Introduction: The Gravity Harvester

About: I am passionate about anything and everything engineering and physics. I am interested in much of chemistry and biology and I enjoy most art and craft + cooking and baking. I have completed my bachelor's in me…

This is a concept based on a idea I had on harvesting gravitational potential energy from rain or any elevated source of water.

The system works by having a pair of tubes that contain a cup each. When the cup is at the top of the tube, a valve opens allowing water to fill the cup. As water fills the cup, it gets heavier and starts to move down the tube. Once at the bottom of the tube a valve opens to drain the water, thus the cup is now lighter and can be pulled up by its partner cup that would be filled with water. The pair of cups moving up and down alternatively via a chain can now power a generator by meshing a sprocket to the chain.
An interesting feature of this design is that you can line up more pairs so you have a row of them and it would improve the output you can get.
Another possible configuration to "stack" the system is to have the pairs where one is upstream of the other thus requiring only one water channel

In this step the 2nd and 3rd pictures show the starting position of each cycle, half way through the cycle the condition is just mirrored where the left side cup is at the top and the right side cup is at the bottom

Here are the screenshots of the design in made in Solidworks
(I really wanted to put in an animation of it working and spent many hours/days getting it to work but my laptop just cant handle it and crashes too much to get any usable animation. but i will try and get one in later)

Please vote for me in the CAD contest if you like this concept, I hope to get some of the parts printed so I can actually test out the device as my access to tools and materials to fabricate this is very limited and quite insufficient.

*Updates*
As pointed out by Kiteman, frictional lose will be an issue, thus maybe the tube can be switched to a pair of guide rails since the tube is only there to guide the cup to the valve mechanisms. As for friction in the chain i guess we just need good lubrication

Step 1: The Cup

The cup is shaped to push the tube's valve open when its at the top of the tube to allow water to enter through its 2 openings.
When the cup reaches the bottom of the tube a plunger in the tube pushes the cup's valve open and drains the water

Step 2: Chain

I have also made the chain in Solidworks, pretty straightforward

Step 3: Final Word

I am really hoping to build a model of this design and I am looking for ways to build it even as I type this out. I hope to polish this design and maybe one day make it good enough to be commercialized and let every home be able to have their own mini hydroelectric station when it rains. I would also like to note this system is not only limited to rainwater, I see its potential to be used in many other places, anywhere a liquid has to travel downwards. This system might even be able to run on fine particles like sand, rice, flour, or even ball bearings. Lets reclaim that vast amount of energy of  Mass X Gravity X Height (mgh)

If anyone is interested in expanding on this idea or have questions please feel free to contact me.
Also I am still quite new to Solidworks, so any tips (exp:" you could have done ... instead of ... , that makes it faster and uses less system resources") would be extremely welcome

I hope you like my idea to help with the energy crisis. I would greatly appreciate any constructive feedback 

Epilog Challenge V

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Epilog Challenge V

3D Printing Contest

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3D Printing Contest