MIT: Micro-Turbine On Silicon

New batteries for the new century? Or how to obsolete current tech?

web.mit.edu...

web.mit.edu...

The Gas Turbine Lab at MIT and the other recent notable turbine announcements are potentially awesome.

When coupled with Intel's recent annoucement of multiplexed Indium Phosphide laser on silicon it does make one wonder what's not next?

www.intel.com...

Exciting times!

Victor K.

I would only want those turbines powering a device outside and from a biofuel. It could cause major indoor air pollution should this become the standard...

I don't think that was Dr. Epstein's intent (mass indoor use of a carbon monoxide generator LOL) but a valid point and a concern with any combustion technology... I like the idea of having an alternative power source from chemical energy - and totally scalable from personal on up to domicile... at another site the concept is explained better than I can relate - the way I read it I see a potential for such diversified technologies in an energy-uncertain future - Aug 15 2003 would have been a great day to have such tech.

www.technologyreview.com...

Victor k.

Yes, I agree that diversification is needed, though I think that aside from powering portable electronics in the field(for say military/scientific usage), it won't see many positive applications for consumers.

I'd rather have a fuel-cell battery being powered by ethanol. Yes I know, lower output but still can hypothetically get 24 hours on a single "charge". They are not disposable either. These are. You cannot easily(possibly?) repair MEMs based engines.

There is also the efficiency of the thing to take into consideration. You wouldn't want to power a whole Command post with a stack of these things, the amount of fuel they would consume together would vastly outstrip even a simple two-stroke jurry rigged to output electricity on the fly outputting the same amount. And talk about the IR bloom it would cause. It would draw heat-seeking missiles like flys to the flame.

Like wind-turbines, the larger the engine, the more efficient it is. On large tankers, the efficiency of their combustion engines is like 95%+. (They are also freaking huge as well)

Still though, if they manage to make a portable mass-spectrometer that could only be powered by one of these things, I'd buy it. I'd still want it to be powered by Biofuels only though, heh.

[edit on 22-9-2006 by sardion2000]

I'd like one about 4000W for the cottage. Another group of 20000W for the trailer buried in the hill in Algonquin... and a couple of the 10W size just to fool around with. I understand about the concern for failed items... I'd think they'd have some sort of mechanism for dealing with that perhaps modular. I saw a Toshiba Ethanol Battery offsite at Toshiba's suite at CeBit last year... most impressive. The guy used a syringe-thingy to saturate a pad of some sort and presto - 3V DC. He popped it in an mp3 player. It was about AAA or AA size. Amazing and tiny. They had some laptop sized protos there too... and strangely enough one of the laptop manufacturing groups is trying to decide on the next gen battery specs right now in response to the fire issue.

Victor K.