Explanation of the Perepiteia rotating machine and the accompanying theory concerning "Back

EMF"

By Natan Weissman

Abstract

The "Perepiteia" generator is demonstrated in a test setup driven by a motor taken from a Ryobi
bench grinder. The acceleration behaviour of the system as a whole can be explained entirely by
the behaviour of the grinder's induction motor. Meanwhile the hypothesis that back-EMF is being
managed in a novel way is disproved.

Introduction

In the demonstration videos for the Perepiteia, the audience's attention is directed to the
Perepiteia generator, which causes even knowledgeable people to not pay attention to the
grinder motor's contribution to the observed phenomena. This focus is a problem. A bench
grinder is a load that requires very little starting torque, which leads to Ryobi's selection of a
single-phase induction motor with characteristics appropriate to that application. In order to
explain the behaviour of the joined induction motor - Perepiteia machine "system", it is essential
to pay attention to the grinder motor.

The first requirement is an understanding of the behaviour of induction motors in general. What
follows is material excerpted verbatim from a white paper on induction motor behaviour on the
website of a very reputable established motor manufacturer, Reliance. The paper is not biased.
Reliance should have absolutely no vested interest for or against the Perepiteia, indeed, Reliance
is probably unaware of the Perepiteia (whereas Ryobi might be) and the white paper probably
predates the Perepiteia, since induction motor theory has been well known for decades, albeit by
a very narrow circle of specialists. The average reader may find the jargon and mathematics of
the paper somewhat daunting, since the webpage assumes a background in general motor
theory, and circuit analysis using complex numbers. However, this page does nicely distill the
math to a minimum, and presents correct conclusions about generic single phase induction motor
behaviour. Below the material has been edited for brevity, but not in a way that distorts its
message. The reader is of course strongly encouraged to visit the original page at Reliance's
website.

__________[begin excerpt from Reliance white paper]__________

http://www.reliance.com/prodserv/motgen/b7097_2.htm

Induction Motors
AC Induction Motor Equivalent Circuits
Figure 2

The equivalent circuit for an AC induction motor can help visualize some of the motor
characteristics. Figure 2a shows separate circuits for the stator and rotor, with the interaction
between them modeled as a "transformer." This transformer has the unique characteristic of also
changing the frequency of the signal! While the current in the stator is at the applied frequency of
the motor power source, the rotor current flows at a frequency based on the slip of the motor.

Rather than work with such a two part equivalent circuit having currents at different frequencies,
the circuits of Figure 2a are typically modified to come up with a single circuit as shown in Figure
2b.

Speed / Torque Curves

As an AC induction motor is started, the values of resistance and reactance offered by the motor
(or seen by the power source) will vary. At the instant of applying power to a stopped motor, the
magnetic field is rotating much faster than the (stationary) rotor. This implies 100% slip, so r2/s is
minimized. As a result, the current drawn at starting (locked rotor) conditions is quite high. Also it
is common to design rotor slots which have dramatically different impedance at high slip (say 60
Hz for starting) versus at typically less than I2 Hz slip (normal running). This changes the values
of both x2 and r2 from starting to running conditions.

As a motor accelerates to speed from a standstill, the changing impedances result in a unique
characteristic developed torque and current drawn during the time of acceleration. Depending on
the design of the motor, a torque / current characteristic such as one of those shown in Figure 3
would typically result. The NEMA Design B motor is considered the most "general purpose" of
these characteristic shapes, with Design C and D typically used for more "difficult to start" loads.
Table 2 gives some ranges of characteristics for integral HP, 1200 and 1800 RPM motors.
Typical AC Induction Motor Speed / Torque / Current Curves
Figure 3

As can be seen from all of these speed/torque curves, the current drawn by an AC motor in
accelerating a load up to speed can be dramatically higher than the nominal running current. At
the same time, the developed torque (during acceleration) may in some cases be less than the
rated full load torque. Various methods exist to control the starting current drawn by an AC motor
but the torque per amp seen during starting is always much lower than at running conditions.

The nature of an AC induction motors acceleration to running speed is such that it can impose
high stresses on the stator end turns and the rotor. The high current draw also stresses the
upstream power system, including cabling, transformers, switchgear, etc. For this reason, there is
often significant effort made to "control" AC motor starting and acceleration - both in terms of
motor design as well as application.

Efficiency and Losses

Returning to the AC motor equivalent circuit of Figure 2b, we can identify three of the five basic
component losses which exist in AC induction motors. The losses dissipated in the resistance of
the stator and rotor windings, plus the core loss (eddy current and hysteresis losses in lamination
steel) are modeled in the equivalent circuit. A fourth component loss is the friction and windage of
the rotor, fan, bearings, etc. Finally, there is the "leftover category of stray load losses. These are
losses which are a compilation of various less easily modeled losses, but are often a significant
loss in highly efficient machines. The stray load losses include eddy current losses in the
conductors, core losses due to flux distortion with load, etc.

