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.'"

Comments

market to first world countries too!

[snooo53]

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.

Re:market to first world countries too!

[rossifer]

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.

Put together a long-lived 5kW "any liquid fuel" generator for $1500 right now. Use a Changfa 195 single-cylinder low speed diesel engine coupled to a 5kW ST generator. The motor and generator will run you about $1000 and you'll need couplers, adapters and to build a solid frame for mounting. This is much heavier than the typical Honda generator, but is less expensive, longer lasting (the Honda will last for about 600 hours, this should last for 20,000 to 50,000 hours between rebuilds), highly field maintainable, is quieter (1800 RPM one cylinder instead of 3600 RPM one or two cylinder), and runs on just about any fuel.

It ought to look a little like one of these rigs when you're done. You could also do a 10kW version using a bigger motor (1115) and generator head for about $2500.

Assuming we're still talking about farm use, plant cottonseed or rapeseed on 20 acres, buy a cheap oil press ($400, use the same motor and coupling to drive it) and run the genset on the oil. For even lower maintenance and possibly making a little money on the side (but more up front cost), make biodiesel from the oil first.

Regards,
Ross

Cow dung?

[PIPBoy3000]

The electric generator is powered by an easily-obtained local fuel: cow dung. Each machine continuously outputs a kilowatt of electricity.

The main advantage of cow dung is that it's considered "carbon neutral". Plus it's a relatively abundant resource in the communities they're talking about. I worry a little about pollution issues, as you likely get a lot of particulates in the air. Small power plants tend to pollute more per power generated than large, centralized ones. Economics of scale and all that.

That's a lot of cow dung!

['nother poster]

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.

Learn the subject matter

[NetRAVEN5000]

"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?"

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.

Re:Only three types of entrepreneur?

[NaruVonWilkins]

What's very interesting about village microloans is the extremely low rate of default. When you have a group of people involved in ensuring that a loan is repaid, especially in small matriarchal societies, you end up with as little as a 5% default rate.

The Segway was useless and overhyped.

[Valdrax]

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.

Not just high school

[Shag]

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. :)