Amid a search for greener and sustainable energy, one US company is introducing a way to capture energy from rolling cars and trucks, which is otherwise wasted, to generate electricity.
Although the notion of “harvesting” kinetic energy is not new, the “rumble strip” devices by Maryland-based New Energy Technologies appear to be among the first coming to the market offering a way to generate energy from moving vehicles.
“We take some of that rolling resistance and capture it and convert it to electricity,” company chief executive John Conklin said.
The firm previewed its MotionPower strips at the civic center in Roanoke, Virginia.
As drivers slowed down, or came to a stop, their vehicle tires depressed small rumble strip-like treadles, allowing for the capture of kinetic energy.
This captured energy was converted to electricity, which powered a series of brightly illuminated lights displayed to drivers.
Because the amounts of electricity generated are relatively small, the best use would be in areas where the electricity can be used locally instead of transmitting over a distance.
Conklin said this type of system has tremendous potential in high-traffic areas, such as sports venues, shopping malls, as well as toll and border crossings, to power lights and other electrical systems.
“We know there are 150 million registered vehicles that travel 6 billion miles [9.7 billion kilometers] a day in the US — that’s a tremendous amount of kinetic energy,” he said, adding that the firm has developed its own technology without any government support.
“Our goal and approach is to design and deploy this at a cost-competitive payback,” which would be more cost-effective than using solar panels, he said.
Scientists have long seen a potential for harvesting kinetic energy using such methods, but the applications have been limited.
Mechanical engineering professor Lei Zuo and colleagues at Stony Brook University note in a research paper that only 10 percent to 16 percent of the fuel consumed by cars is used to drive the vehicle and much of the energy is wasted, and describes the potential for harvesting energy through a regenerative shock absorber. Others have captured energy from braking systems.
City College of New York researchers led by Yiannis Andreopoulos see potential in road-embedded piezoelectric systems — using pressure from cars to squeeze crystals that generate electricity — which have been used in Israel among other places.
“In general is quite feasible to tap on energy which otherwise goes wasted,” Andreopoulos said, although he added that he was not familiar with the New Energy system.
“Technically the main problem is the efficiency in the conversion of kinetic energy of the vehicle to electrical charge ... There is no fuel cost involved and the only parameter to consider is the initial cost and the time to break even beyond maintenance and reliability.”
Andreopoulos said any power generated from such systems would be “incremental,” but that “if we add them all together, a significant impact may result.”
New Energy says its system relies on “peristaltic action,” which refers to contractions which drive pressurized fluid to create power.
The company says it is developing several systems which can be adapted for light vehicles or heavy trucks, in low-speed or high-speed situations.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained