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Microgenerators Coming Soon to Electronics Near You
fygment writes "A new microgenerator developed at Georgia
Tech can now produce enough power to run a small electronic device, like a cell phone, and may soon be able to power a laptop. The microgenerator is about 10 millimeters wide, or about the size of a dime. When coupled with a similarly sized gas-fueled microturbine (or jet) engine, the system, called a microengine, has the potential to deliver more energy and last 10 times longer than a conventional battery. This is still just a quarter of the problem. A turbine
is still being developed to turn the generator and that will require fuel and storage of some kind."
The Cache of the magazine
The cache of the gatech site
Nothing to see here
Jet Engine on a Chip
Shows how much you know about modern power. Almost all of our electrical power sans wind generated, dammed or solar, are "steam" powered as you say.
A nuclear plant is nothing but a fancy way of boiling water to turn, you guessed it, steam turbines to generate electricity. Same with gas and oil-fired power plants.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Here are links to more articles:
Space Daily
GaTech
A Student's description
Or "centimetre" as we say in England.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
"one centimetre" as we say in England
:)
A meter is a device you use for measuring things.
A metre is a measurement of distance
No, that is not a joke. The unit size here is specifying the precision.
mm = + or - 0.5 mm
cm = + or - 0.5 cm
The other way to do it is with significant figures.
10.0 cm would be (ostensibly) the same thing as
10mm.
Damn. Rather, 1.0cm = 10mm
While genetically engineered microscopic hamsters may be some years away, research into tiny internal combustion engines that could drive such a generator is definitely being done. The work of the Berkeley Combustion Processes Lab was in the news a couple of years ago when they showed some prototypes. The stuff can be seen in some detail at http://www.me.berkeley.edu/mrcl/
On your fears of hot exhaust:
My cell phone = 3.6v battery @ 850 mah.
That is 3.06 watt hours.
If I talk non-stop on my phone it takes two hours to kill the battery.
That's 1.53 watts consumed at FULL usage.
1.53 watt hours = 1,316 calories.
That's enough heat to raise 1.3 Liters of water one stinkin' degree - over the course of one hour.
I'm willing to be your thigh contains more than 1.3 Liters of water.
Assume 33% efficiency and you still don't have much to fear.
I dub thee... Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass.
Yes, it would, but you'd get into some pretty hairy heat transfer problems moving the heat to your generator. (By the way, the word is "cogeneration" and the big companies who have to run big thermal generators for other reasons do it all the time, and sell the power back to the local utility, or use it themselves.)
It was easier in the old days, when computers were a lot bigger. Commercial Information Corporation of Woburn MA used to heat their building in winter with the waste heat from their Xerox Sigma 6. It required (I think) five tons of air conditioning plant to keep the processor cool; they ran an extra duct from the outflow to the building HVAC ducts, and put a valve there so they wouldn't heat the building in summer.
I worked a summer job with them, after they moved to Austin and changed the name to Charter Information; I heard the story from them.
- The power output goes down by a factor of 1,000. (power out is proportional to L x W x H )
- The friction in the bearings goes down by a factor of 100 (proportional to surface area of bearings)
- The windage losses due to air friction between the generator rotor and stator stay about the same.
- The air friction losses in the turbine may go waay up (as the ratio of turbulent flow to mainline flow goes way up).
- The thermal input from the burning gases goes down by a factor of 1,000.
- The thermal losses only drop by a factor of 100. Eventually the losses become greater than the thermal input, making it impossible to sustain burning.
So every time you shrink these things, the power out goes way down, the efficiency goes waaay down.Do this a few times and you'll have a turbine that can't even overcome its internal friction and a generator that, even if you could turn it, would be way down on the efficiency scale. Shrinking these things is a very very very *losing* thing to do.
I like this idea.. The CPU would need a kickstart from a battery pack to start work, then as the BTUs rise, the cycle would change over and the Stirling would pick up the load, charging the "starter" batteries, and providing power.
Quite efficient, Stirlings.. The Aussies are using two to drive a unmanned station down in Antarctica. Pricey tho.. 10,000 AU$ each for a pair of 1500w units.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
We import coal from South America on occasion to obtain the better emission outputs. Much of our coal comes from Wyoming. We have sent coal and a great deal of ores such as taconite to China. Canada is sending a lot too. Bill