Slashdot Mirror
World's Oldest Nobel Prize Winner Is Working On Light 'Concentrators' That May Give Everyone Clean, Cheap Energy (businessinsider.com)
Iwastheone shares a report from Business Insider: Arthur Ashkin, the world's oldest Nobel Prize winner, [...] has turned the bottom floor of his house into a kind of laboratory where he's developing a solar-energy-harnessing device. Ashkin's new invention uses geometry to capture and funnel light. Essentially, it relies on reflective concentrator tubes that intensify solar reflections, which could make existing solar panels more efficient or perhaps even replace them altogether with something cheaper and simpler. The tubes are "dirt cheap," Ashkin says -- they cost just pennies to create -- which is why he thinks they "will save the world." He's even got his eye on a second Nobel Prize.
Ashkin's lifelong fascination with light has already saved countless lives. He shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics for his role in inventing a tiny object-levitating technology called optical tweezers, which is essentially a powerful laser beam that can "catch very small things," as Ashkin describes it. Optical tweezers can hold and stretch DNA, thereby helping us probe some of the biggest mysteries of life. [...] Ashkin has already filed the necessary patent paperwork (he holds at least 47 patents to date) for his new invention, but said he isn't ready to share photos of the concentrators with the public just yet. Soon, he hopes to publish his results in the journal Science.
Ashkin's lifelong fascination with light has already saved countless lives. He shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics for his role in inventing a tiny object-levitating technology called optical tweezers, which is essentially a powerful laser beam that can "catch very small things," as Ashkin describes it. Optical tweezers can hold and stretch DNA, thereby helping us probe some of the biggest mysteries of life. [...] Ashkin has already filed the necessary patent paperwork (he holds at least 47 patents to date) for his new invention, but said he isn't ready to share photos of the concentrators with the public just yet. Soon, he hopes to publish his results in the journal Science.
you still need to capture light from a large area to get more power.
So it has to work, right?
TFS says he's filed the patent paperwork, not that he's been granted the patent. Let's wait for that process, and maybe the published results in Science before we rush to judgement. But you are correct in that this is kind of a non-story until then.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
If the patent doesn't tell the story, then it should never have been granted. If he has a patent, then what's the number?
It says he filed the paperwork. It doesn't say the patent has been granted. Presumably he wants to keep it under wraps until he actually has the patent in hand which is reasonable.
Normal PV cells are more efficient the cooler they are, though attempts at water cooling them have given disappointing levels of improvement. They also run pretty hot without concentrators, anything more than 2-3x concentration is going to be difficult and probably seriously life shortening. What would be useful is an omnidirectional concentrator with no moving parts, either capturing light longer across the day or for something robust like solar steam generation.
I don't have much use for thermal generation in my climate, PV at least struggles on during low light conditions and a concentrator could help.
Still, others have tried so maybe there's something here. But it smells off.
It could be this:
https://patents.google.com/pat...
But if it is, it was filed in 2011 and granted in 2015 so it isn't exactly new. I don't know why he can't show us photos if he's been working on it since before 2011.
you still need to capture light from a large area to get more power.
See, even though I have a Nobel in physics, I come here to Slashdot so that I can be schooled by web programmers and app developers and middle managers on what I need to do.
It's too bad Slashdot doesn't have a larger audience because of all you could solve all the World's problems in just a few posts.
I hope that's not it. The thing in that patent looks like a decidedly bulky concentrator that actually needs a mechanism to track the sun. And concentrators which funnel light from a large area into a small one aren't that useful for PV panels: you're better off putting more panels in the area taken up by the concentrator, plus concentrating light onto panels will heat them up and reduce their efficiency.
Now if it's something that makes PV panels more or less omnidirectional, he could be on to something. But modern panels already do quite well on that score, IIRC they lose only around 15-20% of output when the sun is 45 degrees away from the optimal angle, on properly positioned panels.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yep. Sounds more like some nerdy cousin of the "Vanity Fair" made a home story about the oldest nobel prize laureate during which he mentioned that he is still working on something useful and NOT like someone came forward claiming the next cold fusion breakthrough (revealed to be a scam later)
bickerdyke
When you are lost the light may guide you, or maybe not. Still many will follow only to be disappointed in the end but was fun while the suspense lasts.
