Posted on 07/29/2015 1:49:02 PM PDT by Red Badger
A startup team calls their work a product. They also call it a social movement. Many people in the over-7,000 islands in the Philippines lack access to electricity .The startup would like to make a difference. Their main ingredient is salt.
Their product is a lamp that takes two tablespoons of salt and a glass of water in order to work. This is from the Sustainable Alternative Lighting, or SALt Corp. This is a startup focused on delivering a cost effective, environmentally safe lamp that runs on salt water.
Their lamp could be an alternative to kerosene/battery powered lamps and candles as a main source of lighting. They said use of the SALt lamp for eight hours a day every day delivers an anode lifespan of six months and used just as an alternative light source will prolong the life of the anode for more than a year.
The lamp "uses the science behind the Galvanic cell, the basis for battery-making," they said, in changing electrolytes to a saline solution—an approach that is nontoxic, and avoids the tragic incidents of fires that are caused by candles and tipped-over lamps.
For people living along coastlines, even running up the cost of salt would not be a problem. They could store ocean water in bottles and use them to power the lamp. The salinity of ocean-water can operate the lamp. They said it would give eight hours of running-time. "Salinity is expressed by the amount of salt found in 1,000 grams of water. The average ocean salinity is 35 parts per thousand."
Aisa Mijeno is co-founder and CEO, She is a faculty member of engineering at De La Salle University. Raphael Mijeno is co-founder and chief financial officer. Joefrey Frias, a mechanical design engineer, serves as chief operating officer.
They have not yet announced a price for this lamp; their site said they are still doing a cost analysis. They are taking pre-orders online. They aim to get the lamp out by the end of the year or early next year. They said their "priority is to build lamps for our target communities and for the communities of the NGOs and foundations who will partner with us."
In a May interview, Aisa Mijeno said in Asian Scientist Magazine that "I am proud of this research because it is not just a result of tedious experiments but also a product of life experiences," she said, of living among people in the mountains with nothing more than sun and fuel-based lamps as their main source of lighting.
In an interview with Core77, Mijeno said that "there are so many remarkable and creative people in rural Philippines. Their resilience, no matter their condition in life, motivates me to overcome all hurdles. We just need to give these people the chance at life through education by providing them the basic things: the means to provide food to their family, clean water and light."
More information: www.salt.ph/
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-salt-lamp-people-electricity.html#jCp
The Brits impose a salt tax on India. Illegally making salt in defiance of them is what got Ghandi on the map.
Yup. When the cathode wears out, you can drink the lamp.
Can I just use some potatoes instead of the salt water?
“They said use of the SALt lamp for eight hours a day every day delivers an anode lifespan of six months...”
It’s not “eight hours”.
It’s eight hours per day for six months on one anode.
“Wouldn’t the process also include a sacrificial cathodic element that would have to be periodically replaced?”
The article says every 6 months.
Solar cells and a Li ion rechargeable would be better, no anode to replace, better efficiency.
The po’ folks out on those 7,000 islands can’t afford solar panels.
You’re right, I did confuse the two. Watching infomercials can be entertaining. When my son was little *he’s forty-six now* he loved to visit the infomercial booths at the State Fair in Alabama. I still have one of those knife sharpening blocks with two rods that stick out. Still have the three peelers’ we watched demonstrated, too.
“The po’ folks out on those 7,000 islands can’t afford solar panels.”
But they can afford this, unpriced device, with unpriced “replacement anodes”. I suspect this will be a governmnet grant to provide a thousand of these that will be useless in a year. Solar panels are more “renewable” than a Cu-Zn salt battery.
There’s no mention of the “fuel” (anode) or “depolarizer” (cathode) here - they will have to be chunks of quite pure metal - e.g. Zn/Cu, Mg/Fe, Al/Cu and much more costly than salt/water. The water and salt is pretty much a red herring - the energy comes from the metals. The only “modern technology” here is the LED, making it possible to use the rather measly current available from such crude batteries.
The zinger is that ordinary solar cells are quite cheap and give a lot more power for a longer time. So instead just give them a square foot of solar cells connected to a battery or capacitor and a bunch of LEDs, and they can have a bunch of light for hours at night. LEDs now cost about 10 cents each.
Tequila and lime?
That is more likely to cause cold neuron fission.
I think it is the ultra-efficient LEDs that make it possible to actually get long lasting light out of it.
A system of “just add salt water” by the user, though, makes it suitable for the Third World, if the anode is supplied with the lantern.
The question then would be price per unit, because you can be sure groups from preppers to Amish would be interested in something that lets you have long lasting light without a fire hazard or the bulk and batteries of solar systems.
I didn’t know that. Just curious - what was the cause of his death?
The defense to which is—pepper spray.
[sorry, it took me 24 hrs to come up with that]
Thanks for the ping. Very interesting.
A startup team calls their work a product. They also call it a social movement.Oh? Then count me out -- not least because "social movement" is another term for "scam". Thanks Red Badger.
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