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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."
Yes, what a great idea, let's INCREASE our dependency on fossil fuels for powering our portable electronics.
And the hot exhaust from the turbine would feel absolutely lovely against one's leg while being carried in a pocket.
Somehow I don't see this miniature jet engine concept really "taking off" (hur hur).
Welcome to the age of steam powered laptops!
The Cache of the magazine
The cache of the gatech site
Nothing to see here
Surely, if it's a generator running off a turbine running off another fuel, surely it's just a whole big waste of energy in a small space? My science skills are not what they used to be but I don't see why this is great?
Enlighten me please!
You know, the one where the guy is chasing his MP3 player down the street. I didn't realize that they were turbine Energizer batteries. Duh!
EricSee your HTTP headers here
I can see MP3 players of the future becoming like cars in the movies. Drop it, and watch the spectacular explosion as all the fuel goes up.
The next thing will be a private nuclear reactor.
click
What I want to know is can I use this to build my mouse a gocart. At last he will no longer live in the shadow of that bastard speedy gonzales!
Beep beep.
but can we at least pretend we care about the servers we link to?
A 1.5 meg jpg as the first link in the story is a disaster anyone can see coming...
....and is a "quarter" of the problem. Hahahaha. That's some funny shit.
Ga Tech
tdh42134.jpg
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
A while back, there was an article about how implants could be powered using body heat by using the thermoelectric effect (heat causes electrons to move, which creates current). Wouldn't it be possible to do the same thing with the heat coming off a computer system, especially the CPU and GPU?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
A turbine is still being developed to turn the generator and that will require fuel and storage of some kind.
Think outside the box. You've got a 10mm generator, but no way to turn it...
Hamsters! They're cheap and portable. They're a renewable resource. They generate very little excess heat. Their fuel source is available almost anywhere, is non-toxic, and doesn't explode.
Just picture it, the whole world over, millions of laptops, and on top of each screen a hamster in a cage. This is the face of technological improvement.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Didn't we just see an article about exploding phone batteries? Is this competing to make smaller things explode in an even more impressive way?
Sample this!
Jet Engine on a Chip
university of Birminghmam, England did this previously.
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.
Wouldn't it be fantastic if they made it detachable with a cord and some sort of clamp? You could stick it out the window of a train or car and tied with a regular battery and a nice propeller, you could have power for your laptop through long journeys.
If only planes had windows...
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
They just need to team up with these guys.
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
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."
because it will likely require at least the same amount of feul as can fit in a normal battery, but will be less convenient since you can't just plug it into the grid to recharge.... not to mention the already mentioned risks, or the extra pollution and noise (this will likely produce much more noise then a computer fan)
Dear Mr. Nameless,
Refresh my memory, what's the most widely used combustible fuel right now?
If it does run on something other than crude oil products, good. But I'm not holding my breath. Still, the little thing probably can't consume TOO much at that size. Ha ha.
Here are links to more articles:
Space Daily
GaTech
A Student's description
Consumers, industry, and the military are all demanding smaller power supplies for smaller and more pervasive electronic devices. Researchers at the National University of Singapore and California State Polytechnic University (Pomona) recently developed a microgenerator to meet these needs. As long as hydrogen and air are fed into it, the 1-cm3 device generates 4.5 W.
Previous proposals for microgenerators attempted to scale down existing generator designs, but their moving parts made them difficult to manufacture. The team's proposal dispenses with moving parts entirely. The new design radiates heat obtained from hydrogen combustion. A selective emitter focuses the radiation into a small range of wavelengths, and a photovoltaic converter subsequently turns the radiation into electricity.
millimeter = 10^-3 meter
:)
centimeter = 10^-2 meter
decimeter = 10^-1 meter
meter = 10^0 meter
kilometer = 10^3 meter
- Standard SI stuff, not some strange "rougly equal" imperial unit shit.
nt
Damn. Rather, 1.0cm = 10mm
Just imagine:
There you are, staring at me again.
Systems check: goA AAAAAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!
Fuel check: go
Ignition: GO!
fffffffwwwiiiiiiiiiiiiiwwwwwrrrrrrroooOOOOOOOAAAA
Please type Ctl Alt Del or insert your smartcard.
(At least we won't be able to hear this annoying sound when windws boots.)
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
of the Emergency Broadcast System.
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/
'Every single mention' is well outside the scope of this thread.
This PARTICULAR mention, however, clearly describes a closed system - an attempt to use the heat from a computer component to power the computer that's heating the component. A quick look at the original post and perhaps two seconds of thought would have made it obvious that this is an entirely different class of system than the steam engine you're pointing at so smugly.