Assuming it's in any way similar, you can already see the problems with transportation. On the plus side, maybe it's somewhat cheaper per capacity by virtue of being a passive optical system. Perhaps it could even justify using better PV cells to improve efficiency. On the minus side, a replacement of a single flat panel will occupy the volume of a hundred of flat panels, with several dozen times the output even if the "reflector box" somehow produced twice as much as a single panel (for example, by using multiple junction cells). Such issues impacting the economy of PV solutions seem to be often neglected by inventors of similar concentrating solutions.
Ezekiel 23:20
everybody is looking for technological salvation... the only clean energy is to simply use less... Gaviotas in Colombia was already working on clever ways to harness energy. http://www.friendsofgaviotas.o...
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Some reading for you.
As you already have a mountain of comments stating the paperwork is done for the patent but it hasn't gotten back yet, however for inventions that are simple and cheap to make, often means they are also really easy to copy. He is working out of his basement, a simple picture, could mean a large corporation can get the idea and mass produce them without completed paperwork. And facing one man against a big corporation in general means he lost a lot of research.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have been under the impression that the problem with solar as a power source wasn't the collection or direction of light but the conversion process itself, no? If that is the case, how do intensifiers or collectors help with this? Efficiency gains in collection are only going to be incremental and not Nobel Prize worthy paradigm shifts, right? The real prize is in conversion. Correct my thinking here.
One possibility is increasing density. PV installations take up a lot of space. Commercial operators don't want to do things like put them up high and build things under them because it increases and complicates maintenance. Residential operators probably don't keep them at optimal efficiency because they fail to get on the roof and clean them etc.
If a cheap system was designed that allowed collecting the light over a smaller area and then delivering it to PV cells that could for instance be stacked...There might be some gains to be had. You could gather light more efficiently ( in terms of sq ft ) with a round lenses and project it on to flat cells. Without really knowing anything, I'd be skeptical of the cost/payback but its possible there is something to this along these lines.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Perhaps, but could he not then turn around and sue them (that is, not simply try and sue, but have a just case to *win* such a suit) once the patent was actually granted?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Low light conditions and concentrators are generally opposed to each other in photovoltaics, since concentrators cope very badly with diffuse light. Using brain therefore means rejecting concentrators if you're dealing with low light conditions.
Ezekiel 23:20
Solyndra failed because of a piss poor business model, not because China subsidized cheap pv panels. Other markets must also contend with cheap imports from China, and do just fine. Remember that Solyndra was also heavily subsidized from the US government.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Even if he is granted a patent, that's no indication that it works as well as he hopes that it does. A patent is just an indication that he's created a novel invention. Nothing about a patent says that novel invention is actually useful. People get patents for cat litter boxes, they're nothing special in and of themselves.
>attempts at water cooling them have given disappointing levels of improvement
Perhaps so - but that picture might look much better when it comes to keeping them cool and damage free when used with a concentrator. Your water cooling system can also be capturing a lot more energy than the PV cells themselves, if you have a use for heat.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Quite a few things already, including one sufficiently novel that they gave him a Nobel Prize in Physics for it?
The fact that he thinks what he's working on now may be worth a second one may be somewhat wishful thinking on his part, but we can't properly judge the work's value until we see the patents - assuming we know enough physics to UNDERSTAND them.
Is this anything like building a panel with hundreds of tiny magnifying glasses on it so that it is cheaper to build? The energy for every square inch of panel is focused into tiny areas that can more cheaply convert the concentrated solar energy into electrical energy. In other words, today it costs X dollars to build a panel with Y sq. ft. that produces Z watts peak. With this technology you can build the same Y and Z for a cheaper X? Or you can build a bigger Y and Z for the same X?
Yes, but let's look at the details. It takes around 10k USD in patent attorney fees to file the simplest of patents, 30-100k is more typical. Trying to do them yourself is a recipe for disaster as you broadcast your ideas without substantial protections. Patent attorneys are so expansive because they need a law degree and typically have a degree in the field they are writing the patent for, so in this case physics or engineering. After your 65k initial investment, if your idea or product becomes popular, many companies will start to copy it which is where defending your IP comes in. It's first to file so he may either be a reason other patents are denied or can start sending cease and desist letters to any offenders.
Contrary to popular belief, patent law cases are far less about being right or wrong than simply using superior legal firepower to overwhelm your opponent. A small company sending a cease and desist to another small company may bleed them into stopping, this won't work against large companies. Against a company like Apple, Samsung, or a university with a law college you will massively lose 98% of the time unless you have similar resources to fight. A good patent challenge starts at around 500k and can easily climb past tens of millions USD in fees you keep needing to pay up front. This overwhelms any small company or inventor and they are cooked. That's why most small companies and inventors simply skip the patent and try to stay on top with nimble innovation (a competitive advantage for the small entity) and through obscurity. The system is really broken.
