The Black World Of Solitude.

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

Today I'm sitting in front of the computer doing nothing at all (in other words, I'm wasting electricity). But I don't think I'm the only one who's wasting electricity every single second. Imagine what will happen the next few years when the atmosphere contains too much carbon dioxide (remember, you burn oil, coal or methane to generate electricity, and carbon dioxide is still produced).

And the funny thing is, many people say that palm oil, methane and ethanol are fuels that cause less harm to the environment. But burning them produces carbon dioxide too. I think most people are only caring about not polluting the Earth, and perhaps ignoring global warming completely.

And then the production of normal solar panels will exhaust our supply of silicon and germanium and whatever elements used. I'm not too sure for the organic solar cells, though. And nuclear reactors dump nuclear waste into our environment. Wind turbines only generate electricity when there are winds, and the wave thingy may harm wildlife. Building a dam across a river also prevents sediments from reaching the lower part of a river, causing the land there to be infertile. And the conventional coal-burning or oil-burning generator produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide. And it must not be forgotten that water vapour is a greenhouse gas as well.

With all these setbacks of electrical generation technology, it's no wonder the earth continues warming up despites plans to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released.

Therefore, I have tried thinking of a set-up that can produce electricity. Unfortunately, there are many setbacks as well. I would value constructive comments.

Picture of crookes radiometer from Wikipedia.

As you can see, I'm too lazy to draw out the crookes radiometer. The vanes in the crookes radiometer spin when infrared light is shone on it or when it is brought close to any heat source. This spinning effect can be used to spin a generator. Of course, very little electricity is produced at this stage. It is used to spin a small motor, which in turn spins a 600-teeth gear that is made of a low density material, such that it does not weigh so heavy, because it would take a lot of energy for the small motor to move the gear (inertia). This gear is attached to a gear with only two teeth (where the two teeth are at opposite sides of the gear) connected by a belt (I forgot the actual term). See the small box in the picture to find out how it is possible. Since one tooth still remains in the belt, the gear will spin 300 times faster than the big gear with 600-teeth. This small gear spins a generator and produces electricity. If the electricity isn't enough, it can be stepped-up using a transformer to increase its voltage and through a current amplifier to increase current.

So there you are. I cannot be too sure whether this thing will work; I don't have a crookes radiometer and I'll need a vacuum pump...

I'd appreciate any constructive comments.

Labels: Mohenjo-Daro

人之命，若无意，何生乎？11:56