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Super-Soaker inventor may have solar-powered fuel cell breakthrough
- russellallen 16y agoWell the idea sounds coherent. No idea if it would work or not. It's not a fuel cell though - its more like a no-moving-parts replacement for a Stirling engine.
- sasvari 16y agoI remember reading about the JTEC a couple of years ago, but I am very curious to see an actual working version of it. Could be the hottest thing around ...
- brc 16y agoRight - surely they can get a scale model of it working. I take all these announcements with a grain of salt now. We're always reading about these breakthroughs, then nothing. I mean, if he had even a small working prototype, he could be on the news and gaining investors and traction.
- kylemathews 16y agoYeah, I'm a bit suspicious. Google returns nothing right now.
- haliax 16y agohttp://www.johnsonems.com/?q=node/2 http://www.johnsonems.com/?q=node/2
- revorad 16y agoI'd rather be optimistic than so cynical about such important inventions that have huge potential, even if the probability of success is very low. I mean, if he had even a small working prototype, he could be on the news and gaining investors and traction. You mean just like all the great inventors of all times? If only life was so fair and rosy.
- tocomment 16y agoSpeaking of inventors, does anyone know how inventors ever get a foothold? I had a cool idea for heating swimming pools to ambient air temperature (think giant heat sinks). But do I get giant heatsinks built for me to test? How do I find out if this is already patented? How do I sell it?
- sdesol 16y agoI would have to imagine this would have been patented if your "heatsink" source is practical. Unless you are living in a area like Iceland where you can tap into geothermal energy, I would have to imagine any other method would be impractical. You have to obtain the heat from somewhere. Be it natural or from some form of man made energy source. I do remember reading somewhere about capturing/retaining heat during the hotter parts of the season and then releasing it during the colder seasons. The solution involved a massive hole I believe or something like that.
- Groxx 16y agoGotta wonder if you could get funding for "Geothermal Offsets", to replace some of the Earth's sapped heat from geothermal power sources. You could possibly run such a system for free :D
- cameldrv 16y agoI don't know about that. It sounds like it could be a good idea to me. Ambient air temperature varies 25 degrees or so from night to day. The pool is going to tend to gravitate towards a temperature between the ground temperature and the average air temperature throughout the day. If you want to heat the pool in the Fall and Spring, just circulate the water through an air-source heat exchanger in the afternoon, and turn it off when the temperature starts to drop. Voila, warm pool. In some places, pools get annoyingly warm in the summer. Use the same device, at 3am, and the problem is solved. Don't want to use your pool in the fall and spring, but want to save on your heating and cooling bills? Use the pool as a heat storage device, and save the desirable temperature (afternoon or night, depending) in the pool, then run the heat exchanger in the house to enjoy the cool night air during the day.
- tocomment 16y agoHow would this work? Surely sunlight can't create enough heat to ionize a gas (creating plasma?). Why don't the whole hydrogen atoms go through the membrane to the lower pressure area? How does he alternate which side is heated? How does he cool the other side?
- Groxx 16y agoany source of energy will have a chance of causing far more energetic particles, if not directly then through particle interactions. For the same reason, water far below boiling will steam. As to the rest, can't help you there. IANAPP :)
- MaysonL 16y agoThe maximum heat you can get from sunlight is the temperature of the sun: definitely hot enough to ionize most gases.
- shasta 16y agoRight. Cuz the photons are the same temperature as the sun. That's why sun photons feel warm.
- aphyr 16y agoIt's more true than you might think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plancks_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plancks_law
- MaysonL 16y agosee: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=349697 http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=349697
- shasta 16y agoInteresting, thanks. It seems plausible that it isn't possible to redirect light from a uniform temperature black body to produce a higher temperature somewhere else. I'll have to think about it more, though. The thermodynamical argument made in that thread seems flawed to me.
- brc 16y agoThe Lesson here is : if you do make a pile of cash, lock some of it away so that you and your family have an (almost) assured retirement plan.
- brc 16y agoI don't understand the downvoting, so I'll make my position clear. If you read the article, the guy is now in financial trouble because the super soaker profits have largely dried up, and he has had to put other plans on hold. What I'm saying is, if you find yourself in the situation where you have a big win, you need to lock away some of that to keep you in retirement. Then, you can go onto your next venture knowing that, if it doesn't work out, at least you won't fall on financial hard times. I honestly don't know why this is so downvoted, so perhaps someone can explain it to me.
- Cushman 16y agoThe Super Soaker profits are now "only" enough to pay for a third of his dozen-employee business. Presumably if he wasn't so committed to his research, he could shut down and live comfortably off of that money. Putting something away for the rainy day might be good advice, but it isn't really relevant here.
