n the future, you could charge your cell phone just by chatting.

Researchers at South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University have developed a new technology that converts soundwaves into electrical energy, The Telegraph reports. With the sound-harvesting tech, batteries could be charged by everything from the human voice and music to the sound of highway traffic.

Researcher Dr. Sang-Woo Kim said, “The sound that always exists in our everyday life and environments has been overlooked as a source. This motivated us to realise power generation by turning sound energy from speech, music or noise into electrical power.”

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/09/sound-charging-cell-phone-battery_n_859347.html

These are dark days for solar thermal power generation. Concentrating sunlight to produce steam that in turn drives a generator has lost its commercial shine amid a glut of cut-price solar panels. This glut has already famously upended Solyndra as well as other solar innovators, but a recently recapitalized Turkish start-up plans to put solar thermal back on track. Its strategy is to overhaul the steam production process and attack a market that photovoltaics can’t touch.

Istanbul-based Hittite Solar Energy was founded by Oğuz Çapan, its chairman and chief technology officer. Çapan sold a global oilfield-services company to join the renewable energy movement in 2005 and established Hittite Solar a year later. “My biggest advantage,” says Çapan, “is being an engineer and an outsider.”

Like most solar thermal power plants, Hittite Solar uses large, trough-shaped mirrors to focus sunlight onto steel tubes in glass jackets that maintain an insulating vacuum around the tubes. A fluid flowing through the tubes conveys heat to steam turbines, which are attached to generators. In other commercial plants this fluid is a synthetic oil, whose heat must be transferred to water to produce steam for the turbine. But in Hittite Solar’s setup the fluid is water, and the steam is made directly in the collector tubes.

Producing steam directly delivers more power at lower cost; the heat exchangers used with oil-based collectors are not only pricey, they waste roughly 10 percent of the heat captured according to Çapan. Hittite Solar can also superheat its steam to 500 °C—the practical limit for the collector tubes—rather than a lower 400 °C limit for synthetic oils. Hotter steam further boosts the efficiency of the turbines by trimming heat losses another 5 percent.

Whereas conventional plants rotate both mirrors and collectors over the course of a day to track the sun, Hittite Solar pivots only the mirrors. This means flexible hoses are no longer required to connect the collector tubes. These hoses are the reason why thermal plants used synthetic oils: Flexible hoses are just too prone to leaking when used with high-pressure steam. But the static collectors allow for a much more robust system. “Everything is welded and flanged. This is a very simple solution,” says Çapan.

Çapan’s efforts might have come to naught without the marketing savvy and financial backing of Serhan Süzer, the scion of Turkey’s powerful Süzer Group. Süzer’s environmental concerns began in his college years when he joined Greenpeace Turkey. As CEO of the family’s Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut franchises, Süzer won LEED certification for a KFC in Istanbul—a first for the chain globally—but struggled to effect deeper changes. So when Çapan’s original partner wanted out of renewable energy, Süzer recapitalized Hittite Solar and became its CEO in December 2011.

Hittite Solar has demonstrated its technology in four pilot plants of increasing scale, growing from 30 kilowatts of heat output to 200 kW. The company also set up a demo plant in Colorado in 2012 and says it is negotiating to install a 2-megawatt power plant in Qatar.

To help compete with cheap photovoltaics, Çapan and Süzer hope to enter an additional market unique to solar thermal technology. Turkey’s fast-growing industrial sector is building new paper mills, textile, and food-processing plants, and exploring heavy oil production. These facilities all require steam, which Hittite estimates can be generated by next-door solar thermal plants at a cost that’s 50 to 60 percent lower than by burning expensive natural gas. Süzer estimates that Turkey currently imports natural gas from Russia at roughly US $14 per thousand cubic feet for a 1- to 2-year contract—nearly seven times the cost of gas in the United States.

When IEEE Spectrum visited Hittite Solar in Istanbul last November, Çapan and Süzer were prepping a final demonstration plant near Izmir, to begin operating by the end of 2012 at 50-kW capacity and then scale up to 1 MW. The plant, to be equipped with thermal storage to enable 24-hour operation, is intended to convince conservative industrialists that Hittite Solar’s equipment is ready to rumble. “Businessmen like to see that steam roaring into the atmosphere,” says Çapan. His partner, the businessman, agrees. “They have a pragmatic approach,” says Süzer. “Their brain is in their eyes.”

In a milestone that is expected to help Intel's push into the smartphone and tablet markets, the Santa Clara, Calif., tech giant finally has made its brainy microchips as energy-efficient as those from companies using a design by Britain-based ARM Holdings, which now dominate the mobile market, according to a new report. That's important for Intel, which for years got the cold shoulder from phone and tablet makers because its power-hungry chips shortened the battery life of mobile devices. With its new chips, Intel could find its way into a few more of those gadgets, the study by Bernstein Research analysts said Monday. But they cautioned that the development doesn't mean the world's biggest chipmaker is headed for a huge boost in revenue. Bernstein noted that the ARM camp has such a commanding lead in phones and tablets that Intel probably won't make much of a dent in those markets for a couple of years - even with its energy-efficient chips. Moreover, Bernstein determined that the performance of ARM-based chips has increased enough to be suitable for low-end notebooks, which could begin to challenge Intel's dominance in the personal computer market. Both chip types "are very close in terms of power efficiency and processing power," the report concluded. As a result, it said, "the competitive fight between the ARM and Intel camps will therefore heat up meaningfully as early as 2013, with likely damages on both sides and no winner." For its study, Bernstein compared Intel's chip in a Motorola RAZR phone and a RAZR phone with an ARM chip. It also compared both chips in similar tablets outfitted with the Windows 8 operating system. "In smartphones, Intel is competitive in terms of power efficiency," the analysts concluded, and the company "poses a credible threat to ARM's dominance" in tablets. But it also said ARM's chips have become more powerful, making them "a very compelling choice" for consumers looking for low-end notebooks. "Overall, there is no stand-out difference in power efficiency or performance between the two camps," the report said, adding that it all points to "more direct competition" between Intel and the ARM chipmakers. Nathan Brookwood, of the market consulting firm Insight 64, agreed that Intel will have trouble making headway in mobile devices. Besides its late start in those markets, he noted, the dominant smartphone suppliers-Samsung and Apple - prefer to make their own chips. In addition, he said, other mobile-device makers like ARM chips because it's often easier to mix and match certain features with them than with the kind Intel sells. Another problem for Intel is that ARM chips tend to be cheaper, so the company may need to cut its prices - and its profit - to compete, according to a note Raymond James analysts sent their clients. They said Intel's gross margins - money left over from revenue after accounting for the cost of goods sold - have been 62 percent to 65 percent in recent years. But as Intel ramps up its competition with ARM chipmakers, the analysts warned, "mid-50 percent gross margins are an increasing reality."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-intel-smartphone-chips-energy-efficient-competitors.html#jCp