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Segway Inventor Turns To Environment
MBCook writes "CNN has an article in which they talk about Dean Kamen's latest inventions designed to provide water to rural villages. His goal is also to provide electricity and opportunities for entrepreneurship. From the article: 'Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water,' says Kamen. 'The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don't care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns.'"
The rumormill says this time, "it" will consist of a rider on the segway carrying water bottles for the needy.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Dean's been working on this for years, and it's still not happening.
Reminiscent of cold fusion.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
"If you judiciously use a kilowatt, each villager can have a nighttime."
Candle manufacturers express skepticism.
Finally, a product that's worth a crap!
If he just leaned that way, wouldn't his platform make the turn for him?
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
If he succeeds, then people will think technology can solve problems, rather than lectures, matriarchies, and the worship of nature... ...this is so horrible!
Quick, let's move to all these places where they don't have clean water, and relive those diseases, which we'll cure by drawing circles around ourselves.
At least we won't have to put up with that scourge, technology!
Someone remind me, is this the same guy who used a gyroscope with a 60 Hz sampling rate for stability rather than, I don't know, a third wheel?
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
now fast forward to the present.
I've only seen one of them in real life actually being used. None of my friends use it.
so is this going to be another hype engine? he should prehaps donate it too all needy people, if it is so good.
I just bought a Ford Thunderbird... Awesome car, awesome power. ford thunderbird bbs http://www.thunderbirdtalk.com
What he should be doing is marketing this to rural farmers in developed countries. If I lived on a farm with access to the fuel, I would love to have a kilowatt generator for $1000 to supplement my electricity use.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
The technology is already out there, but whats more important for the implementation of clean water and energy is cost. There are many organizations I know of in this area ("Engineers Without Borders, Nourish International, etc) which engage in these types of prjects around the world and the bottom line is always cost. Perhaps now that more individuals and corporations are working towards simplifying and mass-producing these technologies, the price barrier will shring significantly, allowing the afore-mentioned organizations as well as governments of developing nations to make a significantly more tangible impact on what is a significant and immediate health problem facing hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Please don't talk to me about clean water and electricy until I've got a computer with internet access.
Great idea. I'd love to see some sort of energy generator that uses trash to make energy....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns.'"
Apparently he's not too concerned about giving them clean air, though.
Anyone know what the energy density of cow dung is? I assume it takes a few cow patties to fule a sterling engine powered generator that puts out 1kW. Bet it takes a lot more to boil enough dirty water to produce 1000L a day of distilled water.
I'm a little leery of the part where they want to spead around 500,000 of the kilowatt machines to village entreprenneurs.
What's to stop the person with the power from holding a grudge against some family and making them the only family around with no power?
Years ago, relief organizations drilled wells in India and Pakistan to provide clean disease-free water to the poor populations. Indeed, it did reduce the levels of illness and was hailed as a public health victory. Unfortunately, it turned out that this underground water had high levels of arsenic that poisoned the people over time. Now they are seeing high levels of skin, lung, liver, kidney and bladder cancer. So let's hope things go better this time.
I've had an idea for a while for a solar-powered water condensor. The condensation run off from the window-unit air conditioners in my house generate about 100 liters every 24 hours. Granted, the compressors and fans use a lot of power, but I figure that you could have a big solar panel - maybe 3 or 4 square meters - on top of a 10 foot pole so kids wouldn't mess with it, and you could get several hundred watts out of it. Relatively cheap to make, simple to run, and I've seen these window units run for years without maintenance. Seems like it'd be quite doable, and with a lot less complexity and potential to wear or break than a boiler-driven generator like what Segway Boy has in mind.
A-Bomb
During the test in Bangladesh, Kamen's Stirling machines created three entrepreneurs in each village: one to run the machine and sell the electricity, one to collect dung from local farmers and sell it to the first entrepreneur, and a third to lease out light bulbs (and presumably, in the future, other appliances) to the villagers.
I predict it will create at least three more:
* One entrepreneur to fix the broken machines
* One entrepreneur to reposess the machines when the loans default
* One entrepreneur to outsource the shit-shoveling to an even poorer village
Oh no... it's the future.
It's an admirable thought, really. I suspect that if he, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, and a few other multi-billionaire types threw their weight into it, they'd have the water and electricity problems licked inside of 5 years, at which point they would have created a whole new crop of potential consumers.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
We'll call it Mr. Fusion.
Kamen's Segway fiasco was a mistake. Now he's back on track.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
If he just leaned that way, wouldn't his platform make the turn for him?
Forward/Stop/Reverse is controlled by leaning, but steering is controlled by turning the control on the left side of the handlebars. Maybe future Segways will feature lean-stearing.
I applaud his effort, but I am slightly concerned with what happens with the waste product from this thing. If they just dump it back into the water hole, I would think they would start to see diminishing returns on output water quality.
The Slingshot works by taking in contaminated water - even raw sewage -- and separating out the clean water by vaporizing it. It then shoots the remaining sludge back out a plastic tube. Kamen thinks it could be paired with the power machine and run off the other machine's waste heat.
-mls
Only a geek would think that people actually want a third wheel! :)
Yes, this joke has two meanings.
his company was not responsible for all the hype building up to Segway's release. they have made a ton of incredibly useful inventions and i would think anyone with any interest in technology or engineering would know about his work long before the Segway. inventing a portable insulin pump seems like a pretty valid invention, right? a wheelchair that can climb stairs?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen/
or
http://www.dekaresearch.com/
Cow dung isn't a particularly clean burning fuel...
yeah, I'm sure the segway doesn't measure up to all the things you've invented. Kamen only invented portable dialysis machines and innovative wheelchair designs, hardly as impressive as mastering the slashdot GUI, wot?
