Technology in Development to Recharge Gadget Batteries From Thin Air
- Posted on July 18, 2011 at 3:41pm by
Christopher Santarelli
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We all know how annoying it can be when the mobile technologies that fuel our lives run on empty. Computer scientists at Georgia Tech are now developing technology to power our PCs and iPhones through sunlight, heat, and wind. Boston Globe:
“And now computer scientists at Georgia Tech have invented something that sounds as if it came from the mind of Nikola Tesla. That’s because the prototype gadget, which works with an antenna and other components, made with nanoparticles of silver and other materials on an inkjet printer, can draw energy out of thin air.
The energy the Georgia Tech researchers, including professor Manos Tentzeris (above), are gathering comes from radio and television transmitters and cellphone and satellite networks.
So far, the device is able to gather enough juice to power small sensors and RFID tags. For example, the researchers last week said they had managed to gather enough energy from a TV station a half-kilometer away to power a small temperature sensor.”
The early technology is only expected to gather enough ambient-energy to power small sensors and chips, but researchers say it could supplement the juice gathered by solar cells.
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Lawlcat001
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 6:54pmLOOK INTO NIKOLA TESLA! THIS TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN AROUND FOR OVER 100 YEARS!
No, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but the gov’t is keeping this from us because TESLA STOOD FOR FREE-ENERGY!
Report Post »alexegz30
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 6:54pmThe ability to harness airborne power has been available since the invention of the radio. The issue has been with collecting it in the most efficient way possible. Even the home appliances we use are not 100% efficient. As a result, energy is wasted on a regular basis. It is good to have more advancements in what will someday be considered a “breakthrough”, while if it were to be presented today might still be looked at as some kind of magic trick.
http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_giler_demos_wireless_electricity.html
Report Post »TN_Techie
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 4:23pmAnd if we used the right frequency and created a single-purpose high-powered transmitter for this, Nicola Tesla’s dream will finally be realized. Good luck finding funding though, there is no way to make money off this.
Report Post »Wilkins
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 10:49pmNo one who‘s at all concerned about EMI from power lines and cell phones microwaving their brains should ever regret that we never went down Nicola Tesla’s path for broadcast power.
Report Post »Victor
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 5:04amHey! This is a great site – if I could see it all. Why on earth is it so cool to use greyscale fonts that are almost invisible. We are supposed to see the stuff to read it. Not all supporters are teenagers with night vision.
Report Post »Wilkins
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 10:52pmThose are the bits old people aren’t supposed to see. It’s supposed to be invisible to you. Please just ignore it.
Report Post »OhioRifleman
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 1:31pmMythbusters played with this one long ago. They strung a cable antenna (50′) to a DC transformer and measured the voltage they got from it. It came out to be something on the order of just barely enough to power a wristwatch. I can’t see this manner of power collection doing more than the MB power antenna at best.
Report Post »drphil69
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 1:52pm“…. it powered a small temperature sensor…”
I have a small temperature sensor, called a thermocouple, which requires no power at all…. in fact it produces a small voltage which is dependent on the temperature…
Report Post »JEANNIEMAC
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 12:54pmhttp://people.aapt.net.au/psychomerlin/ This site is one of many telling about Nikola Tesla’s invention of the radiant energy device. A list of all his patents can be found at wikipedia.org.
Report Post »Check out this site, and see his diagrams, etc.
scruffycat
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 11:26amRFID tags are already passive devices, meaning you ping them with a burst of RF, they recieve a small tiny portion of that ping with their flat spiral antennas, they rectify that ac RF into enough dc voltage and current to run a small cmos chip that when pinged, boots up and uses a bit more of that energy to retransmit out its serial number to a waiting reciever / decoder / inventory wand, whatever. which means that this concept of using a bit of RF flux to power a computing device has been in use for a good while now so what these researchers are doing is only interesting from the standpoint of having the idea of using an inkjet printer to print flat antennas on a piece of paper which i would imagine they connect to with alligator clips or similar. Tesla was fairly enamored with the demonstration of electrical devices and alternating current in particular, which is fortunate for us as it enabled efficient long-line power transmission as electrons dont have to make a complete loop around the circuit with AC as they do with DC and the losses due to magnetic fields generated around powerlines becomes far less with the RMS cycling currents as opposed to DC peak fields. but if you live in the near field of a powerful tv or radio station maybe this is some compensation as you detune their field and soak up some of their broadcast energy with your paper printed antenna :)
Report Post »jcannon98188
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 5:03amNikola Tesla was able to wirelessly transmit power during his lifetime. Why are we still “trying to figure out how to do this”. I think its a shame that these “scientists” haven’t figured it out yet.
Report Post »Hanno
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 8:33amNikola Tesla was an absolute genius. He was way ahead of his time. If he had been supported instead for used and abused, who knows where we would be today. Partially, Tesla’s eventual obscurity was of his own making. He believed that science was not political and that everyone would work together for the betterment of the project. Edison and the science community proved him wrong…everything is political unfortunately.
