Clean Green Cars: AltCar 2009: EF9's "unlimited clean energy" turbine could go into cars, if it works

AltCar 2009: EF9's "unlimited clean energy" turbine could go into cars, if it works

Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Green Culture, AutoblogGreen Exclusive, Santa Monica Alt Car Expo

EF9’s “unlimited clean energy” system - Click above for high-res image gallery

Mark Tanner, who does R&D for EF9 Energy Systems, was pretty wiped out by the time we got to speak with him at the end of AltCar 2009 in Santa Monica last weekend. It’s understandable. He’d been explaining how his system for “unlimited clean energy” was supposed to work to hundreds of attendees for two days and was starting to question his ability to transmit the information to the people who stopped at his booth. Whether it was because this was the end of the show or for another reason, we didn’t quite understand it either, but here’s what we took away: Tanner claims that you can get about 81 hp of power out of a system that needs just 10 hp to work. Yeah, that’s what Gov. Schwarzenegger thought, too.

Somehow, by funneling air through his turbine and using atmospheric pressure and the Bernoulli effect - the atmosphere is trying to flow into the turbine at the same rate as the air is going out - Tanner’s system could return eightfold the energy put into it. He explained it as the atmosphere of the earth acting as a cache of energy that expands to form wind in the narrow channel of the turbine and spins the blades.

Tanner said the concept could be installed into an electric vehicle as well as a house. We’ll let Tanner explain:

There’s more numbers and details in the gallery below. Also, watch EF9’s own video after the jump.

Here’s another thing. Tanner is looking for about ten people to invest $5,000 each to build them ten prototype systems that he would install in their homes in order to prove that the idea is solid and to provide the investors with all of the clean energy they want. He said that it’s possible he’ll be back next year with a working system on display. We’ll be waiting.

Gallery: EF9’s “unlimited clean energy”