People have asked me if I think the Joule Thief produces excess energy. My answer is –> No, I have not seen or tested any Joule Thief that produces excess energy.
I’ve seen countless Joule Thief videos, and I spend a great deal of time replicating the best Joule Thief claim, a claim by the anonymous user name gadgetMall. After replicating his claim, using all of his part #’s, and the same values (resistors and capacitors), the Joule Thief efficiency was only 5.6%. After some significant adjustments and changes I was able to obtain a maximum efficiency of 44%. After completely changing the circuit, the Joule Thief obtained a maximum efficiency of 80.4%.
The problem in the “free energy” community is that people rarely test for efficiency. It’s so easy to avoid such simple tests and to be absorbed in a fantasy that one has discovered a free energy machine.
One major issue with Joule thief experiments is they like to light LED’s, a lot of them. Folks, some LED’s can be seen with the unaided human eye at only 5 nW. Yes, that is 5 *nano* watts, 0.000000005 watts. Albeit it’s extremely dim, but increase the power by 1000 for 5 micro watts and the LED is easily seen. Some LED’s are not so good, and require a lot more power, but 5 uW from some LED’s will appear bright on a video camera. Such videos that light a string of LED’s for months on end with a single battery is extremely misleading. Why don’t these people just do very simple efficiency measurements. Well, for one, it would reveal the Joule Thief is not producing excess energy. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but so far I have not seen any tested Joule Thief produce excess energy.
Here are a few photos off my old Joule Thief tests. As you can see, I even used the exact same Ultracapacitor, BCAP0650E, that gadgetMall used, and the exact same diode, 1N34A.
Yesterday I tested gadgetmall (Albert) Joule Thief circuit. I used a AAA NiMH 700mAh battery as the source connected to Albert’s circuit, which in turn charges a BCAP0650 ultracapacitor (UC). The UC started at 1.130 volts. The AA battery was charged. The experiment ended with the AAA at 0.491V, and the UC at 1.313V. This means the Joule Thief circuit charged the UC from 1.130V to 1.313V, for total energy of 134 joules. We know from the previous battery test that the same type of battery, fully charged, made by the same company, a AA 2000mAh NiMH has 6900 joules. Therefore the AAA 700mAh battery should have ~ 2400 joules. This comes to 100% * 134 J / 2400 J = 5.6 % efficient.
Today I adjusted the 10Kohm pot to try and improve the efficiency. This resulted 44% efficient, which is better than yesterdays 5.6% efficiency. I’m not sure if there’s much else to do here.
Here’s my results of testing gadgetmalls circuit, or at least the closest I can presently get to it. I don’t have his toroid, but I’m using a good toroid with high permeability & similar size that he describes.
This method consist of using a resistor for the load, and measuring the resistors temperature, which we’ll call Tr. Then doing the control experiment, which consists of connecting the resistor directly to a power supply, and then increasing the current until the resistor temperature stabilizes at Tr.
An elaborate setup would use a closed system that maintains a fixed temperature. I did not go that far. Also I did not dig out the ridiculously sensitive temperature equipment.
A 100 ohm carbon resistor was used as the load. The voltage across the JT was 1.559 volts DC, and the current was 74.3mA DC, for a total of 116mW. The control experiment showed that it took only 93.3mW to bring the resistor to the same temperature.
This comes to 80.4% efficient.
A user by the name of gadgetmall at overunity.com has made some huge claims. He claims his modified Joule Thief circuit can make a AA battery fully charge a 650F Maxwell boostcap, where the AA battery voltage only drops by some microvolts.
So I ordered one 650F Maxwell boostcap, $30 + $9 S&H. When the ultracapacitor arrives, I’ll build his circuit to see the results. I’m not holding my breath, but it’s all good because I’ve wanted to buy one of these capacitors anyways.
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