7 Offbeat Off-the-Grid Green Gadgets, Inventions, and Innovations

Dispite how neat it sounds, it would seem that the gravia lamp is a hoax. It DID win an award, but it cannot exist in reality: http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2008/03/03/stop-pr...

A wood-heated jacuzzi can hardly be called "green" energy... the CO2 emission is worse than most electrical energy sources and to get wood, you cut forests... no way, not "green" energy...

i know, they should call it "Brown Energy" because green wood won't burn ! anyway, you are right !!!

When you use electricity there is an 80% chance that energy came from fossil fuels that were harvested from below the earth. When you burn wood the source is a co2 absorbing tree. There for the wood is far more green because it is offset by a tree that absorbed all the carbon that it took to make that wood...

Dear Jessica,
The burning of wood is considered CO2-neutral because it releases the same amount of carbon that it absorbed during its life as a tree.

You can grow the trees again, they are not saying to cut down old growth forests. Wood is one of the few sustainable products we have...you prefer coal, or electricity? The amount of non-recyclable products that go into making solar panels is horrible too. Yes...this is very "green".

The CO2 put out by people debating the subject is probably worse than what that small wood fire puts out once or twice a week.

Just wanted to point out, the Gravia lamp has been reviewed in several places, notably here: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/03/03/prizew... The physics behind this idea are unworkable and the lamp would never be able to provide a usable amount of light. The inventor of the Gravia lamp has also issued a retraction, stating that estimations and decisions made during the design process were incorrect (http://pesn.com/2008/02/19/9500471_Gravity_Lamp...). So, while the other ideas presented here are neat, the Gravia lamp should be allowed to fade back to the land of ideas.

The Gravia Floor Lamp has actually been proven to be a physical impossibility. The device would only have an amount of energy dependent on the mass of the weight, and the height, most of it lost to friction. LED's arn't efficient enough to make that practical, and even then the amount of energy wouldn't really do much anyway.

You really need to take another look at what is means to be "green" and electricity is not evil. First I will start with the wood burning bathtub. The wood burning bathtub may seem green however all you are doing is harvesting energy from long hydrocarbons (not as long as say coal, however a coal plant is also more efficient than burning wood in the open air with a pipe coil around it to absorb some of the heat to say nothing of the light energy, and either way any natural gas plant, which burns short hydrocarbons will produce less CO2 per kJ than longer carbon chains like wood and coal, to say nothing of carbon free sources such as nuclear power plants, hydro power plants, wind generators, solar panels etc. The hot tub is in fact the exact opposite of "green" and is more polluting than a normal electric hot tub (a large portion of the energy generated in most developed counties comes from natural gas, solar, wind, and nuclear) with the same volume of water. Second, "Instead of using electricity, this refrigerator is cooled by magnetic fields." It does in fact use electricity to power the electromagnets within it, it may be more efficient but that does not hide its electricity usage. You may still argue that it does not directly use electricity. However if you do make that argument then a normal refrigerator does not use electricity either. Rather, a normal refrigerator uses its electricity to power a compressor which incidentally works by a motor which works by magnetism created by an electric current, anyway that compressor compresses a gas which heats up, that heat is radiated away from the refrigerator by the long winding pipe on the back of your refrigerator after which it moves into the refrigerator is expanded, cools and absorbs heat from the refrigerator and is sent back to the compressor. The after light seems somewhat legit, at least some of the energy used by the fluorescence can come from sunlight, though calling it electricity free is somewhat questionable since most of that energy will come from the bulb which is powered by electricity. Next, the kinetic energy band, That energy again comes from your body and is electricity free like the hot tub. however depending on the efficiency of the human body, which gets the large majority of its energy from hydro carbons (more or less food) it may still have a larger carbon footprint than than a natural gas power plant, and certainly carbon less electricity sources such as nuclear, solar, and hydro. You may say that that energy would be wasted normally however that is not the case, adding weight (even a weight that small) requires more energy to move. This may seem insignificant however all the energy you get from that band will be less than the additional energy you have to exert to charge it. This is due to the fact that the energy it produces is the direct result of you putting kinetic energy into some small part inside it that oscillates (probably a magnet through a coil) to produce electricity, however all the mass is not made up by the oscillating magnet and any additional weight reduces its efficiency. The last thing I will mention, is the The Gravia Floor Lamp.. its not possible as it would defy physics. This issue has been covered so many times already that I will not reiterate it here instead I will point you to the comments of this slash dot article http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/... . However a brief summary is in order, Even if the lamp could 100% convert the potential energy of a 50lb weight into electricity and you had 100% efficient LED's neither of which conditions will EVER be possible and that LED was a green led (green light produces the most lumens per watt) it would be unable to power its LED's at its claimed 600-800 lumens for any significant amount of time.

