Patent Application
20190178233
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
The present invention relates to systems that can store and release energy using hygroscopic materials. Specifically, systems based on hygroscopic materials can be selectively exposed to high or low humidity environments in order to cause the materials to expand or contract to do useful work as well as store and release energy.
Natural evaporation across open water facilitates the energy exchange between oceans and atmosphere, thereby fueling the winds and warm weather on earth. Under dry atmospheric conditions evaporation can be harnessed to do useful work, for example, the tree uses evaporation to transport water from soil to the leaves. Plants also use swelling and shrinking of cell walls for mechanical actuation. These processes have inspired novel approaches to engineering actuators, pumps, biological sensors and even energy scavengers to power micro- and nano-devices. In principle, evaporation has the potential to become a significant source of renewable energy. However, this requires useful work to be generated from evaporation with high efficiency, high power levels, long term sustained performance, and without consuming fresh water.
Bacterial spores are dormant cells that can withstand harsh environmental conditions for long periods of time and still maintain biological functionality (
The striking durability, dynamic response, and efficient use of water have motivated us to investigate their use in energy conversion from natural absorption and evaporation. In accordance with the invention, the swelling-shrinking cycle of microbial spores, such as bacterial spores, shows promise for economically feasible generation of renewable energy from natural evaporation. These and other hygroscopic materials, such as mutant spores, plant cells and plant cell materials, and silk can be used to store and generate energy.
In accordance with various embodiments of the invention, the hygroscopic material can be coupled to a generator by a transmission to transfer energy generated by the hygroscopic material as it expands and/or contracts from exposure to moisture and/or humidity. In accordance with some embodiments of the invention, the hygroscopic material can be adhered to a flexible surface or enclosed in an expandable container. In these embodiments, the addition of moisture causes the hygroscopic material to expand resulting in the flexing of the flexible surface in a first direction or expansion of the container and the removal of moisture causes the hygroscopic material to contract resulting in the flexing of the flexible surface in a second direction or contraction of the container. The motion and forces generated by the expanding or contracting hygroscopic material can be converted to electrical energy using a generator.
In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, the hygroscopic material can be adhered to a flexible sheet material that includes a piezo electric material or is coupled to a piezo electric device, for example by a transmission. The hygroscopic material can be exposed to a plurality of cycles composed of a low relative humidity environment followed by a high relative humidity environment causing the hygroscopic material to release moisture and shrink and then absorb moisture and expand. The resulting expansion and contraction caused the piezo electric material or the piezo electric device to generate electricity.
In accordance with an alternate embodiment of the invention, the hygroscopic material can be used to vary the space and area of a dielectric material separating two plates of a capacitor. The plates can be formed from a flexible conductive material and separated by one or more layers of hygroscopic material or a dielectric elastomer material. The plates can be biased with a voltage potential and the hygroscopic material can be exposed to a plurality of cycles composed of a low relative humidity environment followed by a high relative humidity environment causing the hygroscopic material to release moisture and shrink and then absorb moisture and expand. The shrinking and expanding of the hygroscopic material can cause the distance between the plates and/or the area of the plates to change, resulting in a change in capacitance and generating electricity.
In accordance with a further embodiment of the invention, the hygroscopic material can be used in a device that stores energy. The hygroscopic material can be placed in an enclosed, expandable container that is compressed. As long as the hygroscopic material remains sealed away from moisture, the device will store energy. To release the energy, water or moist air can be introduced into the container causing the hygroscopic material to absorb moisture and expand causing the container to expand releasing the stored energy. A plurality of energy storage devices can be combined to enable the generation of larger quantities of energy. The energy storage devices can be coupled to an energy conversion device for converting the mechanical energy to electrical energy.
These and other capabilities of the invention, along with the invention itself, will be more fully understood after a review of the following figures, detailed description, and claims.
The present invention is direct to methods and systems for generating and storing energy using hygroscopic materials, such as bacterial spores. Hygroscopic material includes microbial spores, such as spores of spore forming bacteria, preferably non-pathogenic strains from the bacillus genus, such as, Bacillus atrophaeus, B. subtilis, B. cereus, B. megaterium, B. thuringiensis, B. stearothermophil and Gram-positive bacterial spores, plant cells and plant cell materials (including plant walls), and silk materials. Other Hydroscopic materials can include cell-free extracts from spores, plant tissues, synthetic biomimetic hygroscopic gels, hydrogel based materials, such as pHEMA [Poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)], Polyacrylamide, detergent-containing ‘cytoskeletal stabilization’ buffers, and hyaluronic acid based polymer based materials. In accordance with the invention, the hygroscopic material such as bacterial spores can be arranged in various configurations and exposed to varying environmental conditions that enable the spores to absorb or evaporate moisture. Upon absorbing moisture, the spores expand and upon releasing moisture, the spores contract. As a result, the spores in the various configurations can be made to generate energy and do work. The spores, can be coupled using one or more transmission elements to a generator to convert the mechanical energy, for example, into electrical energy.
