[conservatism_IS_compassion]

UC Berkley has developed a penny sized wankel engine which is connected to a 1 watt motor generator. It runs on butane.

Cool, and others are developing other designs. In context of the posted article, the interesting one of these designs would be the free-piston design, which could produce mainly vibration as its output. This article discusses a micro generator which wants vibration as its input, so . . .

[Young Werther]

This wankel engine was the outgrowth of the DARPA MEMs, (micro electric machines) program. The army wanted a power source that would be more efficient for the Army. When you look at the foot soldiers gear, night vision goggles, laser gun sight, GPS receivers, (no more maps and compasses), lap top computers and satellite links the demand for batteries was unbelievable. When they speced these new power sources and industry responded with butane powered mini machines the Army was estactic. The logistics of shipping butane was less onerous than maintaining tons of mutlifuncitional batteries.

A jet turbine engine the diameter of a human hair was developed with the idea that they could be manufactured using the same chip manufacturing techniques used to make computer chips. It works and some of these devices are already being field tested at the Marine test field at Quantico!!