I love your Comments. Critical "Green" thinking is exactly what everyone needs. No one seems to be questioning anything anymore!

You really should have done some research.

The Gravia lamp does not and will not work:
http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2008/03/03/stop-pr...
http://sustainabledesignupdate.com/?p=626

The gravia should be removed. Simple pre-college shows that, to provide a 50 watt light for 4 hours, the weight would need to be over one tonne in mass. This is also assuming 100% efficiency.

that would be 10 kg not a tonne

The dutch tub is the best. If your going to do something off the grid, it might as well be something you can enjoy.

#1 Neat barbecue and hot tub in one.

#2 Uses ELECTROmagnets or electric motors to spin permanent magnets and thus is not off the grid. It even has a television in the door!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_refrigera...

#3 Was invented in the 1800s and is called a French Press.

#4 Is complete nonfunctional. The designer never did the math on it. With the most efficient LEDs it would last about two or three seconds as the weight fell to the floor.

#5 Actually a pretty good idea. Doubt it would have a good flash, but a simple digital camera wouldn't use much power. You will still need to get the photo off it, but you could have a solar powered printer I guess.

#6 Is just a normal bit of light storing green stuff stuck to a light bulb. Totally not off the grid. Plus it would block light while the light bulb is on actually reducing the effectiveness of it.

#7 Might work but I don't know how much charging you could actually get off it.

Someone did the physics on the Gravia light - its a complete hoax.
Sorry to ruin the list.

So burning a lot of wood is better for the environment than using electricity created by burning coal in a controlled environment?

See? The people and groups coming up with stuff like this are the ones that should be getting the 25 billion usd, not the greedy, wasteful, oil-addicted, overpaid, US automakers.

While it sounds cool, the Gravia has been proven to be a fraud and a physical impossibility. The actual amount of energy potential the device is capable of generating light from an LED is mere seconds, not hours.

These are all awesome, especially the kinetic energy harvesting ankle gadget and the magnetic powered fridge. The wood burning hot tub isn't really "green" technology, but it is cool.

Uhhh, only two of them don't require electricity. (The LED lamp and the tub.)Neat list, but Fail for concept appearance. (you have to heat the presso's water, and you need a computer to see the camera's photos.)

Great list of gadgets. I especially like the kinetic energy sources. Any chance there's an adapter to plug into my nintendo DS?

How the hell is the dutchtub green? It BURNS wood, releasing greenhouse gases, and destroys in hours what took decades to grow.

I don't really see how tubs that are heated by wood are very green. In that sense should we make wood burning power plants? Highly inefficient and we already use too much wood as it is.

the gravia lamp is a silly idea. As if you wanted 4 hours of light with I'd say around 6 LED's which would each use around 5W of power. So W=J/s which gives 30 J/s total. Then 30*60*4=6000J overall. So you would need to produce 6000J of energy to lift the weight in the first place. To lift 1Kg 1m it takes 1J so you would need to lift 1Kg 6000m or 6000Kg 1m

even if the total wattage was 1W you would still need to lift 1Kg 240m or 240Kg 1m

'Although the DutchTub is off-the-grid it is not green by any standard. Burning wood releases loads of carbon dioxide (which is the current buzzword) into the atmosphere along with all sorts of metal oxides and other soot.'

But that CO2 will be almost carbon-neutral if you're burning wood - in other words, it's biogenic as opposed to anthropogenic.

If you're worried about impacts from it, I'd concentrate on VOC's, PAH's and TCDD's. More pertinent than CO2.

