Is the static electricity caused by dust storms useless/negligible? How about the fact that the density of dust is higher, meaning there's technically more kinetic energy in a 'dust molecule' moving at a certain speed as opposed to an 'air molecule' at a certain speed?
Or is that assumption incorrect to begin with.

i have basically no idea about scienes, so take it with a grain of salt, but one problem that occured to me instantly is the frequency of dust storms, which is, i think, too low to make it a viable source of energy. i found this study for australia:

"The first spatial study of dust storm occurrence over Australia was by Middleton (1984), who found the highest frequency of dust storms occur in the centre of Australia, where there was an average of 10.8 at Alice Springs and a maximum of 65 events per year." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212094713000248

feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.

Clearly you couldn't use it everywhere around the world.

From Wikipedia because I didn't actually research:

"The Sahara desert is a key source of dust storms, particularly the Bodélé Depression[4] and an area covering the confluence of Mauritania, Mali, and Algeria.[5]

Saharan dust storms have increased approximately 10-fold during the half-century since the 1950s, causing topsoil loss in Niger, Chad, northern Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. In Mauritania there were just two dust storms a year in the early 1960s, but there are about 80 a year today, according to Andrew Goudie, a professor of geography at Oxford University.[6][7] Levels of Saharan dust coming off the east coast of Africa in June (2007) were five times those observed in June 2006, and were the highest observed since at least 1999, which may have cooled Atlantic waters enough to slightly reduce hurricane activity in late 2007.[8][9]"


Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_storm

So about 80 per year in Mauritania, but I'm not sure if all 80 storms happen in the same geographical area, how long a storm lasts, how severe the average dust storm is, how predictable dust storms are and how much energy can be harvested from them compared to wind.

Right now I wonder more about if the extra energy could even be harvested, though. Maybe it's potentially useful on Mars if it doesn't work on earth, for instance.

Dust/sand grains moving at high speeds are usually considered a problem for machinery. Basically eroding away your baldes, or clogging up the internal moving parts.

It is notable that this was a problem for US military helicopters in the first gulf war.

Now if you can harvest the static electricity without any moving parts, while avoi the worst wear and tear of being pummled by dust particles (ie using a material which is sufficiently hard to avoid being worn away, but also conducts electricity..) then you have a chance of harvedting some energy.

Getting the kinetic energy... I'm not sure, again erosion is your big problem. I think it would be much more signifigant than the static electricity... But that is a gut feeling, nothing else.

Dust and sand is a killer for machinery. You would have to design something specifically meant to handle this. But, again, we aren't really lacking open space to harvest wind where there isn't sand, so the need for this is questionable.

On Mars, I'm pretty sure you'd want to just use solar panels.

The idea behind it is various sources of energy for various situations. The thing with Mars, for instance, is that you're not generating any solar energy in the middle of a dust storm, which can last months.

But I acknowledge that there might not be much feasibility for this idea.

Erosion would be a huge problem, but so would deposition. When we gather energy, we typically take it from something that is moving and turn it into chemical energy in the form of batteries. When we take the energy from that moving object, it has to slow down. What will end up happening is our dust storm machines will either be eroded away or turned into sand dunes.

^ interesting take. Mitomon.

I guess this is actually a part of the problem on Mars. Sand accumulates on the solar panels and prevents then from functioning form months on end (unless some wind blows it off)

You could put the wind mills in reverse and use them as fans to blow away the dust accumulation

@orothaic that is definitely a concern, but Roberts right now deal with it by cleaning themselves

@abge The piles of sand that would form wouldn't accumulate directly on the fan, but would accumulate at the base. That would complicate things for servicing and improvements. It wouldn't affect energy output immediately though. The bases would need to be cleaned constantly so that the weight from the sand doesn't affect the structure. Wind turbines are pretty huge, though so the sand accumulation issue is more for land hugging projects. The turbines would have plenty of trouble with their electronics anyways...

how about this... have the wind-driven sand hit a sail, then slow down and fall into an hourglass which can drive the sand-equivalent of a water wheel. When the sand pile gets too high, use some of the energy you made already to move the contraption to a new place. Just spitballing here! This whole thread seems pretty dubious to me. ;)

Bu.. but dust isn't magic. All of the kinetic energy in the dust has come from the wind. So here's a crazy idea, we could harvest that energy directly from wind using some kind of wind.. mill. Cut out the middle man by building these "mills" away from dust storm areas and avoid clogging your machinery.

Lol, that is the best thing to do, but OP asked about dust storms specifically.

What if the device was somehow tethered and floated in the atmosphere? imagining light gas, such as Helium, filled balloons which elevate several hundred or thousand micro wind-mills. The equipment would be less likely to get covered by sand, and if the balloons were curved properly the sand would just roll off. The energy would travel down the tethers to whatever needed powered.

I had this exact idea over a decade ago and quickly abandoned it because of the problem of getting the sand to push the fans instead of just piling up at the base, couldn't come up with a way to do that.

step 1. stop using fans...
step 2. something which can climb over sand piles?

I do think it is a solvable problem. I do not think it is worth the investment.

What if you use the weight on the 'base' which keeps changing due to the movement of sand?

Literally turning the problem into the solution.

@steephie that would be like digging a narrow but extremely deep hole, lining the side's with kinetic generators ( sideways fans basically) and dropping sand down it with gravity pushing the fans down and making power.