Report Post »TomFerrari
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 9:20amCorrect, Hanno.
It was politics that killed Tesla’s DC wireless transmission.
Imagine driving through the countryside without millions of steel giants holding up those wires?
Imagine driving through san francisco without trolley cars and streetcars requiring a web of wires overhead.
Okay, STRIKE THAT LAST EXAMPLE…
LOL
Instead, imagine not having wires strung to every appliance, lamp, and electronic device in your house.
Report Post »DrFrost
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 10:54amPeople are complaining that the small amount of power projected by cell phones could cause brain cancer. Do you really want megawatts of energy to be transmitted through your home? Also, transmitting power through the air is horribly inefficient. There’s just no way to recollect it all. And that’s just the start of the laundry list of problems involved. Tesla was a brilliant man (he gave us 3-phase power and the ac motor among other contributions) but, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that wireless power transmission was a good idea (except for microwave ovens).
Report Post »JEANNIEMAC
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 12:56pmhttp://people.aapt.net.au/psychomerlin/ Check out Tesla’s diagrams, etc. The full patent info is online. The US government forced the patent office to open all records to the world, enabling foreign governments to gain access to all of our best inventions.
Report Post »Jim
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 10:10pm@ Hanno: I’m glad to see someone else appreciates Mr. Tesla.
Report Post »TheGreyPiper
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 11:31pmHaving that kind of broadcast power would be on par with walking around in a lightning storm. Neat concept, but worse than impractical in application.
But hell yeah, if any of you remember building a crystal set radio from a kit, that’s all that is — a radio powered by the radio energy it receives.
Report Post »lylejk
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 2:52amI remember reading an article from Byte magazine in 1988 (or ws it 1989; yes, I’m getting old now; lol) about developement of tesla coils on a chip that could be used to power up laptops (yes, they had laptops then, but of course they were rinky-dink compared with what we have now; lol) and things like that. Haven’t heard a peep since then until I saw this article. Maybe they will actually implement this type of technology this time. :)
Report Post »MrObvious
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 7:21pmPower transmission tech is old news – and not very efficient.
Ambient em power, on it’s own, would be unrealistic for most locations and people. Just not enough em floating around to power stuff consistently.
Near IR Solar makes more sense long term. IR and Near IR are all around us all the time.
The inkjet printed circuit technology really seems to be maturing, and could be used for all kinds of cheap future tech.
Report Post »fixer
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 1:57amthink of the amount of electrical radiation going through your body all the time.no wonder cancer is growing.
Report Post »corbecket
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 2:02am“no wonder cancer is growing.”
Yuk. Yuk. Good one.
Had my brush with that “growing”, so I can make light of it. Never owned a cellphone at the time. It’s just a failure of the organism.
Report Post »rabblechat
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 8:33amGood point, that combined with all the chemicals we come in contact with everyday in food, cups food containers etc. Cancer has skyrocketed over the past 50-75 years.
Report Post »Docrow
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 1:04pm“Rates of death in the United States from all cancers for men and women continued to decline between 2003 and 2007, the most recent reporting period available, according to the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer. The report also finds that the overall rate of new cancer diagnoses for men and women combined decreased an average of slightly less than 1 percent per year for the same period.”
http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/2011/ReportNation2011Release
Report Post »lemmings4obama
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 1:20pmWhat the FDA doesn’t want you to know is that B17 found naturally in fruits (mostly the seeds of fruits) will seek and destroy cancer cells. http://www.ApricotsFromGod.com Read the story of this gentleman and see for yourself the warning letters from the FDA. Interesting anyways.
Report Post »OhioRifleman
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 1:28pmIf EMI radiation was a major progenitor of cancer, computer techs the world over would be dropping like flies. You wouldn’t believe how much radiation a computer puts out, especially if you have the side panel open to work on it. I ain‘t dead yet and I don’t have cancer, so…
Report Post »DrFrost
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 10:04am@ohiorifleman
UV radiation is the same type of radiation that computer equipment puts off, just at a different frequency. And there’s ample evidence that UV rays contribute to skin cancer. And higher frequency EM radiation exposure is also linked to higher cancer rates.
But I will agree with you that if low frequency AND low power EM radiation had a strong effect on cancer rates we should have noticed by now. This does not mean, however, that low frequency HIGH power EM radiation won’t increase your risk of cancer.
Report Post »Florida_Freedom_Fighter
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 12:48amVery Cool
Report Post »Rampart
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 12:53amNow if we could only find a way to harness the HOT AIR coming from the Demolikrat Party on this debt ceiling ruse…
Report Post »Dojo
Posted on July 19, 2011 at 11:37amIndeed. But didn’t Jack Bauer already use this technology? I’ve always wanted his cell phone battery!
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