1.) A wood-burning stove is "green" now?
2.) The "magnetic fridge" is a sham without a basis in any legitimate science.
3.) The espresso machine is cool if you like your coffee cold, I guess.
4.) The Gravia floor lamp has never been built and the concept is also a sham.
5.) the Twist Camera hasn't been built either.
6.) The "energy-free lighting" is just a CFL bulb with a chunk of glow-in-the-dark plastic on it.
7.) And the kinetic energy charger has also never been built and probably wont work effectively

Now what is the innovation here?

So where can you buy one of the "Kinetic Energy" chargers? The hot tub is cool, but I agree with Dave, too much carbon dioxide.... I really like the idea of making a charger that "charges" with your movement. Maybe that would get some fat asses off the couch!!!!!!!

That tub isn't that creative. I've worked at a boy scout camp and Scout Masters use the same concept to heat water and coffee in a Orange Gatorade cooler using char coal and copper coiling. That's not impressive to me.

Well, burning wood releases CO2 allright, but it is whats called "CO2-Neutral", which means, that it produces as much O2 during its lifetime as CO2. So it won't be bad for the atmosphere.

The camera thing looks like a sex toy, which is why I wouldn't buy it; plus my 12-14 year old students would be wondering what I did with it!

I agree that the woodburning jacuzzi is a bad idea for the reasons stated by the previous commentor. My favorite is the Kinetic energy charger. Way to go!

Wow, how puritan can you get??? Who cares about the world...if something looks vaugely sexual (it didn't to me until you mentioned it...have you been using the "butterfly strap-on vibrator too much??) then one it should not be considered?

Or were you making a funny?

burning wood is carbon neutral as the wood has already locked up the same amount of co2 as is realeased.

Dave, I think you're missing the meaning of "off-the-grid," which means you don't need to be hooked up to the power grid to run it. Also, burning wood is generally a carbon-neutral action--the carbon you release is being soaked up by the wood you're growing. As long as you harvest it sustainably, that is, and keep the same number of board-feet of trees growing at all times, then its carbon neutral (not counting the carbon produced in procuring it; chainsaws, trucks, etc).

The floor lamps seems like the wrong numbers intuitively to anyone who's ever powered a light bulb using a bicycle. I know the lamps use LEDs, which are more efficient, but you have work pretty hard to generate just a few watts, so either that weight is very heavy or it wouldn't last very long.

I think the refrigerator is a fantastic Idea. If it works that will be a great improvement. The wood burning hot tub is also a fun idea. The other inventions are also very good and it is great to see people putting such great ideas into production. Keep up the great work.
Sincerely
Denise

Burning wood is not necessarily ungreen – it releases comparatively little CO2 and is renewable. You can sequester the CO2 given off through burning wood by planting a few trees. It's natural gas and oil that present a real problem because it takes millions of years to take that carbon out of the air. And I don't know where you got the idea that metal oxides are released through wood combustion. Perhaps if the wood is painted.

Actually there is absolutely nothing wrong with burning wood if it is grown in a sustainable manner. What's wrong with plantation forests (especially if they aren't monoculture)? Sure, if you're burning virgin forest it's bad.

Although the DutchTub is off-the-grid it is not green by any standard. Burning wood releases loads of carbon dioxide (which is the current buzzword) into the atmosphere along with all sorts of metal oxides and other soot.
Burning wood can be counted as zero comission in cardon dioxide and quite green because the carbon has gone in to the wood in the woods lifecykle and is a renewable source of energy. On the other hand if you would use normal electricity to heat up the bath tub, then the energy could come exsample from coal or oil and then the carbon emission would be plus, because that carbon has been tied up to earth and would not come back to atmoshpehere in normal way eventualy. Ofcourse if you are using wood, then you should also take care that you are growing at least the same amount that you are using. But that tub invention is mutch older, It basicly the same type as japaniese people use, but lousier tecnical desing. Mutch of the heat will go unused because of the type of the fireplace.


I too remeber that I´ve read that the Gravia lamp doesent work as they are promising and the fridge has some problems too.

I think burning a few pieces of wood is actually a lot greener than using massive the amounts of electricity to power a traditional hot-tub, which is usually kept at a constant temperature.

