One of the problems I have, is where is the electricity being generated from? What is the mechanism? Theory matters. Just declaring something is so is not good enough.

C14 is a beta emitter. That means electrons. So capturing the electrons directly produces electric current.

Bob

 

It only is if your posing a question about the electronics behind it.

" Just declaring something is so is not good enough."

Actually we do this all the time. Why is the electron attracted to the proton? We don't know. Why is it that the electron does not swirl into the proton losing energy, but remains in a quantum wave position in space in a given orbital? Why is it that massive objects attract one another via gravity? Why is it that massive objects warp space-time? Why is matter composed of up and down quarks? Why is it that mass-energy cannot be created or destroyed? Why does the cosmologic constant have the value it has? Why does Planks constant have the value it has? Why is the impedance of free space about 377 ohms? These are the foundations of physics, we consider them true. That is axioms, but there is no further theory that explains why they are true.

In fact an axiom is a statement that is assumed to be true with no explanation (theory) behind it.

 

Actually a lot of what you declare we don't know has strong experimental evidence behind it. Even black holes had finally been observed (at least their effects on mass nearby). Theories are what we use to explain observations. They can be scrapped with one dissenting observation.

 

Actually a lot of what you declare we don't know has strong experimental evidence behind it. Even black holes had finally been observed (at least their effects on mass nearby). Theories are what we use to explain observations. They can be scrapped with one dissenting observation.

Granted we know that certain facts are true because of observation (naturally). I was not arguing that the facts are true and observable. That seems like a given to me. But there are no theories that explain specific types of facts. The cosmological constant happens to be one of those things. Sure observation confirms it but no theory explains it. It is taken for granted as true without any further explanation required thus it is an axiom that stands on its own with no further explanations.

"Theories are what we use to explain observations"

That is not always true. Sure in many cases it is. But it does not apply to the fundamentals (axioms) of physics which are taken to be true with no theory explaining why. It happens all the time in physics.

 

Until someone makes a prototype diamond battery, I will remain skeptical. Speculation is easy (usually), and can be called science fiction. Of which I am a major fan.

 

 

Just to be clear, extremely low power betavoltaic batteries are commonplace (in the areas that benefit from them). Even this fraudulent company has 100μW right on the chip of the real product. It‘s the scaling up that can’t be done.

The device is simple, the key is the equivalent of a photovoltaic cell that using the beta radiation directly. In fact, you can make an even less capable but working battery using a beta source, a phosphor, and a conventional PV cell.

It’s the same arrangement but the phosphor is used to covert the decay to photons, then the PV cell converts the photons to a voltage. One way to play with this is using tritium vials and amorphous* PV cells. These can compete with the total output of commercial direct conversion cells but but not efficiency, it will be much larger (though still quite small).

*Even though you might expect the more efficient monocrystaline cells to be a better choice, it turns out they are only more efficient at higher light levels and don’t work for this application.

 

I really want to mess around with these. I have dinked around with the tritium vials and the pv cell and thats not nothing as as far as power is concerned. Its slightly more than rubbing your fingers together, but not much more. It entirely possible to do the math with whatever waste you're dealing with to eke out power from it. just have to find the right method. Plutonium and polonium are alpha emitters and the thermal energy from the decay is used to get the power. The alpha I don't think gets used, other than incidentally if it happens to get absorbed and deposits its heat energy somewhere. So there is an existing thermal solution where an alpha absorber could potentially get more power out.
I think its a useful area of research. Every extra erg you pull out of an energy source may not be needed with our brute force method of energy collection, but down the road where a thousand minds are simulated on a computer substrate with the equivilent of 4 joules of energy that little bit extra might be important. Hell, with some of the nuron-like processors coming out we might see chip level diamond batteries integrated right on the silicon as memory batteries, cause the 100uW is more than enough to run the section of memory.

 

I really want to mess around with these. I have dinked around with the tritium vials and the pv cell and thats not nothing as as far as power is concerned. Its slightly more than rubbing your fingers together, but not much more. It entirely possible to do the math with whatever waste you're dealing with to eke out power from it. just have to find the right method. Plutonium and polonium are alpha emitters and the thermal energy from the decay is used to get the power. The alpha I don't think gets used, other than incidentally if it happens to get absorbed and deposits its heat energy somewhere. So there is an existing thermal solution where an alpha absorber could potentially get more power out.
I think its a useful area of research. Every extra erg you pull out of an energy source may not be needed with our brute force method of energy collection, but down the road where a thousand minds are simulated on a computer substrate with the equivilent of 4 joules of energy that little bit extra might be important. Hell, with some of the nuron-like processors coming out we might see chip level diamond batteries integrated right on the silicon as memory batteries, cause the 100uW is more than enough to run the section of memory.

This story is a cautionary one. Scammers are operating at every level. If it sounds too good ....

 

This story is a cautionary one. Scammers are operating at every level. If it sounds too good ....

Agreed. Gonna need a lot of data to believe anything more than microwatts from the tech so far.

 

Just to be clear, extremely low power betavoltaic batteries are commonplace (in the areas that benefit from them). Even this fraudulent company has 100μW right on the chip of the real product. It‘s the scaling up that can’t be done.

The device is simple, the key is the equivalent of a photovoltaic cell that using the beta radiation directly. In fact, you can make an even less capable but working battery using a beta source, a phosphor, and a conventional PV cell.

It’s the same arrangement but the phosphor is used to covert the decay to photons, then the PV cell converts the photons to a voltage. One way to play with this is using tritium vials and amorphous* PV cells. These can compete with the total output of commercial direct conversion cells but but not efficiency, it will be much larger (though still quite small).

*Even though you might expect the more efficient monocrystaline cells to be a better choice, it turns out they are only more efficient at higher light levels and don’t work for this application.

Hi,

Thats like what is used in smoke detectors, but only for the sensor, and they last years.
Some spacecraft use the thermal effects to generate years of relatively high energy levels.

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