Posted on 07/08/2011 1:09:28 PM PDT by Red Badger
Researchers have discovered a way to capture and harness energy transmitted by such sources as radio and television transmitters, cell phone networks and satellite communications systems. By scavenging this ambient energy from the air around us, the technique could provide a new way to power networks of wireless sensors, microprocessors and communications chips.
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Microwave IEEE 802.11 Radio Radiant energy
"There is a large amount of electromagnetic energy all around us, but nobody has been able to tap into it," said Manos Tentzeris, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering who is leading the research. "We are using an ultra-wideband antenna that lets us exploit a variety of signals in different frequency ranges, giving us greatly increased power-gathering capability."
Tentzeris and his team are using inkjet printers to combine sensors, antennas and energy scavenging capabilities on paper or flexible polymers. The resulting self powered wireless sensors could be used for chemical, biological, heat and stress sensing for defense and industry; radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging for manufacturing and shipping, and monitoring tasks in many fields including communications and power usage.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
I was using 3d printers back in 2005/2006 to make test models of surgical implants.
A radio station transmitter does not suffer greater costs when more radios are tuned in. It just blasts that energy out in all directions, and your radio picks up a bit of it. This gizmo just collects that energy and routes it for other uses.
bflr
You get arrested for theft of services..............
More kinda like when you drive on a highway, you heat up the road. Clever people have embedded water pipes in sections of freeways and gathered that waste heat & put it to good use.
Georgia Tech? That's good enough for me - this story's for real'.
Hypothetically, of course, and if you wanted to risk killing yourself and possibly burning your house down, it would be a lot easier to just wrap a few turns of insulated wire around one of the hot lines. It’s pretty common in Mexico and other places.
What is so unbelievable about 3D printers?? They've been around for quite a while. You can even find instructions on the net to build one for yourself. I watched one work on an interview with Jay Leno about his antique car collection. He uses it to duplicate no longer available pieces (not structural stuff.....decorative).
When your drafting on a highway you are raising the pressure behind the lead car reducing that cars drag also.
didn’t he work on using the energy generated by the Van Allan (sic) belt?
There’s a company about a block from here that does 3-d ‘printing’........It uses UV laser and a special liquid to create 3-D models of cad designs................the laser scans the surface of the liquid, turning on and off from a ‘slice’ of the object in memory. The liquid hardens when exposed to the UV. The platform then raises about 0.001 inch and then the next ‘layer’ is created. When it’s done, a complete 3-D model of your drawing is left standing on the platform..............
Good ol’ Southern Country Boys............
“Hardly the same thing.”
Uhhhhh! I know that! But he would have enjoyed it immensely. Right up his alley, so to speak. And probably would have come up with the tech a long time ago!
Awesome!.................
Cool!
I know of ham radio operators that sometimes have a little led attached to their antennas that lights up from the electricity in the air.
I’m still amazed after 30 years of building crystal radios that I can receive a station three hundred miles away and the radio is powered by the electricity coming from that station.
The Earth has been likened to an electrical generator.
The Earth possesses a molten metal core and spins on its axis, and as the solar wind’s electrically charged particles flow against the planet, this plasma interacts with the planet’s magnetic field lines extending from pole to pole and streams out into space.
Too bad we haven’t figured out how to exploit that energy source for near-earth space propulsion.
The tech is cool. The function however is THEFT.
No different than a banking system hacker who catches the round-down of fractional cents. It’s still stealing.
I remember a chicken farmers who buried some parasitic lines under a hi voltage transmission line running through his farm. He used the power to heat the chicken coops. IIRC, he was arrested, fined and had to pay for the power he took.
That farmer was doing the same kind of thing as this Professor.
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