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Power, Water and Refrigeration in One Box
Roland Piquepaille writes "Engineers at the University of Florida have developed and built a system that can provide power, water and refrigeration from a single unit. This project, funded by the U.S. Army, will lead to units small enough to fit inside a military jet or a large truck. The prototype system is already more efficient than conventional turbines. And it is also environmentally friendly because it can use traditional fossil fuels as well as biomass-produced fuels or hydrogen and releases only small amounts of pollutants. This kind of system could be used as a mobile unit in case of hurricanes or wars. But it might also be connected to the normal power grid in fixed locations."
Here is a link to a picture of the device and a professor who I assume worked on it (or at least took credit for it).
I think the idea here is medical supplies that need to be refrigerated -- blood, perishible medication, etc. There is more to keep cool in a rescue operation than just food. Besides, the cooling mechanism was included to increase the effeciency of the turbines. The ability to have refridgeration or to generate water were nice bonuses since the original idea was to save fuel when generating energy.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
Trademark only applies to competing products. If i created a drink and called it Powerade that would be bad as it woudl confuse customers. a mobile unit that provides these things wont exactly be competing with an energy drink.
Dean Kamen's stirling generator is more interesting. It produces potable water, unlike the DoD monstrosity, and can also run on any fuel. Several of them could fit in a pickup truck, which strikes me as an advantage in disaster relief situations. The air-conditioning feature of the DoD turbines is interesting, but electricity = A/C, so it's not a big deal.
And it is also environmentally friendly because it can use traditional fossil fuels as well as biomass-produced fuels or hydrogen and releases only small amounts of pollutants.
People say that that's "friendly," but, really, it's friendlier. You have to get the hydrogen, which generally means investing energy into its production, so, hydrogen is only as friendly as the means of production. Biomass is probably biodiesel in this case, which also releases pollutants, but makes less CO2 when burned.
Even so, it sounds like a rather nice unit, and, yes, it is friendlier.