Nanotech Energy Source Discovered - 500 hr laptop battery?

[bik0]

veddy intellesting... could be available within 5 years...

Could you imagine a laptop battery that lasted for 500 hours? How about an electric car that boasts a range many times that of a gasoline vehicle? For that matter, think about environmental sensors that could be scattered into the air like dust and collect data. While the last thing might not exactly be what you want for Christmas, a breakthrough in energy production made by MIT researchers could make such technology a reality during the next few years.

The process, dubbed “thermopower waves” by its discoverer, MIT’s Dr. Michael Strano, does nothing less than open up “a new area of energy research, which is rare,” says the scientist. MSNBC’s Michelle Bryner describes the phenomenon and its applications in brief, writing:

Researchers have found a way to produce large amounts of electricity from tiny cylinders made from carbon atoms.

The achievement could replace decades-old methods of generating electricity, such as combustion engines and turbines, the researchers say.

A carbon firecracker
The researchers coated the nanotubes with a fuel, such as gasoline or ethanol, and applied heat to one end. The result: The fuel reacts and produces more heat, which ignites more fuel to create even more heat.

The process creates “a wave that travels like dominoes falling in a line ,” said study team member Michael Strano, a chemical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The resulting heat wave, it turns out, also creates a wave of electrons moving in one direction — aka electricity.

“The thermal wave squeezes electrons out of the nanotubes like a tube of toothpaste,” Strano explained.

The devices built in the MIT lab produced 10 times more power than a lithium-ion battery of equivalent mass.

“What's intriguing about these waves is that we haven’t really done any engineering to make them efficient yet and already they’re ten times a lithium-ion battery,” Strano told TechNewsDaily. “We may be able to make very very small power sources out of them."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35466087/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/energy/3133-nanotech-energy-source-discovered

[Ozymanithrax]

1. This may be the cheap energy source that powers the next great civilization...

Now that the oil civilization is dead.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. See also

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=234727&mesg_id=234727

[tinrobot]

3. So, you have to soak it in gasoline?

The researchers coated the nanotubes with a fuel, such as gasoline or ethanol, and applied heat to one end.

Heating gasoline or ethanol? Sounds awfully close to fossil and other carbon based fuels.

The questions I would have are - What happens to the fuel that's heated? Does it burn? If so, how does this become carbon-neutral?

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. See above

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=237032&mesg_id=237050

[tinrobot]

5. Can't you just answer the question

Rather than giving me a link to a link to a link?

I know you like promoting your own threads, but seriously...

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. No, I'm not attempting to promote my own thread

If you follow the link, you will see a much better description than I would write.

[joshcryer]

7. No.

[joshcryer]

8. While extraordinarily promising, this will take a decade or more to be exploited, assuming it works.

We're talking about building arrays of trillions upon trillions of nanotubes in a way that can focus the energy to be used by a device. This is super high level technology here.

If it works though then it just crapped all over the lithium approaches. Though those are more likely to be used in the short term.