Hyper pedantry right here, but these wouldn't be wind mills, they'd be wind turbines. Wind mills use wind energy to grind something into a powder by using the energy of the blades being turned by the wind turning to turn the millstone and smash it a bunch. Wind turbines turn that same energy into electricity. That said, windmill is used so often to mean wind turbine that it really doesn't matter. Kinda like this post.

We could use the wind mills to grind the dust into smaller dust

Yep, repeat until the dust is so small that we can only grind it further by splitting off atoms.

Nuclear fission, problem solved.

They're basically the same thing. Wind mills turn kinetic energy to mechanical and turbines to electrical. Mills turn stones, turbines turn magnets. Same principle : P

Okay, so back to my post. Let's imagine a large aircraft such as a blimp; now imagine it tethered very securely to the ground in several locations to prevent major motion. Now imagine that the blimp has wind turbines built into the balloon structure which allow wind to pass through but are angled in such a way that sand won't accumulate. Between the minor swaying motions, material used for production, and the wind itself sand could be mostly prevented from hampering the device. This could then collect energy from the massive winds during dust storms on mars but be safe from most of the issues sand storms present. I am imagining the problem as "mars colony needs energy even during sand storms."

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2001/01_72AR.html

http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2853/is-wind-power-a-viable-backup-power-source-for-mars-one

there's fuck all energy in static. why would you bother with any of this when we have plenty of coal. kids these days...

Coal produces harmful gases which cause lung damage. Calculations put it at more desths per KwH than nuclear, so even ignoring the green house effect, coal is considered one of the most dangerous fuel sources. (Deaths related to solar are usually associated with people falling off roofs while installing solar panels, and this leaves them as some of the least dangerous)

Fact is that coal is being killed by (a) natural gas and (b) environmental regulation. Even the most reactionary gung-ho coal advocate can't solve (a). It ain't coming back.

All sources of renewable energy (wind, tidal, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, wave, etc.) are based on having a constant or near-constant supply of energy. Dust storms are not constant, even on Mars. We can imagine harnessing energy from hurricanes and monsoons too, but imagining something doesn't make it practical.

I've heard of a promising source of energy coming from the sandstorms in Darude. The way it was described was as an essentially unlimited source of power with little to no cost on the enviroment. Here's a link to a short little bit on the study.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQaBWziYvY
Very interesting idea.

@JECE- I think dust storms and such aren't worth an invested time on earth but they are worth the time on mars. Since mars dust storms can last for months. The problem is that long-term human habitation will need energy even during those months of darkness. So it is definitely a issue which should be given thought.

Yeah, maybe just build a thorium reactor, if we're talking long term human habitation of mars. At least we know that works...

And an "enriched thorium" fuelled fission reactor produces a different chain of "by products" than a fission reactor using enriched uranium as it's fuel.
I always figured the best way to call Iran out on it's "peaceful" nuclear industry would have been NOT to try to impose sanctions and say "not for you" which they have ignored successfully with help from Russia & "Trump~pal Putin", but instead to have said "Sure thing, we'll help you set up to use "enriched thorium" and sell you the technology and thorium fuel" ...if they're genuine about Iran's nuclear program being for peaceful purposes then no problems, and it manoeuvres them into a corner of either accepting the thorioum based systems, or being embarrassed and having to squirm and "justify" needing enriched uranium technology with all it's military use spin offs. Plus I think Australia has about 40% of the world's known thorium reserves. I'd much rather we were mining and exporting thorium than uranium

Thorium is like, 4-10 times more common in the earth's crust, and is currently dumped as a mining byproduct. So yeah, likely to outlast Uranium, probably safer, and can't be used for weapons (which is why no states have invested in it so far... Maybe someone should tell Elon Musk....)

@Mitchel you're not the only one: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph241/birer1/

Though, according to others the weapons risk is not too different: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-the-superfuel-thorium-riskier-than-we-thought-14821644/

Specifically, that terrorists wouldn't be able to easily make weapons, but a country running a nuclear reactor still could.

Oh let's recognise that the "by products"/ decay chain elements from using enriched thorium in fission reactors will be radioactive & potentially dangerous..but a with the important qualification, "as I understand it" I thought that the single biggest advantage compared to using enriched uranium fuel was no plutonium produced when using enriched thorium
When you think about the "toxicity" & half life time of plutonium, then simply avoiding having plutonium has got a lot going for it.
I think the problem is there are so many"vested interests" keen to keep us using enriched uranium fuel in fission reactors
Call my cynical, but it could be said that now repealed embargoes on uranium sales to India, combined with India's poor quality domestic uranium reserves caused India to push forward with the use of enriched thorium as they have good domestic reserves of thorium...so that they could keep their limited uranium to use for military purposes.. So using thorium was a way to save uranium for military purposes.

There were millions of man-hours and dollars spent on developing current uranium-based nuclear technology.

It isn't vested interests, if you have that man-hours and $$$ you have to choose between Thorium and Green alternatives, like solar and wind. At the moment it looks like these technologies will be ready sooner.

That said, the idea of a thorium reactor which can be buried in the ground and left slowly burning away for 200 years (with out any need to pull rods in or out, change fuel mixtures, or any of the complicated stuff which resulted in accidents like Chernobyl, or twelve-mile island. And without the risk of something like Fukoshima happening) is very appealing.

We just need to figure out the right fuel mix in advance.

The other advantage is, (waste) decay products which will last a few hundred years, rather than potentially hundreds of thousads of years.

And yes, that may be a reason for India's investment in Thorium, but given the abundance of Thorium, any safe working reactor which is economically viable would jump start an energy revolution.