Solving the World Energy Problem
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Did you know that if you fart constantly for 6 years and 9 months, you’ll create as much energy as an atomic bomb?
If only you created a fart capturing widget, you would become a multi zillionaire (Ha!)
The point I’m trying to make with this silly useless fart fact?
The energy problem has never been: scarcity of energy. We have energy in abundance*! The problem is: controlling the energy’s usage. At the lowest cost possible. Lets look at some of the possible solutions to this problem.
* In one hour, more solar energy hits earth than is used by our entire population in one year!
Perpetual Motion / Energy Machines
Only a handful of people know this. One of the things that interests me a lot is perpetual motion/energy machines! In fact, some years back, I’d even tried to create a perpetual motion machine of my own using magnets. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out.
Shouldn’t the magnets’ constant attraction force make the wheels go round-and-round?
Most perpetual motion widget ideas surround around using magnets or gravity. The idea behind perpetual motion machines is not to create energy out of nowhere. But to create a mechanism that doesn’t stop ever. Can’t we leverage the energy forces that never cease - for our benefit?
Sure we can. In fact, it’s already been done too!
1. The Cox Clock
Its 1760 and James Cox has made a grandfather clock that never has to be wound. Its an awesome breakthrough! Is it the world’s first perpetual motion machine?
James Cox sincerely thought that he had created a perpetual motion machine and his clock worked without energy! Of course, he was only half right. His clock was perpetual. But it did require energy.
The clock worked on a perpetual source of energy!
How did the clock work? It worked because of the difference between the day temperature and the night temperature! As the temperature changes, the barometer in the clock drives a ratchet mechanism. Which keeps the clock wounded and in motion!
2. Refrigeration Using Noise Energy
If the difference in temperature can create energy (as in the Cox clock), can energy create difference in temperature too? Thats the question professor Orest Symko asked himself. And came up with an ingenious solution! He has managed to use the noise energy for refrigeration!
a_?The beauty of this is that you have heat that is so disorderly and you have sound which is orderly and one frequencya_? - Symko explains.
One of the many uses of this new technology? It’ll be added to all the computer devices. As your computer functions, it heats up. Symko’s technology will convert this heat into sound waves. And then re-convert the sound to produce cooling! In effect, the computers will cool themselves and thus become much more efficient!
Read more at: The temperature of sound
3. Solar Vending Machines
Solar energy is being used since a long time now. But its always been very expensive to use it. Yet, because many governments provide subsidies, many people have installed solar panels on their roof tops.
SEV (Solar Energy Vending) also used solar panels on vending machines. So that vending machines can be installed anywhere - on top of hills, in golf courses etc. To make these solar panels affordable, SEV came up with an idea: display advertising on the vending machines too!
Solar Vending Machine
4. Solar Windows
But the coolest news regarding solar energy has been the research done by Professor Vivian Alberts. He has gone a long way in reducing the price of solar panels!
Instead of using expensive silicon, the solar panels use cheap customized glass! (Glass is made out of sand.) Pretty soon, we’ll see all the windows being made out of solar energy powering glass! The windows of all the houses and buildings will help generate its electrical energy!
5. Perpetual Windmills
When solar energy has seen such tremendous advances, can wind energy be left behind?
Norsk Hydro has plans to create floating wind turbines in seas!
Wind Turbines in Water
By installing wind turbines in water, its prices can be reduced drastically (and its almost always windy over the waters). And other benefits include: birds won’t interfere with these wind turbines!
Another idea that has come forward is converting express ways into wind farms! By installing wind turbines over the passing cars, the wind energy generated by the movement of cars can be used to generate electricity! This idea doesn’t look too cost effective though.
Expressways = Wind farms
6. Windbelts
But perhaps the most interesting advancement in using wind to solve our energy problems comes from Shawn Fraye. Shawn proposes using of thin membranes instead of huge turbines to generate electricity out of wind. Let the wind vibrate belts. And at the two ends of the belt - attach magnets that oscillate between metal coils as the belt vibrates - creating electricity.
This windbelts technology brings the cost of using wind energy down enormously! And makes it possible to use wind energy in household devices like radios!
7. Leveraging Bacteria to Produce Ethanol (and Energy)
Professor Pengchen Fu is using cyano-bacteria to produce ethanol from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide! This ethanol can then be burned cleanly to produce energy, water and carbon dioxide!
Cylinders containing bacteria that create ethanol
Its a cool idea for a renewable source of energy. And there are plans to construct kiloliter tanks that create a lot of ethanol everyday!
Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Misc on 15 Oct 2007
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