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Registered Member #2261
Joined: Mon Aug 03 2009, 01:19AM
Location: London, UK
Posts: 581
Kerosene Radio
Made in Moscow for use in rural areas, this all-wave radio is reportedly powered by the kerosene lamp hanging above it. A group of thermocouples is heated internally to 570 degrees by the flame. Fins cool the outside to about 90 degrees. The temperature differential generates enough current to operate the low-drain reciever. Regular listeners may want fur lined union suits, though: it works best in a room with open windows
And scroll down about half way here
Kerosene Lamp Powers Radio
REMOTE areas of Siberia and China use thermoelectric generators like the one shown here to convert heat from a kerosene lamp into electricity for radios.
The 20-lb. device is being studied by scientists at the Martin Co., Baltimore, Md., where similar direct conversion principles have been applied to nuclear heat sources. They paid $56 for the Russian-built device.
A series of thermocouples is arranged around the upper portion of the lamp. As each set of elements is heated at one end by the lamp, a small amount of electricity flows through the pair. Metallic fins remove the excess heat.
Registered Member #2463
Joined: Wed Nov 11 2009, 03:49AM
Location:
Posts: 1546
You could make a rain powered generator. Small scale paddle wheel or cup wheels turning a series of small generators made out of permanent magnet DC motors-(battery powered hand tools are a good source.) Calculate how much energy is in falling rain over an area.
Also consider if you overhaul the load (reverse the shaft torque) in an AC washing machine motor) you can make your electricity meter slow down or actually turn in reverse (feed the grid). These generators are known as induction generators and are used in industry to recover energy in certain situations.
Registered Member #162
Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3140
For "green" energy I have two 5W solar panels that will probably never pay for themselves but on eBay there are relatively cheap individual cells that I calculated could pay for themselves in c3 years. I use them to recharge or 'float charge' VRLA batteries for a transceiver that I'm building, it's just that amateur radio is independant of communications infrastructure so I want it independant of the power infrastructure too.
Bio-mass seems the next easiest, either to ferment to alcohol or dry and burn.
Small wind turbines look practical.
For peltiers etc. a Freznel lens or a concave mirror/reflector (old satellite dish?) would up the power per unit.
How about a small turbine on the house water system so every time you use water you get electricity ?
Registered Member #1792
Joined: Fri Oct 31 2008, 08:12PM
Location: University of California
Posts: 527
One of the senior projects at my school this year was a thermoelectric generator. It was a big box with a fresnel lens focusing on a black absorber. Then absorber -> copper heat spreader -> thermoelectric device -> heat sink with fan.
The whole box was sun tracking, based on a lookup table of location and time of day. It would wake up every now and then for a quick reorienting. In full sunlight it supposedly produced about 2W above the power usage, since the reorienting circuitry spent most of its time asleep.
Registered Member #2422
Joined: Tue Oct 06 2009, 02:41AM
Location:
Posts: 85
This reminds me, I read a while back about satellites generating power by extending a long (like a few km) wire or loop of wire into space, but I can't find anything about it now because I can't remember what it's called.
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Power Generation Idea