- guynamedloren 16y agoThere is nothing in the article that states he has not put away enough money for retirement, nor that he could not retire right this moment if he wanted to. For all you know, he could have $100MM in bank, ensuring that his family is well-off for generations to come. The article doesn't delve into his personal finances at all - it merely states that the Super Soaker profits are not able to fund his research as much as they once did.
- arethuza 16y agoFrom the article: "There was a time in my life, he says, when I was independently wealthy. But that time has passed" Sounds to me like he has sunk a lot of his capital into his ongoing research projects.
- kenjackson 16y agoThis is like the ultime HN article. * Born hacker * Issues of race and oppression * Entreprenuer spirit * Issues with patents * Big companies stifling innovation Someone should write "Inventors at Work".
- davidalln 16y agoNot only that, but he's a huge supporter of science education for kids. He is a judge at the local Atlanta FIRST Robotics regional.
- Rhapso 16y agoThat is really cool. I guess I met him then. FIRST is an amazing thing, it got me started with Computer Science.
- gvb 16y ago* Experts tell him it won't work and point out the PhD thesis (or equivalent) that "proves" it... however, he is attacking the problem in a different way that the expert did not expect.
- brianbreslin 16y agoProof that sometimes an outsiders perspective can come at a problem in a novel and seemingly successful way.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Vekz 16y agoCould someone explain the differences in acquiring funding as an inventor vs an entrepreneur? Reason I ask is that I was recently laid off by a failed startup that had secured and wasted an investment in the amount of 2 million. After that experience I went on to do some contract work with another early stage startup. They had no solid idea or vision for a product and had funding in the amount of 1.5 million. It is concerning to me that a proven inventor like Johnson, who has a solid concept, is struggling to pull in his initial 100,000
- dstein 16y agoHe should disguise his invention as a social network for the energy industry -- BOOM! instant funding.
- nickpinkston 16y agoHaha I think you've got that backwards. It's probably better to make a social network look green and sell the carbon credits! How that for monetization?!?
- dstein 16y agoYou nailed it! A social network for carbon credit sharing. Call Sequoia.
- olefoo 16y agoI expect to see this very thing funded by this time next week. Looks like someone else has already proven the market http://sandbag.org.uk/ http://sandbag.org.uk/ But since they aren't doing it in the bay area it's an easy run for a motivated team with strong leadership.
- sandGorgon 16y agoOr rather, Kleiner-Perkins http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/26/news/companies/terralliance_tech_full.fortune/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/26/news/companies/terralliance_...
- brandonkm 16y agoIf anyone is interested in reading more about how exactly he invented the Super Soaker http://www.isoaker.com/Info/history_supersoaker.html http://www.isoaker.com/Info/history_supersoaker.html
- eru 16y agoThanks. You should submit it.
- hop 16y agoHe will change the world if he can get 50-60% efficiency. Photovoltaic cells would be out and parabolic mirrors aimed at a heating elements would take their place - even better, tubes running under asphalt streets all circulating water through JTEC heat exchangers. A huge unmet need is extraction of heat energy at lower temperature differentials - it could put to use tons of waste energy at industrial plants, your car exhaust, h20 that leaves current steam generators, etc... The JTEC has the potential to make use of all this would-be entropy.
- sliverstorm 16y ago> A huge unmet need is extraction of heat energy at lower temperature differentials That, of course, would still be a real challenge. I didn't see any specifics, but notice his ceramic membrane was built to withstand 400 C. That's very hot.
- ck2 16y agoBut what if it's double the efficiency at twice the cost to produce? It does sound rather more complex than a solar cell.
- cma 16y agoAssuming it has the same lifetime/maintenance costs, then the profitability will be double that of the alternative.
- eru 16y agoThere's not much you can do to get useful work out of low temperature differentials. Carnot's theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine#Carnot.27s_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine#Carnot.27s_t...) says that the maximum efficiency of a heat engine is n = 1 - T_cold / T_hot, where the temperatures are given on the Kelvin scale (i.e. absolute temperatures). That means between say 20 Celsius and 45 Celsius you will never convert more than 8% of the thermal energy that needs to flow from hot to cold into useful work.
- rajat 16y agoI don't get it. Why isn't Google investing in this along with robot self-driving cars? Why isn't Khosla investing in this? Or is this the article that gets them interested? I don't pretend to have the engineering knowledge to know whether this will work or not, whether it's snake oil or not, but surely, if an electric sports car for the rich can get funded, so can this guy. I'm assuming the guy isn't peddling snake-oil, the circumstances certainly seem to indicate that he's sincere. Is it that he needs a super-salesman to the money? Godin, Kawasaki, surely one of them would step up for the potential for good and profit that is possible if this technology is feasible.
- brianbreslin 16y agoIT seems that he has focused on the academic side of this more than commercial, though he seems to have a staff suitable to commercializing this. Maybe the DARPA or whomever gives him better terms on his deal than he'd get from Khosla? It does mention PARC investing and owning parts of his patents.