AC Induction Motor Efficiency vs. Load

Figure 4
Since the friction and windage and core losses are essentially independent of load, while the
other losses vary as the square of load (current), the efficiency of an AC induction motor falls off
precipitously at light loads (see Figure 4).

Adjustable Frequency, Variable Speed Operation

For steady-state (as opposed to starting) operation, AC induction motors offer a reasonably linear
torque per amp and high power factor characteristic. This is seen in Figure 5 as the part of the
speed torque curve between "breakdown RPM" and "synchronous (no load) RPM." It is this
portion of the AC induction motor range of operation within which adjustable frequency drives
function.

AC Induction Motor Speed Torque Curve

Figure 5

__________[end excerpt from Reliance white paper]__________

Explaining the Perepiteia demonstrations

Behaviour of the Induction Motor

Technical support staff at the Ryobi company in Anderson, South Carolina indicate that Ryobi is
not a member of NEMA, and their motor assembly for small grinders is manufactured privately for
them, so that it does not carry a formal NEMA classification. However, simple observation of the
machine in action distinguishes it as having a Class A or B motor and definitely not class D.

To demonstrate the Perepiteia machine in the University of Ottawa laboratory, a reduced AC

voltage is applied using a variable autotransformer (variac). The voltage selected is barely
enough to get the single-phase induction motor turning. Otherwise it is normal North American 60
Hz AC. Pause to study the speed-torque curve of Class A & B motors in Figure 3part2. Here
there is no external mechanical load applied to that induction motor other than the Perepiteia
generator. These initial conditions place the induction motor at or close to the torque minimum
near 20% of synchronous speed (Figures 3part2 or 5). A typical demonstration has the Perepiteia
generator's coils either open or shorted. If they are open, then the Perepiteia's contribution to the
load is only due to its mechanical losses, which are small. If the Perepiteia's coils are shorted,
there is a speed-dependent drag as well, but it isn't as great as one might think, because the gap
between the Perepiteia's rotating magnets and its stator coils is fairly large (which contributes to
the Perepiteia being a relatively inefficient, but otherwise conventional permanent magnet
alternator). Either way, the load on the induction motor is not great while the machine is in
operation at this low speed. This is also a very low efficiency regime for the induction motor.
Consider Figure 4. Note that the x-axis here is load, not speed, so the operating point is near 0%
load even if the speed is near 20%. The efficiency is also near 0%.
It bears emphasizing that this initial extremely inefficient operating point for the induction motor is
nowhere close to a normal operating condition. It is also unstable. If the motor speed increases
an infinitessimal bit, then it increases in torque (Figures 3part2 or 5), and decreases in its current
consumption (Figure 3part1), which in turn implies an improving efficiency (Figure 4). The
improving efficiency permits further acceleration while drawing less power, until the induction
motor approaches the breakdown RPM. At or near this point, the acceleration ceases, and the
induction motor establishes a steady-state mode of operation, often beyond the breakdown RPM
but necessarily below the synchronous RPM. Note that just because the induction motor does
accelerate over some range of operation - while drawing less power as it speeds up - one cannot
extrapolate and conclude that it will keep speeding up forever (it doesn't), nor that its efficiency
will keep increasing forever (that doesn't happen either). It can at most approach synchronous
speed, and reach an efficiency of perhaps 90%.

Behaviour of the Perepiteia Generator

What about the Perepiteia generator's contribution to the above picture? True, the load
represented by the Perepiteia generator increases as the motor speed increases, however, so
long as that load doesn't fully consume the available torque from the motor, the motor can
continue accelerating towards a stable operating point at a faster speed. Thus the acceleration is
governed by the induction motor, not by the Perepiteia generator.

Changes in Coupling between Motor and Generator

What about the demonstrated differences between the ferromagnetic (iron or steel) shaft coupling
vs. the non-ferromagnetic coupling (brass, plastic, etc)? Or what about the application of an
external permanent magnet to the induction motor in the demo video that doesn't involve the
Perepiteia at all? These phenomena are also explained by the nature of single-phase induction
motors. One must remember that an induction motor is a rotating transformer. Its core is built of
magnetically "soft" material, "soft" in the sense that it allows the direction of magnetization to
change very easily and with minimal hysteresis losses. Nonetheless, a magnetic hysteresis curve
is traced out with every reversal of the magnetization direction. Changing the externally applied
magnetic field "biases" the magnetization in the induction motor's core, placing it in a slightly
different efficiency regime. That shift can result in greater or lesser efficiency. The videos
demonstrate some cases where the efficiency happens to improve at least marginally thanks to
the magnetic bias. When the opposite happens, the result isn't very interesting: the motor simply
stops.

