Chip Turns Waste Heat Back Into Useful Electrical Power; Promises to Significantly Extend Laptop Battery Life
August 11th, 2007I’m not even going to say it.
Via: Computing UK:
Eneco, a US-based chip development firm that claims to have developed a “solid state energy conversion/generation chip” capable of turning a proportion of heat energy directly into usable electricity, has claimed that it is in talks with both Dell and Apple about how the technology could be used in laptops and other devices.
Speaking at a presentation to potential investors in London, chief executive Dr Lew Brown said that the new chip is small, lightweight, quiet and capable of producing up to 20 amps of current. “It’ll suit any portable device and is also very scalable and long lived as there are no moving parts,” he added
He added that both Dell and Apple are interested in using the chip in their laptops to extract heat generated by microprocessors, convert it to electricity and use it to power cooling fans. Harnessing waste electricity in this manner could help improve battery life and enhance processor performance, according to Brown.
However, Brown admitted that the talks are at an early stage and that all parties are still investigating where the chip will sit on the motherboard. “We are talking to partners about what they need to do and what we need to do to get the first demonstration products built,” he said.
Is it just me or do most of these nifty new alt-energy technologies/devices seem to be “in the early stages” which most often seems to mean “we don’t have a prototype you can look at or examine but hey trust on this it works great and there’s lots of big companies who are interested. Just you wait and see.”
Color me skeptical… I’m still a believer in laws of thermodynamics, which state the maximum theoretical efficiency of a heat engine, which I think this qualifies for even if it doesn’t produce motion, is
Efficiency = T_hot – T_cold / T_hot
(where temperatures are in Kelvin). Plugging in a few numbers, I get a maximum recovery efficiency of something on the order of 5%. Stated another way, no free lunch. I think this is an investment scam.
Well, the company has MIT and DARPA on their side.
http://www.eneco.com
You dumbshits have uninformed opinions.
Runs in the Sun,
85% of DARPA’s projects never come to fruition. Occassionally they hit a homerun (the internet being the biggest one ever) but most of their stuff ends up in the junk pile.
I’d link up the mechanical elephant they worked up back in the 1970s but you can google yourself up a more informed opinion on your own.
Runs In the Sun,
Forgot to add: admit it, you got all excited over Steorn’s Orbo too, didn’t you?
The broken record nonsense of Mr Peak Oil. Does that lame Steorn argument help you sleep better at night?
ATTENTION: If the comments don’t add anything substantial / useful, I’m just going to delete them. This is ridiculous and boring.