New invention 'harvests' electricity from background radiation

New invention 'harvests' electricity from background radiation and could be used to beam power to remote locations or recharge phones wirelessly

• Device captures microwaves and converts them into electricity 
• Future versions could harvest satellite, sound or Wi-Fi signals 
• Technology could be used to recharge phones without cables or beam electricity to mountaintops 

Engineers at Duke University have designed a breakthrough gadget that 'harvests' background microwave radiation and converts it into electricity, with the same efficiency as solar panels.

The development, unveiled on Thursday, raises exciting possibilities such as recharging a phone wirelessly and providing power to remote locations that can't access conventional electricity.

And the researchers say that their inexpensive invention is remarkably versatile. It could be used to capture 'lost' energy from a range of sources such as satellite transmissions, sound signals or Wi-Fi.

The Duke engineers used metamaterials, which their press release describes as 'engineered structures that can capture various forms of wave energy and tune them for useful applications.'

They say the device harvested microwaves with an efficiency of 36.8 percent, similar to modern solar cells that capture light energy.

A report that will appear in the journal Applied Physics Letters in December states that this invention is capable of converting microwave signals to enough direct current voltage to recharge a cell phone battery.

The gadget, created by undergraduate engineering student Allen Hawkes, graduate student Alexander Katko and lead investigator Steven Cummer, consists of five fiberglass and copper conductors wired together on a circuit board.

It is capable of providing 7.3V of electricity. As the press release points out, current USB chargers provide around 5V.

Hawkes said: 'We were aiming for the highest energy efficiency we could achieve. We had been getting energy efficiency around 6 to 10 percent, but with this design we were able to dramatically improve energy conversion to 37 percent, which is comparable to what is achieved in solar cells.'

His colleague, Katko, added: 'It's possible to use this design for a lot of different frequencies and types of energy, including vibration and sound energy harvesting.

'Until now, a lot of work with metamaterials has been theoretical. We are showing that with a little work, these materials can be useful for consumer applications.'

Possible uses for the new technology include building metamaterial into homes to ensure Wi-Fi signals are not just lost.

Electrical products could also have a device attached to increase efficiency by ensuring that excess power is not wasted.

In theory, the invention could also be used to beam signals from phone towers that could then be converted into electricity.

Electronic devices could be recharged wirelessly or electricity sent to remote areas without power cables.

The researchers explained that a series of the power-harvesters could even capture signals from satellites passing overhead.

This could allow for electricity in hostile environments such as mountaintops or deserts. Cummer said: 'Our work demonstrates a simple and inexpensive approach to electromagnetic power harvesting.

'The beauty of the design is that the basic building blocks are self-contained and additive. One can simply assemble more blocks to increase the scavenged power.'

High levels of radiation found in creek near drilling wastewater site in western Pa.

A new study published in the journal of Environmental Science and Technology has found high levels of radiation and salinity in a creek near a drilling wastewater treatment facility in western Pennsylvania.

The Duke University study took numerous samples of water discharged downstream of the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility into Blacklick Creek in the Allegheny River watershed from the summer of 2010 to the fall of 2012. Sediment in the creek contained levels of radium that were 200 times greater than normal or background levels, along with high levels of salts like chloride and bromide in the surface water.

These elements come from a naturally occurring brine that is released along with natural gas during the hydraulic fracturing or fracking process. That radioactive brine, known as “flowback,”is either injected back underground or sent to facilities like Josephine where the wastewater is treated and then deposited into rivers and streams.

Professor Avner Vengosh, one of the study’s lead authors, said the radium and salt levels found in the creek are “problematic” and could lead to bio-accumulation of radiation in bugs and eventually, animals further up the food chain like fish.

“That’s why in the U.S. they have a limitation on how much you’re allowed to dispose from a site and to a certain level, to define it as radioactive waste disposal site,” Vengosh said. “The values we measured in the sediments in this site are far, far exceeding these threshold values.”

Fracking’s Other Danger: Radiation

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection announced plans to study radioactivity associated with oil and gas drilling. The DEP says preliminary results from landfills have indicated radiation releases, but at levels too low to threaten public health. The issue has come up over the past several years in obscure studies that avoided headlines. But the jury’s still out on the dangers of shale related radiation exposures.