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
How about creating ones on a bigger scale and then putting a few of these machines at the factory runoff/waste exitways and provide clean water to our streams and rivers as well? I could see this as a potential future for this technology.
This would be another way to help the environment and the world's population in the process.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Except of course it doesn't work when the air is dry to begin with.
Maybe not so brilliant.
The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don't care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns.
So now, instead of a village in the Phillipines using relatively clean water that's been percalating through a forested area, they will just burn even more of the trees to power their water cleaners, resulting in even more of this (which surviving local villagers said was due to illegal logging on the surrounding hills). Yes, TFA indicates that it's cow dung that will be burned... but that just means that the wholesome goodness of that dung is not going into agricultural fertilization, which means either shipping in artificial/processed fertilizers, or very inefficiently using more land for grazing and crop production... including cutting into forests (see above).
Yes, most of us "burn things" for clean water (to extract from a well, or to run a municipal water treatment facility), but things like this at the local level strike me as putting a tiny, tiny bandage on the symptom of a much larger problem. To wit: too many freakin' people in areas not developed enough to sustain them without very poor land use. I mean... a kilowatt? Between solar, and perhaps some of the village kids taking turns in a big hamster wheel, you could do that without burning more stuff. And, for someone who included the notion of improving the "leisure time" of poor villagers, he's not thinking too clearly about the delightful aroma that comes with 24x7 burning of cow dung.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The reason I ask this is if the power machine can handle human dung, you could hook the machines up to a toilet/sewage system and build a system as follows: Waste flushes from toilet to water cleaning system to retrieve water for reuse and then sends the waste extracted to the power machine to produce some power for the lighting. :)
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
I'm really not sure if the Segway was the best or worst thing he has ever made. It made his presense consideribly more known to the average person, but at the same time, it credits him as the inventor of a gimmick (Segway is cool, I'd love to have one, and it may pave the way for usage of the technology in useful things, but overall, it just does the same thing we have been doing for years on our own, or with other wheeled devices), and less as an intentor of many things that have had very useful and important roles. I have the utmost respect for him, but with some of this other creations, I was let down by what he insisted and credited as the most significant device ever made (or something like that).
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water...
Let's see...
1) Common cold
2) Smallpox
3) Cancer
4) Diabetes
5) Ebola
6) HIV/AIDS
7) Alzheimer's
8) Creutzfeldt-Jakob
9) Marburg
10) Botulism
That's all I can name... wonder which two can't be wiped out by this fantastic machine.
1) Parabolic satellite dish with foil or mirrors on it to focus heat. 2) A teakettle. 3) Semi clean but bacteria infested water going into teakettle 4)When teakettle hits a boil, it initiates a 5 minute timer 5)When 5 minute timer goes off, it drops the water into the drinking water resevoir, then takes in some semi clean water in.
God spoke to me.
Maybe, maybe not, but look at his other work before deciding.
If Benjerman Franklin was only considered for his stove*, he would be considered a failure.
While they work extremely well if kept stoked, once they began to cool a little, they got extremely smokey. Meaning they weren't practical.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But these sorts of projects are what the guy actually cares about.
After he made his initial fortune (in medical devices) he started up an organization called FIRST, designed to get more smart kids interested in engineering, and to help our culture value problem solving more than drama. Since then the organization has grown to include thousands of teams, tens of thousands of high schoolers in countries all around the world.
I've been working with one of those teams for three years, and every year Kamen stands up and gives a speech, not about how much fun we're going to have building robots, but about his vision for what we can do to solve these sort of engineering problems, to bring clean water to those who need it, etc. He's done a lot of good work, aside from his kind of whacky human transport device, and for all that his speeches are about as depressing and boring as you can get, it's very clear that this is where his heart is. He's put a ton of money and effort into getting people into engineering so that some day if he can't solve these sorts of problem someone will.
And for as bored as I am every time I have to sit through him talking about it, I can admire that. This is about things a lot more important than a goofy looking scooter.
Yeah, he's a real dope. No intelligence at all. Hummm... kinda remains me of you. ::rolls eyes::
From TFA: A satellite picture of the earth at night shows swaths of darkness across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. For the people living there, a simple light bulb would mean an extension of both their productivity and their leisure times. -- Yes, and then it's all downhill from there: first light bulbs, then telephones for telemarketers to call, televisions for advertisers to stuff with their ads all aglow, microwave ovens to provide late-night high-fat carbohydrate-laden heart sludge, personal computers from which to have one's identity stolen, not to mention thirty-five clocks to set forward every Spring, etc. I hope these people who have lived in the beautiful nighttime darkness for so long know what they're getting themselves into.
The Big News Page
I think what this man is doing is simply wonderful... we really need to spend more resources solving the problems of third world nations (if nothing else it would help our country's public image). U.S. citizens spent around $30 billion last year on toys for their kids, if even 10% of that was directed towards this kind of R&D, many of these "simple solutions" could be found and put into action.
Kamen is a really skilled inventor. He comes up with interesting solutions to problems and made some really impressive devices before the Segway. His problem is that his head is logged pretty firmly up his ass when it comes to predicitng broad social outcomes. He can invent things for clearly defined problems where money is only a minor issue (medical equipment), but his handling of the Segway shows his attempts to tackle more abstract problems are pathetic. The guy invented a multithousand dollar scooter with an hour battery life. Uh, good job. You took the scooter and managed to make it more expensive and have a shorter drive time. Awesome.
I am highly skeptical that he has anything other then smoke and mirrors. I think he doesn't have a clue in the world when it comes to broad abstract problems. This is a guy who really need to sit down and talk to an economist and a marketer before trying to build something.
Check out just about any city in China. You have a hard time seeing the sun some days.
On the other hand, if you put the cow and people dung in a digester and get methane, you get more efficient burning and zero particulates. Farmers here do that already. It works well.
