Tesla Valve Explained With Fire

[Music] hi everyone in this video we're going to be looking at a Tesla valve now I got the idea to look at one of these valves from some of the comments on my last video about propane bottle rocket testing now a Tesla valve if you're unfamiliar was invented by Nikola Tesla and this is a sort of flow restricting system if you input gas from one side of the valve it has a very easy time making it all the way to the other side but with no moving parts if you input gas from the other side the flow is much more restricted it's much harder to push air through going this direction in the valve than it is coming back even though the insides of the valve are completely static and they remain unchanged the way this works is that if gas comes in this way it bypasses all of these fins the flow of gas can just go right through the primary channel in the valve and exit the other side but if it's moving this way the gas wants to go up into each of these fins if it's flowing this way and be routed backwards now each time this happens and the gas is redirected backwards through each of these channels it gets in the way of the rest of the gas flowing through the more of these little fins you have in the valve the harder it is to force air this way compared to this way now one of the tricky things about Tesla valves is figuring out how to demonstrate them visually how do you demonstrate that how do you show the flow of gases through a valve like this well I had the idea from my last video to try filling a transparent valve with propane and then igniting it from either end so I've got my high-speed camera set up we're gonna fill this valve with propane ignite it from either end and hopefully the flame will give us a good visual indication of the gas flow and we'll be able to see intuitively how this valve functions hopefully we'll learn something I'm really excited to try this so let's get started okay here we are I've got my torch ready my safety glasses are equipped because these are glass panes and I'm a little bit concerned that they might shatter if the propane mix gets to be just right inside this valve but we'll see how this works the high-speed is rolling I'm gonna fire it a few times going this way a few times going this way and compare the result let's go interesting all right interesting sometimes the flame doesn't make it all the way through to the end so this is actually pretty interesting on the high-speed I was noticing as we're forcing the gas through the direction that it does not want to go in this valve the tails of the fire coming back through these little channels are actually accelerating it appears to be faster this direction then this direction even though this is the direction of travel that the flame front is moving in take a closer look at the high-speed footage as I loop it over and over to see what I'm talking about you can see how the tail on each of these flames is jetting backwards really quickly as it passes each of these channels that's pretty interesting it still happens really quickly even when we look at it in slow motion but I hope you can see what I'm talking about now I'm going to try this coming from the other direction and we'll see how it compares so this is the direction where the valve should allow the more rapid passage of gas so I suspect we will see a faster flame front traveling through this direction than the other way but we'll have to wait till we see the high speed to find out let's give it a test well it's a little bit louder actually okay high speed time can see when we force the fire through this way it actually accelerates it starts off pretty slowly until it passes the first few channels and then I think what we're actually seeing is because we're using a flame front and not just a regular flow of gas the gas inside the valve is actually expanding right where the flame front is that combustion process causes an expansion so it's not your typical flow through this valve and that expansion is pushing backwards and forwards but since that expansion of gas has a much easier time going forward than backwards it's actually building in pressure as it continuously flows through this valve causing an acceleration this is a very interesting thing that I did not consider until I saw this high-speed we could actually use a valve like this to accelerate a combustible gas if we wanted to we could make a valve much longer and get the acceleration rate up to probably really incredible speeds that would be an interesting test I wonder if we had a valve long enough if we could reach supersonic velocity I might save that one for a future video to close out this simple video today I think we'll take one last look at this valve being ignited from both ends this time side by side in slow motion so you can see really clearly the differences in the rate of travel of gas from one side to the other thank you for watching this video leave me comments below I read every one and I'd love to hear from you thanks for watching I'll see you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: NightHawkInLight

Views: 4,503,463

Rating: 4.9174681 out of 5

Keywords: Tesla, Tesla Valve, Science experiment, Science, Experiment, Fire, Propane, Bottle Rockets, NightHawkInLight

Id: tcV1EYSUQME

Length: 5min 53sec (353 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/hammajang310]

How about using smoke? Propane being ignited is not ‘flow’ and throws whole different set of variables into it.

[u/Gisandtoys]

Are there any instances of this valve being use industrially?

[u/JesusStillLovesMe]

Tesla Velve.

[u/Gelsamel]

Couldn't you use Schlieren imaging to watch the flow through the valve instead of relying on a propane explosion (which he says probably isn't like a normal flow)?.

[u/sequestercarbon]

This only shows how fire moves through a tesla valve, not gas per say.

[u/virus1618]

Very interesting how it accelerates

[u/-Tartantyco-]

VELVE.

[u/FadedRebel]

I would like to see some sort of airflow indicator on the easy flow input when ignighting from the hard flow input. It kind of looks like when lighting from the hard flow side it is pulling air from the easy flow input.

[u/Vogad]

Wonder what this concept would do to a formula one exhaust muffler or air intake