Microgenerators Coming Soon to Electronics Near You

fygment writes "A new microgenerator developed at Georgia Tech can now produce enough power to run a small electronic device, like a cell phone, and may soon be able to power a laptop. The microgenerator is about 10 millimeters wide, or about the size of a dime. When coupled with a similarly sized gas-fueled microturbine (or jet) engine, the system, called a microengine, has the potential to deliver more energy and last 10 times longer than a conventional battery. This is still just a quarter of the problem. A turbine is still being developed to turn the generator and that will require fuel and storage of some kind."

No thanks.

[davidbrit2 (775091)]

Yes, what a great idea, let's INCREASE our dependency on fossil fuels for powering our portable electronics.

And the hot exhaust from the turbine would feel absolutely lovely against one's leg while being carried in a pocket.

Somehow I don't see this miniature jet engine concept really "taking off" (hur hur).

Re:No thanks.

[beders (245558)]

Yeah, becuase the electricity in your batteries comes from tickling flowers and my laptop is ice cold

Re:No thanks.

[Chess_the_cat (653159)]

No, the electricity in your batteries most likely came from burning coal. But I'd rather burn American coal than buy Arab oil.

Re:No thanks.

[stephenbooth (172227)]

There's a good chance that's Chinese coal you're burning.

I'd be most interested in these generators if they ran on vegetable oil. Large areas of South America (especially Brasil) have been using vegetable oil as a major fuel source (especially in the automotive arena) for some time. I'd rather plant sunflowers or corn than drill oil wells.

Stephen

Re:No thanks.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Oil doesn't depend on fossil fuels. It's just currently the cheapest source. It should bequite easy to use vegetable based oil, and the great thing about that is that you can even use old stuff that's already been used for cooking if you want to filter the crap out.

Re:No thanks.

[InternationalCow (681980)]

Well, you can probably just run it on ordinary lighter fluid or other combustibles. It doesn't need to be fossil fuel you know. And your current batteries are charged with electricity generated using fossil fuel, or nuclear. I think the real advantage here will be size and weight. If the turbine problem is solved it might be possible to have many of those mini generators in one small package, generating as much power as a big battery. And, refueling is faster than recharging. For mobile use it's also much e

Re:No thanks.

[john.r.strohm (586791)]

Dude, lighter fluid is a combination of various light hydrocarbons, most probably produced from natural gas.

It *IS* fossil fuel.

There are other processes for making the hydrocarbons, but they require a LOT more energy input than refining natural gas.

And natural gas is too damn' valuable as a chemical process feedstock to waste it in a fricking fire!

Re:No thanks.

[TykeClone (668449)]

One for the case, one for me. Two for the case, two for me...

Mmmmm - ethanol.

Re:No thanks.

[Sai Babu (827212)]

Who says the turbine has to be powered by fossil fuel? It could be a hydro turbine with penstock attached to your dick. Or perhaps methane powered with a hose stuffed in your ass. Vegans are known for producing copious quantities of methane [counterpoint-music.com].

.Other methane sources include your composting latrine [mtu.edu], port to cows stomach [nyud.net], and even composting of dead cats [amazon.com]

.

Re:No thanks.

[Murphy Murph (833008)]

And the hot exhaust from the turbine would feel absolutely lovely against one's leg while being carried in a pocket

On your fears of hot exhaust:

My cell phone = 3.6v battery @ 850 mah.
That is 3.06 watt hours.
If I talk non-stop on my phone it takes two hours to kill the battery.
That's 1.53 watts consumed at FULL usage.
1.53 watt hours = 1,316 calories.
That's enough heat to raise 1.3 Liters of water one stinkin' degree - over the course of one hour.
I'm willing to be your thigh contains more than 1.3 Liters of water.

Assume 33% efficiency and you still don't have much to fear.

Re:No thanks.

[dnnrly (120163)]

More than likely these microgenerators will be powered by methanol. It's easy to produce, well understood, and easy to handle. All this makes it CHEAP! Since methanol will come from specially grown crops, so in some respects it can be regarded as CARBON NEUTRAL. In other words, it won't contribute any more CO2 to the atmosphere than was taken out to produce it.

Factoring in the other energy used to produce the crop (such as powering tractors, transporting it etc) can be quite complicated and will no doubt slightly offset the advantages but overall I seem to recall that it isn't a bad trade off.

Re:No thanks.

[Hognoxious (631665)]

"A turbine is still being developed to turn the generator and that will require fuel and storage of some kind"

[Sigh]
Do I have to all the thinking round here? Just turn the turbine with an electric motor running off a battery.

Steam?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the age of steam powered laptops!

Virtually everything is "steam" powered!

[laetus (45131)]

Shows how much you know about modern power. Almost all of our electrical power sans wind generated, dammed or solar, are "steam" powered as you say.

A nuclear plant is nothing but a fancy way of boiling water to turn, you guessed it, steam turbines to generate electricity. Same with gas and oil-fired power plants.

Size

[by Anonymous Coward]

The microgenerator is about 10 millimeters wide

Or "one centimeter" as we say in English.

Re:Size

[DrSkwid (118965)]

or 0.01 meters as we say in science

Re:Size

[RasendeRutje (829555)]

Nope:
10 mm = within the range of 9.5000 to 10.499999 mm 1 cm = within the range of 0.5000 to 1.49999 cm

Re:Size

[by Anonymous Coward]

No, that is not a joke. The unit size here is specifying the precision.

mm = + or - 0.5 mm
cm = + or - 0.5 cm

The other way to do it is with significant figures.
10.0 cm would be (ostensibly) the same thing as
10mm.

Re:Size

[Tim C (15259)]

Or "centimetre" as we say in England.

Re:Size

[Cybertect (85900)]

"one centimetre" as we say in England

A meter is a device you use for measuring things.

A metre is a measurement of distance :)

metremeter, metermetre, metermeter, metremetre

[Rares Marian (83629)]

A metremeter is device for measuring things that are 1 metre long. It has only two numbers 0 and 10 marked at opposite ends.

A metermetre is a metre within the precision (and accuracy) of the meter that was used to measure the metre.

A metermeter is a device used to measure meters in units unknown.

A metremetre is a square with area of 1 metre in length on each side. A metremetremetre would be used for cubes.

Thank you.

Already slashdotted.

[amigoro (761348)]

Already slashdotted.
The Cache of the magazine [66.102.7.104]

The cache of the gatech site [google.com]

pointless?

[zing22 (787912)]

Surely, if it's a generator running off a turbine running off another fuel, surely it's just a whole big waste of energy in a small space? My science skills are not what they used to be but I don't see why this is great?

Enlighten me please!

Re:pointless?

[TykeClone (668449)]

Refill instead of recharge - same argument that goes against electric cars can be made here as well.

This explains those new Energizer commercials....

[Eric Giguere (42863)]

You know, the one where the guy is chasing his MP3 player down the street. I didn't realize that they were turbine Energizer batteries. Duh!

Eric
See your HTTP headers here [ericgiguere.com]

Don't drop it

[shiba_mac (415267)]

I can see MP3 players of the future becoming like cars in the movies. Drop it, and watch the spectacular explosion as all the fuel goes up.

Re:Don't drop it

[AndroidCat (229562)]

Just the thing when the RIAA comes a-calling.

Now you might be asking yourself: Did he play five hours of music or six? .."

what's next?

[rollx (830963)]

The next thing will be a private nuclear reactor.

Google Cache for broken microturbine link

[DaneelGiskard (222145)]

click [google.at]

Forget powering laptops

[Realistic_Dragon (655151)]

What I want to know is can I use this to build my mouse a gocart. At last he will no longer live in the shadow of that bastard speedy gonzales!

It's the size of a dime...

[by Anonymous Coward]

....and is a "quarter" of the problem. Hahahaha. That's some funny shit.

The big pix cached...

[Sai Babu (827212)]

Ga Tech /.ed? seemedawfully slow. So, here's the big JPEG cached.

tdh42134.jpg [nyud.net]

Thermoelectric generators...

[mikael (484)]

A while back, there was an article about how implants could be powered using body heat [obgyn.net] by using the thermoelectric effect (heat causes electrons to move, which creates current). Wouldn't it be possible to do the same thing with the heat coming off a computer system, especially the CPU and GPU?

Re:Thermoelectric generators...

[john.r.strohm (586791)]

Yes, it would, but you'd get into some pretty hairy heat transfer problems moving the heat to your generator. (By the way, the word is "cogeneration" and the big companies who have to run big thermal generators for other reasons do it all the time, and sell the power back to the local utility, or use it themselves.)

It was easier in the old days, when computers were a lot bigger. Commercial Information Corporation of Woburn MA used to heat their building in winter with the waste heat from their Xerox Sigm

The perfect "turbine" is...

[bshroyer (21524)]

A turbine is still being developed to turn the generator and that will require fuel and storage of some kind.

Think outside the box. You've got a 10mm generator, but no way to turn it...

Hamsters! They're cheap and portable. They're a renewable resource. They generate very little excess heat. Their fuel source is available almost anywhere, is non-toxic, and doesn't explode.

Just picture it, the whole world over, millions of laptops, and on top of each screen a hamster in a cage. This is the face of technological improvement.

Re:The perfect "turbine" is...

[otuz (85014)]

Microturbines, on the other hand won't crap all over the place.

Related Article

[DosBubba (766897)]

Jet Engine on a Chip [slashdot.org]

1/Thermal efficiency means 3X hotter laptops

[G4from128k (686170)]

Given the nasty realities of thermal efficiencies, I doubt this thing can be more that 33% efficient. That means that the device will run 3 times warmer than current battery-operated versions. Given the behavior of most modern-day laptops, that will be far too hot.