Segway is just a basic, two-wheel version of his iBot wheelchair. You know, the wheelchair that can climb stairs and raise the user up high enough to talk to standing adults? The wheelchair that's based on all of the inventions that made the Segway possible.
Segway isn't a fiasco, it's an overhyped consumer toy. He probably makes a handsome profit from it.
Yes.
And now I ask you - what good would a third wheel do for a wheelchair that climbs stairs? Especially when it already has more than three wheels.
The gyroscope was so that the chair would stay level when it had to go up on its hind wheels to climb the stairs.
www.linuxpenguin.net
stupid / at the end messed up the URL i guess....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen
20-odd years ago there was a plan to provide 3rd world countries with salt, sugar, and water-purification tablets. The thought was this would greatly improve the health of communities. Of course, people need other things too, like real food, medicine, and clothing. This plan was just to put a dent into the malnutrition problem and the lack of clean water.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
From TFA: For the people living there, a simple light bulb would mean an extension of both their productivity and their leisure times.
Ahh, so they can be more productive. Spreading American values across the world! "You see, with light, you can work longer than ever before. If you're lucky, you might be able to work hard enough to afford the light bulbs!"
Water-borne diseases are a HUGE problem in the third world. Seriously, they have *fatal* diarrhea, and I'm not saying that to be funny.
meanwhile at Wired magazine.....
During an interview with Wired magazine, Kamen was upbeat about a new venture. "It's going to change the way we look at _change_."
When pressed for more information Kamen clamed up. Only providing us with the name of his new endeavor.....
Mary-Ann.
Well, if I were you, I would let the dung dry in the sun for over a week before picking it up to try to burn. It comes out of the cow quite wet! :P
That's the answer! Just extract the moisture from the fresh manure!
This would be fucking great for fish farms.
Fisheries generate a lot of crap-filled water that generally gets pumped into (and pollutes) a local river.
Of course, this guy's invention would have to be scaled waaaaay up for farmers of any kind in the 1st world, since they have enormous plots of land compared to most farms in 3rd world & developing countries.
Still, Kudos to him, because he's right. Finding potable water is actually a greater problem than access to food in most of the 3rd world. However, the second you increase survival rates in those developing countries, you create a host of other problems as the population increases.
Countries are like ecosystems, once you fiddle with one variable, you usually have to deal with a rash of unintended consequences.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I think that pollution was part of the considerations. If you have 500,000 machines dispersed over the massive land mass of Africa, it will cause localized pollution, but it is the kind of pollution that the earth can handle. It's not spewing toxic chemicals and dangerous bacteria.
His goal is to kickstart democracy and the economy of Africa. Once you have the model in place (find something people want but don't have, provide it to them, profit) then they will begin to build up their own industries. As pollution becomes more of a concern, they will have the economic power and natural initiative to solve it.
I think his idea connecting economic power with political power is absolutely correct. If our founding fathers weren't independently wealthy, they would've never been able to do what they did for their country. When Africa has a large wealthy class that made their wealth through honest means, then that class can carry the burden of reforming the economic and political system to favor entrepeneurs rather than despots.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
You are the definition of a fucking clueless retard. Good going. Next time you feel remotely smart, re read your post.
Segway paved the way for the iBot. Or is it the other way around, iBot might have paved the way for the Segway.
Anyway, my point its, Kamen and his engineers designed the iBot wheelchair at the same time as the Segway. The both use the same technology, except Segway is a rich man's toy and iBot is a wheelchair that can climb stairs and rase the user up the standing adult eye level.
What about cats?, will it make energy and clean water from cats?
Yeah, that's so much worse than rabid dictators (if you think Bush is bad, you have no fucking clue about *anything* in this world), open sewers and having half your kids/siblings die by age nine. Honestly, you people who think life in the technological world is so awful and life in the undeveloped world is so pristing and happy need to visit some of these places. And, yes, I have.
We're building a home in New Mexico, and Kamen's creation look like something we might find useful. It's not just poor folk who need clean water and independent power — although they certainly could use it.
All about me
Electricity generator. Water cleaner. Cow-dung reseller. (or would that be Cow-dung VAR?)
Overated.
"Instead of putting up a 500-megawatt power plant in a developing country, he argues, it would be much better to place 500,000 one-kilowatt power plants in villages all over the place"
Indeed, not to mention it's using a carbon neutral fuel (which your average 500-MW plant in Africa would likely not be doing) and generating pure drinking water at the same time. Nicely done, sir.
That's a good idea. Here's an even better one:
Dig a cistern. Line it with rock if you can. Cover it with a screen if you've got one. Keep the bugs out of it.
Get a big sheet of canvas, punch a hole in the middle, and raise the corners. Position it above the hole.
Wait for rain.
Drink the water.
Don't build your outhouse near the well.
Out of curiousity, what do you plan on doing when gas hits $20/gallon?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
It's been fifteen years since I was in the water treatment business, but I doubt any of the fundamentals have changed.
Here's how it works: You mix a chemical called a 'flocculant' in with the water, which has been roughly filtered and perhaps let sit for a while to let any silt settle. This water is then mixed with air under high pressure, and pumped into tanks, entering halfway between the bottom and top of the tank with as little turbulence as possible. Because of the decrease in pressure, air bubbled form, and the flocculants cause small particles (bacteria, shit, uranium) to stick to them. The bubbles then gradually float to the surface, where the 'suds' or 'scum' is skimmed off, again with a minimal amount of turbulence. After enough of this happens, the water is then called clean and sucked out and wasted on fertilizing laws.
Generally, this is done on a continuous basis, and the equipment is a big, round vat. The ones I knew were from 5 to 23 meters in diameter. There's some real issues that make this process a bit more tricky than the description above would make it seem:
1) raw water is not produced, nor clean water consumed, at uniform rates. However, the filtering equipment works correctly at a very small flow/pressure. Holding tanks on either side are neccessary.
2) Flocculant is a consumable, and it takes a certain amount to clean a given volume of water to a certain improvement. Costs money.
3) water is not uniformly dirty.
4) generally, the larger units can let water stay and bubbles float (and grit sink to the bottom) longer, so less flocculant is needed. But these take up more space...LOTS more.
5) How clean does water really need to be? If there's some nasty outbreak (Cholera, Giardia) maybe it needs to be much cleaner. Maybe not so much at other times. Who makes that decision? My thoughts are that tap water should only be cleaned to a certain percent, which can be used for lawns / car-washes / firefighting / pools, cleaned a bit further for household uses (laundry, bathing) by an in-home filter, and cleaned further for drinking by a tap-based carbon filter (Brita, etc). But this is a lot of equipment. Real serious policy issues here. I doubt that such a poor and corrupt country as Bangladesh can handle these problems correctly. But hey, I guess eomthing is worth a try.
If he can get it to run off of old AOL CDs the power problem is solved for all of us.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They want to burn the chips to provide electricity to fuel light bulbs for use at night.
This can lead to burning more which leads to greater pollution.
Particularly if the potable water system works and you have an increased population. Which then needs more water to survive which means more machines burning more chips
What about Water Hyacinths? Epcot and NASA have been doing research for over 30 years on using the Hyacinth for water filtration and later for fueling furnaces for electrical generators (the Hyacinth used to filter the water gives off large amounts of methane as it decomposes).
I said yep, what a concept,
Current Quote: "If you judiciously use a kilowatt, each villager can have a nighttime."
So, uh what does each villager have now, and what will they have to give up to get this "nighttime" of which he speaks.
is good governance and a lot less corruption. A lot of those other things would take care of themselves if you took care of the first two. And without it, you're not going to get the other things. Look at Zimbabwe. Used to be the largest net exporter of food in Africa. Corruption, mismanagement, and ethnic violence by the indigenous blacks against white farmers have turned the place into a pauper's paradise, complete with famine and babies being thrown into sewers.
As for roads, they used aid money to build roads in the Congo. Nobody uses them (for the most part). They use the bush trails. Same thing with schools.
Until you (or they) solve the tribalism and corruption issues in the development world, all we are doing is throwing good money after bad in offering up "solutions".
What will happen when you magically solve the clean water, food, and medical care issues in the developing world? Population explosion even worse than they are experiencing today, without the social revolutions that preceeded and enabled the developed world's evolution. And at the end of the line, population crash, and more misguided intervention on the part of the developed world.
If this particular Stirling engine design is capable of being made in volume at a sensible price and is not simply an over-priced toy for rich yacht owners like the WhisperGen, it deserves to succeed.
One reason it might just is crime. You could make a perfectly adequate generator for a village using standard technology, but it would get stolen in no time. A washing machine sized design is going to be much harder to steal.
However, as with many alternative technologies, the likely problem is going to be seals. Seals have been the problem with Stirling engines in the past (and are the continuing problem with the Wankel.)
Pining for the fjords
The pollution still occures, just not where Londoners can see it.
Probably something like biodiesel or just keep using mass-transit, like always. I haven't bought a gallon of gas for myself yet, and I don't really intend to.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Buying a sawed off shotgun, welding spikes to the front of my SUV and leading raiding parties on Gasoline Tanker-Trucks. You?
As Bush would say: "It's new-cue-lur!"
Sig? - yeah, whatever.
... that the inventor hoped the segue would catch on because if it did, his stair climbing wheelchair would have become a lot cheaper to make, due to using many of the same parts.
On another note... the segue's relatively small foot print giving it's rather impressive performance(if you actually ride one, it's impressive, if you just read some numbers they don't sound like much), would not be possible using only a 3rd wheel for balance. 3 wheels present their own stability issues, especially in a top heavy machine.
True, I'm just judging based on his one invention that I am familiar with. I have been told he's a genius, so hopefully he does what he sets out to do.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Hand-dug wells:
1. Oxfam well building guide (up to 30m) (0.5MB pdf) (html)
2. Tearfund well building guide (up to 50m)
Indian villagers have been using cow dung for creating gas for cooking, running automobiles and geenrators for decades now.
5 /cbytes2.asp
What's the point of this new "invention"? Frankly it has pretty significant and successful prior art and is not all that "inventive" either.
Here's a URL: http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jan11200
My question is the amount of fuel that it needs.
Boiling water takes a lot of energy.
And though cow dung may be considered a waste product with fairly low value in the fuel and fertilizer rich industrialized west, it's a valuable item in a lot of other places.
Not only is it used as fertilizer, but it's also used as a fuel in a lot of places.
So, the villages now have another economic question. Do they give up a fertilizer and heating fuel for this? Does it raise the cost of what was a cheap fuel and fertilizer?
So, it's not quite so neutral as it might seem on first glance. It's a very neat idea and it probably works out, but the economics may be more complicated than this indicates.
If you don't do that, there probably is a cost/benefit reason for it: maybe an hour of collecting poop nets you $10 in electricity and that's not worth YOUR time, but for a third-world farmer it's good money.
The big problem with the Segway was the hype, not the merits of device itself. When Jeff Bezos said that he could see cities being redesigned around the thing, we all thought that it had to be something revolutionary and amazing that would lead us all to change.
What he really seems to have meant was that for the device to sell, cities would have to be redesigned first. It's too heavy, fast, and unmaneuverable to ue on sidewalks, and it's too slow, unprotected, and unmaneuverable to use on streets. In essence, for the Segway to work, there'd have to be a completely new set of lanes for it. Additionally, it has all the problems of not protecting against the elements or having cargo space that prevent it from truly replacing cars. It's also far too expensive for the average person to justify the limited utility.
