Top Inventions of 2007

Gibbs-Duhem writes "Time Magazine is reporting on the best inventions of the year. The top invention is the somewhat well-known iPhone, but there are some extremely cool projects included that I had certainly never heard of, including a device for capturing waste heat from car engines to increase efficiency up to 40%, a novel car designed to run entirely on compressed air claiming to have a range of 2000km with zero pollution, a James Bond style GPS tracking device that police can use to avoid high-speed chases, a small-scale printing press capable of printing and binding a paperback book in 3 minutes for under $3/book (and $50k per machine), a microbe-based technology for turning soft sand into sandstone, a water-based display which uses computer controlled nozzles to produce coherent gaps in the water, and a way to convert type A, B, and AB-negative blood into type O."

not 2000km!

[Thornburg]

Editor or poster added an extra 0... the anticipated range on the aircar is 200km (about 125 miles).

Jeep did it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeep has been using that water based display at auto shows for a few years now.

Re:not 2000km!

[Red Flayer]

From the MDI site linked to in TFA page for the compressed air car:

With the incorporation of bi-energy (compressed air + fuel) the CAT Vehicles have increased their driving range to close to 2000 km with zero pollution in cities and considerably reduced pollution outside urban areas.

Of course, that's a hybrid compressed air / fuel car, but it quite clearly states 2000 km.

It's an exercise for the reader to determine if that's just a number pulled out of MDI's compressed-air spewing ass, or if it's for real. Given the size of the CATcar (think go-cart on steroids), that range could be attainable...

Re:not 2000km!

[Thornburg]

Ok sorry, someone else typo'd. The MDI aircar site specifically states in several places a range of "200-300km".

e.g. http://www.theaircar.com/models.html [theaircar.com]

Some more enlightning stuff...

[ioshhdflwuegfh]

Can You Feel Me? Philips' SKIN Probes use biometric sensors and lighting to pick up on your feelings and make them visible. The Bubelle dress changes color depending on your mood. The Frisson bodysuit is covered with LEDs and fine copper hairs that light up when brushed or blown on.

Blinded by Light The hunt for better non-lethal weaponry gained new urgency when several people died in recent years after being shocked by a Taser. The LED Incapacitator, funded by the Department of Homeland Security, is a novel alternative. When officers shine the flashlight-like device in a person's eyes, high-intensity LEDs, pulsating at varying rates, will make the suspect temporarily blind and dizzy.

Making the Car Chase Obsolete High-speed chases may be money shots in Hollywood, but everywhere else they're just dangerous. The StarChase Pursuit Management System uses a laser-guided launcher mounted on the front grill of a cop car to tag fleeing vehicles with a GPS tracking device. Then the fuzz can hang back as real-time location data are sent to police headquarters.

Good Morning, Sunshine Embedded with a grid of LEDs, it [pillow] uses nothing but light to wake you up. About 40 min. before reveille, the programmable foam pillow starts glowing, gradually becoming brighter, to simulate a natural sunrise.
This helps set your circadian rhythm and ease you into the day.

Ignore the iPhone

[mcrbids]

If you ignore the over-hyped (and still pretty damned cool) iPhone as 1st place, this list is pretty amazing. The water-injected engine at first glance sounds alot like the water-injection that was hyped back in the 1970s [motherearthnews.com], but it's not. A little bit of digging (thanks, Google!) reveals that it's actually a 6-stroke engine [autoweek.com] that uses the heat that would normally be radiated away. If done right, there's no need for a radiator or other cooling system!

My first thought is about what this could mean for General Aviation - having the fuel burn rate cut by 40% WITHOUT needing any cooling gear (think: reduced weight) could be a real boon... already there are diesel aviation engines already that are significantly more efficient [flyingmag.com] ( but need radiators, and already have a high compression ratio) this could help out even more - imagine a diesel engine that reduces fuel consumption by 60%, maybe even 70%?!?!?

Pipe dream? Yes. But I sure do hope. And it would likely happen in cars before airplanes, thanks to the glacial pace of technology advancement in aviation. Everybody's so terrified of risk that innovation is radically reduced. The reality is simply that (Private Airplanes) == (Money) == (Lawyer Bait) == (an industry that is forever on the edge of shutdown).

If you want to see the crippling effect that excessive lawyering can cause to industry, you need look no further than private aviation.

-Ben

Air-car bullshit

[Eivind]

The "air-car" is bullshit.

First, all they have is blurry cad-drawings, and still they claim it'll be on the market in 2008. That's not possible, if that where to actually be the case they'd have to ALREADY have several completed prototypes of the car at the minimum for safety-testing and similar.

Second, there's just not enough energy there.

If you believe the claims of the aircar-makers themselves, (which ain't a safe thing to do, because they assume near termic equilibrium, among other things, but nevermind) then, and I'm here quoting their website: 300 litres at 300 bars results in 46 MJ (Y 52.1 MJ with 340 litres at 300 bars ).

Okay, so a 340lite (90 gallon!) air-tank can hold the same amount of energy as 0.4 gallons of petrol. Really

So, after you've refilled this gargantuan 90 gallon tank with air, you'll have the equivalent of 0.4 gallons petrol worth of energy. Thereafter you have to refuel again. Who wants to refuel every 10 miles ? This think makes electric cars look EXCELLENT by comparison.

Water injection. Crower's engine not new.

