characteristic. The surface of the electrode on the hot side has to be as large as possible. This is because on the hot side, the electrons on the electrode heat up and become more and more volatile, jostling each other. They need more chances to get into the semiconducting mortar, and therefore they need more metal surface to jump easily from the electrode to the mortar. The number of the electrons is important as well, and the larger the metal surface is, the more electrons there are on its surface, ready to move to the cool side and generate an electric current.

On the cool side, a reasonably coarse metal net is enough to gather the electrons that have wandered through the mortar and ooze out of its surface. In my experimental brick, the aperture of the electrode-net is 4mm or 5/32''. Later, I noticed that the steel plate was loosening from the mortar after cooling and heating several times during the experiments that I was doing. Therefore, the electrode on the hot side has to be of a metal net also, but a dense one. However, the net-electrode must not be too dense. Namely, both net-electrodes have to sink a little into the mortar when the brick is cast, so that they keep fast on the mortar, and a very dense net cannot do that.

The wire-thickness of the electrodes that is chosen has to be usable. In my case, it is 0,4 mm or 0.0016'', but it can be otherwise altered, according to the need and experiments done. The larger the metal surface of the hot electrode, the better if the other conditions are fulfilled and a sufficient practicality is reached.

I used a small electronic general meter to do electric measurings. After several rounds of experimenting, I confirmed that the voltage generated by the El-Brick in question, was 0.25 V when the steel plate was on the hot side and the steel net on the cool side, as it was intended. The hot electrode is positive (+) and the cool electrode negative (-). That is natural, because the heating of the electrons on the hot side causes them to escape in growing numbers into the mortar, moving then to the cool side where they create a negative charge. The lack of electrons on the hot side means a positive charge and an extra load of electrons on the cool side means a negative charge. The hot side in my experiments was so hot that my hand could not tolerate it anymore. The temperatures were about 50 C (122 F) on the hot side, and about 20 C (68 F)on the cool side. When I turned the brick over, so that the electrodes exchanged places among themselves, the voltage dropped to 0.075 V. This time, the much smaller surface of the net-electrode on the hot side caused that.

The voltage of one El-Brick does not seem like much, but it has to be pointed out that one El-Brick wall could easily consist of hundreds of bricks, or even thousands of them. If you connect 50 to 60 El-Bricks in a series, you will easily get a voltage to charge a normal 12 V car battery, and you can connect as many rows of parallel bricks as you want. Higher voltages are also possible. The total area of the brick wall defines the electric power that you get, depending also on the temperature difference between the hot and cool sides, as well as the thickness of the wall.

The haematite gives the bricks its own color, namely the pitch black that absorbs the heat radiation most effectively. Such a color is not attractive, so if you don't like it, a dark red hue is the next best choice, because it is the next color to the black in the spectrum. So, you can paint the wall with that color; at least on the visible side. Naturally, the invisible side does not need to be painted. I think that a dark red paint will not diminish the electric power remarkably.

I fixed the electrodes on the flat sides of the El-Brick, because I was doing experiments. I did not ponder the practical questions concerning building an El-Brick wall yet. However, the bricks in a wall usually are positioned with the flat sides being placed horizontally and the narrow sides vertically, so the electrodes have to be fixed on the sides that are vertical in a normal brick wall. However, the bricks in a wall can sometimes be laid with their flat sides vertically, so the electrodes in that case have to be fixed on the flat sides, which I did.

I used galvanized steel as the material for the electrodes but of course, that is not a compulsory choice. Electrically, brass is better, but it is much more expensive than the steel, and the mortar does not keep on it as fast as it does on steel, even galvanized steel. For the connection wires of the electrodes, brass is good, because it resists corrosion better than the copper. I used a temporary fixing between the net-electrode and its connection wire by crooking the loose ends of the net-wires on one side of the net. However, in a normal case, the wire should be fixed to the net-side, or even to two perpendicular sides in order to insure a connection, by soldering it to preserve a sufficiently good connection permanently.

A normal, dry joint mortar without haematite or any other semiconducting or conducting ingredient is an electric insulator that is able to insulate the El-Bricks from each other. In principle, the connection wires between the El-Bricks do not need to be insulated either, if the bricks and wall stay dry, and the wires are inside the joint mortar. However, it may be hard to secure the wires, so that they cannot touch wrong bricks and cause short circuits. Also, an oblique rain easily wets an outdoor wall, and if the joint mortar between the bricks includes an acid or alkali as it may well do, the joints become conducting and short circuit the connections. Therefore, the mortar that is used in laying up the wall should be chemically neutral and water proof as much as possible. To improve the water resistance, the wall can be sprayed with a solution that makes it water repellant. It is also better to insulate the conducting wires.

The thickness of the El-Brick is an essential property. To be more exact, I made my very first exemplar brick very thin, less than 1 cm or about 1/3". The voltage it produced was miniscule. I don't even remember it. From the disappointing result, I concluded that the brick has to have a sufficient thickness. The greater the thickness, the greater the temperature difference between the hot and cool sides is, and the higher the voltage. Also, there has to be a sufficiently high electric resistance between the sides. You see, if the resistance between the sides disappears, the brick becomes a conductor and the sides get the same electric potential. There would be no voltage at all.

So, you have to get a high enough temperature difference and electric resistance between the hot and cool side, by making the El-Brick sufficiently thick between the sides, but on the other hand, you cannot make it impractically thick. However, I think that when the electrodes are fixed on the narrow or vertical sides of the El-Bricks, the wall becomes sufficiently thick in most cases, and this question should not even trouble you.　

To be sure, you have to do your own experiments and decisions in every phase of your first El-Brick wall building. Good luck!

Home    Updated second edition of my book, Ice-Shedding of Ages, $17.00, CreateSpace.

 TRAFFICadbar