So you can't admit that you said "It's easier to land on Mars than Melbourne, Australia" now?
I can't admit saying something I never said.
25-30 years is not the "least" in terms of replacement windows for existing cheap panels.
So if something built thirty years ago with the expectation of lasting maybe ten years actually lasted over twenty years, the same but improved thing manufactured today with the expectation of lasting twenty five years will actually last *less*? Sorry. You don't know what you're blathering about, again.
Ezekiel 23:20
Damn, you stole my snarky comment.
There's something seriously wrong with your thought processes when you jump to the conclusion that a recent Nobel prize winner is a scam artist despite his not seeking investors yet, simply because he doesn't want to show the general public photos of his project until his prototype reaches a point he's satisfied with.
It'd be like letting the client install an early internal alpha of a software project. You'll get lots of useless feedback about things you were going to change anyway and bugs you already knew about, and it'd only slow down your progress.
Will this invention save the world? Probably not. That doesn't mean it doesn't work.
This space intentionally left blank
Back in the early days, when Arco was running the test farm for what I think were the first for-the-general-market solar panels (the famous "Arco Panels" of early Renewable Energy hobbiests of the day), one of the things they tried was concentrators.
I think the idea was to see of they could get away with half the area of (then very expensive) single-crystal cells - and was tested with the same prototype panels with the concentrator . The concentrator sat on the top of of the panel and focused the light that would have hit a whole cell into a square in the center of it, of about half the area.
The result convinced them that they were ahead to just use more then-very-expensive panels. With modern dirt-cheap high-efficiency panels, I'd expect the economics would be even more weighted toward the just-panels solution. So this guy has a steeper hill to climb.
One problem with a concentrator is that raising the insolation also raises the heating. Solar panels get less efficient as it gets hotter. So doubling or tripling the light hitting it does NOT double or triple the power. But it DOES increase any degradation of the cells.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
One problem with a concentrator is that raising the insolation also raises the heating. Solar panels get less efficient as it gets hotter. So doubling or tripling the light hitting it does NOT double or triple the power. But it DOES increase any degradation of the cells.
On the other hand, one of the degradations Arco panels had was a sun-induced darkening of the adhesive between the cells and the glass. The concentrators increased this, too - cutting the already short lifetime in half. This might have been the key driver for the no-concentrators decision. (A better adhesive that didn't discolor over decades was one of the first improvements in solar panels.)
Still, you can do the concentrator thing, at least with panels that track the seasons, with two slanted flat mirrors, and I haven't seen that for decades.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Posting to cancel an erroneous moderation. I hate clicky touchpads...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Why would he have to pay up front? If he would be in the right, a lawyer would probably jump at the chance to be paid on commission, as long as the payoff was big enough.
If a big company makes millions trying to use his patent pending system, once the patent comes in, he can sue them for all of that. Yeah, probably nearly half would have to go to his lawyers but he'd still be ahead of the game in the end.
Plus, that big company would have done all of the hard work of getting his product out there and recognized for him, so he wouldn't have to be starting from scratch once he got the patent approved.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If a cheap system was designed that allowed collecting the light over a smaller area and then delivering it to PV cells that could for instance be stacked.
...then it would be a solar diffuser, and it would generate even less power for even more money.
Ezekiel 23:20
That means installation large enough to power the average home (10399 kWh/yr / 8766 hours/yr = 1186 Watts) is about 1866 W / 25.5 W/m^2 = 73 m^2 or a 12.8 kW system (55 m^2 in the desert Southwest, 9.7 kW). Although that's based on an average - you'll have a shortage of power in winter, so will probably need an even bigger PV installation to get you off the grid year-round.
That quantity of PV panels costs several tens of thousands of dollars. On the other hand, a reflector/concentrator that size can be made for a few tens of dollars. Though the added bulk will increase the mounting and maintenance costs. So you can see where the guy in TFA is going with this. (I left out cost of mounting and voltage regulation circuitry since I figured it'd be about the same for both cases.)
