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Question for R&D folks... Converting heat to battery life?

post #1 of 3
3/29/05 at 4:14am
Thread Starter 
I keep hearing about all the heat generated by the CPU and GFX Card in laptops. The current approach is to dissipate the heat via a heatsink or similar approach. What about an approach to contain the heat rather to allow it to dissipate? It shouldn't be too complicated to convert all that lost energy into battery life. (I was reading DUNE again and thought that their Stillsuit concept would be useful in laptop battery efficiency.)

Has this approach ever been taken?

Or should I just go to sleep?
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post #2 of 3
3/29/05 at 4:24am
Hmm, a coal-fired laptop? I think you need to convert the heat to mechanical energy and then to electricity. Not very efficient, and you'd have to have a little turbine and generator hooked to your lappy.

Just use your laptop to keep you warm, and you can save on heating bills in the winter.
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post #3 of 3
3/29/05 at 5:22am
yay for thermodynamics!

taking max temperature inside the laptop as 70C, min temperature outside as 20C, get the best obtainable efficiency of a best possible converter operating in these conditions as (70C-20C)/(70C+273[K-C]) ~= 14.6%. the real thing would necessarily have a lower efficiency, say 10% (being extremely optimistic here---since the powers dealt with here are very low powerplant-wise, losses will most certainly dwarf the results), which means the best you can possibly hope for is extending your battery life by 1/(1-0.1) ~= 11%. adding a couple cells to the battery'd be much cheaperER and betterER.
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