Besides using your microwave as a valuable resource to reheat last night’s (non-soggy) leftovers, or using its cooking time as a race to get a kitchen chore done, you may see in the near future using your microwave to charge your cellphone. How wild is that? Microwaves are constantly leaking small amounts of energy each time they’re turned on. To save this wasted energy, Yoshihiro Kawahara, engineer of University of Tokyo, and his research team have developed a machine to gather this energy to put it to better use. The concept of this device was provoked by the current project of NASA collecting excess solar energy from the sun through orbiting solar farms converting the energy to radio waves. Kawahara’s machine harvests the leaked microwave energy through an antenna. From there, it is able to transmit this energy to devices. Kawahara ran through some tests. Using the microwave for a couple minutes, his device was able to charge a small kitchen timer with small batteries even though the charge lasted a few minutes. What does this mean? Things are in the works. The FDA does have regulations on how much energy loss is allotted from microwaves. Meaning, it may take some time before you see your microwave taking over how you charge your smart phone, for now. With kitchen appliances currently turned on like your refrigerator, or on a timed-schedule like your washing machine or dryer, there’s always energy being wasted. Why not use the energy that is already there to power devices like your phone? So while more research and experiments need to go on, using home appliances to charge small devices could be our near future…closer than what you would think.
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