Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 10 -- Geophysical, Pnuematic and Electromagnetic Engines
Method 4. Reciprocating Pump
Another, and very different, electomagnetic pump
concept employs two rotating magnets in an annular
channel, simultaneous energized with opposing polarity
by of a pair of solenoids. One magnet works as a pump
while the other is between the inlet and the outlet ports,
acting as a valve. With each cycle, the magnets reverse
their function. Tests have yielded a flow rate of 13.7
milliliters/minute at 200 rpm at a pressure of 785 Pascals,
something less than 1 percent of atmospheric pressure.
This pump is thus just a mechanical pump in which
magnetic switches control the component function.
Method 1 can work, but not for water.
Method 2 does not work.
Method 3 can work, but not at hydrologic scale.
Method 4 is a novel rotational pump utilizing electrical, rather than mechanical, switches.
While the concept of an electromagnetic engine for subterranean streamflow resonates with
some aspects of modern geoscience and technology, it's a proposition that again and again fails
upon further consideration.
In 1940, M. King Hubbert's The Theory of Ground Water Motion demonstrated that Darcy’s
equation for groundwater (Chapter 43) is analogous to Ohm’s law for electric current. By no
means, however, does this imply that subsurface water is driven by electricity, but rather that the
mathematical form of the underlying equations are the same. Because things act the same is not
to say that they are the same.
We'll turn to literary fiction in chapters ahead, but the setting of John Mastin's The Immortal Light,
a Scientific Romance (1907), an underground world in which electrical charge is the driver of
nature, provides a fitting departure for our consideration of electromagnetism as a hydrologic
energizer.
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