Using Air to Recharge Your Cell Phone 346
sanspeak writes "Now you do not have to look for a power outlet to charge your cell phones. Department of Industrial Design at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi have come up with a mobile turbine which generates around 3 to 4 watts of energy - sufficient to charge a mobile phone. It costs around $4, fits in your pocket and runs on air ;-). What else do you want ?"
You're going to WHAT?!?! (Score:5, Funny)
First impression of "in your pocket and runs on air" is this is charged by hydrocarbon emissions, i.e.
Logically followed by The device is best suited for coastal areas where the wind flows almost continuously.They must eat more lentils there...
"ahhhhh, go blow yer phone!"
Re:You're going to WHAT?!?! (Score:2, Interesting)
That said, I have some friends who could probably run their phone just with the volume and amount of time they spend talking into the darn thing
ACME Industries. (Score:5, Funny)
I have a hundred of these, mounted on the roof of my Prius. Next...
Re:You're going to WHAT?!?! (Score:5, Funny)
yeeeeeeehaw (Score:5, Funny)
The wind would blow, and then the battery would get really recharged. They could talk forever:
Sample conversation
Customer service: This is a Sprint customer service person, how may help you?
Cowboy Neal: I would like to order some pizza
?
Customer service: This is not a pizza place, this is Sprint Customer service
Cowboy Neal: Oh, sorry, I just pressed some random buttoms because my battery is really charged up.
Customer service: Oh you have one of those new air chargers, those are really cool
Neal: Yeah, I like them a lot.
Sprint customer service: Hey have you played Zelda: The wind waker?
Cow Boy Neal: I hear it is awesome.
Sprint person: Can you hear me now.
Cow Boy Neal: Yes.
Re:You're going to WHAT?!?! (Score:3)
Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
Hanging out your phone from a car, bus or (shock!) train is pretty dangerous stuff, maybe superman will find this thing handy.
I hope they haven't patented this technology yet, 'cos I'm rolling out my air-powered fan next month.
Re:Alternatives (Score:5, Funny)
Powered exclusively by
Re:Alternatives (Score:2)
Or, better yet, buy one of those cables... (Score:4, Informative)
Paul B.
RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Instead, they're expecting that typical environmental wind, especially that found on coasts, will work well enough. The idea is to ease communications access to areas without convenient electricity. (Mountain climbing, anyone?)
Re:RTFA (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Alternatives (Score:3, Interesting)
http://windupradio.com/ [windupradio.com]
Re:Alternatives (Score:3, Interesting)
Because I've used one of those, and they royally suck. The light is nearly worthless. I blame this on their reliance on an ultracapacitor rather than rechargeable batteries. Batteries would enable the use of more LEDs, making the light a lot more useful. Nothing wrong with Faraday induction, just that's a HORRID example of it.
Also, doing this in a fone would require substantial empty space and weight, neither of which seems to be all that
Blow or run really fast (Score:5, Interesting)
The device will help mobile phone users charge their phones while travelling in a bus, a car or a train. All they need to do is -- place the turbine against the wind flow.
In other words, hold it out the window. Can they get sued when people drop their phones, or lose an arm while holding it out the window?
Re:Blow or run really fast (Score:2)
You must be out of your mind.
Re:Blow or run really fast (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Blow or run really fast (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blow or run really fast (Score:2)
remember, this is designed in india, where windows are almost always open, or you are in an open rickshaw (enough wind!).
sticking your hand out there (in that case, anywhere in a car) is very dangerous, and i'm guessing no, you can't sue them.
Re:Blow or run really fast (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Blow or run really fast (Score:2, Funny)
Only if it's because you're riding with an evil driver who rolls up the window on you.
You've obviously not seen (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Blow or run really fast (Score:2, Insightful)
So if I need to charge my phone, I can drive my 12 MPG SUV around town and hang this turbine out the window?
Cool! That is such a leap forward.
Re:Blow or run really fast (Score:2)
It would be easier (and probably more efficient) just to plug the phone into the cigarette lighter adapter.
You'd be better off relying on weather-related wind (or just run really fast, thus powering your phone by biomass).
Re:Blow or run really fast (Score:3, Insightful)
You increase wind resistance quite a bit just by opening the window. In fact, it has been noted that you are actually better off using the A/C than opening the window, because opening the window decreases your fuel economy more than running the A/C.
Now, unless you have one of those 1980s cell phones that are roughly the size of a boombox of the same era, your cell phone uses less energy than your car A/C.
Frankly opening your window
No air indoors (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No air indoors (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No air indoors (Score:5, Funny)
Simply place a fan next to the turbine.
Re:No air indoors (Score:2, Funny)
Problem solved! (Score:2)
What else do you want? (Score:5, Funny)
I still prefer the alternator strapped to a cat with a slice of buttered toast strapped to its back.
