h a l f b a k e r yWe have a low common denominator: 2
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Introducing the NMRM Corp charging system!
The toilet + cistern is raised by a modest vertical spacer
which is hardly perceptible*.
When flushed, the water runs down the elongated pipe,
turning a small hydro-ecletic turbine and so making
leccy.
Note, the output is a USB port on the
side of cistern,
available in white, green and puce.
*15 ft
[link]
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Hmm. I'm thinking maybe 10kg of water falling 3m, so that's
300Nm, or 300 Joules. That's 5W for 60s. You are going to
have to pee a lot more than you phone. |
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They did, but it was called VW back then. |
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They didn't have a lot of things in the 60s; ozone depletion, AIDS, the Internet, compact discs, gene splicing, GPS, The Spice Girls ... |
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Things were better then ... |
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//gene splicing// Surely they did. It's nowadays that nobody
"splices" a gene. Back then you had to untwist the strands,
plait them together, then run some whipcord over it and
finish off with a good coat of tar. Of course, DNA was bigger
back then. |
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That's probably because it was all on 7-hole punched paper tape, rather than amino-acid base pairs. |
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Of course, the upside was that you could edit it with nothing more than some sticky labels and a sharpened 2B pencil ... |
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Why, back in my day, we did it all with scissors, tape,
and 35mm film. The soundtrack came later. |
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Some commercial roofs are a large surface areas of singular purpose . |
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// The soundtrack came later. // |
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Of course, before 1950 almost all DNA was only in black-and-white, too. When you look at pictures from that era, everyone's grey. |
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Only the very wealthy could afford to go to a professional painter and have their DNA colourized. |
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//10kg of water falling 3m |
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Aha, this is the clever bit, included in the price is a 5
cubic metre flush tank. |
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For modest extra fee(s) you get the "Thames" tank
10m3, the "Nile" at 20m3 and finally the "Amazon" at
30m3. Available in Beige, Taupe and Angry Plumber
Chartreuse . |
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How much is the "modest extra fee" for having all the walls reinforced to take the huge additional load ? |
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You should have read the small print <sound of evil
laughter> |
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A contemporary of Gene Roddenberry and Gene Shoemaker. Specialised in biochemistry. |
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(Homer Simpson, allegedly) |
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the orange-faced one, maybe. |
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As nicked from the emoticons list wikipedia |
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Rather than putting a turbine on the tank that is elevated 15
feet, just put the turbine in the filler valve. A pressure drop
of 40 - 60 psi typically found in residential plumbing is
equivalent to ~90 to ~140 feet of head. |
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The big challenge is making the turbine cheaper than the
cost of all the electricity it will ever produce. |
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Hmm, well seeing as the water supplier does the
pumping the water up to the tank...I would have
thought the electricity generated would be low cost,
no? |
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If you're turbine averse, then a cascade of Tesla fluid
valves pulling on a dynamo should work. If it was
made
out of transparent plastic, it might be kind of pretty
to
watch. |
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Obviously you'd need some mesh filters on
both ends of the valvey bit, to keep confused
salmon
trying to use it as a fish-ladder. |
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// making the turbine cheaper // |
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It would only be economic if the property already had a PV installation with battery storage, as the output from the turbine will be erratic. |
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If it was integrated with the float valve, it might be possible to manufacture it for about USD $20 in quantity; it would make sense to sell the actual dynamo as an add-on. |
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As a plus, such a device would also function as a water meter. |
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One could wait until a fair amount of waste had
accumulated and then capitalized on the increased
mass to get a larger charge. Or better - convert
liquid mass to steam and keep it under pressure.
Over time, very large pressures could become
possible and on venting the pressure vessel a lot of
energy could be harvested. There might be one
special day when the whole city vented their
pressure vessels at once, and you would stay indoors
on that day. |
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This reminds me of my thought experiment about putting a sort
of backwards Archimedes screw at the bottom of a down-pipe,
to capture the energy of occasional heavy downpours. |
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An Archemedian screw is acceptability efficient as a low-speed low-head pump that has good immunity to blockages, but is otherwise very poor as an energy-conversion device. A Pelton wheel would be a much better choice. |
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However, unless you have a building with a huge roof area, positioned in the tropics and subject to daily massive rainfall, the amount of energy recovered is unlikely to recoup the costs of installation and maintenance; and you need a battery system to store the power generated. |
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