Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: indy007 on February 09, 2007, 09:17:03 AM
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Neat stuff.
Engine on a chip (http://www.tfot.info/content/view/114/58/)
4mm & smaller turbine rotors powered by hydrogen. Possibly our next alternative power source?
Q: What sort of performance should we expect from the engine?
A: The best metric is energy per unit weight, about 120-150 w-hr/kg for current commercial Li-ion rechargeable batteries. We expect that 500-700 whr/kg can be accomplished in the near term, rising to 1200-1500 whr/kg in the longer term (for the engine and its fuel supply).
Q: Will the micro-engine be capable of refueling (and how will that be accomplished)?
A: Yes. It can readily be refueled. For example, as you do a lighter, or prepackaged fuel cartridges could be used. This is probably a commercial question.
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Not so much a power source as it a power storage method, you still need some sort of fuel to run 'em. They'll probably start with something like hydrogen because it's easiest to work with at that level from a technological perspective, but I'm hoping we'll see other fuels soon. An almost solid-state generator that has a fuel hopper with an enzyme-based culture living in it that breaks stuff down into something that can run the microturbines would be pretty sharp.
Shovel a bunch of grass clippings and coffee grounds in, ala Mr. Fusion, and away it goes. Maybe it doesn't produce kilowatts, but the mechanical simplicity plus the promise of being able to build these in mass quantity could have pretty big consequences down the road.
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Wow, very interesting stuff.
The future is going to be interesting.
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Originally posted by Chairboy
Not so much a power source as it a power storage method, you still need some sort of fuel to run 'em. They'll probably start with something like hydrogen because it's easiest to work with at that level from a technological perspective, but I'm hoping we'll see other fuels soon. An almost solid-state generator that has a fuel hopper with an enzyme-based culture living in it that breaks stuff down into something that can run the microturbines would be pretty sharp.
Shovel a bunch of grass clippings and coffee grounds in, ala Mr. Fusion, and away it goes. Maybe it doesn't produce kilowatts, but the mechanical simplicity plus the promise of being able to build these in mass quantity could have pretty big consequences down the road.
Don't see why not. Dow re-engineered E-Coli to eat fructose and excrete plastics... just needs more development to bring the production costs down on par with current methods of creating plastics. Definately has more possibilities behind it.
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Originally posted by indy007
Neat stuff.
Engine on a chip (http://www.tfot.info/content/view/114/58/)
4mm & smaller turbine rotors powered by hydrogen. Possibly our next alternative power source?
Hmm if you could use methane... we could develop POWER UNDIES!
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Plasma generators that burn waste to Energy built on barges to get round permit issues....................... ......