In addition, the hygroscopic materials, after being exposed to water or moisture, can be exposed to an evaporating environment, such as low RH or heating or low pressure environment that causes moisture to be released from the material and causes the material shrink, substantially back to its original size when dry. Sources of heat can include natural and artificial sun light, as well as other natural and artificial heat sources, including hot springs, geothermal heat sources, and heat released by power plants and other industrial equipment or vehicles.
In accordance with the invention, the exposure to or application of high relative humidity environment includes the direct application of a fluid, including water, water vapor and high relative humidity gases, including air and the exposure to or application of low relative humidity environment includes the direct removal of water and water vapor, for example, by lowering the vapor pressure and/or heating and the application of low relative humidity gases, including air.
In accordance with various embodiments of the invention, the hygroscopic material can be coupled to a transmission that transfers the forces and energy generated by the expanding and contracting hygroscopic material to a generator that converts the forces into energy, such as electrical energy. In some embodiments, the transmission can be a mechanical linkage of one or more components, including for example, levers and/or gears. In other embodiments, the transmission can include an arm or sheet material that is coupled to the hygroscopic material (using, for example, an adhesive material) such that it flexes in response to the changing volume or shape of the hygroscopic material. The arm or sheet can be connected to or coupled to a generator to produce energy. The transmission can be adapted, for example, using levers and/or gears, to change the speed and/or force of actuation. The transmission can also include one or more hydraulic or pneumatic elements and can be adapted to change the speed or force of actuation by varying the cross-sectional area of the fluid or gas flow. The generator can, for example, be an electromagnetic generator which converts mechanical energy to electrical energy or a solid state device, such as piezo-ceramic transducer which converts mechanical energy to electrical energy. In other embodiments, the generator can be a capacitor that changes its capacitance in response to the expanding and contracting hygroscopic material that forms part of the dielectric of the capacitor. Dielectric elastomer based generators can also be used. In this embodiment, the hygroscopic material can be coupled to the dielectric elastomer so that changes in the size of the hygroscopic material changes the capacitance across the dielectric elastomer. See, for example,
In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, bacterial spores can be physically adhered to a sheet of elastic material, drying spores contract anisotropically and reduce their radius (
To demonstrate the dynamics of force generation, water absorption/release, and the response of spores to long term cyclical expansion and contraction in a system, B. subtilis spores can be placed on the surface of an atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever, as shown in FIGS. 2a and 2b, and subjected to changes in relative humidity (RH). This system can be used to measure the changes in surface stress from the deflection of the cantilever and the mass of the absorbed water vapor from the shifts in the resonance frequency.
In this embodiment, an AFM cantilever chip (Veeco Instruments, HMX-S) was gently placed on a flat piece of silicon wafer while the cantilever stayed in contact with the surface of the wafer. A solution of spores (˜1 mm in diameter) in water was pipetted onto the cantilever under an optical microscope and allowed to dry. The cantilever surface was inspected by optical microscopy to ensure that spore coverage of its surface. The cantilever was placed into the AFM head (Veeco Instruments, Multimode AFM) with the uncoated side of the cantilever facing the laser beam.
In order to provide a system for rapid switching of relative humidity, an aquarium pump was used to supply two streams of air travelling through plastic tubing. One of the streams was saturated with water vapor by passing it through a bubbler. The other stream carried laboratory air at approximately 15-20% relative humidity. The open ends of the tubes were placed near the AFM head with air flowing towards the cantilever. A motorized arm was used to block the air from the tubes one at a time, switching at the frequency of a square wave supplied by a signal generator. The RH levels experienced by the cantilever were determined by first recoding the cantilever deflection signals at high and low RH levels in this setup and then by placing the AFM head in a controlled humidity chamber to find the steady RH levels that give the same signal values.