(And the Matrix line would only make sense in the context of a situation where they were feeding the humans with something that couldn't be converted to energy some other, more efficient way. Which, given the rather high overhead in the human-body-as-power-generator, seems vanishingly unlikely. But it's not really a question of thermodynamics, at least.)
I'm referring more to the convenience aspect. Plug the thing in the wall for a while, or constantly keep a supply of fuel on hand? And said fuel has to be distributed somehow as well, and that will likely involve gas guzzling semi trucks. I'll stick with the wall plug for now. If they can make this thing appealing and marketable, great. Until then, no thanks.
Why not just get self-cooling cans? Or use this geeky Peltier one can chiller? (Do not overclock your beer!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
He might have a point tho'. I remember running WordPerfect 5.2 under Windows 3.1 and DOS 5 on a 386SX 25MHz and I remember it running a heck of a lot faster than Word 2000 under Windows 2000 on the 1.2GHz on my desk right now.
Assuming that the code would even run on contemporary processors (as I recall it was 16 bit code, should still run I would have thought, drivers are likely to be the problem) and I could find the installation disks (less likely, I've moved house 5 times since then), it would be interesting to try. Some time ago (1996) I did a C programming course, I remember one of the tutors saying that whenever a new machine came out one of the first tests he'd run was to install a particular pascal compiler and compile a program he wrote in the early 1980s. The code being compiled in the same compiler went from several hours to a few minutes between when he first wrote it and when he talked to us. Obviously this wasn't just a test of processor speed but also included memory speed, bus speed, caching and disk speed as well.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Just last week, the Artic Council released its findings that show that people and animals living in the Arctic region are suffering quickly from ongoing global warming, with many species expected to go extinct. Prime farmland in other areas of the world will have altered rainfall patterns, turning much of them into lower yielding rangeland. The Western US is already struggling through 7 years of drought, further straining the falling aquifers, such as the Ogallala.
Granted, a calculator wouldn't use as much fuel as the typical SUV, but simply adding more uses of fossil fuels (or those indirectly produced with fossil fuels) puts us deeper into the negative ramifications of those fuels.
Curse you evil Link-Pixie! Peltier one can chiller
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"Detailed calculations indicate that the actual scaling is not quite that dramatic, but a millimeter-size engine would have a thrust-to-weight ratio of about 100:1, compared with 10:1 for the best modern aircraft engines."
:)
This gives me visions of a jumbojet with the whole wingspan covered in thousands of really small jet engines.
This will be worse than people concentrating on their cell phones being run over in traffic.
I predict a wave of guys getting nailed by buses because they're totally focused on their Gameboys, and having an entire city block nuked when the jet fuel tank on the guy's back goes up in flames as a result...
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Since these generators are so much more efficient than batteries, and so small, why not hook them to an electrolyzer, storing the energy as hydrogen, in pancake-sized cells with gyros to spin them? Human motion can be captured for all our devices. Not only will we power devices without foreign oil, but Americans will have a reason to get off our asses and exercise - desperately needed by the most battery-hungry demographics.
--
make install -not war
The idea isn't to get ALL of the power from the heat off the CPU, just to reclaim SOME of it. Reclaiming 5% of the energy is better than venting it out the exhaust port, isn't it?
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
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."
- 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.
Now thats just too confusing.
1 barleycorn = 1/3 inch
1 inch = 3 barleycorns
1 foot = 12 inches
1 yard = 3 feet
1 rod, pole or perch = 5½ yards
1 chain = 4 poles
1 furlong = 10 chains
1 mile = 8 furlongs
1 league = 3 miles
Now isn't that much better?
Surely fuel cells have potential to be more effecent then using a minature engine burning fuel, as that has to go through several energy conversions (chemical > mechanical+wasted heat > electrical) rather then converting the chemical energy straight to electricity
To power the new Radeon Mobility X800 graphics card, your laptop will enable the afterburner. This will inject kerosene into the exhaust jet to provide additional power to the generator. Please keep the laptop away from combustible materials for your own safety. During operation, you should wear noise protection earmuffs and keep a fire extinguisher handy. Turbine blades must be inspected by your closest General Electric Turbines facility each 10,000 hours of operation. Only use unleaded JET A1 fuel. DANGER: Avoid jet blast! Do not obstruct the air intake or data loss may occur.
--- Eat my sig.
I can generate well over 300 watts on a bicycle. You can generate 100 watts essentially indefinitely without breaking a sweat.
You want to listen to your iPod? Hook it up to your bike!
I wear my iPod when I'm on my bike. Imagine how much cooler it would be if it didn't neeed a battery...
