Slashdot Mirror
Rubber Boots Charge Your Phone
andylim writes "UK wireless provider Orange and renewable energy experts GotWind have come up with a prototype pair of power-generating rubber boots. Inside the power-generating soles of the boots are thermoelectric modules constructed of pairs of p-type and n-type semiconductor materials forming thermocouples, which are connected electrically to form an array of multiple thermocouples (thermopile). They are then sandwiched between two thin ceramic wafers. When the heat from the foot is applied on the top side of the ceramic wafer and cold is applied on the opposite side, from the cold of the ground, electricity is generated."
Now you can look goofy AND charge your phone all at once!
Periodically someone will come out with one of these "Clothing that generates electricity" (usually based on kinetic energy, in this case on body heat) inventions and the press will briefly cover it as a novelty item, then forget it. The clothing product in question will always be expensive, uncomfortable, prone to break and malfunction, and unable to generate enough electricity to be of any practical use. People either don't buy it at all or stop buying it the second the newspaper story fades from view. They stop buying it for the same reason that I ditched my "generator powered" light on my bicycle when I was a kid (you remember, the one that attached to the tire and used its kinetic energy to power the bike's headlight)--because it doesn't work worth a damn.
I just hope those much-touted wind turbines that are all the rage now work a lot better than my old bike light at converting kinetic energy to electrical.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The term for this type of electricity generation is the Seebeck effect. Typically a very small voltage is generated per pn junction, so many hundreds of junctions are placed in series to generate a significant voltage.
It'll cool your feet in the winter when it works at its best and in the summer the difference between warm sidewalks and the inside of the boot will not generate any electricity. This means that when you don't mind to wear it, it does not work. When it works, it causes so much discomfort that you choose not to... Mmm.
!
Boots that don't keep my feet warm because they depend on heat flowing across a thermocouple as quickly as possible to produce electricity? That sounds great! I'll take two.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So pathetic. This is not a way to generate electricity, but to destroy it.
You see those "p-n" junctions did not appear out of thin air-- they're the result of using scads of electricity to heat silicon to the melting point, extract it into perfect crystals, then slice it, anneal it again in an electric furnace, then more hours at 1200C to diffuse in minute amounts of p and n dopants, then more electricity to slice, dice, solder, and cement these into usable devices.
And in the end you have some very expensive, in both dollars and energy used, heat to microamps of electricity converters. And you can easily compute exactly how much electricity you get back given say a 10 degree temperature difference between the warm and slightly less warm sides. It's miniscule. Microwatts per square centimeter. Even if you wore these for 10,000 hours, you're nowhere near making back the amount of electricity, not to mention the $$$, it cost to make these things.
Add these with your nylon socks and underwear and wearable solarpower packs and you'll never need to juice up again. Screw wierding modules, just point your hip mounted crotch sock and fry the enemy with your static charge. Maaaau'dii*ZAAAAP*$%%"£..