The other option is to just allow plants/algae to collect solar energy. They use it to convert sunlight, CO2, and H2O into sugar, starches (sugar molecules glued together), and wood (starch molecules glued together). You can then use those as fuel. The efficiency is much lower (around 1% or less). But plants grow and reproduce on their own, so manufacturing cost is zero (negative in cases like weeds where we're actively trying to prevent the plants from growing). You only have to pay for harvesting and processing. Human global energy consumption is about 170,000 TWh per year, which at 8766 hours/yr is 19.4 TW. The rate at which energy is stored chemically by photosynthesis worldwide is estimated to be several hundred TW.
Damn it! I knew I should have filed sooner
Being able to replace solar panels with something that is both cleaner and simpler is an extraordinary achievement, but extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
Scientific integrity demands skepticism, and using the fact that he has won a Nobel Prize already to give the claim any further merit than it would be due if it came from someone who was unknown is nothing more than an appeal to authority.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I know this guy has a Nobel in physics and I don't, but I've spent a really long time in the solar business, mostly in R&D but also on the financial side, and even have some direct experience with concentrators. This article is mostly puff, but still something about the guy's claims seem off to me.
It would be easy to say, "yeah, the guy's got a Nobel, but he's 96 years old," and write it off to some sort of senility or dementia. The article does not give me the feeling that's what's happening.
It would also be easy to say that the idea of concentrating light for solar energy has been around for a long time and assume that he can't possibly have an original idea on the topic. I can't say whether he really has an original idea, but I can say that if it simply collects direct sunlight from a large area and focuses it onto a small area, it doesn't matter if the reflectors and/or lenses can be made for free, the economics probably will not pan out (and at the very least, it will not be the clear-cut universal solution to cheap energy that he seems to think he has). If it does something new -- collect both direct and diffuse light and focus it on a small area, or shift wavelengths so the light that reaches the solar cell can be used more efficiently -- then maybe he's on to something. Simple, non-concentrating solar using flat-plate panels is already so cheap, though, that I'm not sure that even that will bring a clear-cut economic case, especially if the reflectors can't handle things like heavy wind or snow.
Which brings me to my final thought: I suspect this guy is working with an outdated version of solar economics in his head and simply doesn't understand the current market. He clearly knows his stuff as a physicist, so unless he is senile this seems like the most likely scenario to me. I won't rule out that he has some revolutionary idea, but even if he does, the economic impact it can have is limited simply because the costs he can cut are already low. There's a certain way in which this reminds me of article I read where somebody invents a near-perfect antireflection coating and thinks they're going to revolutionize solar cells, which already have such a low reflectance that there is little to be gained there, especially if the new technology is not essentially free.
If it were simply a better magnifying glass, he would not be claiming to have applied for a patent, but a better magnifying glass is not what is extraordinary, what is extraordinary is a cheaper, simpler, and efficient method of harnessing solar energy.
If you lack the ability to be skeptical of this claim simply by virtue of the fact that he happens to be a Nobel Prize winner, you are simply appealing to authority for your reasoning.
Authority is not always wrong, but it is a very far cry from what scientific integrity demands, which is skepticism.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It permits further development without disclosure which might enable competitors to beat you to the punch.
If he's smart enough to win a Nobel he might be smart enough to do a risk/benefit analysis.
https://www.heerlaw.com/benefi...
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
My first thought when reading this was, "if this was possible, than somebody else would probably already have done it." Then it occurred to me that people like Arthur Ashkin are the "somebody else" who probably would come up with it. If anyone is likely to come up with a revolutionary improvement on photovoltaic technology, it would be a nobel prize winning scientist specialized in light manipulation.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
And again, you resort to referring to his past scientific accomplishments to give credibility to his current claim, or to my own lack of such scientific achievements in an attempt to discredit the veracity of what I am saying.
How can you not see that you are simply appealing to authority?
As I said... the incredible claim is a "simpler, cheaper, and efficient solar collector". This breaks the general rule where you can have fast (simple), cheap, and good but can only pick any two. Getting all three in one package is certainly not physically impossible, but it sure as hell is extraordinary, and on that basis alone is worthy of at least some skepticism.
Maybe he's on to something, but it's not unreasonable to be cautious of simply assuming veracity when it has been pointed out above why there may be legitimate reasons to not simply take this kind of claim on faith, regardless of the man's prior accomplishments.
Of course you are welcome to take the man's claims on faith if you so desire.... some of us prefer to not jump to such conclusions at this point.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Old guy attempts to remain relevant in modern age by working on a solar concentrator, makes premature promises of unlimited green energy. Fails to mention the vast space required for his possible future invention to fulfill his premature promises.