I want to build an outdoor ice skating rink

[nath88nael]

i need a massive amount of energy, and i intend for my skaters to give it to me.

 

i'm looking for a way to harness the motion of the skaters across the ice.

it should give enough energy to keep the ice cool.

(this is a daunting task, and will rely heavily on my ability to, later, design an effective cooling system)

 

any suggestions?

 

 

[rktpro]

I wanted to have such a system to harness energy from friction produced by people while walking.

Here, on SFN, I got a reply which stated that this arrangement is not possible for large scale. It produces a little energy and is expensive to set up.

Read it here.

[Leader Bee]

For this setup the problem would be two fold because as well as piezoeletric plates being expensive and not particularly efficient you'd also need to cover them in a sheet of ice...

[nath88nael]

instead of using the pressure of the skaters, i would lay copper coils under the ice.

if the bottoms of the blades of the skates were magnetized, wouldn't they create an electrical current in the copper?

assume 20 people (40 magnets) moving along the outside of a cirlce (radius 25 feet) and underneath them is a large coil of copper covered by a layer of ice.

 

 

[John Cuthber]

i need a massive amount of energy, and i intend for my skaters to give it to me.

 

i'm looking for a way to harness the motion of the skaters across the ice.

it should give enough energy to keep the ice cool.

(this is a daunting task, and will rely heavily on my ability to, later, design an effective cooling system)

 

any suggestions?

I have a suggestion: give up.

 

If they are fairly athletic and prepared to work hard you can probably get something like 100 Watts from a person.

So you have a budget of about 2Kw.

It will take more than that to keep the ice cold.

Also, the whole point of skating is that it's a low friction surface. If you draw energy from the motion of the skaters they will feel like they are "skating" on sandpaper.

[nath88nael]

you bring up a good point,

i hadn't thought about the added strain on the skaters.

 

i'll think for alternatives

[rktpro]

instead of using the pressure of the skaters, i would lay copper coils under the ice.

if the bottoms of the blades of the skates were magnetized, wouldn't they create an electrical current in the copper?

assume 20 people (40 magnets) moving along the outside of a cirlce (radius 25 feet) and underneath them is a large coil of copper covered by a layer of ice.

 

 

 

The current would be really small and not continuous because of unguided movement of magnet. This would not be DC or AC, it would just be an induction-momentary.

[CaptainPanic]

There is not enough energy to cool the ice from skaters...

Even if you somehow can harness all the energy from the skaters, you would still need a ridiculous amount of skaters... like 1 skater per m2 just to cool the ice.

[John Cuthber]

According to this

http://www.niceskating.com/FAQ.html

you need roughly a hundred times more power than you have available.

 

 

"What is the power and water consumption of an ice rink?

 

The power consumption is related to the cooling capacity required by the fridge unit to maintain the rink as frozen ice. The power of these machines chillers, typically range from 200 kW to 1,500 kW or more. "

 

Unless, of course, you are setting up a rink in Canada in Winter or something.