To sum up, it costs too much and can't be used in a majority of outdoor situations. It was overhyped when it had commercial flop written all over it. The Segway was brilliant example of promising the world and delivering nothing.
Snowmobiles and trail bikes at least have thrill-seeking element that the 12.5 MPH, no off-roading Segway did not.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The LEGO Mindstorms beloved to so many Slashdotters are used by 9-14 year olds (basically grades 4-8) in the FIRST LEGO League International, which has participants in almost 2 dozen countries.
:)
And since last year, within the US they've been piloting a "Junior FIRST LEGO League" for ages 6-9. I just found out about it, and my daughter's in that age range... bet she'll be happy to hear.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
They want 500,000 one Kilowatt generators. How much CO2 will that be?
Oh wait they are not in US, so pollution does not count.
What's wrong with collecting the drips off a sheet of plastic over top of something wet, out in the hot Indian sun? Pathogens?
Cow dung for power generation seems to have some problems. First of course - will really poor people have all that many animals to produce enough dung?
If the area is hot and dry and short on vegetation, the people probably are already burning cow dung for other purposes. Putting it into electricity generation will make it less available for the poorest to use for cooking.
Cheap solar concentrators seem like an obvious solution for hot dry areas - you can make a big and cheap one out of local materials (e.g. woven baskets) plus shiny tin foil, and the energy is free. Charge up a bunch of batteries for use at night, or if that isn't appropriate-tech enough, use the solar heat to power a compressor to make lots of ice and hot water during the day, and at night use the stored hot and cold to increase the efficiency of a stirling engine burning a small amount of fuel. Having ice can also raise standards of living in the village, reducing food spoilage.
If the area is hot and humid, they probably have plenty of vegetation to burn for electricity, and dung often won't usually be dry enough to burn without extra drying - though waste heat from the generator might be enough for that. Likely they could collect rain for reasonably good drinking water through much of the year, if they had plastic sheets and large storage drums. When the rains stop for a long periods, they could suspend the sheets, fill them with water, and catch condensation.
Cow dung still has lots of stuff in it, even after 2 stomachs. Human dung does not. If there is meat in the diet, the dung is even worse.
FTA: Inventor Dean Kamen wants to put entrepreneurs to work bringing water and electricity to the world's poor.
But... but... doesn't he realize that when you mix water and electricity, people get electrocuted?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Would be a lot better to run the shit thru a digester, burn the resulting methane for your heat and use the rest of the output of the digester fertilze the crops.
______
Andre' B.
I will continue to drive my Silverado as normal....only it will be more enjoyable, as the roads will be empty. In fact, in a round-about kind of way, it will cause my city mileage to improve
The EPA won't let you burn stuff in your back yard.
The easy example is North Vs South Korea. In this example we can factor out cultural differences, resources, and development time. with 50+ years of good governance and security aid, South Korea is a major industrialized nation and economic player. The north had tons of subsidies from the USSR and a dictatorship. As a result the people are impoverished, famine riddled, and sick while the government goes off and develops nuclear weapons and ICBMs.
Clean water, food, medical care, roads, electricity, basic literacy...
All of these are dependent on stability afforded by good governanace and security.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
* One entrepreneur to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
A more effective method for develping (or undeveloped) regions is Slow sand filtration. It may be used on a small scale -- even as small as one family. It can be implemented with a concrete basin filled with sand. The maintenance costs are minimal. It is simple to run. There is next to nothing to break.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
Since when is potable water an environmental issue? Sure concerns about potability brought about many
environmental regulations in the west but these are with respect to industrial pollutants, not cholera.
As others have noted, dung does not exactly burn cleanly, why not use existing tech like methane harvesters?
Besides, how much dung? A kilowatt per kilogram would make it a wundertech, a kilowatt per kilotonne
is a joke.
Were that I say, pancakes?
All jokes aside, pipes from central plants are a LOT more expensive than locally created potable water. A 2" diameter PVC pipe costs a little over $2/foot. That's over $10K per mile. Now add the cost of burying the pipe or otherwise securing it from harm.
Kamen's idea is better.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The condensation run off from the window-unit air conditioners in my house generate about 100 liters every 24 hours.
First of all, I'm calling bullshit on this. Either you live in a swamp, or there's something wrong with your air conditioner. Buy a new one and save the world 1kWh/day instead of producing distilled water with electricity.
Secondly, you realize you're advocating air conditioning as a means of water purification for undeveloped nations? That's just goofy.
Then you say a "3 or 4 square meter" solar panel is "cheap to make". And, assuming such a thing would even run a single air conditioner, you'd need one for, say, every two African villagers. Let's say this contraption costs $2000, which is a conservative figure. To outfit 100 million Africans, you're talking about $100 billion. And then of course who knows how long the things will last and whether they will be immediately confiscated by warlords and diverted to people who are actually productive enough to afford solar panels.
So, by now we've gotten to the point where you've completely lost your mind. As further evidence, "with a lot less complexity... than a boiler-driven generator". Umm, okay.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The idea is not to remove all environmental pollution from the water but to simply destroy cholera, hepatitis A, E. coli, cryptosporidia, salmonella, typhoid fever, and many other waterborne diseases. This is not all about cleaning up dioxin, benzene, or other industrial disasters.
This will solve a lot disease problems in the third world.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I mean, a kilowatt is cool, but only REALLY cool people mess around with plutonium, gigawatts, and guys named Biff.
Do or do not. There is no try. --Yoda
compliments of the UN:
Cow dung = 10 MJ/kg
air dried firewood = 15 MJ/kg
Peat = 20 MJ/kg
Kerosene = 44 MJ/kg
well, genius is an iuncredibly over used word.