Re:What else do you want? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What else do you want? (Score:5, Funny)
In your example you are using a non-traditional cat-buttered-toast model in which the cat is placed on top of the buttered toast in such a manner that the cat ends up with buttery paws. This model is not used for various reasons. Firstly, the difficulty of attaching toast to all four paws of the cat is at least an order of magnitude greater than simply attaching the toast to said cats back. Although various attempts at slicing the toast have overcome this difficulty, the amount of effort required is always greater than attaching the toast to the cat's back.
In any event, the results of the non-traditional model are usually the same as the classical. Our cat with buttery paws is dropped from a height and attempts to land on its feet, however the toast that is attached to its feed attempts to land buttered-side down.
Now, it should be noted that defenders of the classical scenario usually point out that the toast, relative to the cat, has already succeeded in landing buttered side down by the nature of it being attached to the cats paws. If the cat were to hit the ground while standing on the toast, it would be akin to someone steping on a slice of toast after it has already landed on the floor, buttered side down. Basically it would be irrelevant as the goal of the toast to attach its buttered side to a surface has already been acomplished.
So, although I used the traditional buttered-toast-on-cat model and the non-traditional models are at least partially flawed, I believe I made the correct decision in its use.
Re:What else do you want? (Score:3, Funny)
I tried this once on a cat at home (not one of my favorites, fortunately). The cat landed on it's feet at the same time that the bread landed buttered-side down, causing a small tear in space time that instantly pulled the cat, toast, butter container, miscellaneous dishes, the toaster, and 3/4ths of a city block into a parallel dimension where old adages aren't always true. I can't imagine the horror of trying to live in such a place!
Re:What else do you want? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What else do you want? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What else do you want? (Score:5, Funny)
Granted my experiment might have been more sound with better method of toast attachment, I do believe this proves that neither law can be violated. Were I to more securely attach the toast some other method of getting both the toast butter side down on the ground and the cat on its feet would present itself
Re:What else do you want? (Score:2, Funny)
I'm afraid that will infringe upon my hovercraft patent.
well, for one thing... (Score:5, Funny)
Does it run linux?
uhh... (Score:2, Funny)
Is that a turbine in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Re:uhh... (Score:5, Funny)
>
> Is that a turbine in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
From the Department of Industrial Design at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
I believe you meant to say "Please be telling me is in your pocket a turbine, or are you happy to be seeing me?"
Now, if you'll pleased to be pardoning me, I have another caller in my queue. Some woman named Paris Hilton needs to be blowing on my hard drive to reboot her Windows.
Re:uhh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Racism is telling people they can't drink from the same water fountains as other people, or refusing to sell a house to them based on their skin color, or herding them into gas chambers, or dragging them behind pickup trucks, or chanting "Death to all ABC" where ABC is the race of your choice.
Joking about an accent which, let's be honest here, can sometimes border on absolutely incomprehensible is possibly in bad taste but defin
Re:uhh... (Score:3, Informative)
(That was a joke. Laugh. Or don't, it wasn't all that funny, I won't feel hurt. But I have to say, I think you aren't laughing because I'm Jewish. Fucking anti-semite.)
What else do you want ? (Score:5, Funny)
--dave
compressed air (Score:5, Interesting)
In essence, the compressed air tank would be a battery (it would 'hold' the energy that was used to pump the compressed air in).
I don't know a lot of about high pressure tanks. Does anyone know if this would work at all? Would all the air come out too quick to make it worthwhile?
Re:compressed air (Score:5, Funny)
Re:compressed air (Score:3, Interesting)
-Jesse
Re:compressed air (Score:3, Interesting)
If it would work and provide enough energy, it would also be an environmentally friendly way to store energy for later use.
Kind of the same idea as pumping water into a tower and then later opening the tower at the bottom and using the flowing water to run a generator. In essence, the water tower is your battery, because it is storing e
Re:compressed air (Score:2)
So scale it up, even by a factor of 1000x. (Say the turbine is 3" across.) Now its 250ft tall.. you are generating 4000 watts. That will power about 2 houses, maybe 4 if they are all careful.
Now imagine the airtank to turn a 250ft turbine..
Doesn't scale very well.
Re:compressed air (Score:5, Informative)
There's also a compressed-air car [theaircar.com].
Re:compressed air (Score:2)
The weight issue isn't that much assuming the turbine is lightweight enough. Size is another issue; but carbon fiber wound air bottles can get 2500 PSI ratings fairly easily so it might be doable...
Re:compressed air (Score:2)
Re:compressed air: not efficient (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:compressed air (Score:3, Informative)
See more about energy density here [tinaja.com].
