For the first time in my life I actually watched 60 Minutes II last night, not having a clue what was on. In the previews, they mention the inventor of the Segway. Since it is used in Atlanta, I figure I’ll watch just to see the local perspective. The 2nd half of the piece focused on Dean’s newest invention.
It is essentially a modifiedStirling engine that produces a useable (albeit small) amount of electricity while also distilling contaminated drinking water and making it safe for consumption.
This sounds like a great idea and one that could conceivably aid in helping out under developed or malnourished areas. This just seems too much like a pipe dream come to life so I was wondering if Kamen is on the up and up about this or if he is pushing an idea that is a good one but only for the benefit of his company.
Good question, Mulls. I think it can hardly be debated that Kamen has already proven himself as a technological mastermind. In my book, anyone who invents something like an insulin pump is borderline genius at worst.
Of course he’s also a businessman. Few inventors/theoreticians work out of pure altruism. He’s rich, and certainly wouldn’t mind being richer.
But I guess your question is “Is he just trying to score a quick buck with tech that’s not really as good as he claims?” I dunno. I haven’t seen any reason to doubt his sincerity in the past. I’ll admit his suggestion that the Segway will solve the world’s transportation problems, cure Third World poverty, and make thousands of julienne fries is a little extreme, and he’ll make a mint off of Ginger (already has, near as I can figger). But he sure seems to be sincere about its societal possibilities. And it seems like he’s on the level here as well.
I have no problem with him making a pile of cash off of his inventions. It just seemed extraordinary that he came up with something that pollutes minimally, produces energy, and purifies water and I hadn’t heard one word about it until I tuned into a 2nd tier news show.
I saw the program too and I have no doubt Kamen is a genius. He is a person of great intelligence and genius, no question about that. The question is whether his inventions and products will revolutionize the world or not and the answer is not so clear to me.
The Segway has been discussed in depth here so I will not go too deeply into it but there is no question inventing it and making it happen requires above average intelligence. Personally I do not think the practical use will be what some have predicted. In airports, warehouses and other large buildings around the worl you can find the same need being covered by scooters which are pretty much the same thing except they do not have the whole balancing thing and they just have one or two more wheels instead. They can do everything the Segway does except turn in place. I do not think the Segway will change our lives in any significant way but I do think inventing it and making it happen required a stroke of genius.
In the same line and concept is his balancing wheelchair and this will have a greater effect on the lives of people who are wheelchair-bound but that is a tiny portion of the population. In any case, the product is also the result of a stroke of genius and a lot of hard work.
Finally, the Stirling gadget presented on TV. Well, this has less ingenuity in it and just builds on pretty common and well-known things. It combines a distilling water purifier (big deal!) with a small stirling engine which will produce small amounts of usable electricity. Well, I do not see this as such a big deal. A water distiller is relatively simple and could be of use in parts of the third world with no access to potable water. Of course, that means they need fuel which in many cases may be scarce or not available. But it does not take a genius to invent this as it is old hat.
The idea is to combine it with a small electric generator and I am not so sure this is such a great idea. It might be a good idea for my sailboat but not so good for people who live in the bush. Who is going to maintain and repair this? Who is going to have the money to even buy this? Even if some fuel efficiency was lost, wouldn’t it make sense to manufacture distilling stills separate from electrical generators?
Alternatively, the electricity could be used to electrolyze water into hydrogen (and oxygen gas). The hydrogen gas can be burned, heat more water and turn a turbine, which will in turn produce more electricity.
da pope and lucwarm, it’s called “thermodynamics.” What you’re proposing is to get more energy out of the system than is being put into it. If you guy’s can work out a way for that to happen, I suggest you get started immediately, by the time you’re done selling the units, you’ll have enough money to make Gates look like a pauper.
sailor, a stirling engine can be designed to run off of anything that burns, from liquid fuel to wood or coal. So a properly designed stirling could run off of whatever the locals happen to have handy. Fuel efficiency is another matter, however. Stirling’s aren’t all that efficient at times, that’s one of the reasons why they’ve never been put into cars. (Though one could possibly design an engine that approached a car’s level of fuel efficency, the R&D costs would be insanely prohibitive. No one, to my knowledge has ever built a car powered by a stirling, though lots of folks have talked about it.)
This is the second time that Kamen has been on 60 Minutes II, the first time was just before the Segway was announced, and while I don’t think that Kamen’s formally said it, the basic motivation behind the Segway is to drive the cost of the wheelchair down to a more affordable level.
