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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."
Yeah, becuase the electricity in your batteries comes from tickling flowers and my laptop is ice cold
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
Oil doesn't depend on fossil fuels. It's just currently the cheapest source. It should bequite easy to use vegetable based oil, and the great thing about that is that you can even use old stuff that's already been used for cooking if you want to filter the crap out.
No, the electricity in your batteries most likely came from burning coal. But I'd rather burn American coal than buy Arab oil.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Nope:
10 mm = within the range of 9.5000 to 10.499999 mm 1 cm = within the range of 0.5000 to 1.49999 cm
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
Given the nasty realities of thermal efficiencies, I doubt this thing can be more that 33% efficient. That means that the device will run 3 times warmer than current battery-operated versions. Given the behavior of most modern-day laptops, that will be far too hot.
Of course, the invention will work very well with better designed hardware and software. Anyone who thinks they need more than 500 MHz processor for most applications (and more than 50 MHz for basic office applications) is either playing games or using bloatware.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Fuel cells, increasingly efficient solar, modular, small scale (pebble bed) nuclear reactors - I'm seeing the beginning of the end of the conventional power grid.
One of the advantages of decentralization is you no longer have big juicy targets for terrorists - who'd attack a neighborhood-size solar station or fuel cell stack? And if they did, the damage would be limited in scope.
Well, you can probably just run it on ordinary lighter fluid or other combustibles. It doesn't need to be fossil fuel you know. And your current batteries are charged with electricity generated using fossil fuel, or nuclear. I think the real advantage here will be size and weight. If the turbine problem is solved it might be possible to have many of those mini generators in one small package, generating as much power as a big battery. And, refueling is faster than recharging. For mobile use it's also much easier.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
There's a good chance that's Chinese coal you're burning.
I'd be most interested in these generators if they ran on vegetable oil. Large areas of South America (especially Brasil) have been using vegetable oil as a major fuel source (especially in the automotive arena) for some time. I'd rather plant sunflowers or corn than drill oil wells.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Dude, lighter fluid is a combination of various light hydrocarbons, most probably produced from natural gas.
It *IS* fossil fuel.
There are other processes for making the hydrocarbons, but they require a LOT more energy input than refining natural gas.
And natural gas is too damn' valuable as a chemical process feedstock to waste it in a fricking fire!
Funny, we hear all this new technology like hydrogen fuel cells using sodium borohydrate, microgenerators. We also hear a lot about "alternative energy". Alternative = anything but oil. Yet we never hear about the consequences of these alternative energy sources. Occasionally, on page 16 of the local newspaper, you'll see a story that talks about the hazardous waste problem in China, Malaysia, or Korea due to the manufacturing of these "alternative energy" products.
And we tell ourselves that we're better off.
It reminds me of the solar panel people. "Look, we can save all this energy! Never mind that we just created a bazillion tons of hazardous waste making the solar panels."
I'd rather plant sunflowers or corn than drill oil wells
Agreed. Burning biofuel has zero carbon dioxide release net - it would have decomposed anyway and we're just harnessing the energy released. Burning fossil fuels on the other hand releases CO2 locked up ages ago and so is fucking things up.
Anyway it's all a bit irrelevant from an environmental point of view. We might as well accept that _all_ the fossil fuels reserves will be burnt sooner or later. Only when the reserves get low will prices get pushed up enough that we seriously take up the alternatives.
It's fact that atmospheric co2 has sky-rocketted since the industrial rev. We not going to stop it by burning less fossil fuels - it's just not going to happen (there's too many countries in the world that don't give a flying fuck. *cough*US*cough*). Instead our concerns should be:- So what the co2 is going up? - Does it matter? (ie. is it really going to cause greenhouse effect, etc.), and second; What will be the consequences of the greenhouse effect, what timescale will these changes be, and wtf are we going to do when it happens?