Free Energy from Solar Circuit made with Human Hair...Science & Tech News (UK)

[Hman]

@cat--

Your right

Just a little tongue and cheek to keep it light (especially with the title).

I was really trying to get more info. than that original press release had...I agree, this topic (the title) is closed unless we hear something new....I was thinking of sending a note to the photographer to get more info but have such a hard time believing this device at this point, like you, I want to move on to other topics and not waist more time.

Although @wiley deserves the credit for the interesting research...

Free Energy Device from Solar Hair? - NO

Melanin interesting stuff? - Yes

Melanin old news? - Yeah but some new interesting research too

Applicable? - Maybe to someone...I certainly have 100 things prioritized before I would start harvesting squid for a deep dive on Melanin--I just thought someone might find some of it useful.

Guess @wiley summed it up best as "more reading here if you get bored"...downplayed just enough to set my expectations way low which made me pleasantly surprised and maybe a bit over zealous in my response.

Good link on nanowires...I have been watching the inexpensive flexible thin plastic panels such as Heeger's http://www.konarka.com/index.php/technology/our-technology/ which are going into products now or the 25 amp claims of http://www.nanosolar.com/technology.

[hartiberlin]

I guess most people are confused by the released pictures of the board and
its connections and thinking the hair is between these connection points as these
small wires...

I guess these people missed the whole point and surely don´t have any knowledge how
a chemical solar cell works.

Surely the black hair is inside  this board inside some kind of electrolyte solution
to extract the electrons simular to a Graetzel cell and you can still see the single
cells being about a few cm^2 big.

The brass contacts are just the way to get a contact point to the electrolyte
around the hair and the brass points are just wired together outside of the board via
small silver or copper wires....

So the hair is in the whole board you see as it is black !
The other contact point is probably from the other side.

I guess the hair is somehow glued chemically to a metal plate or graphite paper
on one side to make one contact point
and on the other side the electrolyte takes off the generated electrons and
the brass contacts pull it away from the electrolyte.

So if the Melanin really can extract electrons from the sun, this really would
be a cheap to produce solar cells.

Now the question still is, how the hair is prepaired and what electrolyte is being used.

I hope this inventor will join over here and post the recipe for it,
so we can free us from the big corperations, that sell the cheap
solar cells only to the military or for government purposes...

[powercat]

Hman thank you posting the thread
we do need to investigate all the possibilities that could lead us to create free energy / OU

The solar panel revolution has truly begun
prices are  forecast to fall by the year end, if you look carefully on eBay there are already some good deals to be had. I got a 220 W solar panel of £460,
with all the new technology coming online it will only get cheaper

BTW your second link was not working here is a repost, great video showing the production
http://www.nanosolar.com/technology

cat 
Stefan I do hope they join, I must say you are doing a good job of getting inventors on this forum

[hartiberlin]

I have added some explanations to the picture of the cell:

[hartiberlin]

Here are the interesting parts of the posted PDF file:

We proceeded to test the photo electrochemical properties of melanin by
manufacturing a prototype cell (figure 2). We started with a very simple cell were
the electrolyte was a 1.3% solution of melanin in distilled water, cooper and
aluminum electrodes 2.5 cm apart, cooper wires (covered with silicon) where
attach to the electrodes by glued them down, we noticed that any kind of
welding affected the melanin’s behavior. The cell started to give up electricity
just a few minutes after being ensemble.

The output was similar to that of dye-sensitized solar cells, the output was
remarkably stable even under light soaking for more than 10,000 h. see figure 3.
We believe that developing these prototypes could have a significant impact on
the alternative energy sources research.