Dave,
The only item I would disagree with is your statement that burning wood releases loads of carbon dioxide. While this is true, it is carbon neutral environmentally speaking. That carbon was captured from the atmosphere during the growth of the tree therefore the net change is zero. The issue with fossil fuels is that burning them releases carbon that was taken out of the global equation long ago.

Regarding the fridge - it's not cooled by magnetic fields *rather than* electricity - it requires electricity to create the magnetic fields used for cooling. What (presumably) makes it interesting and potentially more efficient is the use of magnetic cooling rather than using compressors, radiators etc.

Also, the Twist Camera is a concept, which you should probably make more clear. And it's a fairly poor concept at that - how can you twist the end when that's where the USB plug is?

I like the idea of the Dutch tub. It reminds me of those commercials for medicine where they never actually explain why the drug does. I remember there was a couple looking out into the meadow in separate tubs drinking champagne. I like the idea of a tub for the outdoors that is kept warm by burning wood.

Dave, it is true that burning wood releases C02 into the atmosphere, but that doesn't mean it isn't green. Ethanol is considered green but it produces C02 as a byproduct as well. The reason that ethanol is preferred to gasoline for your car is that ethanol can be harvested by corn, a plant, whereas gasoline comes from oil. Oil is generated over millenia through abstruse geological processes, so as far as we're concerned, it's non-renewable. Corn and other plants, however, consume carbon and produce oxygen as they grow. Therefore, if you harvest a few gallons of ethanol from a crop of corn and then burn the ethanol, you are releasing as much carbon (and consuming as much oxygen) as was originally consumed (and produced) by the corn plants when they were growing (less, in fact, since not all of the carbon in the corn plants is in the ethanol). Whereas burning oil produces carbon dioxide from the carbon that was formerly locked underground, C02 from corn-extracted ethanol or firewood only releases carbon that was already in the atmosphere. It's the difference between either digging your hole deeper or just not digging at all.

Personally I love this hot tub and the design is so simple and effective it's genuinely elegant.

@Dave
The only true cause of global warming due to burning things is the burning of fossil fuels.
Think of the carbon in all the CO2 and flora and fauna and humans as one great big number that's been divided into what makes up all life. Well, a hefty enough portion of that number was stored underground with the fossilized plants and dinosaurs and over time became crude oil. So with, say (and this is a random number) only 60% of the carbon above Earth's surface today, we're at a low. We've adapted to the 60% carbon Earth and the burning of biomass (any living oraganisms including wood) just takes from that 60% and puts it into the same place. Meaning no fluctuation of greenhouse gases. The extraction of this (hypothetical)40% of carbon as crude oil and then burning it is slowly pouring that 40% back into the atmosphere and aboveground environment. So we're technically bringing ourselves back to 100% of original carbon. As you probably know the dinosaurs lived in a pretty much world wide tropical climate, so that's what we're headed towards again.
SO ANYWAY, my point is that burning wood does absolutely nothing against the environment. Only taking carbon from the fossil fuels does.

IF I MAY ADD..and here I have no actual idea, but for the refridgerator: Now, this is definitely not off the grid, cuz any magnet powerful enough to start cooling needs an electrical source.

I would like to point out that using wood fire for heat is much more efficient than using electricity, both in terms of energy from mass, and in terms of emissions.
Basically the tub is off the grid and short of moving to a volcanically active area it's as close as you're going to get to a "green" hot tub. I suppose you could use solar, but then there's the question of how much pollution is generated in making the setup to generate heat at night from a solar system.

Also, you may think I'm being too picky, but carbon dioxide isn't a buzzword, it's a gas and it has been around for a long time. It seems to me to be rather foolish to diminish a global problem by calling it a "buzzword".

cc

I appreciate the sentiment, but I somehow doubt DutchTubs will be either the life, or death of planet earth.

I'm totally with Dave on the Fridge. As mundane as it seems, it could be the most significant break through on this page. If the power usage of each fridge was reduced by 60%, it would go a long way to reducing household power usage.

Oh, and please, use your DutchTubs responsibly.

