THE EARTH LOVE POWER BUBBLE MILL

The Earth Love Bubble Mill is a response to an RMIT University Industrial Design brief where the students were tasked with producing a ‘unique machine’ or ‘unique simple mechanism’, and to clearly define how the mechanism worked. This task formed part of the engineering component of the course.

I utilised this opportunity to create ‘The Earth Love Bubble Mill’ as a small scale prototype for a much larger version, with the intention of building as a public art installation at one of Australia’s premiere outdoor music festivals.

The Bubble Mill is oriented around the mechanics of a gravity battery - being a mechanical system that suspends weight against gravity as a means to store potential energy. When the weight is released, and gravity attracts the weight downwards, that potential energy is released. During the ‘falling process’, the mechanical system can utilise that energy by harnessing it and redirecting to an output system - in this case, a mill that blows bubbles.

Gravity batteries serve as an alternate method of energy storage than conventional systems which rely on storing energy in forms of electricity. The requirements to store energy as electricity, and electric system in general, have significantly higher negative environmental impact than those of gravity batteries. While the total storable energy and output potential of gravity batteries may currently appear far inferior to electric system, I believe with investment and correct engineering, gravity systems could be refined to be applicable to particular scenarios, creating a contributable reduction in environmental harm.