Of course, that's obvious to a genius like me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
for a wheelchair. Without it you couldn't have a forth wheel!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There is a more informative, detail filled article here-/ 02/28/BU156573.DTL
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003
"about the height of an airline bag on wheels, is priced at about $1,500, but it is designed to require little maintenance and uses no chemicals or filters"
"Kamen's device purifies water through a distillation and condensation process"
"Kamen said the purifier can handle any contaminants and produce 10 gallons of water an hour on 500 watts of electricity."
The late 20th century reversal of this process is being played out in the American economy (as well as other industrialized countries worldwide). Local entrepreneurs are being pushed and bought out of business by large concerns (i.e. national and multi-national corporations). The economy of scale and polical clout of these giants are impossible to compete with effectively for most small, individual run businesses. The effect is to drain profit out of local economies and into a much larger scale economy. This robs resources from local-scale economies, and makes them less self-sustaining. Overall the economic engine seems to be running better, but fewer people benefit. The resultant concentration of resources eventually make such systems unstable.
The idea outlined in the article is brillant. I suspect, though, it will never come to pass. Not because it won't work, but because it will work. As soon as small scale success begins to be seen, larger concerns will interrupt the process, buying out the local entrepreneurs, and concentrating production and profit where it is subject to corruption and incompetence.
cheers, ben
Never miss a good chance to shut up -- Will Rogers
tap water should only be cleaned to a certain percent, which can be used for lawns / car-washes / firefighting / pools, cleaned a bit further for household uses (laundry, bathing) by an in-home filter, and cleaned further for drinking by a tap-based carbon filter (Brita, etc). But this is a lot of equipment.
I'm sure that due to economies of scale, the water utility can purify a given amount of water more efficiently than I can. (Those Brita filters are expensive!) So here's a better idea:
Run two pipes to every home. The big pipe carries minimally-cleaned water, and the small pipe carries water purified to human consumption standards. The lawn sprinkler system uses water straight out of the big pipe. For laundry and bathing, use a blend of, say, 70% from the big pipe and 30% from the small pipe.
It's kind of like how Sunoco stations used to sell about six different grades of gasoline. There were only two tanks in the ground, and the pump mixed the top-shelf stuff with the base stuff to achieve the desired octane.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Is this the same thing he was talking about 6 years ago? Where's the news?
1) Buy crap eating machine
2) Produce crappy electricity
3) Get people to buy your crappy electricity for their rented light bulbs
(sub-plan: rent out light bulbs)
4) PROFIT !!!!!111eleven
Funny sigs make your Karma go down.
TFA says, "The Slingshot works by taking in contaminated water - even raw sewage -- and separating out the clean water by vaporizing it." If it vaporizes the water, couldn't it also be used to desalinate seawater? That would be a boon for poor dry coastal villages, like in Baja California.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If he can make one of those cheap generators run on feline poo, I'm buying one! My cat craps more than any living thing I've ever seen. And judging by the near-nuclear potency of whatever comes out of that cat's ass, I'd say I should be able to power my house for quite a while!
Reaching out to poor rural villages where 2/3rds of humanity lives is an admirable goal.
I've been reading that micro-loans, (micro-banks, micro- capitalism) is having a revolutionary effect in some of these villages too. The concept is to lend a small amount of money e.g. $50 to $200 to someone who would could not save that much money beforehand or a bank would find too much trouble to deal with. With that small amount of money the borrower buys some device like a peddle sewing machine, an irrigation pump, a kiln, etc. and improves their business. Early results are the entreupeneurs improve their incomes by an order magnitude. And the loan default rate is no worse than for a middle-class urban borrower. These micro-loans are really growing the rural economies where they are availble.
...for a stealth bomber strike, or a cruise missile salvo, it would be Mugabe and his henchmen. One day when they are all hanging out at the palace, WHAMO! end of those turkeys. Why the hell we thought saddam was a bad guy and needed "regime" change and he doesn't is beyond me, he makes saddam look like a boy scout. At least saddam paid attention to the economy and unlike all the other muslim nations was letting women get some power and kept the fundy mulim mullahs in check. You can SEE what happens when you go overboard on "punishing" the successful, and the SAME thing is going to happen to South Africa, just watch, it's already started and for the most part the western media and the communist-leaning left PLAIN IGNORES IT. They got what they wanted and it failed, so now they want to do it again.
I don't know what it is over there, but they consistently prove they can't self govern worth a crap. The west goes "OK, too politically incorrect, we must sanction these white folks in rhodesia and let the blacks take over". We did it, the blacks took over after a war, POOF, instant economic disaster, went from net food exporter to now they need "western aid", their total economy is completely borked, they even are driving out and murdering any successful blacks, YET, the UN and the west are more or less ignoring it. Probably because what they did is so EMBARASSING once you see the results of political correctness run wild in the face of logic and observational data. Why do they even get a seat in the UN? There isn't a single UN resolution concerning human rights that isn't blatantly violated there-where is the sanction, the condemnation, the "peace keeping" force to go in there and wipe out those murdering retards? Even so called "hero" Mandela supports Mugabe. What's up with that?
It won't matter, in the long run China will take over there on that continent, because they are both ruthless and long range planners, and wipe out most of the people and use the resources for their own purposes. I *sincerely* wish there was something actually good the west could do for the african folks in general,I would like to see all peoples and cultures do well, I am in no manner any sort of racist, but comes a time you just got to use a little tough love and let people fail at their own speed until it gets sorted out. There just isn't anything practical left to do. the best help we could be would be to just ignore them, stop either taking resources or providing aid, embargo the entire continent or something. Any more aid over there is money down a rat hole. Africa is an incredibly RICH continent, it has everything, yet they can't hack it in the modern world, not even close, very generally speaking. I don't know why this is, but it "is". You have a few pockets here and there of something approximating civilization and at least half assed government, that leaves 99% of the continent still in the stone age, and it is NOT all "the white man's fault".