- nait 16y agoIt seems like he still needs to proof that his idea is working. Other scientist say that it seems to be a good idea. So investing in this is a huge risk since even though the concept might actually work it may turn out that there's economical sane way to enter mass production. In addition there's still the doubt of "too good to be true" because it usually is. On one hand it is probably this kind of thinking which makes us pass on great opportunities, on the other it keeps us from sending money to help getting a multi-million dollar transaction through. Somewhat related also with the funding problem but on a larger scale was this guy http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606# Judge for yourself if you would invest 1 billion to (prehaps) get a working fusion reactor.
- eru 16y agoGoogle also had a talk about liquid Thorium fission reactors. That seemed doable.
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- Detrus 16y agoI heard this story about two years ago, not a lot of new information about the fuel cell here.
- stcredzero 16y agoSteam engines—powered predominantly by coal, but also by natural gas, nuclear materials, and other fuels—generate 90 percent of all U.S. electricity. But though they have been refined over the centuries, most are still clanking, hissing, exhaust-spewing machines that rely on moving parts, and so are relatively inefficient and prone to mechanical breakdown. Do steam turbines really clank? (I can believe in the hissing part.)
- dctoedt 16y agoI don't know about all steam turbines, but for the ones with which I'm familiar, clanking is a Bad Thing. (Between college and law school I did my ROTC scholarship payback as a Navy nuclear engineering officer.)
- Chris_Morrell 16y agoI imagine the vast majority of people equate steam engines with steam powered trains seen in cinema. Unlike those clanking piston based engines, modern turbines whir -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHhNrQL7Azc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHhNrQL7Azc
- jacquesm 16y agoSorry guys, I got there first: http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/concentrator/ http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/concentrator/ Patent pending ;) Yes, I realize there is a lot more to it than that. However, there have been solar concentrators of all kinds of varieties, I've built a couple of proto-types the one in the pictures above was one of the more promising ones because it allows the collector to be stationary. Interesting tidbit from that experiment, it's quite hard to bond a solar panel to a cooling surface that can dissipate 800 watts over 100 square centimeters, whatever you use to bond will melt or dry out and then your solar cells will self-disassemble. So you will end up with active cooling, which in turn will give you co-generation (both electricity and heat). I really hope this guy will succeed, we could do with a bit more radical thinking in this space.
- catch23 16y agowell, I think the real tech isn't the concentrator but the membrane that converts heat to electricity by forcing ions through a proton-exchange membrane.
- jacquesm 16y agoYes, of course. I had a ton of fun building that stuff though. And with co-generation you use the 'old' tech and use the byproduct (heat) for some other purpose. That way you can get to very high efficiencies too.
- gallerytungsten 16y agoI find the story very inspiring, but as some others noted, it would be nice to see a working model of the unit, or at least some pictures. Now on a more substantial level, the claims of "60% efficiency" and "on part with coal" claims are interesting and need a little more explanation, in my opinion. How are these numbers being calculated? We aren't told. One might guess it's based on a bunch of manufacturing and startup costs, along with operating costs, for an unknown number of years (probably many) along with projections about various other future costs. What power levels will a prototype produce, and how will it be scaled up? I think the concept sounds promising, but a lot of questions remain to be answered.
- sliverstorm 16y ago> At 13, he bolted a discarded lawn-mower engine onto a homemade go-cart Hmm... Getting that to work is quite a feat for a kid. Lawn-mower engines usually cannot be operated sideways. I wonder if he was lucky enough to have a 2-stroke motor, or if he managed to keep the engine vertical?
- notmyname 16y agoI'm curious about how he stores the hydrogen. Hydrogen is notoriously difficult to store. How does he keep the indefinite cycle going with hydrogen in a sealed chamber if the hydrogen is constantly leaching through the walls of the chamber?
- jhaglund 16y agoI don't know.... But since H2 is not the fuel (it is the working fluid, the sun is the fuel) and as long as the loss is kept within reason, it seems like this could generate enough energy to do some electrolysis and refill any lost H2.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Blunt 16y agoI want to work with this guy!
- olegkikin 16y agoGuys, we should put our money together and invest into this.
- sfard 16y agoAssuming a proof-of-concept is developed, this guy has just managed to create a more-efficient way of converting heat into electricity. If that's the case, that technology could be applied to other heat-generation plants (nuclear, coal, gas), so those technologies would hypothetically still be more efficient. Am I missing something?
- noibl 16y agoOne thing that confused me about this was the claim that it might selectively advantage solar electricity production. I can understand that the system might work at small scale, making it available for deployment in preference to photovoltaics. But at large scale, surely the efficiency boost that comes from avoiding turbines would be as good for coal-fired and gas-fired generators as for anything else.