Ever wondered why almost everywhere except France, stairs go in flights of 12? That's because the builders always used a rise per step of one inch per foot of total rise. Which will always give you 11 steps and a landing, no matter how much the total rise may be.
Except in France, because France never bothered with feet and inches: they went straight from saying "about yay big" {or more probably "environ tellement grand"} to the metre, originally defined as the length of a pendulum which takes one second to swing from side to side. {Try it in the old formula T = 2 * pi * sqrt (L / g); remember the formula gives the time it takes to swing from side and back again}.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Shouldn't these engineers be concentrating on building a miniature Stirling engine instead? The processor itself could provide most of the heat for the engine. Also, this would make the whole system a lot more efficient. Instead of generating more wasted energy in the form of heat, the heat from the processor would be recovered and turned into more electricity.
A metremeter is device for measuring things that are 1 metre long. It has only two numbers 0 and 10 marked at opposite ends.
A metermetre is a metre within the precision (and accuracy) of the meter that was used to measure the metre.
A metermeter is a device used to measure meters in units unknown.
A metremetre is a square with area of 1 metre in length on each side. A metremetremetre would be used for cubes.
Thank you.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I guess everyone's idea of 'polish' is different, but centi- is not an SI preferred prefix; the power of 3 prefixes are more convenient and more familiar to most of us.
There's a 10^2 prefix, too - hecto - but you don't hear that one too much for the same reason.
They already do, methanol from Home Depot. Alcohol in the form of a fifth of vodka. And lighter fluid is sold in containers of lighter fluid in drug stores everywhere.
Methanol, ethanol, butane or naptha. Any one of them, with appropiate air/fuel mixture and adjustments to compression pressures, would probably fuel it quite well.
Problem, though. Control of temperatures, pressurized gases, liquids, etc. would probably (conservatively) be 100 times more difficult than current (as in, contemporary, not in terms of dq/dt) engineering problems involving batteries. Neglect, for a moment, the inevitable design and manufacturing errors causing recalls: Drop your cellphone, crack a turbine blade. Two weeks later in your pocket, the engine grenades. It's like hydrogen cars - neat idea from a technical standpoint, but suicidally stupid in the real world.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Dude, you just gave me a chubby.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
You take a crystal radio, tune it to a strong AM station, run the output not to a loudspeaker but to a rectifier, then use that to power a transistor radio which you can tune to any station.
Viola! Free energy!
Tell me again, who knew Mary was a virgin, and how did they know?
Local laws notwithstanding (because I'm sure you were talking about a stationary bike, right?), why don't you try to build one yourself? There are already plenty of plans on how to build iPod charger using batteries. So it's not so much of a stretch to imagine a generator charging the battery pack, charging the iPod...
Now instead of carrying a cellphone and a Zippo in my pocket, I will have the choice for a 2-in-1 combo!
I am a bit fuzzy as to how I need something that will literally burn a hole in my pocket. And, IIRC, at 100K RPM, doesn't it act like a gyroscope?
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
You forgot the warning in 72-point type: "Use ONLY in a Well-Ventilated Area."
Also, these warnings are printed in eight different languages, all translated by Babelfish.
Tag lost or not installed.
You know what's even better than that? With Modern Technology, you don't have to remember ANY of that. You can type:
the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight
into http://google.com/ (or just click This Link) and it responds with an answer. I didn't check if it's the RIGHT answer, but the 10^14 factor seems to be in the ballpark.
Tag lost or not installed.
and from looking at TFP, it looks easy enough to do those "coil" layouts on a regular printed circuit board. TFAseems to have given away the rest: Use a rare-earth magnet encased in titanium for strength at the very high RPM's generated by a dental drill.
That soldering job (the six wires coming off the board) looks horrible. My worst SMT soldering looks better than that.
Tag lost or not installed.
We use them, sugar cane, to produce ethanol.
And yes, it burns cleaner than gasoline.
Vegetable oil based fuel requires fossile fuels to produce. I've read statistics indicating that the conversion doesn't work in our favor. A greater amount of energy from fossile-fuel is required to produce a much smaller amount of energy from vegetable fuel. All the tractors, trucks, water pumping stations, etc. used by the industry that produces the Ethanol are still coming from fossile fuels. Therefore, vegetable oil fuels like the Ethanol aren't really going to solve the problem on their own. At this point, talking about cleaner burning fuels and environmentally friendly fuels is only marketing FUD, until the rest of the dependencies are satisfied with non-fossile fuel energy sources (nuclear power, etc ,...)
Because it's downloading the mpeg of the latest Stargate episode.
...or about the size of a dime. When coupled with a similarly sized gas-fueled microturbine (or jet) engine...his is still just a quarter of the problem
Looks to me like nickel short...
What?