Storage of seawater desalinated by fusion power.
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in an election.
Biosand Filter.
Cost - about thirty bucks.
Technology - rudimentary.
Efficiency - "Overall, these studies have shown that the Biosand filter removes:
More than 90% of fecal coliform; 100% of protozoa and helminths; 50-90% of organic and inorganic toxicants; 95-99% of zinc, copper, cadmium and lead; 67% of iron and manganese; 47% of arsenic; all suspended sediments" (So it's not going to help with that arsenic-tainted water in India.)
IMO, there is no better filtration system. Cheap, low-tech, highly effective against the most common pathogens -- why should we be using anything else?!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The EPA won't let you burn stuff in your back yard.
I wish you'd convince my neighbors of that so they stop burning their leaves each Fall...
That is some nasty smoke for a person with asthma (me) to inhale.
And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns.
Well, there you go. Is there still a small patch of scrappy woods on the edge of the village? Now you can burn it down in order to experience Brittney Spears and other exciting forms of entertainment from the west on your villages' satellite TV.
You're joking, right? I live in Africa, so maybe it's a little closer to home, but just Tuberculosis and Malaria kill more people than HIV/AIDS (over 3 million per year). (And yes, these are by and large curable.) Ebola? Marburg? Come on, those may make the news in the West, but deaths from those number only in the hundreds.
More people die of TB or Malaria every hour than have died from Ebola and Marburg in total. God knows why the focus of Western media is so incredibly distorted.
If everyone would hitchike, we wouldn't need cars anymore.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
OT...I dump turtleshit-laden pondwater on part of my yard, and the plants there have exploded with lush growth. My friends joke that I should bottle and sell it.
I'm gonna need more turtles.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Mazda seems to have solved the problem with the rotor gaskets in their Wankel engines just fine.
I must object. While you're statements are absolutely true, they are misleading. Every industrialized country has, in fact, raped its environment in order to succeed. Now, when third world nations want to rape their environments to succeed, suddenly the first world is critical, leading to the understandable anger from the 3rd world about hypocracy.
Unfortunately, though, this practice is not sustainable. Simply put, there are just too many people in the world for all of them to have the current first world status. The environment of the earth just can't sustain it.
The trouble is, third world people want a first world lifestyle, and denying them this lifestyle while millions of people have it is also not a morally correct action.
This is an impending global crisis, especially as populations continue to rise.
As I see it, the only way we as a planet can survive is through population planning with things like birth control, coupled with concerted efforts to increase the standard of living of everybody on the planet. Without controlling population, there aren't enough resources, and without equality, there is no peace.
This is part of the reason that I get so angry at US politicians who are trying to outlaw birth control (ie, condoms) in Africa. Only with controlled population (including in first world nations) can we as a species survive.
That much water from an air conditioner seems reasonable. Here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation: 80 deg. F / 80% humidity = 28mBar H2O = 2.8 molar percent = 3.1-3.2 mass % = ~32g/m^3. Assuming 12hr/day and 12m^3/min as would be reasonable for the system described below, that is ~275 liters equivalent total moisture. Trapping 50 liters per day (18%) seems doable for a third-world setup, and 100 l or more for a 24-hr/day western AC is totally believable.
Dessicant-based solar air-conditioners can be quite cheap if the automatic machinery is mostly replaced with human labor. Drying out the dessicant requres "solar collectors" that are just reasonably sealed flat black containers which might even be made out of plastic sheeting. The exhaust flows over a shaded earthen/ dirty-water-evaporative heatsink covered with glazed tiles, for instance, and you get distilled water. The electricity use is only what's needed for the fans, and even that is lower than the fan use in a typical western air-conditioner. The parts are pretty simple:
plastic sheeting (consumable yearly) - $25
40lb. sack of silica gel (indefinite life) ~$75
fans, 25W each - 2 x $50
50W Solar collector - $200
Locally-produced tile - $100
Misc. - $100
So a ballpark estimate of $600 in hard costs, (~$1000 principal plus interest microloan over 7.5 years = ~$11/mo) plus about $3/mo maintenance = ~ $14 / mo. Let's say I'm being optimistic and say it's actually $18/mo.
Even for a famly of 5 living on $150/mo. (~$1/day ea.) that is affordable, considering the health benefits of air-conditioning and clean water. I'm sure a properly-engineered design could work within that kind of budget.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I don't think many people realized what the Segway was supposed to do. It was meant for longer distances in populated areas. So instead of being stuck in traffic, you could get places at a slow and steady pace quicker than you could via car. I really believe when most people saw the Segway, they thought it was invented by a man too lazy to walk. The fact that they didn't try and counter this thought was why it failed or is failing.
I agree that he has mad skillz, but he needs better insight on how to explain his inventions better.
Hey, you can't underestimate the value of good roads. The Romans knew it, and anyone who has used the miracle that is the American highway system (or the abortion that is the Canadian highway system) knows it too.
There's this thing called "efficiency" and this other thing: "economies of scale". Not to mention "closed cycles" and "ignoring important issues".
People in the power business have been thinking about these issues for many decades now. Lone inventors hardly ever do.
If you want to get a kilowatt of electricity, here's two ways:
(1) Put a kilo of dried cow dung into a small Stirling engine/generator. You'll get a kilowatt for X minutes per cow flop. (2) Put a kilo of dried cow dung into a large heat engine/generator, preferably anything but a Stirling. You'll get a kilowatt for X*Y minutes per cow flop. Where Y is the increased efficiency of a good heat engine.