Measurement of changes in plane stress and mass of the cantilever were determined as follows: The plane stress σ at the surface of an elastic substrate with thickness t, Young's modulus E, and Poisson's coefficient v is related to the radius of curvature r according to Stoney's formula:
This formula provides a good approximation if the film generating stress is significantly thinner than the substrate so that the bending stiffness of the film is negligible. While the thickness of the spore layer is comparable to the cantilever, we assumed that it has a negligible bending stiffness because it is composed of objects with approximately circular cross sections. A more general treatment of curvature can be found in Reyssat, E. & Mahadevan, L. Hygromorphs: from pine cones to biomimetic bilayers. J. R. Soc. Interface 6, 951-957 (2009) which is hereby incorporated by reference. The AFM allows measurement of the slope of the cantilever at the location of the laser spot, rather than measurement of the radius of curvature. However, r can be related to the slope θ if the position of the laser spot relative to the cantilever base x is known. Assuming a parabolic profile for the cantilever, the radius is: r=x/θ. The changes in the slope near the free end of the cantilever were measured to be well beyond the detector limits (saturation); therefore we placed the laser spot close to the cantilever base. The exact position of the laser spot was estimated by comparing the ratio of the thermal noise levels at this location and at a location near the free end of the cantilever, using the analytical expression for the mode shape of a rectangular cantilever beam. Thickness of the cantilever was determined to be 1.49 um from the spring constant. Young's modulus and Poisson's coefficient were selected to be E˜130 GPa and v ˜0.278 for silicon (100). The effect of the reflective aluminum coating (40 nm) was neglected and it was assumed the entire cantilever is made of silicon.
The change in cantilever mass was determined by its effect on the resonance frequency, which is described by the equation ω2=k/m. Here ω is the resonance frequency, k is the cantilever spring constant, and m is the total mass of the cantilever. For relatively small changes in mass;
Δm/m=2Δω/ω (2)
To make rapid measurements of the shifts in the resonance frequency, the cantilever was driven at a constant frequency near the resonance and then monitored the phase of oscillations. Phase is related to the resonance frequency according to the formula
Here ωd is the drive frequency and Q is the quality factor of the resonance. For the cantilever used for the measurements, ωd was chosen as 12.15 KHz and Q was determined to be 48. Once a phase value was measured, Eq. (3) was used to find the resonance frequency and Eq. (2) was used to find the change in mass relative to its value at the lowest RH. Note that the total mass of the cantilever includes the dry mass of spores (650 nm thick, 1.5 g/cm3, circular cross section) and the silicon (1.49 μm thick, 2.33 g/cm3, uniform cross section).
In accordance with one embodiment, the RH can be cycled between 15% and 85% at a predefined period, in this example, 5 seconds, and the spores expanded and contracted generating a plane stress of 25.2 N/m, as shown in
As shown in
To understand the effect of long term cyclical absorption and release of water on the kinetics of shape change, the period of cycles was reduce from 5 seconds to 2 seconds and the spores were allowed to go through more than 1 million cycles over the course of 6 weeks (
In the above analysis, spores induced a strain of 0.04% and displaced the free end of the 300 μm long cantilever by 18 μm. While this represents a remarkable actuation capability in the context of micromechanical devices, the strain induced and the energy transferred to the substrate can increase significantly with a proper choice of substrate material and thickness. To understand the conditions that maximize energy transfer, we used a simple estimate for the maximum strain in a bilayer plate. For a given ratio of the elastic modulus of the passive sheet to the spore layer, there is an optimum ratio of thicknesses that maximizes the energy transfer, leading to a simple design criterion for optimizing these dynamic spore-based hygromorphs as energy harvesters that correspond to an optimal range of the elastic modulus and thickness corresponds to millimeter thick rubber sheets. Consequently, we prepared samples by placing spores on natural latex rubber sheets.
In principle, spores that contracted and equilibrated at low RH can also generate work when they expand in saturated (high RH) air. If two sources of air are available, one saturated and one at low RH, spores can cyclically absorb water from the saturated air and release it at low RH, while converting ambient heat into useful work. The maximum work that can be done in this process is determined by the changes in the free energy of the water being transferred: w=RgTln(ρ), where w is the molar work, Rg is the gas constant, T is the temperature and ρ is the RH of air. According to the AFM based measurements of the mass of the absorbed water (˜0.15 g/m2), the maximum work that can be done in one cycle is approximately 32 J/m2 at 20% RH. Assuming that the energy converting device based on spores can collect energy from the displacements in two directions and equal amounts of work can be done in expansion and contraction, the spore layer should be able to generate ˜10.4 J/m2 of work per cycle. This represents an efficiency of approximately 30%. The efficiency can be improved by strengthening the adhesion between the neighboring spores, thereby preventing crack formation and increasing the plane stress values. In addition, the expansion and contraction of spores in the third direction transfers water without generating work. This leakage effect can be mitigated by blocking the expansion of spores in that direction.
