Re:New multiferroic alloy turns waste heat into green electr...
by SigmundA on Thursday June 23, 2011 @03:49PM
(#2689556)
"which isn't even going to power my wristwatch"
Not true, thermocouples can produces hundreds of watts, it 's all about the size of the thermocouple and the temperature difference used.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_gen...
Frankly, this material sounds a bit like a thermocouple. Those produce electricity from heat, too, about several microvolts, which isn't even going to power my wristwatch. It isn't even going to power my nano-machine! The magnitude of the effect in question is kind of a key thing to know if you state "free, green energy", since I'm wanting 110V at 10A out of my green energy. Thermocouples are about 9 orders of magnitude away from what "free, green energy" requires, and 9 orders of magnitude is a huge thing to leave out of an article. It's like leaving off the fact that superconductivity requires temperatures slightly warmer than Pluto (and that omission is only 2 orders of magnitude).