[slashdotmsiriv]

This article dates back to 1979 and is one of the first google results for "water injection" http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Home-Building/1979-09-01/Water-Injection-Wizardry.aspx [motherearthnews.com] "During the second World War, fighter pilots could push a button and inject a stream of water into the turbochargers of their monstrous powerplants . . . to get extra thrust on takeoff." Similarly, Crower's engine "harnesses normally-wasted heat energy by creating steam inside the combustion chamber, and using it to boost the engine's power output and also to control its temperature" This Crower guy must have a lot of nerve to claim as his own an invention that has been around for more than half a century. He may know how to build engines, but apparently he does not know how to search the internet ... His difference with Pat Goodman that did the same thing back in 1979 is that Goodman did not lie (or chose to ignore) about the novelty of his idea. And btw, unlike Crower, Goodman had his engines tested on actual vehicles: "Pat Goodman installed his first water injection system (on a Porsche racing car) in 1964, and the racing organization responded by banning his device . . . it made the vehicle too fast! Undaunted, Pat decided that--even if the racing establishment wasn't interested in "improving the breed", he was. Today, several near-bankruptcies later, the innovative mechanic owns a vehicle that only the government could argue with: a 1978 Ford Fiesta . . . that gets 50 MPG in normal around-town driving. (This impressive figure has been verified by a MOTHER staffer, who accompanied Goodman on a 48mile jaunt around Winchester, Virginia. During the drive--which Pat accomplished with, if anything, more speed than normal--the small four-cylinder sipped only .95 gallon of unleaded gas.) "

Re:not 2000km!

[Rei]

The problem is not that electricity has to be generated. While nothing is perfect, wind and solar would be close enough if only their costs went down (energy-payback and pollution-payback times are rather minimal for them). The problem is that compressed air vehicles are largely just hot air. Compressed air has a "Laundry List of Bad":

1) Lousy energy density (~17Wh/l; ~34 Wh/kg). This is about on par with regular old lead-acid batteries (~40Wh/l; ~25 Wh/kg). By comparison, lithium batteries are 250 Wh/l; 350 Wh/kg, 150 bar H2 is 405Wh/l; 39,000 Wh/kg and gasoline is 9000 Wh/l; 13,500 Wh/kg.
2) Inefficient energy storage (~16% of the energy that goes in ends up usable in a single-stage compresser; a heavy, expensive multistage compressor may reach 50%; then factor in energy losses for whole system numbers around 11% and 40%). Compare with ~30% for a gasoline or ethanol engine, ~40% for diesel or biodiesel, ~50-70% for hydrogen fuel cell, and ~90% for electrics.
3) Very limited ability to do regenerative braking. The engine is mechanical, not electric, so for efficient regenerative braking you'd need a second (electric) engine and electrical system. Technically, braking energy could be used to compress air, but that would compress with a very inefficient mechanism (as described in #2) since it'd need to be lightweight and fast.
4) One of the worst explosion dangers of any type of proposed vehicle, next generation or current generation. Only hydrogen has the potential to have worse explosions, and even that requires an ignition source to wait until there is a proper fuel-air mixture. Gasoline, diesel, biodiesel, and ethanol all can be subject to conflagrations, but are very difficult to get explosions out of. Most ultracapacitors and some batteries are essentially inert. Other batteries have fire risks, but few have explosion risks.

Re:Frank

[boarder]

Either you are shopping in an incredibly good place for all-in-one computers, or at an incredibly bad place for EVERYTHING else. All-in-ones aren't usually cheap, but monitors are. Monitors should only cost $300 for a good one, while the rest of the system can be had for around $500 (new, all components, no re-use). You can then upgrade everything but the monitor every three years for $500, vs buying an all-in-one for $1200.

The cheapest iMac is $1200 for a 20", cheapest Gateway All-in-one is $1500, cheapest Sony Vaio All-in-one is $1800. A 22" Dell is $300. So you can save $400 the first year and $700 every 2-3 years you decide to keep the monitor and upgrade, AND get a bigger monitor.

You fail at math... though maybe you succeed at meth.

Re:not 2000km!

[Rei]

[quote]A single coal power plant is a large ugly brick building stuck near a rail yard with a single or short series of tall smokestacks all located on the same campus, not a tens of miles long stretch of hideous moaning machines interrupting your previously uninterrupted property.[/quote]

You've apparently never seen a fossil plant up close. It's not just "a railyard", but a whole coal depot [google.com] that they have near them. It's like a giant's sandpit; the machinery that moves the coal around looks like little ants. They have to spray it all the time to keep the risk of a fire down.

And that's not the problem.

The problem is the huge plume of pollution that comes off of the plants. Apparently you don't care about your lungs. I care about mine. How pretty do you find hospitals and dead trees?

How come we don't wind turbine farms on the tops of buildings in large cities

Because the building has to be built extra strong for that. You can't just add a turbine on top of a building like that. Extra strength means extra cost. Big cities build their turbines offshore. Like, for example, the London Array [londonarray.com].

or in Central Park

Apparently the term "high property values" means nothing to you. How much does an acre in rural New York cost? Now how much does an acre in Manhattan cost? Prices aren't irrelevant. In fact, they're the most relevant issue at hand.

Long Island Sound

There was one [treehugger.com]. It was going to cost too much compared to how much power it would have provided..

off Martha's Vineyard etc etc

You mean like Cape Wind [capewind.org]?

And yes, there are some people like you who've been protesting it. Apparently they'd rather breathe heavy metals from coal burning (like the unopposed Canal Electric plant) than have a barely visible turbine on the distant horizon.