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Self-Heating Can
nickprecision writes "Ontro has been working for a while, and they are about ready to get to the public market. Quite a nifty little self-heating can... imagine the uses. Read up so you know about it when your friends pull one out on the ski hill."
"anytime, anywhere"
and they trademarked it. am i the only one who thinks that this is stupid?
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Just a sidenote - in Europe (well - London) Nestle already sell similar cans of self heating coffee. Works quite well - shame about the taste of whats in the can though. I can't remember the reactants - but the oxidser is diluted hyrogen preoxide.
It looked like a nice idea, but I didn't try it - mainly because of the price: £1.30 IIRC, which is about $2. It seems a bit much IMHO for a normal cup of takeaway coffee, even if it does have a neat self-heating function! Good for camping trips, perhaps, but not in the roadside service station where they were selling it: you can buy normal fresh coffee for the same price and get a seat and newspaper to go with it...
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/review/349432.html
I can see this getting slashdotted fairly quickly if they had more information on the site, since they seem to want to do everything as images. And the site has one paragraph of text and no links when viewed in Lynx. Not very geek-friendly.
Follow me
How about some prior art from "Taxi Driver":
Cab Dispatcher: Can you drive to the Bronx? Manhattan?
DeNiro: Anytime. Anywhere.
Cab Dispatcher: Do you work on Jewish holidays?
DeNiro: Anytime. Anywhere.
Cab dispatcher: How's your driving record? Clean?
DeNiro: Clean. Just like my conscience.
-metric -- you talkin to me?
Clearly neither you, nor the dumb-assed moderaters who modded you up, nor the other dumb-asses who posted the exact same thing as you, nor the dumb-asses who modded them up, bothered to follow the link.
... a beverage container that would heat its contents without the benefit of external energy sources (microwave, heating element, etc.). They soon found similar products in other parts of the world, but all had two very significant problems."
If you had, you would have seen:
"While on a trip overseas in the early 1990s, Ontro's founders, Jim Scudder and Jim Berntsen, came upon an interesting product
Followed by information about what makes their product different.
This is what is known as promoting your product. What do you think they would say? Our product is exactly the same as the others? It's more expensive?
There is nothing revolutionary about this product. It works in pretty much the same way as the products available in Europe and other places.
Don't be so critical of other posters and moderators. People might think you're a dumbass yourself.
If you are interested this product, then you're most probably willing to wander in some places where you would neither have time to cook...
So, you're probably trekking.
The problem is with the container itself as you can't obviously just drop it in a bush and it may be an oversupply in terms of volume, once used.
Especially if, as they say, you use it for Baby-food : you will need its place to store the pampers... If you at least have some respect for the environment.
I saw such self-heating doses of food here in Switzerland and they actually took care of this detail by storing these (and their self-heating chemicals) in plastic/metal bag which advantage is to occupy very little space, once empty...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Not something I'd like near my coffee, thanks!
When mixed with water it turns into Slaked Lime and heat. So the waste problem goes from recycling cans to recycling cans full of Slaked Lime! Oh well, perhaps the sewage and effluent treatment industry would buy it off the recyclers?
As someone who did read the web site, I can say that the product they have produced, is virtually identical to the nescafe coffee cans other posters have mentioned.
According to the Ontro web site, they got the idea from similar products released in the early 1990s. Those ealry products had flaws, such a bulkiness, which Ontro wished to overcome.
Admitedly those early products (at least those released in the UK - there was a spate of self heating and self-cooling products released on a trial basis in the early 90s) did suffer from the flaws the Ontro founders identified. However, the product currently available from Nescafe, is a complete redesign of those early ideas, and has overcome the flaws in a very similar way to the Ontro product.
Ontro state that their product is 16oz in size, holding 10oz of beverage, and that it heats up within 5 minutes after pressing a button on the base, and stays warm for around 20 minutes.
The nescafe self-heating coffees are more or less the same size, stay warm for the same length of time, and heat up in around 3 minutes.
Nescafe and Ontro have produced solutions to the same problem, and ended up with very similar products.
I think that you should consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, some of the people who posted about the Nescafe products in the UK, actually did read the Ontro web site, and were commenting on the fact that the current UK product is virtually identical to the Ontro product and has been available for some time now, but is a different product to those available in the early nineties.
Personally I wish Ontro every success, as I would love to see the technology become more widespread (and cheaper), and I doubt that Nestle will take their product much further.
The one flaw that still remains (IMO), is the weight of the cans. They always feel as though there is some drink left, despite being empty.
www.vurt.co.uk
It's still around, I used it this thanksgiving to keep food warm. Little metal cans, probably packed at or near sea level judging by how, when opened at 7,000', the cap flies off and through the air, splattering flammable purple goo... oops.
I also understand the desperate alcoholic can squeeze it through a filter of some sort to get at the ethanol within... consult your local wino for exact directions.
--
Benjamin Coates
So, wake me up when there's a self cooling can of Jolt Cola available....
The concept of a self-heating container is not new. Armed services personnel used a self-heating can introduced in 1939 that relied on the burning of cordite to provide the thermal energy.
I think all the recent self-heating mechanisms have relied on the reaction between calcium oxide (also called quick lime) and a water-based solution.
Actually, the Japanese had such can since the middle 1980's for cans of sake so the sake can be pre-warmed. I've seen them and they do work quite well.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
...but it never fails to amaze me how industry continues to come up with new ways to increase packaging and reduce product. Now I comepletely understand the utility of this product, although selling it in direct proximal competition with regular coffee stores seems stupid.
However, I have to wonder about the increased waste involved when about half of the net weight is packaging and heating chemicals. I assume the reaction involved would be environmentally benign, but it still seems to add to the waste.
It's kind of like an ad I saw the other day for "Gogurt" or one of those silly products, that from the look of it, seems to be about 4 ounces of product in a long thin container (maximizing surface area). You can walk through a grocery store and notice that many boxes of dry foods are often half empty ("This product is cold by weight, but marketed by perceived volume"), or the fact that cleaning products have been grotesquely over-diluted (a trend which, fortunately seems to be reversing).
Anyhow, as a niche product for those situations when a hot drink would otherwise be difficult or impossible to obtain, it does seem like a good idea. But the idea of something like this becoming common seems to be a bad idea.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.