MIT Undergrads Develop Energy-Generating Shock Absorbers
MIT undergraduates have created a regenerative shock absorber that can increase vehicle fuel efficiency by 10 percent. Not only does this conserve energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat, it also reportedly results in a smoother ride than conventional shocks.
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The team is moving quickly to commercialize the technology, initially focusing on organizations with fleets of heavy vehicles, such as the military. The reason: large vehicles are particularly well-suited to shock absorber power generation.
In 6-shock heavy trucks, each absorber can generate as much a 1 kW of power on standard roads — reportedly enough to displace the large alternator load in these vehicles, and even run accessory devices.
The team has received help from MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service, and has already drawn interest from the U.S. military and several truck manufacturers. In fact, the company that is currently working on development of the next-generation Humvee has loaned them a vehicle for testing purposes.
“Simply put — we want this technology on every heavy-truck, military vehicle and consumer hybrid on the road,” says Senior Shakeel Avadhany.
Not only does this technology represent a completely new way of thinking about shock absorbers and their effectiveness at smoothing out your ride, it is essentially a drop-in technology that can be easily integrated into current technology. For instance, hybrid cars already regenerate energy that would otherwise be lost during braking. These shock absorbers could be added to the hybrid system to regenerate even more energy at a constant rate.
Source and Image Credits: MIT
This is a perfect example how innovation can create new products that generate jobs & exports.
The Car 2.0 era is likely to be very competitive and China is committed to becoming the global leader in it (keep your eyes on BYD). The US has the innovative capacity to compete & win, but is stuck with the Big 3 dinosaurs as its primary channel to market. Perhaps tax dollars would be better spent encouraging/supporting a new generation of car companies (e.g. Tesla Motors) that can take the 2.0 ball & run with it.
If this really works, just imagine what this could be for energy wave generation!!!!
Making these shock absorbers waterproof and placing them in the position to respond to wave action!
How expensive are they?
Will they be 100% recyclable?
@ Bob,
If you go read a little about wave tech, this type of tech is already being developed and tested in Scotland. The things I would like to see are the possibilities at sports arenas and shopping malls. Think if they could use these to reclaim the kinetic energy from the patrons they could almost make carbon zero stadiums.
This is one of those great ideas that has been staring us in the face for years - I even have one of those stupid “shaker” flashlights that uses almost exactly the same mechanism.
ARGH!!
Do It! Our American roads are so bad we could get 4kw per car.
The problem with recovering the energy from shock absorbers has been with changing an erratic movement into a usable form of energy and do it in a limited amount of space. So, if this device can be mass produced at a reasonable price, there are countless applications beyond vehicles. Consider how much energy is wasted by large machines in industry. They use shock absorbers to dampen machine vibrations. There is also great deal of vibration in heavy construction equipment. Its hard to wrap your head around how much energy is lost as vibrations.
Think of the energy that could be recovered if they were put the device on the seats of all Golden Corrals. A lot of poundage moves up and down there every day;)
An invention such as this could be the foundation for a slew of other inventions and the resulting industries. We just need to find a way to keep them in this country.
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