Kamen is a genuis, there’s no doubt about it. Back in high school, he made so much money from his various inventions that he could afford to send his parents on vacation. He did this so that he could have their house remodeled to better accomidate his machine shop. Needless to say, they were not amused when they came home from the vacation early and found out what was going on…
Probably the person who comes closest to Kamen in recent history is Buckminster Fuller. Bucky ran into the problem that he didn’t have the money to complete all his projects, however. Kamen obviously doesn’t have that problem. Personally, I hope that Kamen takes some of Bucky’s ideas and builds on them. Bucky had some great ideas for affordable housing that no one’s working on.
>> sailor, a stirling engine can be designed to run off of anything that burns, from liquid fuel to wood or coal.
Tuckerfan, I am not sure why you feel the need to explain this to me as I know it very well. . . and even if I did not know it before, it was explained in the progam we are discussing.
At any rate, my point stands, in many places of the world fuels of any kind are pretty scarce.
What lucwarm is saying does not have to be invalid if your goal is to store the energy in a different form which may be more usable - such as using waste biomass to ultimately create hydrogen at the end of it all, for storage/use in transport. Sure, your efficiency is extremely poor, but if you want to do it that way…
Here is a quote from the article about the Kamen Stirling engine thing:
Um…
If you’re burning charcoal to heat it, it is not a non-polluting device unless Kamen has also invented wood or charcoal that doesn’t pollute when you set it on fire. Honestly, who writes this stuff?
There’s nothing about this invention that’s terribly new or amazing, and it’s not going to break the laws of thermodynamics. However, a device to create clean water for the Third World IS a good idea. Two million children every year die from dysentry and other illnesses caused by dirty water. Kamen’s heart is in the right place.
The distilling still is a pretty old invention and can bebuilt easily without Kamen’s help. In any case it would use a lot of fuel which would take some labor to gather if it is available at all. It seems to me the solar stills (which are not new either) would offer a better solution. Putting high tech things in third world settings is not a good idea but it has been a common mistake of well-meaning people who are trying to help.
I mentioned it because it seemed to me that you expecting Kamen’s engine to be ran off gasoline or something similar. And now that I think of it, I have seen designs for stirling engines that concentrate the sun’s energy to run. Perhaps, Kamen’s design is such that it can do something similar.
Stirling engines can indeed be run off of solar energy. They don’t have to get very hot, since it’s a simple difference in temperature-induced gas pressure that make 'em work (greatly simplified, of course.)
However, the lower the temp difference, the less power it has. So hotter is better, naturally.
Also, from what very little I understand of the Stirling process, it “scales up” very poorly. A larger engine is actually less efficient, which is part of why you don’t see 'em running cars, and no one’s made a power-plant-sized one.
I’m assuming that one would prefer an “array” of smaller engines to produce X output, rather than one large one.
But again, this is nothing terribly new. The engines still need fuel and maintenence, somebody has to pay for 'em in the first place, and somebody’s gotta provide the water to be purified.
Definitely a step in the right direction! If the device can be made to require little maintenance, with easy repair from interchangeable parts, it will be a great boon to the poorest of the poor. He mightn’t be a saint, who cares. Mother Theresa only comforted people who were dying, nobody left her hospice better than they arrived
Finally, it all comes down to energy on Spaceship Earth. There are great stride to be made in small energy/small engine technology, but not the kind of profit that would attract GM or BMW. If this gadget proves to be practical, he will have saved a million lives, easy. But it’s got to be relentlessly simple. Like what was said about the Kalashnikov: designed by a genius to be used by an ignoramus. If the ability to buy toys is what floats his boat, I say go for it.
(Theres an interesting article in Discovery about using LED’s to provide light for reading, etc. in places that have no chance of getting hooked to the power grid. One guy pedaling a genertor for half an hour can supply enough juice for the kids to read by all night. Synergy, as ol’ Bucky might have put it.)
You can filter all the bugs out of dirty water with acheap ceramic filter-unglazed pottery will do for this. The problem with the Stirling Cycle engine is that the working gas needs to be prevented from escaping…and NO engineer (to my knowledge) has ever solved that problem. Back in the 1970’s PHILIPS (of Holland) and FORD jointly collaborated on a stirling cycle engine, intended to power automobiles: after the expenditure of several hundred million $, they came up with an engine that weighed twice as much as a gasoline engine, with half the power output. It was also sluggish to accelerate, and the retention of the working gas (helium) was a problem that was never solved.
As for the two-wheeler-it is a very interesting concept, but I don’t see people rushing out to buy them (at $6,000 a pop). A good idea with no market, in my opinion.
Except the problem isn’t simply bugs in the water, Ralph. There’s some rather unsavory chemicals in there as well, which distillation would help take care of (and ceramic filters wouldn’t).
I’ve never heard of a stirling engine leaking the working gas. The problem I’ve always heard them having was that over time the temperature differential drops to zero and the engine stops.
