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Ambient Energy LED lighting contest!

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ShawnLG

Thu Mar 01 2007, 03:43AM

Registered Member #286 Joined: Mon Mar 06 2006, 04:52AM
Location:
Posts: 399

I have one more project to submit before the end of contest. If not posted by tomorrow noon then I did not get it working.

Thu Mar 01 2007, 02:00PM

Banned on April 7, 2007
Registered Member #277 Joined: Fri Mar 03 2006, 10:15AM
Location: Florida
Posts: 157

With regard to lighting LEDS and more, this morning I saw a TV commerical announcing a documentary. Looks like the Science Channel (channel 206 where I live) has a soon-to-air program which includes using 'junked cars' from the scrap piles to help run everything from LEDs, lights, and our future hydrogen cars. CM

ShawnLG

Thu Mar 01 2007, 04:06PM

Registered Member #286 Joined: Mon Mar 06 2006, 04:52AM
Location:
Posts: 399

"With regard to lighting LEDS and more, this morning I saw a TV commerical announcing a documentary. Looks like the Science Channel (channel 206 where I live) has a soon-to-air program which includes using 'junked cars' from the scrap piles to produce hydrogen to run everything from LEDs, lights, and our future hydrogen cars. Those guys must be completely insane! CM"

I have already seen it. It is on episode 3 of Future Car on the science channel. They talked about the various fuels cars of the future may run on. I have posted this some were before. They would take the plastics from the car and break them down into an oil that can be used as a fuel. The way I see it that there is not enuff plasics in a car to make up one tank of fuel. I do not see why they even bother unless their main purpose was to recycle junked cars for environmental reasons.

Thu Mar 01 2007, 04:28PM

Banned on April 7, 2007
Registered Member #277 Joined: Fri Mar 03 2006, 10:15AM
Location: Florida
Posts: 157

Shawn:

Hmmm... I agree with you... since they are only using the plastics from the junked cars, seems not so exciting to me. Thanks for the info.

This contest has re-energized my interest in earth batteries, not because I think they are 'the' solution, but because I wonder just how much V/amps a few buried junked cars would produce and for how long. The conservative side of me is fighting the curious side of me concerning burying a few junk cars in the same field that my ion antenna is located, just to see.

Coyote Wilde

Thu Mar 01 2007, 05:09PM

Registered Member #175 Joined: Tue Feb 14 2006, 09:32PM
Location: Sudbury, ON
Posts: 111

How much energy from junked cars rusting in the ground?
Answer: not near so much as it took to refine from ores to begin with. Damn that second law of thermodynamics!
You're better off recycling the cars, and then society can use the energy you just saved it on the (very energy-intensive) refinement process to charge the battery banks on some future cars. Or better yet, busses-- even better, trams, that can run direct of the electricity and not lose more than 60 of the power involved to the damn fuel cell cycle.
Yeah, battery banks. Not hydrogen. There are some established limits on how efficiently you can crack H2O, and when you get down to it... hydrogen is not as efficient a storgage medium as a battery for the electrical-chemical-electrical energy conversion. The new "nanosafe" li-ion batteries (as used by Pheonix Motorcars in California) are looking pretty seriously awesome. Top speed governatored to highway norms, 250mi on a charge, 10 minute charges... seats 8?
Okay, that's WAY OT, and I appologize. Point is that turning good metal into ores is really not an energy-efficient use of it.
The idea of the contest is to harness wasted energy; not waste energy and harness it.

I notice nobody tried a bio-electric fuel cell. I would have, but in a residence room probably smaller than CM's wife's closet bottles of swamp water and poo just lose their appeal. I don't think I even have a lose LED here, either. I hate being 400 klicks from the lab

I could even harness the methane produced and burn the foul-smelling offput for a Sterling. Or just burn it direct for gas lighting, and party like it's 1899.

Avalanche

Thu Mar 01 2007, 06:04PM

Registered Member #103 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:16PM
Location: Derby, UK
Posts: 845

Here's something quite 'cool' I saw today at a show I went to with work.

Ok it isn't lighting an LED, but this is basically just a heatpump with a very high COP rating. The pipes on that globe thing were covered in ice, and a few meters away was a boiling hot radiator, with just a few hundred watts going into the whole system. I think the COP was about 6 or 7, it was very impressive anyway. I suppose with an efficient enough thermoelectric generator it could run itself (omg omg) and light a few LEDs as well, but I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon!! It's the closest related thing I could find anyway, harnessing ambient energy (from an impressively small area) and putting it into use

There were quite a few other things there too, such as biomass kit and solar/pv systems, I might put some photos in the chatting area if I can be bothered.

Download

Mon Mar 05 2007, 09:11AM

Registered Member #561 Joined: Sat Mar 03 2007, 02:46AM
Location: Adelaide Australia
Posts: 230

ok
if you put 2 metalic things a microwave they create a voltage potential betwen them
so how about stray microwaves from MO?

Steve Conner

Mon Mar 05 2007, 10:18AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Someone already did stray microwaves a few pages back. Are we ready to start voting yet?

Marko

Mon Mar 05 2007, 12:31PM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145

Steve Conner wrote ...

Someone already did stray microwaves a few pages back. Are we ready to start voting yet?

Well, most things that appeared in this contest (including mine) are mostly quicky lashups and it's a bit hard to pick something out...

ShawnLG

Mon Mar 05 2007, 05:19PM

Registered Member #286 Joined: Mon Mar 06 2006, 04:52AM
Location:
Posts: 399

PIN power!

I can light up an LED using my collection of IR PIN diodes. They can put out around 250mV at a few uA in ambient light.

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