In the fall of 2011, the USGS released areport on radium in Marcellus Shale flowback fluid. The report didn’t address public health issues directly, but concluded that the levels of radiation in Marcellus produced water is far higher than the resulting flowback water in other formations. Concentrations of saline in water buried deep within the Appalachian Basin is unusually high, which is associated with increased levels of radium.

It’s not easy to get data on the content of production water. For its study, the USGS had to rely on tediously scanned data from the DEP, a 1999 report from the New York State Department of Environment and Conservation, as well as limited industry cooperation. Presumably, the DEP researchers will have better access to good data. But the USGS report does raise some important questions.

People are unlikely to drink such salty water. But animals are attracted to salt, and fracking waste water spills or leaks could be consumed by livestock. The problem with radium is it can accumulate in the soil where crops are grown, and where animals graze. From there, it could be passed on to people. Radium at some level, is present in almost all rocks, soil and water. The question is how much would be harmful to public health, and how much is released by the drilling process. The Environmental Protection Agency says the body will eliminate the bulk of radium that is ingested, but long-term exposure can be harmful.

“Inhaled or ingested radium increases the risk of developing such diseases as lymphoma, bone cancer, and diseases that affect the formation of blood, such as leukemia and aplastic anemia. These effects usually take years to develop. External exposure to radium’s gamma radiation increases the risk of cancer to varying degrees in all tissues and organs.”

Radium is a known carcinogen. According to the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, exposure can result in “increased incidence of bone, liver, and breast cancer.” More harmful, however, is radon, a decay product of radium. Radon exposure can cause lung cancer, and often seeps into households from underground formations.

A report issued by Marvin Resnikoff, of Radioactive Waste Management Associates, sounded an alarm that Marcellus Shale gas contains high levels of radon, which could create health impacts for the end users cooking with it, or heating their homes.

“We calculate the number of excess lung cancer deaths for New York State. Our results: the potential number of fatal lung cancer deaths due to radon in natural gas from the Marcellus shale range from 1,182 to 30,448.”

But Resnikoff’s report is controversial, and was rebutted by another scientist Lynn Anspaugh, who prepared comments for a pipeline company seeking a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to transport Marcellus Shale gas.

“Natural gas samples have now been collected by an independent environmental engineering company and analyzed by at an independent commercial laboratory by a certified health physicist and specialist in radon measurements….The sample analyses clearly show that the radon levels in the natural gas are low and will cause no significant health risk. Further, the sample results directly and factually contradict Resnikoff’s speculative claims.”

Either way, Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of the Mid-Atlantic region, says the issue deserves greater study.

“These are fair questions for the scientists to ask and address,” says Stewart. “Proponents (of gas drilling) make the case that there’s no problem. And the opponents (of gas drilling) say ‘oh there’s radon in the shale.’ But radon is everywhere. The question is how much, what are the exposures, and what are the risks.”

Stewart points out that despite some scientists warning of the dangers of bedrock radon seeping into houses for decades, the impacts were not clearly known and reported until the mid-1980′s. DEP’s radiation study is expected to be completed in 2014.

208 Instances of Radiation in Cargo Containers

Quarantine authorities nationwide uncovered 208 instances in which excessive levels of radiation were found in imported cargo containers in September, the nation's top quality watchdog said on Thursday.

There was 19.6 percent more radiation from the same period last year, said Chen Xitong, spokesman for the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

A figure provided by the authority shows that more than 1,000 cargo containers were found with excessive levels of radiation in the first half of this year. Last month, customs in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, seized 952 metric tons of waste materials that were imported from Japan.

Cabbage Helps Protect Us From Radiation

Cabbage could be the key to protecting people from radiation during cancer therapy, new research has shown.

The Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre study found that a compound derived from cruciferous vegetables - such as cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli - protected rats and mice from lethal doses of radiation.

The American researchers' work suggests the compound, already shown to be safe for humans, may protect normal tissues during radiation therapy for cancer treatment, and prevent or mitigate sickness caused by radiation exposure.