The value of Y is arguable, but probably between 2 and 20. Stirling engines are not noted for their efficiency. To say the very least.
Looked at another way, the Stirling engine is going to require 2 to 20 times more cow flops, not to mention operating staff, people or vehicles to bring in cow flops from the surrounding area, etc.
That's why we don't already do this in the developed areas, it's not cost efficient to have anything smaller than a HUGE, well-designed, well-maintained, pollution-controlled generating station. HUGE as in many megawatts, enough for a whole village.
And there's the whole issue of cow flops. You and I probably think they cost nothing. Wrongo. They're already being used for cooking fuel and heating fuel. Every cow-flop that goes into a Stirling engine is one less cow-flop for cooking dinner. The fuel is *not* free. Same with other energy sources-- they're already being used way beyond the sustainable level. There are places where women already walk 30 km a day just to get firewood to cook dinner. We don't need another inefficient drain on scarce resources.
This backyard-burner thing is just going to deforest and pollute and smell up the world. No thanks.
Affluence breeds democracy, and democracy preserves affluence. A quick look at the history of the US should demonstrate that to you.
Mmmmm ... whale blubber ... fuel (and lunch) choice of the Gods. Got blubber?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Population increases are only temporary. The birthrate will always decline once the standard of living improves. Population explosions are usually confined to the places and times where health and affluence increase quite suddenly -- such Canada and the US at the end of World War 2, Europe during the industrial revolution, India right now. After a few decades, people adapt and the birth rate plummets until it reaches a level appropriate to the low mortality rates and long life-spans that affluence brings with it.
You know, as I was posting that I was going crazy trying to remember what they actually used. I looked up metal pipes & plastic pipes, but I knew I was still missing something.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
". As a bonus, you can literally do it with 2 coconuts and a banana leaf."
HOW?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
How bout ya stop making those Segways with the toxic batteries.
it's just reprinted on CNN/Money
from the article: "By Erick Schonfeld, Business 2.0 Magazine editor-at-large"
I used to subscribe to the print edition of Business 2.0, last century.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Does no-one research problems before they try to solve them? There have already been better cheaper solutions that are working in the field, uch as this project that I've visited. Here's the kicker: these only cost $100 apiece, they cannot breakdown and they last virtually forever.
http://www.addyourlight.org/project_biosand.htm
We used to use it in Army purification tanks, when we set up fresh water supplies for troops, and it traps everything and filters out most contaminants, even the microscopic ones.
Most "high-tech solutions" actually use it, they just repackage it, give it a fancy name and brand, and make you think it's better than what actually is doing all the work.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This has always been the trouble with Stirling engines. They seem simple until you actually try to make one that outputs a usable amount of power at some reasonable efficiency that doesn't cost a fortune. Many people have tried over the centuries, but so far it's always been a matter of picking which two of the three goals you want to fulfill. Dean Kamen has a nontrivial challenge ahead in trying for the Sterling hat-trick.
Don Lancaster's Blatant Opportunist #32
Wikipedia - Problems with Stirling Engines:
U.S. Patents:
6,862,883 Kamen, et al. Regenerator for a Stirling engine
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Years ago, long before the Segway, I saw a TV show about Kamen where he touted his water purification system. Are they still trying to perfect it? How long does it take to produce it?
01/20/09
What's so innovative about burning something to generate power? We should all think this one through first. Clean water, yes, and good for you Dean. Power generation from combustion, NO! Any power generation 'solution' that involves combustion, no mater what the fuel, is not innovation or solution, resulting in the accelerated demise of those who are supposed to benefit.
to help their suffering masses??
Whats the point of India, Bangladesh and other such hellholes having engineering schools and a democracy then??
Are they just stupid as the IQ tests reveal, or is there a serious flaw in their character?
he should have put the engineering and marketing into something like the electric Xootr.
17 mph and ~20lbs, now that was a scooter!
human-powered, only purifies as much water as needed: LifeStraw
So when can they install this thing in my De Lorean?
Tesla's problem was that he talked about his work - released early and often - and unscrupulous business rivals used this against him with those ideas that didn't work out to be as good as originally expected or took his ideas as their own.
AFAIK Mazda's engine still burns far more lubricant than a piston engine and has never been commercially viable for genuine mass production. The dead giveaway is that no-one is building bread and butter Wankel engines; they remain overpriced toys for posers. Hardly a role model for Third World engineering.
Pining for the fjords
Stirling engines make sense in some limited applications where their ability to utilize any source of heat can be an advantage. The most promising use (but a market of onesies, twosies) is power for spacecraft heading for outer space. Currently, a chunk of plutonium provides heat to thermoelectric generators with maybe 8% efficiency. A very durable Stirling could do the job with more than 20% efficiency. The regenerator is, of course, a key component. NASA Glenn Research Center has been funding regenerator research and recent tests show that an etched stainless steel foil regenerator produced an outstanding figure of merit based on heat transfer and pressure drop. Flexure-mounted pistons with non-contact clearance seals offer extremely long life for the mechanism. Stirlings have a place in the world, albeit a small one.
You have to be kidding me! I was not trolling. Do you moderators even have a clue? This, like many other posts after this, was a joke. Come on. Do I need to break it down for you to understand? Stuff powered by cow manure A.K.A Bullshit! Lighten up.
Do what is right and let the consequence follow
Am I the only one who remembers an article in Wired magazine of a hand operated water purification system? It was in an article about that, and some very basic illustrated books/phamplets to help rural villages with crop planting, and how to irrigate it? I think it talked about an easy to make irrigation system too. Also discussed how to inform them of the basic value of their goods, and to try and set up a basic economic guideline to go by. Sorry, only remember vague info on it, and can't find it when searching wired.com Point is, hasn't this been done before, what is so revolutionary about his purifier other than it's a good idea?