The other stuff yousaid may be true Dave (I know not) But burning wood is green, or at least greener. Wood is Carbon Neutral (which is the current, wait, no technical word) for it. When its alive it takes in carbon dioxide from the air (turning into oxygen), and when its burnt the onle CO2 it releases is the CO2 its already taken in, hence Carbon Neutral, nothing changes.
Your right about the fridge though, that would be awesome, wonder how that works...

Agree with Dave--a portable hot tub sounds like a must have item for that pampered camper in your life, but it is not green. The magnetic refrigerator is fascinating. If it really is feasible, the technology will have many applications to greenify our homes without sacrificing comfort (usually a vital selling point).

Burning wood is actually not considered by most GHG accounting protocols to be an activity that adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. "Ecologists generally agree that wood is carbon neutral. While burning wood releases a significant amount of carbon dioxide—a greenhouse gas also released by fossil fuels—the gas is reabsorbed by growing trees and turned into carbon, which accounts for half the weight of wood. Whether a tree burns in your fireplace or decomposes in the forest, it will release the same amount of carbon into the environment in the form of CO2, methane and other gasses." The important thing to consider, then, is the source of the wood...fueling this hot tub with scraps from a local furniture maker (who uses no-VOC stains and varnishes of course) would be a great way to fuel the fire.

Dave if you think that burning a small wood fire for the DutchTub is so much worse than paying a lot more for electric thats generated by burning coal you have some serious research to do.

@Dave:

The DutchTub actually is greener than a "normal" tub where the water is finally heated via fossil fuels like oil or gas, may it be directly or indirectly via electricity. But by using wood, which actually grew by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere you are not really increasing the total CO2 circulating in the system. You're right though with all the other crappy metals and sulfur or nitrogen compounds that's a not so nice side effect of most fires...

How do you expect to heat a hot tub in a more sustainable manner, Dave, especially if you are having a campfire anyway?

Burning wood is actually carbon-neutral - it only releases the same amount of CO2 as was absorbed by the tree in its lifetime. Its still one of the cleanest fuels available, and managed carefully, it won't run out.

Actually, burning of wood simply recycles the same carbon that the tree absorbed from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. So it doesn't increase the net amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is, however, not quite true if wood is being burned faster than trees are growing. But if forests are well managed, wood burning does not increase overall carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. On the other hand, burning of fossil fuels always increases carbon dioxide because the carbon is being taken from a source that has been long underground away from the atmosphere. So it's far better to burn wood than fossil fuels.

My understanding is that wood burning is carbon neutral, the carbon released is that which has been sequestered by the growth of the wood in the first place.

the whole point with wood burning is that the wood has already taken the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere so you releasing it by burning it makes no overall effect on carbon levels, hence why it is generally classed as being green to use wood burning stoves

I think the wood-fired hot tub violates the "green" portion of the title of the article. Burning wood is far from green.

The gravi-lamp has been thoroughly debunked. Quick back-of-the-envelope calculations show that it could not possibly produce more than a few minutes worth of light. It's designer (Clay Moulton, a student at Virginia Tech) has admitted that he never did the calculations to support its claims, and has recanted them. Unfortunately, the contest judges didn't do their homework either before giving the award.

Burning wood releases exactly the amount of carbon that the tree sequestered while it was alive. It's a closed loop as long as the timber was grown in a sustainable method. The excess carbon in our atmosphere is caused by burning hydrocarbons which sequestered carbon eons ago. The carbon in trees is released by burning or by natural decomposition in the same quantity.

Burning coal is a "closed loop" in the same way that burning wood is. The only difference is the time scale. Biodiesel crops re-capture their carbon in a single year. A tree takes between 20 and 50 years. Coal takes millions.
Most climatologists are saying that the next 20 years are going to be the critical ones as far as the greenhouse effect is concerned. Therefore, burning a tree whose carbon won't be re-captured for at least 20 years is as bad as burning coal.