In one embodiment, natural latex rubber sheets (Rubber Sheet Roll, Shippensburg, Pa.) were cut into rectangular pieces with scissors. Their top surfaces were treated with poly-1-lysine to improve adhesion. A solution containing B. subtilis spores was placed on pieces of rubber sheet and then allowed to dry in a fume hood. RH of the laboratory air was approximately 15-20%. The amount of solution to be placed on the rubber sheet was determined by visually inspecting spore coverage under an optical microscope. Once the solution dried, the rubber sheets already exhibited a curvature because the RH of laboratory air was low (˜15-20%). The sheets were then placed in a chamber with saturated air and kept for a day. This procedure increased the curvature of the rubber sheets once they were placed back to low RH.
The rubber sheet, 0.5 mm thick, was cut into a 2 cm by 6 cm rectangular piece and coated with a layer of spores. The sheet was attached from the center to a piece of acrylic glass with adhesive tape and then placed vertically in a humidity chamber with transparent walls. RH inside the chamber was monitored with a hygrometer (Vaisala). The chamber RH was gradually increased from the laboratory level (˜18% at the time of the measurements) by supplying saturated air. Photographs of the latex sheet were taken from a direction allowing the 2 cm wide edge to be seen. Pictures were taken at intervals of 5% RH starting from 20%.
The plane stress at the spore layer was determined according to the formula:
Here σx is the surface stress along the direction of the observed curvature, E is the Young's modulus of the rubber, v is the Poisson's coefficient for rubber, t is the thickness of the rubber sheet, and Rx, Ry are the radii of the curvature. t is 0.5 mm for the sheet used in
The contracting spore layer exerts a plane stress at the interface between spores and the substrate. As a result, the substrate shape deforms into a curved surface (
Here E is the Young's modulus, v is the Poisson's coefficient, and t is the thickness of the elastic substrate. In the resulting curved geometry, the strain within the elastic substrate varies linearly with distance. The neutral plane with zero strain is located 2t/3 away from the spore-substrate interface. Therefore, the strain s at the interface is given by
Using s, we can rewrite Eq. (1) as follows:
Eq. (6) provides the plain stress-strain relationship dictated by the elastic substrate. Strain within the spore layer provides a second relationship. Precise modeling of this relationship is complicated by the complex geometries of spores and their arrangements on the surface. For simplicity, we assume the following linear relationship:
σ=M(sdry−s) (7)
Here M is the modulus of stretching, sdry is the strain induced in unconstrained spores upon drying, and s is given by Eq. (5). Note that sdry has a negative value and for sdry<s<0, plane stress σ is also negative. Equations (6) and (7) can be solved to find equilibrium stress σ0 and strain s0 values.
The energy transferred to the substrate during the drying process can be written in terms of the equilibrium stress σ0 and strain s0 values as follows:
This equation is maximized when K is equal to M. The modulus of stretching M is the product of the effective thickness h and the effective elastic modulus Eh of the spore layer. Therefore, the condition of maximum energy transfer becomes:
To estimate the value of the left hand side of Eq. (10), we measured elastic moduli of the spore coat and the underlying cortex layer with atomic force microscopy and found them to be 13.6 GPa and 6.9 GPa, respectively. To measure the elastic modulus of the cortex, we analyzed a cotE-gerE mutant of B. subtilis, which lacks most of its coat. The cortex is very likely to be the layer that most readily absorbs water and swells. Therefore, we approximate Eh with 6.9 GPa. The bacterial spore layer has an approximate thickness of 650 nm (typical diameter of B. subtilis spores). However due to their round shaped cross sections, spores do not make physical contact in the entirety of the 650 nm. To account for this geometrical effect, we assumed h ˜300 nm.
According to Eq. (10), for a given substrate material with elastic modulus Es, maximal energy transfer to the substrate takes place at some specific thickness. In addition, the conditions for maximum energy transfer (K=M) also require s0 to be sdry/2 (See Eq. (8)). For spores sdry can be as much as 12%. Therefore, materials that cannot sustain large strains are not suitable for maximizing energy transfer. In this work we used natural latex rubber sheets, which have Es˜1.3 GPa and v ˜0.5. Then, according to Eq. (10) the thickness of the rubber sheet should be 3.15 mm.
