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IP: re The Little Engine That Could Be: button size micro gas turbin e
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 21:57:06 -0500
From: Neil Hunt <nhunt () netflix com> To: "'farber () cis upenn edu'" <farber () cis upenn edu> IPers may find it interesting, I hope... Neil/. -----Original Message----- From: Neil Hunt [mailto:nhunt () nhunt org] Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 7:48 PM To: farber () cis upenn edu Subject: RE: The Little Engine That Could Be: button size micro gas turbine Interesting... A laptop "battery" turbine with 100g of Propane would have an uppper limit of about 1kWh of energy assuming (100% efficient conversion). More practically, I'm going to guess 10% efficiency for about 100Wh. That would power a laptop for about 6 hours. It is about equivalent to 300 AA batteries. I think it would also have about the explosive power of a small hand-grenade. I wonder how the airlines would feel about that? Incidentally, the combustion of that 100g of Propane will consume the oxygen in about 78 cu-ft of air at sea level or about 0.2 cu-ft/min in a 6 hour burn. FAA documents suggest that an absolute minimum ventilation rate of .24 cu-ft/min is required to sustain a sedentary adult. So presumably the ventilation on an airline would have to be substantially upgraded too! Neil/.
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- IP: re The Little Engine That Could Be: button size micro gas turbin e David Farber (Nov 29)