Thus, the acceleration behaviour of the Perepiteia in the demonstration videos can be explained
entirely by the behaviour of the induction motor. No unconventional manipulation of "back EMF" is
required to explain this. None. Visitors have gone to the laboratory at the University of Ottawa,
and have seen the setup operating. Their observations are consistent with the present
hypothesis. The inventor Mr. Heins and his colleagues have been asked whether they have
attempted the same experiment with a DC motor. Visitors were told that this has indeed been
tried, and that the Perepiteia didn't work when driven by a DC motor. This reinforces the
hypothesis that the induction motor was solely responsible for the acceleration phenomenon,
since if unconventional "back EMF" manipulation in the generator were responsible, it would have
worked with a DC motor as well. Apparently the Perepiteia has not been tested using a
dynamometer instead of a single phase induction motor, a test that would further confirm the
present result.

The Back-EMF Theory

A separate issue is Mr. Heins' "back EMF" hypothesis, which claims that the direction of the
magnetic flux in a transformer or rotating machine can be manipulated to reinforce rather than
oppose the applied current and flux. The conventional result is predicted by Lenz's law and
Maxwell's theory. One may argue that just because the back-EMF hypothesis isn't applicable to
explaining the Perepiteia experimental results, that this doesn't mean that the back-EMF
hypothesis isn't correct in its own right.

Fortunately the back-EMF hypothesis can be subjected to a very simple test. Anybody who has
tried to turn a conventional generator by hand while it is under load will have noticed that the
torque required to turn it isn't uniform. The torque you have to apply increases and decreases
periodically. This variation in the drag load is called "cogging torque". Try it sometime with a
bicycle generator for example. If you can observe what happens inside the generator, you will
notice that the number of "bumps" in the torque per rotation is equal to the number of poles. On
the Perepiteia machine, the rotor poles are conveniently visible. They are the disk magnets on the
rotor, and their path takes them past coils on the stator that are also perfectly visible.

Concerning the cogging torque, the "back EMF" hypothesis makes a radically different prediction
than James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetics. The Back EMF hypothesis claims that
when a rotor magnet on the Perepiteia approaches a stator coil, it is drawn towards that coil, and
when the magnet recedes from a stator coil, it pushes away from that coil. This is the exact
opposite of the behaviour predicted by Maxwell's theory (more specifically, by Lenz' law) for all
generators, which predicts the cogging drag described in the previous paragraph: When the
magnet approaches a coil, it opposes the motion, and when it receeds from the coil, it also
opposes the motion, but that opposition is nonuniform and is strongest when the magnet is
closest to the coil. So, who is right in the case of the Perepiteia? Resolving this question is very
easy to test by hand-cranking the Perepiteia, with it either decoupled from the induction motor, or
with the motor simply not powered. Visitors to the lab at the University of Ottawa have performed
this simple experiment. The answer is simple and unequivocal: the cogging behaviour of the
Perepiteia is normal, exactly as predicted by Maxwell.

Another telltale sign of whether "back EMF" was being manipulated would be to observe the
phase of the flux in the cores beneath the Perepiteia's coils. This is not at all easy to do except
perhaps with a Kerr effect microscope, however, observing the magnitude and phase of the
current in the stator coils (which results from the flux) is very easy by means of an oscilloscope.
This test has not been applied to the Perepiteia machine, but has been tried independently with a
Perepiteia transformer, which is claimed to use the same anomalous back-EMF mechanism to
obtain perpetuum mobile levels of efficiency in excess of 100% (sometimes as high as several
thousand %). A transformer was tested carefully by an engineer with a Ph.D. under various
operating conditions recommended by the inventor himself, conditions under which the inventor
reported efficiencies between one hundred and several thousand percent, and it was found that:
(1) the magnitude and phase of the current in its coils was consistent with Lenz's Law and
Maxwell's theory in general.
(2) the efficiency of the transformer was poor, between 12% and 75% (vs. over 90% for typical
conventional transformers). The poor efficiency was due in part to poor design, and in part to the
fact that the specified operating conditions were beyond the unit's flux handling capacity, so the
core was in saturation.
(3) the saturation flux handling was poor for a transformer of its size, such that it wasn't able to
carry anywhere near the currents that it should be able to handle.

Conclusions

The acceleration of the Perepiteia generator in all the configurations shown in the demonstration
videos can be explained by the behaviour of the induction motor driving the Perepiteia. The
acceleration phenomena cannot be observed when a DC/universal motor is used.

There is no evidence that anomalous manipulation of Back-EMF takes place within the Perepiteia
generator or the Perepiteia transformer. The behaviour of both Perepiteia devices is consistent
with Maxwell's theory.