Slashdot Mirror
MIT Researchers Create New Tiny Energy Harvester
RogerRoast writes "Researchers at MIT have designed a device the size of a U.S. quarter that harvests energy from low-frequency vibrations, such as those that might be felt along a pipeline or bridge. The tiny energy harvester — known technically as a microelectromechanical system, or MEMS — picks up a wider range of vibrations than current designs, and is able to generate 100 times the power of devices of similar size."
But I fear that advances in vibrator technology will leave me at even more of a disadvantage.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
If only it could harness energy from first posts... The supply would be limitless!
Tiberium harvesters have been around since the first Command and Conquer. I hope someone claims prior art.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
MEMS actually refers to any microscopic-scale electromechanical device, such as microscopic motors or other such devices, and not specifically to the device described in TFA.
Finally, through the use of a hybrid regenerative powertrain, it might be possible to make Harleys as fast as other motorcycles! :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
... I wondered about that plastic device attached to the rear of my barstool.
I can just see it now, right in the middle of getting hot and heavy some dude sticks this up some girls ass and then says, "sorry honey, but letting all this energy go to waste would be a shame"
Great, I always have quarters jingling in my pocket. Now I can create energy, 'and' give my wife something else to whine about. Win-Win.
Build one of these into every vibrator sold and we won't need any other power source ever again.
call it whatever you want. the genocidal murder & mayhem campaigns are also being arbitrarily expanded by the holycostal chosen ones.
spies like us? no, some of them really do/are like us. just a job?
If these devices are harnessing energy from the vibrations, wouldn't they also act to dampen the vibrations as well? So if you hooked enough up to siphon off a noticeable amount of energy, you'd also be noticeably extending the life of the pipeline or bridge section in question.
"Designed" is so much more appropriate here than "invented." Cause these "energy harvesters" have been in watches for decades now.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Crib notes: what they have is a device that they claim generates 45 microwatts in the lab, from the same artificially efficient frequencies that they belittle other devices for relying on. They don't have a device that generates their target 100 microwatts, not even in the lab, not even at their ideal artificial frequencies.
So, short summary: they don't have a useful device, and they don't have anything beyond "plans" to make it work.
The only valid test is deployment. The only valid result is full functionality.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Michigan has been working on this very thing for a large government push to embed smarts into bridges. http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7585
So, is this another kinetic watch battery, basically?
I8-D
There is a fundamental relationship between the surface area and mass of the harvester and the maximum possible power output (assuming the vibration source has infinite mass for illustrative example). It will be many, many years before everyday *practical* applications will require little enough power to use one of these nanoamp devices effectively. Meantime, with A) applications that are highly optimized for limited harvester capability and B) harvesters highly optimized for the vibration source, systems can be built that "work" but in a limited fashion.
Now....if we could only harvest energy from the BUZZ this hype generates........
Quote from article and /. post: "...and is able to generate 100 times the power of devices of similar size."
My addition that explains the subject of this comment: "...but we won't bother to tell you what those devices are."
WHAT devices that are similar to "that" size "generate" power?
Why this didn't go in the summary I really don't know.
The recent trends in the industrial instrumentation world has been to go wireless for many applications. Currently the vast majority of them run on battery. Other options are external supply (so why would you go wireless), or local solar (which doesn't do very well in a dusty plant at all).
It would be pretty neat if the instrumentation on a plant can harvest their own energy. Certainly saves the maintenance nightmere of having hundreds of lithium batteries at $250 ea going flat on you.
This would be NEWS.... or is news, but not technology -- yet. Nearly the last sentence in the article states that it worked: at higher frequencies than are likely to be found and therefore useful at the vibrations available where MEMS devices normally would be used. In other words useful news that matters -- "once the lab techies make it work for real world conditions."
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Sure the power is low. But might be useful to add to a cellphone. This device provides some extra power. You'll still need a battery but would have to charge less.
Researchers at MIT have designed a device the size of a U.S. quarter that harvests energy from low-frequency vibrations
- it's been around for ages. Called 'clitoris', look it up.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm eating gassy foods to recharge my pacemaker.
Hell, I can perfectly imagine the satisfaction from yelling at the stupid cellphone that does not want to turn on, enough to give it enough power to complete a short call. Of course, it's bothering enough to listen to people shout to their devices as it is, it will be much worse when such devices actually have use for the vibrations.
I'm eating gassy foods to recharge my pacemaker.
For those of use who have no farkin clue to the size of a US quarter (which I gather is a coin? Top guggle search). 24.26 × 1.75mm.
If I could filter articles by editor, I would soon have nothing left to read. Awesome /. editing.
I've always thought it would be cool if you could somehow harvest the energy of tectonic plates in areas that experience seismic creep. That's where plates move without producing quakes. Imagine two anchor points and a fantastic reduction gear. Obviously there is no practical reduction gear to harvest the energy (however impressive) from two continents moving past at 1 cm per year.
OTOH, if you can harvest some energy from tremmors in areas that experience them on a regular basis that's cool. I suspect that putting solar on the roof of a building in LA is several orders of magnitude better in cost and energy production though.
If you scavenge energy from passing cars, etc; then you're really just using fossil fuels. I think the untapped energy of people doing workouts is more intriguing. When I pass a gym, I sometimes consider the possibility of hooking that equipment up to generators. It's still not free energy since those people have to eat; but at least it wouldn't be wasted energy anymore.
From the article it states "The researchers calculated that the device was able to generate 45 microwatts of power with just a single layer of PZT ". That indicates to me that they have yet to measure the output of the device. Considering the state of the art of simulations they may not even have built the actual device.
In the next paragraph they state "the MIT group will have to aim lower in the frequencies they pick up, since few vibrations in nature occur at the relatively high frequency ranges captured by the device." So as it stands it will not work in the real world. Why didn't they aim for real world frequencies first? Maybe they did and it didn't work. I love this statement; "This design allows the bandwidth to be larger, meaning the problem is, in principle, solved." I prefer problems to be in fact solved and not in principle. The target being 100 milliwatt is meaningless as well. They can have any target they want; it does not mean they will reach it.
Yet another preliminary research project that is mainly theoretical looking for funding.
... and somebody with the patent on mousetraps will probably send you a collections letter....
of near nothing is still... near nothing :). 45 *micro* watts.
Hmm...interesting stuff.