Powering Gadgets by Recycling Waste Energy - Alice's Windmills in my Mind Through the Looking Glass

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping

Past the minutes on its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Excerpt from the soundtrack of The Thomas Crowne Affair (1968)

I have been quite surprised this week by the sudden surging interest in my blog article entitled “uBeam's Perry & Dweck Ultrasonic Power Transfer - Rafe Needleman's Hidden Village of Sound” on the use of Ultrasonic Sound waves with their Ultrasonic Power Transfer Technology to power electronics gadgets developed by University of Pennsylvania graduates Meredith Perry and Nora Dweck and their start-up uBeam.

Good to note it’s NOT my idea; I merely added to it by suggesting partnering graduate student Sang-Woo Kim from the Institute of Nanotechnology at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea to develop his technology of using ambient noise as the power source, as the environment has a lot of Sound Energy generated, which is analogous to Heat Exchangers in an Industrial plant using waste heat to do other work.

Thus I decided to pen a short note to highlight various Technological innovations to reuse Wasted Sound, Kinetic, Solar, Radiation and Chemical Energy to achieve the dream of every Telecoms and Power Technician: Recycling Wasted Energy!

My article on uBeam segwayed from reusing Wasted Energy in the form of Sound Waves to Kinetic Energy from general walking or running motion by humans in a device designed by Tremont Electric which could have put some of Congress’s Energy wasted on negotiations to good use as I had joked in my blog article entitled “Tremont Electric nPower PEG Kinetic Charger - Showgirls Flashdance Energy”.

Ditto too the use of Solar Panels, effectively a reuse of Solar Energy to power Gadgets as tabled in a 2010AD patent filings by Apple as stated in my blog article entitled “Apple iPhone 5 and its Design - Of Gods, Critics, Lemmings, Sheep and Men” and my Geezam Blog article entitled “Towards a cheaper Apple iPhone – Batteries Not Included”.

Still hoping for this innovation not only on the Apple iPhone and the Apple iPad but on a revamped Apple iPod and its cousins, the Apple iPod Touch, the Apple iPod Nano and the Apple iPod Shuffle.

This increased performance, after optimizing the design of any gadget to use less power, now means that engineers must turn their attention once again to improving battery technology as intoned in my blog article entitled “Apple iPad, PC Makers and Battery Life - Lost in Space and The AppleByte”.

These innovations above are for powering Apple MacBook Airs and their Intel-prescribed copycats the Ultrabooks, which are also in need of a common Power Adaptor standard as stated in my blog article entitled “Apple MacBook Airs and Intel UltraBooks cometh – Time for a Common Standard on Power Adaptors” as Mobile smartphones and Gadgets already have a common Power Charger Standard.

The PC can also be saved too by becoming more power efficient via either DMFC (Direct Methanol Fuel Cells) as stated in my blog article entitled “Chrome OS Cr-48 and the Mobion Fuel Cell Generator - Green Lantern” or Liquid Metal Battery Technology as stated in my blog article entitled “Prof Donald Sadoway and the Liquid Metal Battery - VC Bill Gates Evanessence”.

There may even be use for Crook’s Radiometer, once scaled up to size to not only power gadgets but an entire house once scaled up to size as stated in my blog article entitled “Alternative Energy and the Solar Generator - Pitch Black”.

The same is true for all of the above Waste Energy concepts: it’s all a matter of imagination and scale, Alice Through the Looking Glass (TV 1998) style.

Patent developments that are VERY necessary, as every addition to these electronic gadgets needs more power and there is only so much power you can squeeze out of Lithium-polymer batteries. Thus, do not be surprised if you seen smaller SMT (Surface mount Technology) or nanoscale versions of the above mentioned featured in a next gadget under Apple CEO Tim Cook’s leadership as per my blog article entitled “Apple CEO Steve Jobs Resigns as Apple Becomes No 1 - Rihanna Cheers from Apple iMac to Apple iPad”.

Much as the song implores us explore the Windmills of our Minds, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) Style!

Windmills of your mind - Thomas Crown Affair

All these innovation brings us close to cutting the Analog Power Cord and Power Adaptor, the last vestige of Electronic Gadgets that still has not made the switch to Digital as per my blog article entitled “Alternative Energy and Solar Power - Die Another Day”.