Energy From Vibrations

JN writes "Now here's a nifty invention. What started off as a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the Navy to a MIT professor has turned out to become a great mechanism that harnesses running machines' minute vibrations into energy. The possibilities are limitless. Aside from the obvious, imagine the ultimate cellphone - one that charges the battery every time it rings/vibrates, hence promising extended talktimes, and giving operators all the more reasons to get their customers to use their devices. How cool is that? Do I see 3G applications with a vibrate() call mandatory every couple minutes? "

Comments

Indeed

[inertia187]

Reminds me of this article. But seriously, wouldn't the daily movement of the cell phone user also be useful? Granted, it's not as vigorous as the vibrate feature, but it has to account for something.

"Crud, I dropped my cell phone. But now I have ten more minutes of talk time! Gotta love solid state!"

Re:Indeed

[dev_sda]

That was my thinking, too. That sort of "recharge" has been available in wrist watches for some time (no winding necessary, your wrist movements do it). For a cell phone with small power needs, it would seem a simple thing to accomplish.

Its the same basic concept but the degree of difference between the levels of energy generated by the daily movements of a person compared to the power required by a cellphone is huge. The amount of 'vibration energy' you release on a daily basis would probably add 10 minutes of talk time to a low powered cell phone a day. I also like the submitter's misconception of general physics:

How cool is that? Do I see 3G applications with a vibrate() call mandatory every couple minutes?

Right. Energy for free! Unfortunately the mythical +100% efficiency machine has yet to be built (and never will). This technology only recovers percentages of energy lost due to machine inefficiency and friction. The day x amount of energy generates y amount of energy where y > x is the day the universe implodes.

Re:Indeed

[moonbender]

I don't think this will work, either, but I think your reasoning is a bit off. Obviously powering a cell phone won't work in the same way as those wrist watches work, but that's kind of the point: there's a new technology converting vibration into electrical energy. Those wrist watches do something similar, but in a different way (I'm studying CS not EE, I don't know any specifics).

There are vibrations to convert, not the ones the article refers to (which is fairly ridiculous) but rather the ones generated by carrying around your cell phone with you. The traditional, "wrist" way might not be able to tap that "source" of energy, but this new tech might.

Finally, this obviously could be used as an additional source of energy. There would still need to be a battery, and there could still be a charger to recharge the battery from mains power. So no constant moving required.

However, at least judging by the article, this still wouldn't work. Cell phones are designed to work with hardly any energy, but it does seem that this technology can only generate very minute amounts of energy, too - enough to power a sensor or an LED, but probably not enough to considerably prolongue a cell phones battery life. Certainly not enough to justify the added technology this would require.

Re:Indeed

[Raskolnk]

Based on my experience, I have a theory that the kinetic watch thing is an evil conspiracy. My wife bought me an expensive Citizen Eco-Drive watch. Ran great for a while, but eventually stopped. The guy from the store told me to put it under a lamp for the night to "recharge" WTF? So, I bring the watch back in to the shop, and they tell me they need to send it to Citizen to be serviced. Worked again, but a year later, same situation. It almost made me wonder if their Eco-Drive device (or whatever it was called) is actually a marketing term for "hidden watch battery that can only be replaced by the company."

Thermodynamics

[Psion]

Any energy captured from a vibration recovery system will unavoidably be less than the energy required to make the mechanism vibrate. Now capture of energy from externally generated vibrations would be useful...recharge your phone by placing it on top of a tower with a noisy fan.

Not perpetual motion

[Plastik]

This is a way to power small, low-power devices parasitically from the vibrations of a much larger engine. Actually very interesting.

self recharging key fob

[LuxFX]

I had an idea kind of like this a while back, when I had to replace the little watch battery in the key fob for my car (the little remote-control that unlocks my doors). So instead of having to replace this battery, I thought it would be a good idea to make it a small rechargable battery. It would utilize the kinetic vibrations of the car, which would be transfered into electricity. Or to be more precise, inside the keyfob would be a tiny magnet on the end of a tiny spring. The vibrations would cause the spring to wave the magnet around, and the moving electromagnetic field would be transferred into electricity.

This would be especially efficient for the keyfobs that are part of the key structure themselves, so that they are directly connected to the steering column (as opposed to the ones that are simple part of the keychain and just dangle under the steering column)

And it's not like I'm claiming originality on this -- I got the idea from a tiny cell phone a friend brought back from Japan. It had no connectors on it to recharge the battery, but the recharger base would vibrate when the phone was set on it, and passed the electicity via electromagnetic fields.

Consider scale...and how about earthquakes?

[Mr. Underbridge]

The article is (I assume) about energy recovery/scavenging

Classic slashdot. You know, you could actually read the article and find out. You do go to berkeley.

the article poster just invented perpetual motion, arguing that the vibrator from the ringer could power the cellphone.

Well, he didn't imply "power," he stated "recover." As others have mentioned, any vibration recovered isn't giving you that tingly feeling that says your phone is going off. So nothing doing there, but Hemos isn't quite as daft as you think. (Insert ./ editor joke here)

What this article is really about (I feel like I'm making Cliff's Notes here for the science-deprived) is not recovering a significant proportion of power from a low-power device like a cell phone. It's about powering a milliwatt-draining device like a sensor off of, say, a megawatt-producing device like a nuclear reactor. This is actually kind of cool, since as the article states (for the literate among you), there are places with no light, no wiring, and a lot of vibrations where you might need power. So this has the chance to do some cool things - just don't expect it to actually extend the life of your cell phone or be a perpetual-motion machine.

On the interesting side, this would make a cool way to create non-powered earthquake sensors. When it gets a quake, it transmits its position and maybe have the power out proportional to power in. You could distribute hundreds of them and have a real-time quake sensor that might be better than triangulating.

Also, could be useful to track vehicles if you slap it on the chassis. Again, deploy once, no worries about going dead.

Re:This could be sweet.

[GRH]

I'm in the HVAC controls industry. Many sensors are required in ventilation systems (primarily air handlers) to control them properly. This is costly, not because of the cost of the sensor, but because of the wiring and conduit required to reach the sensor. We have little choice about the location of the sensor (it has to be able to do its job).

There has been talk of trying to build wireless sensors (some do exist) and actuators, but the killer is the power. It either needs to be brought in on wires or battery powered. Batteries are not very good because they don't last that long (these systems are designed to run for over 10 years) and some sensors are difficult to access.

So, this could be looked at as an enabling technology, in that it could allow wireless sensors to become practical (by running off the ductwork vibration).

In a mid-sized office building, the installation savings from this would be around $100k. Look around at how many buildings there are...

GRH

Re:This could be sweet.

[dasmegabyte]

More importantly...since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, doesn't this effectively reduce the vibrations themselves as well?

Which means other great things besides generating "free" energy...basically, it reduces the need for vibrational dampening systems, and reduces the overall wear and tear on a machine. Even if it's only a minute difference, it could have a profound effect on the reliability of machines from combustion engines to eletrical transformers, and possibly a reduction in transient EMF (due to induction in steel casings vibrating near a magenetic field) as well!

All these cool things actually lead me to believe that the idea doesn't work. It seems too good to be true...a little extra power, less maintenance and maybe even cleaner signals? Like Stewie said, "This is so good it HAS to be fattening."