Immersed
You ever had just said “What the heck with it” and jumped right in? For many of my Kenan Fellows past and present that moment came at Nantahala on the troll bridge. In my second blog (shameless plug here) I spoke about my Kenan fellowship as “akin to removing water from a crack in the hull of a sea bound vessel with a teacup”. At this point in my voyage, I’ve abandoned ship. I’ve decided to no longer be a bystander and dive right into the deep blue waters of energy harvesting. What’s really amusing is that browsing for thermoelectric (TEG) microchips and piezoelectric transducers are just the beginning. I have to find out how they work and how they can benefit my students during our project. In order to do that I really had to dive headlong into this endeavor.
What is energy harvesting? Energy harvesting is the future. At least I want it to be. No, I’d love for the energy harvesting techniques that are available today, to have a prominent place in our future energy consumption. Some of the techniques available today have been used widely for years: solar, wind, water, shoot, you can even add nuclear to that lot. The technique that really fascinates me the most involves human energy harvesting (insert joke here), particularly using TEG and piezoelectric chips as energy conduits. These technologies have been around since the dawn of time. Piezoelectric energy is generated when two crystals come into contact through pressure. This results in an electrical charge that can be captured and manipulated. I’ve spoken about this in my third blog (shameless plug, hint, hint read it) so I won’t bore you with the details. The point is, this knowledge is at our fingertips and it is only natural that we explore it more.
According to an IDTechEx report “the market for energy harvesting devices will rise to $4.4bn by 2020, from $605m in 2010”. A search on Amazon, now the most valuable company in the world, for “piezoelectric” yielded 4,259 hits. There are lots of products out there already on the market. My intention is to propagate the implications of this technology to my students. There will be many opportunities for them in the energy harvesting sector as researchers, developers, engineers, salespeople, distributors and many more careers.
**Garden Update**
I have been very pleased with the garden this year. I tried a few different things and I think they have paid off. First, I added chicken fertilizer to my usual mix of compost, organic soil and leaf mulch. In addition to that I began harvesting compost tea from my compost bin. Basically, I have a bin under my compost bin that catches juice from the decomposition process. I extract the tea from the second bin, and using a spray bottle, I saturate the foliage of the plants and vegetables in my garden. The compost tea acts as a protectant against pests and disease and it works as advertised, at least so far. Usually I get some kind of pest invasion but none this year (keeping my fingers crossed). The foliage on my plants is incredibly green and healthy. My tomatoes are like mini trees. I have never seen so many tomatoes on one plant.
Which leads me to the next thing I tired which was “planting by moon”. This method is right out of the Farmer’s Almanac (which is an amazing resource) and involves planting your crops by the moon cycle. For instance, the theory states that it is prudent to plant crops that bear fruit above ground when the new moon begins. Everything I planted this year fit into that category. This method is supposed to yield a more bountiful crop. Thus far I cannot argue with the results. So a new fertilizer pattern, in addition to a new planting method has been truly fruitful (okay pun intended).