The compound - known as DIM - previously has been found to have cancer preventative properties. But the study's corresponding author, Doctor Eliot Rosen, said: "This is the first indication that DIM can also act as a radiation protector."

The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Radioactive cesium in foods drops to one-fifth in Fukushima

Radiation exposure through food items consumed by residents in central Fukushima Prefecture continues to remain far below the legal safety limit, according to a health ministry study.

The dose of radioactive cesium from average meals in the region last year dropped to one-fifth of the level a year earlier, the health ministry said June 21.

The ministry’s finding showed that annual dose of radiation amounted to 0.0038 millisievert as of autumn 2012, down from 0.0193 millisievert a year earlier.

Japan’s annual radiation dose is set at up to 1 millisievert under law.

The ministry calculated the annual figures based on readings of radiation from rice, seafood and processed foods produced in local areas.

The central part of the prefecture includes Fukushima city, the prefectural capital, which is about 60 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Klansman and accomplice charged for building radiation gun

Two men, one of them a member of the Ku Klux Klan, were arraigned today in Albany, N.Y., on federal charges of plotting to build a mobile radiation gun intended to kill Muslims – or “medical waste,” as the plotters called their intended targets.

Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, a Klan member from Galway, N.Y., and Eric J. Feight, 54, of Hudson, are both charged with conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism in the use of a weapon of mass destruction.

The case has been under investigation by a Joint Terrorism Task Force since at least April 2012, when Crawford allegedly reached out to Jewish organizations, asking if Israel would be interested in such a weapon to kill its enemies.

“The essence of Crawford’s scheme is the creation of a mobile, remotely operated, radiation emitting device capable of killing human targets silently and from a distance with lethal doses of radiation,” says a 67-page criminal complaint filed by the FBI.

It might sound far-fetched, but experts told investigators that the design would work, producing a “a lethal, and functioning, remotely controlled radiation-emitting device,” the complaint says

A “central feature of the weaponized radiation device is that the target(s) and those around them would not immediately be aware they had absorbed lethal doses of radiation and the harmful effects of that radiation would not become apparent until days after the exposure,” the complaint says.

At one point, Crawford described his planned device as “Hiroshima on a light switch,” the complaint says.

The charging document contends that Crawford, who worked at a General Electric manufacturing plant, conspired in designing the device with Feight, who the Albany Times-Union identified as working for an electronics company in Columbia County, N.Y.

No actual device was built, the complaint says, but the pair was far along with the design and testing.

“Crawford, conspiring with Feight, and assisted by others, has supervised and successfully completed the building, testing and demonstration of a remote initiation device,” the complaint says. “He now (on or about June 18, 2013) plans to integrate that remote initiation device into a truck-borne, industrial-grade x-ray system, thus weaponizing that system and allowing it to be turned on and off from a distance and without detection.”

The complaint says Crawford described his device as having three core components: “an x-ray tube or system that would emit ionizing radiation; a power supply for the x-ray tube/system; and a control panel that could be used to remotely turn the device on and off.”

The case against the pair, it initially appears, is built around extensive recordings of their conversations and e-mails. Within six weeks of Crawford’s attempts to solicit financing from two Jewish organizations, the FBI was monitoring and recording much of his activity and had recruited an informant.

Last August, Crawford traveled by car from his home in Albany to North Carolina to meet and solicit funding from an unidentified  “ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan,” who cooperated when contacted by FBI agents. In early October, he traveled to Greensboro, N.C., to meet with a cooperating witness and two undercover FBI agents who posed as “Southern businessmen of means who were associated with the KKK.”

Crawford “described to the [undercover FBI agents] his radiation emitting device, his remote initiation device, mobilizing the radiation device and discussed operation security concerns,” the complaint says. “Crawford again solicited money to finance his scheme (primarily to fund the purchase or acquisition of an industrial strength x-ray system).”

The complaint further says the “first and second branches have assisted Crawford with financing and obtaining of parts,” but it’s not clear from the document if that’s a reference to a branch or local unit of the KKK.

In conversations recorded by the FBI, the complaint says, Crawford identified himself as “a member of the Ku Klux Klan, specifically, the United Northern & Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”