Of course, the invention will work very well with better designed hardware and software. Anyone who thinks they need more than 500 MHz processor for most applications (and more than 50 MHz for basic office applications) is either playing games or using bloatware.

The beginnings of distributed power?

[vudufixit (581911)]

Fuel cells, increasingly efficient solar, modular, small scale (pebble bed) nuclear reactors - I'm seeing the beginning of the end of the conventional power grid.
One of the advantages of decentralization is you no longer have big juicy targets for terrorists - who'd attack a neighborhood-size solar station or fuel cell stack? And if they did, the damage would be limited in scope.

More Links to Slashdot

[otuz (85014)]

Here are links to more articles:

Space Daily [spacedaily.com]
GaTech [gatech.edu]
A Student's description [gatech.edu]

Tech Specs

[otuz (85014)]

Consumers, industry, and the military are all demanding smaller power supplies for smaller and more pervasive electronic devices. Researchers at the National University of Singapore and California State Polytechnic University (Pomona) recently developed a microgenerator to meet these needs. As long as hydrogen and air are fed into it, the 1-cm3 device generates 4.5 W.

Previous proposals for microgenerators attempted to scale down existing generator designs, but their moving parts made them difficult to manufacture. The team's proposal dispenses with moving parts entirely. The new design radiates heat obtained from hydrogen combustion. A selective emitter focuses the radiation into a small range of wavelengths, and a photovoltaic converter subsequently turns the radiation into electricity.

A hamster in a wheel?

[Maljin Jolt (746064)]

Or perhaps a micro steam engine could be used till the turbine one is fully developed...

Just imagine:

>dmesg
cdrecord: cannot burn dvd,code=72,reason=coal buffer empty
ACPI: hamster in sleep mode on CPU3, processor offline
kernel panic: /dev/hda water tank overflow occurs, fsck recommended

Re:A hamster in a wheel?

[NtroP (649992)]

kernel panic: /dev/hda water tank overflow occurs, fsck recommended

Wouldn't that be

/dev/h2o

?

Tiny Engines

[pvg (152136)]

While genetically engineered microscopic hamsters may be some years away, research into tiny internal combustion engines that could drive such a generator is definitely being done. The work of the Berkeley Combustion Processes Lab was in the news a couple of years ago when they showed some prototypes. The stuff can be seen in some detail at http://www.me.berkeley.edu/mrcl/ [berkeley.edu]

self-winding?

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

Since these generators are so much more efficient than batteries, and so small, why not hook them to an electrolyzer, storing the energy as hydrogen, in pancake-sized cells with gyros to spin them? Human motion can be captured for all our devices. Not only will we power devices without foreign oil, but Americans will have a reason to get off our asses and exercise - desperately needed by the most battery-hungry demographics.

This WARNING label on gaming notebooks recommends:

[flowerp (512865)]

To power the new Radeon Mobility X800 graphics card, your laptop will enable the afterburner. This will inject kerosene into the exhaust jet to provide additional power to the generator. Please keep the laptop away from combustible materials for your own safety. During operation, you should wear noise protection earmuffs and keep a fire extinguisher handy. Turbine blades must be inspected by your closest General Electric Turbines facility each 10,000 hours of operation. Only use unleaded JET A1 fuel. DANGER: Avoid jet blast! Do not obstruct the air intake or data loss may occur.

Why not mini-Stirling engines?

[cratos (795425)]

Shouldn't these engineers be concentrating on building a miniature Stirling engine instead? The processor itself could provide most of the heat for the engine. Also, this would make the whole system a lot more efficient. Instead of generating more wasted energy in the form of heat, the heat from the processor would be recovered and turned into more electricity.

Re:Why not mini-Stirling engines?

[TheHawke (237817)]

I like this idea.. The CPU would need a kickstart from a battery pack to start work, then as the BTUs rise, the cycle would change over and the Stirling would pick up the load, charging the "starter" batteries, and providing power.

Quite efficient, Stirlings.. The Aussies are using two to drive a unmanned station down in Antarctica. Pricey tho.. 10,000 AU$ each for a pair of 1500w units.

Re:Metric system 101

[rufus t firefly (35399)]

10 millimeters are roughly equivallent to 1 centimer, or 1% of a meter.

And 12 inches are roughly equivalent to 1 foot.

Re:The Law of Scale

[calidoscope (312571)]

It can't all be bad. Electronic miniturisation seems to be mostly okay so why not mechanical?

While I'd quibble with the OP's numbers, the general thrust is correct - efficiency does take a big dive when a combustion engine is scaled down. Gas turbines are more affected by scaling than reciprocating engines - the smallest model aircraft engines are on the order of 0.2cc and the largest diesel engines have several cubic meter displacement per cylinder.

The OP had mixed up flow regimes - the microturbines wo