Personally I would think a hand squeezer device like this [thinkgeek.com] would be ideal. It's a very natural motion.
Compressed air IS useful if you need to deliver a lot of force at once, like with compressed air tools, or if you want to avoid using electrical devices for some reason.
What's next? (Score:4, Funny)
Also, I understand that Iran is currently importing plutonium from Russia in an attempt to make a personal, portable nuclear reactor capable of charging cell phones.
What else do I want? (Score:2)
But, (Score:5, Funny)
I can just imagine someone talking and their battery's about to die, and all the other person on the other end hears is "Wait, my phone is dying...hold on a sec *blowing sound* Ok, now where were we..*blowing sound*...Oh yes, about the *blowing sound*..."
Re:But, (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But, (Score:2)
Re:But, (Score:2)
air vs wind (Score:5, Interesting)
Essentially, the idea is to incorporate a windmill to power the phone.
Saying the phone is "Air" powered implys (to me, at least) that some chemical reaction is taking place using oxygen or nitrogen.
It is a cool idea, and the article implies that normal winds are sufficient to power the cell phone.
If the generator is small enough to actually be part of a cell phone, I'd think that scaling the design up might make economic sense for generating normal electric power. Unfortunately, there weren't any specifics, so it is tough to make any extrapolations.
Re:air vs wind (Score:2)
-Jesse
Re:air vs wind (Score:3, Interesting)
To me, Turbine means a multi stage fan, that uses compression of the 'Air'.. If I have to hold it out the window at 60mph to get it to work, its a damn pinwheel.
AUUUUUGH!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
NO IT IS NOT!!!!!! AUUGH!!!!
Okay, I'm sorry.. I just can't take it anymore. This is not an innovation by any stretch of the imagination (you say "portable turbine", I say "little windmill"). Second, the application and practicality are extremely limited. Let's look at the scenarios.
Scenario 1: You live someplace windy Supposing you take this turbine, stick out your window that receives good airflow in an area that has *continuous* wind (let's say you live in a lighthouse). Gi
Other good uses too (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Other good uses too (Score:2)
Re:Other good uses too (Score:2)
That is, quite possibly, the most naive statement I've ever seen. I'm guessing you don't have much experience with long-term relationships.
Ok then... (Score:4, Interesting)
The wind blows the large blades which causes air to flow through the smaller fans.
Of course you could probably put up walls of these things in windy areas and get the same results.
Any thoughts on this?
Re:Ok then... (Score:2)
Re:Ok then... (Score:2)
What this tells me that the manufacturers are idiots and we can improve it.
If we're not even close to producing one that is 59% efficient why wouldn't something like this help improve it. From my thinking it would help in several ways:
1) These turbines are designed for everyday use which means that they have to be cheap and replaceable as they die.
2) They produce 3 - 4 watts per device. This is not insignificant in larger numbers. How many rivets do you see on large buildings?
3) By br
Re:Ok then... (Score:2)
you need bigger wing span to generate more power, also the less complicated design, less maintenance time. With large number of small things... although they might be cheap enough not to care about that.
Re:Ok then... (Score:4, Informative)
Tell me why if this model produces 3 - 4 watts of energy why they can't cover the blades of larger windmills with these things or better yet design the blades so they have edge holes with these things inside.
There is no such thing as a free lunch (1st law of thermodynamics). The drag produced by the turbines extracting energy slows the speed of the windmill blades reducing the power delivered to the main generator so you gain nothing by adding those (more likely you will lose since the main generator is less efficient at slower speeds).
Coincidently, this is the same problem with charging the cell phone by clipping this device to the outside of the window while riding in a bus, train, or car. The vehicles engine needs to consume more energy to offset the drag produced by the turbine. Granted it is small compared to the amount of energy used to move the vehicle in the first place but it would be more energy efficient to connect the phone to the vehicles alternator than to convert the engines rotory motion to motion induced "wind flow" and then the wind flow back to rotary motion.
Now could you make a windmill with no main generator and use a large number of small turbines instead? Yes but it probably would not work well at all. In fact, it would probably work less well than just pointing the turbines into the wind which in turn would not work very well at all. The problem is a serious impedance mismatch. Turbines want high pressure/high airflow. A windmill blade tip will be travelling at a lower linear velocity than the air that turns it.
Incidently, power from wind is proporional to the cube of the wind velocity. Generators are inefficient at low speeds. Modern windmills adjust to different wind velocities by feathering the blades to try to run the generator at a relatively constant speed. In really high winds they turn the blades parallel to the airflow to avoid destroying the generator and gear train.
