Posted on 07/29/2015 1:49:02 PM PDT by Red Badger
The Brits impose a salt tax on India. Illegally making salt in defiance of them is what got Ghandi on the map.
Yup. When the cathode wears out, you can drink the lamp.
Can I just use some potatoes instead of the salt water?
“They said use of the SALt lamp for eight hours a day every day delivers an anode lifespan of six months...”
It’s not “eight hours”.
It’s eight hours per day for six months on one anode.
“Wouldn’t the process also include a sacrificial cathodic element that would have to be periodically replaced?”
The article says every 6 months.
Solar cells and a Li ion rechargeable would be better, no anode to replace, better efficiency.
The po’ folks out on those 7,000 islands can’t afford solar panels.
You’re right, I did confuse the two. Watching infomercials can be entertaining. When my son was little *he’s forty-six now* he loved to visit the infomercial booths at the State Fair in Alabama. I still have one of those knife sharpening blocks with two rods that stick out. Still have the three peelers’ we watched demonstrated, too.
“The po’ folks out on those 7,000 islands can’t afford solar panels.”
But they can afford this, unpriced device, with unpriced “replacement anodes”. I suspect this will be a governmnet grant to provide a thousand of these that will be useless in a year. Solar panels are more “renewable” than a Cu-Zn salt battery.
There’s no mention of the “fuel” (anode) or “depolarizer” (cathode) here - they will have to be chunks of quite pure metal - e.g. Zn/Cu, Mg/Fe, Al/Cu and much more costly than salt/water. The water and salt is pretty much a red herring - the energy comes from the metals. The only “modern technology” here is the LED, making it possible to use the rather measly current available from such crude batteries.
The zinger is that ordinary solar cells are quite cheap and give a lot more power for a longer time. So instead just give them a square foot of solar cells connected to a battery or capacitor and a bunch of LEDs, and they can have a bunch of light for hours at night. LEDs now cost about 10 cents each.
Tequila and lime?
That is more likely to cause cold neuron fission.
I think it is the ultra-efficient LEDs that make it possible to actually get long lasting light out of it.
A system of “just add salt water” by the user, though, makes it suitable for the Third World, if the anode is supplied with the lantern.
The question then would be price per unit, because you can be sure groups from preppers to Amish would be interested in something that lets you have long lasting light without a fire hazard or the bulk and batteries of solar systems.
I didn’t know that. Just curious - what was the cause of his death?
The defense to which is—pepper spray.
[sorry, it took me 24 hrs to come up with that]
Thanks for the ping. Very interesting.
A startup team calls their work a product. They also call it a social movement.Oh? Then count me out -- not least because "social movement" is another term for "scam". Thanks Red Badger.
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