Storing static electricity?

red_ice

Hey, dont know if i have the right forum here, but ill give it a shot! im just wondering which is the easiest method to store static electricity?

Imagine i have a plastic or pcv surface, and i rub <item> against it, is it possible to have said item linked into a battery of some sort to store and reuse for an led light or something?

Professor_Fink

red_ice wrote: »

Hey, dont know if i have the right forum here, but ill give it a shot! im just wondering which is the easiest method to store static electricity?

You can just charge a capacitor off it. Just earth the other terminal of the capacitor.

red_ice

Professor_Fink wrote: »

You can just charge a capacitor off it. Just earth the other terminal of the capacitor.

Ok, but say i wanted to do something that would store a charge for say an hour, and power one led light with it? Or would the capacitor be capable of lighting the led for a long period?

folan

hey, im looking at something similar, but im only looking for a short amount of charge to be stored (ie < 10 secs) so capacitor will do the job, maybe even 2.

Perhaps an array of capacitors would do it for longer for you but I cant remember my capacitor physics too well so worth a check.

My problem is i cant connect to ground, and leaving all the wasted energy on the object is a big no no!

red_ice

how do wind up torches work? i just realised that they are pretty much exactly what im looking at!

dudara

I think that they use dynamos to charge a battery - just like old-fashioned bicycle lights.

As for your original question, read up on RC-circuits and time constants. Sorry that I don't have more time to explain, but that should help you out.

Michael Collins

You can get fairly large capacitors (~ 1 farad) that store quite a bit of energy. The difficulty I'd say would be to get the charge into it. Especially if it's on two insulating materials like PVC and nylon or something like that. Also most capacitors have a voltage rating that you can't exceed, and static charges tend to have quite high potential differences...so that could also be a problem

bushy...

Google for Leyden Jar ( i think thats the right track ) , basic form of capacitor , but can put up with the voltage.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Or you could go with the novel Beer bottle approach, can put up with very high voltage, and is easily expandable, you just have to drink more.
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/5322/bottle.htm
http://amasci.com/tesla/cap2.html

red_ice

thanks fellas, loads of great info there - just what im lookin for!