Note that since it was described as a turbine and not a "wind turbine" (which is normally a very different beast) and described it as fitting in a pocket, I am imagining a device with multiple disks with the edge shaped into blades inside a tube like you might find in a jet engine or gas fired power plant (every other disk is stationary or counter rotates to restore longitudinal airflow). A friend built an toilet paper roll cardboard tube sized device out of sheet metal in this topology that was demonstrated with the air from a shop vac that would be about the right size for a cell phone charger. If that is not the topology used., then some of what I have said will not apply but much of it still will.
Whatever turbine topology you use on your windmill blades, you are converting from wind to rotary motion twice and therefore are reducing the efficiency by around 60% compared to doing so once even if it is well designed and operating at optimal wind speed. And poor performance at low speeds will be made even worse by being being run twice through the innefficent portion of a non-linear transfer function.
Back to the original article, the usefulness of this is likely to be very limited since people in India who don't have electricity aren't likely to spend a lot of time running around in vehicles every day to charge their phones. A small roof mounted windmill would probably be a lot more practical. It may have some use as a travel charger for people who will be traveling to distant points but not be staying for very long (such as tourists).
The little generators that run headlights on a bicycle might be another alternative for charging a cell phone. With a stand, pedal power can even be used while stationary. Someone built a generator stand for a bicycle [erols.com] that was capable of generating as much as 260W (100W seems more likely for an extended period of time).
A small solar panel with built in battery (so you don't need to leave your cell phone on char
What more could you want? (Score:2)
Yeah, try and explain THAT to the airport security guard when he pulls you outta the line
We want truth in summaries... (Score:2, Informative)
Summaries that are closer to the reality of the article.
It costs around $4.
"The technique is not yet commercialised but the department has sent a proposal to the ministry of science and technology to help manufacture the turbine on a large scale, Das said."
A better idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
wind? (Score:4, Funny)
-wind?
Rocket in My Pocket (Score:2, Interesting)
How about just whirling in circles the dinky turbine by the cord by which it attaches to the recharging phone? Why bother waiting for the wind when you can wind your phone instead?
Crank Alternative (Score:5, Interesting)
Compressed air is an interesting idea for storing energy.
But I have to wonder how it compares to the alternatives.
How about a capacitor [electricitystorage.org] bank and a hand-crank generator [pasco.com]?
If you're out of compressed gas or batteries in the middle of nowhere it's hard to replenish your cell phone. Turning a hand crank would make use of cheap, available human power.
Re:Crank Alternative (Score:2, Funny)
A pocket hand crank? I can see it now, a whole new array of pickup lines...
"Excuse me miss, can you turn my hand crank? It's in my pants."
Gives new meaning to the word "Air Time" (Score:2, Funny)
$4? No it doesn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Because people are suckers.
4W for $4 would be significant (Score:3, Funny)
Obvious Joke (Score:2)
Well what do you know (Score:2)
What else? (Score:2)
Flying cars perhaps?
Now.. (Score:2)
Re:Now.. (Score:5, Funny)
Whistle? (Score:3, Interesting)
Adolfo
Not just for cellphones... (Score:2, Insightful)
Think wider.
Think mine detectors.
Think Cambodia, Rwanda, Ethiopia.
People who really, really need some piece of low-power electronic equipment, and DON'T have four different charging stations already, and whom it will cost an arm and a leg - literally! - if they are careless.
Coming to think of it, I'm not surprised t
If only they could scale this technology up.... (Score:5, Funny)
Could work in some places (Score:2)
I reckon many other places in the world are fairly windy, even if they are not a coastal city or some such.
Ingenious (Score:2)
Why didn't I think of it! A way to use the power of my car to charge my cell phone. Ingenious!
Mini windmill (Score:2)
Finally a good use for propeller beanies! (Score:2)
Perfect for motorists! (Score:5, Funny)
Or for when your battery is a little low, but you just really need to call someone - you can blow on your phone for a few minutes, then pass the phone to a friend (if you have any left) and they can call 911 since you're hyperventilating.
Seriously, in public transportation - of the times when you can hold your phone up to a window - you might want to purchase some tshirts that say "I'm an idiot, steal my expensive phone after I get off the bus". Any other times, you should be able to find a much more efficient and timely manner of charging your phone. Windows down + A/C up == your car is burning excess energy.
Re:and... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"What else do you want ?" [OFFTOPIC] (Score:2)
Of course, no one posts country jokes...in Japan!
I don't know why people want to stop the running jokes so much. (Hell, bitching about the running jokes seems to be getting as bad as the jokes themselves.) Without our subculture [wikipedia.org], Slashdot wouldn't be what it is today. We'd probably all just sit around thinking of Natalie Portman while pouring hot grits down our pants...except in Nebraska.
Re:"What else do you want ?" (Score:2)
Yum! (Score:2)
Re:What else do I want? (Score:2)
Why? With money, you can always rent love.
(woohoo! Married with Children reference!! Top that!!)