Micro-Engines powering a laptop?

[diggingforgold]

I was watching the history channel a few minutes ago, and they were talking about micro size engines. They said that the gear threads in the micro engines are the size of a blood cell. Imagine, pour a few drops of some type of gas into your laptop. No need to charge. Keep a model paint size bottle of gas with you, and it keeps it powered for the entire week.

They said current technology permits just one of these engines to be used to power and fly a miniature airplane with a wingspan of 4 inches!

Any comment? Ideas? Please share.

 

[Captain Slug]

I've seen official qhitesheets on the engines and the current difficulty is that these engines produce temperatures high enough to melts any material currently used to make computers (1,000f and up) let alone your hands touching the device.

The emerging technology that will really enhance the entire portable market is the Zinc-Air battery. Instead of being disposable or rechargable(which doesn't work forever) these batteries are "refuelable".

They have EXTREME output capacity and are currently being tested in 5 city busses. 36 cells the size of a PCMCIA card are capable of driving the Bus around with large electric motors for an entire bus shift (12 hours).
Upon depletion the batteries are refueled by exchanging out the deionized Zinc-AIR mixture with a freshly ionized batch.

Not only do these batteries pack a huge wallop, but they're also made for indefinite usage. Since they're refuelable via a machine that runs on electricity, there's nothing to throw away or recycle.

If one of todays laptops were to be converted from NiMh rechargable batteries to Zinc-Air refuelable batteries, it's battery life would be increased 10-fold (30 hours versus 3 hours). AND it would weigh 5 pounds less than it did wit hthe rechargable battery.