Water Powered Laptops. The future?

[Cogman]

This one kindof struck my imagionation a little bit, If they are able to power a cell phone with water, would it be much harder to get the laptop going with the same principle?. I mean, a laptop does have more electricity needs, but You could also shove a whole ton more micro-tubes into it for the water. and if that is true, what would be the steps on charging it? would you have to turn it onto its side so the water would run through the tubes? How long do you think it will be able to charge it for? and, Do you think that if we incorperate carbon-nanotubes for computing power that the laptop could run virtually forever?

 

[CTho9305]

I'm not seeing where they get the pressure difference from.

 

[uart]

I believe that the "press" are incorrectly describing this as a "new energy source" when they should in fact be describing it as "new energy conversion technology". The difference between the two concepts is enormous, but as far as I can tell no journalist anywhere in the world has ever managed to get the distinction right in their pointy little heads.

Now admittedly I don?t know much about this new technology, so it may turn out that my suspicion is wrong and that it really is an ?energy source? (by which I mean that it would need to be able to generate more electrical output power than the input power used to supply the pump which drives the water flow), but I highly doubt it. In fact I?ll go and run stark bollock naked around my local shopping centre (and post the pic?s here) if that really turns out to be the case.

 

[dnuggett]

What kind of weight (how much displacement) would their be in order to power the laptop from water? We'll have to wait and see. This is way too new to know the answers to your questions. At least intelligent answers anyway.

 

[uart]

Look, I really dont think that this whole "water powered" thing is even aimed at the mobile market.

Ok these guys produced enough power the light a small globe (I heard a figure of about 10 watts) and someone in the press probably asked them something like "and what else could that much power drive?". Somene probably said "that's about what mobile phone takes" and so the story goes around that we could have water power mobile phone. I'll bet that they had half a room full of gear to get that 10W, at least in the prototype stage.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: uart
Look, I really dont think that this whole "water powered" thing is even aimed at the mobile market.

Ok these guys produced enough power the light a small globe (I heard a figure of about 10 watts) and someone in the press probably asked them something like "and what else could that much power drive?". Somene probably said "that's about what mobile phone takes" and so the story goes around that we could have water power mobile phone. I'll bet that they had half a room full of gear to get that 10W, at least in the prototype stage.

And a wall-outlet powered pump .

 

[uart]

Originally posted by: CTho9305

And a wall-outlet powered pump .

Yes I imagine that they would have done so, and that's not joke.

 

[nrg99]

what about body heat powered (biothermal energy) laptop?

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: nrg99
what about body heat powered (biothermal energy) laptop?

Depends how much power it draws. I don't know the power output of a human... but the brain uses ~25 watts, and supposedly is about 1/4th of the glucose consumption of the body. If we use that information, humans put out 100 watts. As long as you don't cause your body temperature to drop, I guess you could use the heat we produce.

However, there is a caveat.... I don't think you can get 100 watts or actual usable power out. Consider refrigerators/heat pumps which spend 1 watt to move more than 1 watt (lets say 1 watt moves 5 watts - search for some of my old threads for actual numbers). That means that just having a heat source available that supplies 5 watts, you can't actually get more than 1 watt of usable energy (?).

 

[ReiAyanami]

a small leak and your laptop's... somebody's bound to get shocked and of course will sue

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: ReiAyanami
a small leak and your laptop's... somebody's bound to get shocked and of course will sue

Laptops dont use high enough voltages to shock you. The LCD backlight might, but I doubt it can supply enough current to matter.

 

[Cogman]

reading up on it a little more, they use pressure diffrences to get the water flow, and for all you wondering, the actual device was not very big (probibly the size of a basketball) though I do relize that that is pretty big for a cell phone, no doubt because this is new they will be able to make it much smaller and much more effective.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Technically speaking practically everything in certain areas of the country are water powered via generators driven by water falls.

 

[dnuggett]

Laptops dont use high enough voltages to shock you.

You obviously haven't worked on laptops.

 

[Cogman]

I guess it would be possible for the water to shock you as they said that it came out with a positive charge, but if a battery leaks the acid can burn through your skin. Im pretty sure that the used water would be stored fairly safely, and probibly still be used (as it has a positive charge)

 

[Howard]

You can power Stirling engines with body heat, but I doubt they can be made dense enough (power-wise) for feasible use in portable devices.

 

[uart]

Originally posted by: Cogman
reading up on it a little more, they use pressure diffrences to get the water flow, and for all you wondering, the actual device was not very big (probibly the size of a basketball) though I do relize that that is pretty big for a cell phone, no doubt because this is new they will be able to make it much smaller and much more effective.

Yeah but what is powering the pump that creates the pressure difference ? I'll bet it is either batteries of an AC "wall outlet".

Technically speaking practically everything in certain areas of the country are water powered via generators driven by water falls.

Hehe, but the water is lifted up the mountains by energy from the Sun, so it's actually Solar power. And the Suns power is from nuclear reactions so it really nulear power.