Alternative Energy Forums

I am interested in 'wind up' technology and as a design project at university would like to pursue the idea of a wind up kettle. I am not sure if it is feasible as I am not too familiar with the current technology.

Instead of boiling a chamber full of water, I propose that the winding of the handle would both heat an element and start the slow flow of tap water past it.The water would reach boiling point by the time it has reached the end of the element. Boiling water would trickle out into a mug. The handle would be wound until the desired amount of boiling water enters the mug.

I am unsure how much energy it would take to heat an element and whether this could be human powered- be it with a winding handle or an other means.
Please let me know if you think this is feasible or not...

Thanks
Jack- artgraphunkel@gmail.com

Hi Jack,

I am an engineer working for a uk micro wind turbine manufacturer. We recently had a work experience student with us for a week, and we set him off doing something similar. The plan was to generate electricity from an adapted bike or rowing machine and use it to boil water.

From doing the theory (the amount of energy to boil water can be calculated from E=m*c*change in temp) and from ,measuring the amount of energy a real kettle takes to boil, we estimated that is would take around 12 minutes of constant human power to boil 200ml of water (eg 1 cup of tea), if a human is able to provide about 100W of electrical power.
This is obviously a long time! The student managed to build a "cup of tea generator" in a simplified form, which was capable of raising the temp of the water, although we never got it to boil, due to lack of insulation on the kettle (above 60 degrees we found the 100W ish we could supply was only balancing the losses from the un-insulated kettle, with no energy left to raise the temp).

To make this work, you will need to
a) insulate the kettle
b) use the type of kettle you mention which instantly heats the water to avoid the losses. This type of kettle is available to buy, and I think this could work well if you can store the energy in an efficient way, then dump it all at once into the kettle when you want to boil the water.


Heating takes A LOT of energy!!

Good luck with it:-)