The phone charger cuppa

Godfrey charges phone using the Tellurex   Washington - Arabstoday Cell phone use has spread throughout the developing world. Unfortunately, electrical grids haven’t kept pace. This has left millions of individuals in underdeveloped nations with access to far-reaching cellular communications but no convenient, affordable means of charging their handsets. Enter the Tellurex World Pot, a teakettle generator. Created by Traverse City, Michigan headquartered Tellurex Corporation, the Tellurex World Pot is a practical solution that combines native cooking fires and thermoelectric science to recharge cell phones and other small battery operated devices. The Tellurex World Pot is being developed for use in remote villages around the world or during crises, such as natural disasters, when electrical grids might be disrupted. “My intent is that people will be able to use this on something as primitive as a three stone fire burning dung,” said Tellurex’s Director of Engineering Richard Harmon. “The Tellurex World Pot can be used with any fuel source - dung, wood, charcoal, kerosene or propane. It can operate on all of these - even potentially on a solar cooker. All it needs is a heat source underneath it.” To use the Tellurex World Pot, just start the heat source and add water or another liquid such as milk to the kettle. After about two minutes on the fire, the tea kettle will have generated enough power to boot up a dead cell phone. Of course, the liquid in the kettle would be heating at the same time. This enables people to charge small devices and boil and sterilize water using the same heat source. Watch a demonstration of the Tellurex World Pot through www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YoBaR5Quxc The Tellurex World Pot can deliver important benefits to people in the underdeveloped world who have access to far-reaching cellular coverage but too often are attacked while trekking to an electrical source to charge their phones. It may also be a life saver in any location hit by a natural disaster and power loss, where rescue may depend on keeping cell phone GPS and texting power working over several days, along with any mapping and compass apps. “The phones are cheap now, but the challenge is getting the charge. People often must walk many kilometers to a place where they can access electricity. Then they may have to pay from 35 to 50 US cents to charge the cell phone, plus there’s the danger in reaching the charging location,” Harmon said.   The Tellurex World Pot is designed using the concept of thermoelectrics which Harmon explain is “quite ancient,” but now better understood. Semiconductor materials have been refined quite a bit and Tellurex has proprietary methods of manufacture that give them an advantage in this particular application.  Positioning itself as the global leader in new thermoelectric materials, Tellurex already provides thermal management and power generation engineering and design expertise to the medical and bio-medical markets and to industrial customers in automotive, diesel truck, electric generators, thermally managed circuitry enclosures and telecom industries, as well as to the US military. “As the device is designed now it will be made of new materials. The generator is integrated into the pot. It’s not like the generator sits on top of the cooking vessel. The generator is part of the cooking vessel,” said Harmon. “For the process to work properly it’s rather critical that there is a fluid in the cooking pot. I have selected a tea pot in particular because tea is quite universally consumed around the world. Each culture has some form of a tea that they drink so I would not have to overcome a cultural barrier. A tea is something that is culturally accepted already and so the teapot is not something uncommon.” Tellurex would oversee the manufacture the metal tea pot, gather up the individual components and then assemble the Tellurex World Pots near the distribution points, creating employment opportunities throughout the developing world. Keeping in mind that these tea kettle generators would be used by people living on very limited incomes, Harmon’s team has relied on value engineering to design an affordable product. “We’ve demonstrated a proof of concept device and the design is quite a ways along,” advised Harmon. “The next step is to ruggedize it so it can reliably be sent into the field. The goal to is to settle on a basic design that will be accepted by a variety of cultures so that its components can be mass produced to drive costs down. We’re in meetings this week trying to determine a large demonstration and distribution schedule. We want to get the Tellurex World Pot out as soon as possible.” The teakettle generator could change the lives of millions. One of the reasons that people are often forced to live on a dollar or less per day, is because they don’t have access to work opportunities. If people could use their cell phones to find project-focused work opportunities, either daily or weekly, this would help to raise their incomes. In some nations, having a way to charge a cell phone would mean that low-income people could live in their villages rather than in slums on the outskirts of urban areas. Among the benefits of the Tellurex World Pot sitting atop a simple fire: • One tea kettle generator would charge a cell phone, rechargeable batteries, or light up high intensity LED lights anywhere a fire could be started. • After just two minutes, a cell phone with a dead battery could be powered up enough to send a text message and transmit the GPS location. • In 36 minutes, one liter of water could be sterilized for drinking, while four potatoes are baked in the coals of a campfire and a cell phone achieves a 20 percent charge. • Alternatively, in that same 36 minutes, while the water is sterilized, reusable batteries could be trickle charged to power four high intensity LED lights for over four hours. Tellurex is in talks with NGOs to find financing or some model that would make it affordable for every family in need in the developing world to own a Tellurex World Pot.