But carbon dioxide is only one form of pollution. It's one that has gone completely unnoticed for so long that we let it build up too much and now we are panicking about it but that doesn't mean that all the other sorts of pollution don't matter. Wood smoke contains carbon monoxide and loads of tiny carcinogenic particles. These don't have the same long term effect on the climate but they have a far more direct effect on our personal health.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-13-...
http://www.lungusa.org/site/c.dvLUK9O0E/b.23354...
http://burningissues.org/car-www/index.html
http://www.epa.gov/woodstoves/healthier.html
http://www.epa.gov/woodstoves/refp.html



The magnetic fridge link has gone 404 but I found a couple of articles about the technology:

http://www.physorg.com/news64851465.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/dec/1...

Unfortunately the articles are a little old but the spin-off company that was created to start manufacturing the fridges looks to still be doing things:

http://www.camfridge.com/Pages/news.html

true, but natural decomposition takes much, much longer than burning.

LMAO @ you green knuckleheads. When are you going to get it through your heads that carbon dioxide is at best a trace gas in the atmosphere. Water vapor is the key, not co2. Dolts!

Imagine a 100 story sky scraper. By comparrison the amount of co2 in our atmosphere would equate to the WAX covering the tile in the first floor of said sky scraper.

Your argument would be like saying Sarin gas "couldnt possibly have killed a room full of people, its only 1 part in 100,000".
The propertys of the gas are important, and its effects can outweigh its ratio. In Co2's case, its because it reflects heat in ways water vapour does not.

Sarin? Oh my, great analogy. Fact is there has always been co2 in the atmosphere, way before man invented the internal combustion engine. Do you understand why dinosaurs were the size that they were? Because there was more co2 in the atmosphere back then than there is now - fact.

Here's another tidbit for you... when Mt Pinatubo blew it spewed more shit into the atmosphere in two days than man ever has or ever will. We are still here, aren't we?

Again, co2 is at best a trace gas. Get over it. Study sun spot cycles and clue yourself in.

Okay, I'm a chemist. And I want to say please verify your facts.
The effect that water vapor has on the heat reflected towards and away from the surface of earth is so massive that if there was no water vapor in the atmosphere our planet would be approximately 31 degrees Celsius BELOW our current temperature! This is resultant because at the wavelengths that thermal radiation travels at (between 3,000nm and 100,000nm) water vapor is practically opaque! That means that the said thermal radiation would reflect off of it the majority of the time.
On the other hand if all Carbon Dioxide was removed from the atmosphere of our planet the temperature would drop by a much smaller amount, approximately 15 degrees Celsius. This is because Carbon Dioxide is relatively transparent at the wavelengths of thermal radiation.
I mean at least look at Wikipedia if your going to pretend to know what your saying. Second section of the global warming entry it gives a breakdown of the effect of the effects of different greenhouse gasses. I wish you people would at least make have a try at getting your facts straight.

EDIT
sorry 1.5 degrees Celsius not 15 degrees Celsius.

That's some waxy buildup.!

If we assume that 1 story = 10 ft, a typical handwave, then a 100 story building is about 1000 feet and as Google will show you, (0.038%) * 1000 feet = 4.56 inches, and 0.038% is the percentage of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. Personally, I'd avoid any buildings with four and a half inches of wax on the floor.

If I told you once, I told you a million times... don't exaggerate.

I didn't realize a 100 story building was a straight vertical line. I thought it would look more like a box, if anything...

You're not calculating volume. The Sears Tower is about 100 stories and it has 4.5 MILLION square feet of floor space alone. That's not including the space in between the floors...

So the wax analogy is about right.

Its amazing what we do on less than 1% of our brain. I think thats what they say we use but I can't remember. See I use less than that!!

That's a great thing this wood heated Hot tub. Now that Global Warming Hoax is finally out in the open we don't need to feel bad about burning wood.

@ People saying wood burning is not green ---

Burning wood is MUCH more green than burning coal, as wood is a renewable resource. The CO2 released into the air is taken up by trees which are then burned again. It's cyclical, meaning it has virtually zero footprint.

This is assuming the trees are grown at a rate matching the rate of burning, which is more and more becoming the case. Logging companies are beginning to log only new growth forests which they then replace. Coal on the other hand, takes millenia to replenish. If we were burning the coal at the rate it was being produced, it would also be zero footprint. This is obviously impossible for us to do with our current energy consumption.

That tub is literally the coolest thing I have ever seen. I intend to buy some land on a mountain side just to make this a necessity.