Electricity Generation with Spores
To demonstrate the generation of electricity with bacterial spores, we used a commercially available piezoceramic (PZT) transducer. For this, we fixed one edge of a spore-coated rubber sheet and allowed the opposite edge to slide against the surface of the piezoelectric plate (
Despite the limited mechanical coupling and frictional losses, the electrical power generated by the changing relative humidity compares favorably against energy harvested from ultrasonic vibrations, suggesting that interfacing with spores may improve the power output of piezoelectric nanogenerators. Nevertheless, economically feasible generation of electrical energy requires high efficiency electromechanical conversion. A developing technology based on dielectric elastomers shows significant promise for low cost high efficiency electromechanical conversion. These materials are basically thin sheets of elastomers, such as silicone, coated with compliant electrodes. When external mechanical forces cyclically stretch and contract the elastic sheet, the changes in the capacitance between the electrodes allow converting mechanical energy into electricity. Theoretical work has shown that dielectric elastomers have a capacity to generate electrical energy of more than 2 Joules per gram of the elastomer in one cycle of stretching and contraction. In principle, spores can be assembled on dielectric elastomers, resulting in potentially low cost and scalable rubber-based devices.
Electricity can be generated by placing the rubber sheet in contact with a piezoelectric transducer assembly as shown in
Note that there is large difference in bending stiffness of the piezoelectric material and the rubber sheet. Consequently, the effective spring constant of each piezoelectric transducer (˜188 N/m, when fixed at one end) is significantly higher than the effective spring constant of the rubber sheet (˜0.03 N/m, in the flexure mode). The large mismatch in mechanical properties leads to low mechanical coupling. The piezo assembly used here has a lower effective spring constant that improves energy transfer from the spore coated rubber sheet.
The power density levels in
Both elastomers and bacterial spores are produced in large quantities and used in a variety of industries. Bacterial spores also have the important advantage that several species (including the one used in this study) are environmentally benign and pose no health risk to humans or other animals. Biological materials with strong hygroscopic properties, such as plant cell walls and spider silk, are potential alternatives to spores in our proposed technology. However, spores are particularly attractive because of the ease with which they can be produced and built into devices, their high work density and durability over a wide range of conditions and large numbers of cycles of dehydration.
We have calculated the evaporation rate, surface temperature, and the power that is extracted from evaporation as a function of the surface relative humidity ρ and for a range of the relative humidity of air. Note that ρ is a variable that can be controlled by the energy converting devices, which can be tuned to a desired value by adjusting the load w.
In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, one or more layers of bacterial or other spores can be adhered or coupled to the surface of a piezoelectric material or a piezo polymer, for example as shown in
The piezo materials can be used in an energy conversion device formed from an otherwise unstable structure (this can be a mechanical instability like an inverted pendulum, buckling beam, etc). The coupling helps to bring the overall spring constant of the entire device to near zero. A near zero spring constant means the system has near zero stored mechanical energy. This will ensure highly efficient electricity generation.
In an alternative embodiment, the spores can be embodied in a system that periodically exposes the spores to high RH and low RH environments as shown in
In operation, the spores 1102 can be dry and contracted in the expandable container 1106. The bottom shutter mechanism 1110 in this initial state is configured such that the slots 1116 are aligned and moisture from the body of water 1130 below can easily enter the container 1106. In this initial state, the top shutter mechanism 1120 can be configured such that the slots 1126 are not aligned and closed, so moisture cannot easily escape the container 1106. From this initial state, moisture enters the container 1106 from below and the spores 1102 begin to swell causing the container 1106 to expand horizontally as indicated by the arrows 1132. As the container 1106 expands the top plate 1122 of the top shutter mechanism 1120 and the bottom plate 1112 of the bottom shutter mechanism 1110 move in an opposite direction to the bottom plate 1124 of the top shutter mechanism 1120 and the top plate 1114 of the bottom shutter mechanism 1110, causing the slots 1116 in the bottom shutter mechanism 1110 to close and the slots 1126 in the top shutter mechanism 1120 to open such that the system reaches the expanded stated as shown in
Naturally occurring evaporation can be powered by the sunlight. When some of the light gets reflected from the surface, that power is not used in evaporation. To maximize the use of solar energy for evaporation, the materials in the vicinity of the hygroscopic material can be constructed from black colored materials or light absorbing materials or nanoparticles.
Similarly, as shown in
Similarly, as shown in
In an alternative embodiment of the invention, the spores according to the invention can be used to change the distance between plates that form a capacitor. The spores expand to increase the distance between the plates and decrease the capacitance and then the spores contract to decrease the distance between the plates and increase the capacitance. In an alternate embodiment, the spores contract to increase the distance between the plates and decrease the capacitance and then the spores expand to decrease the distance between the plates and increase the capacitance.
Dielectric electroactive polymers (dielectric elastomers) can be used to produce an electric generator. Dielectric elastomers (DE) are thin rubber dielectric sheets that can be coated with flexible/compliant electrodes to form a capacitor. Stretching the dielectric elastomer increases the area of the plates and decreases the space between the plates (and vice versa) to convert mechanical energy into electricity. Their operation is simple and they can run for millions of cycles.
In an alternative embodiment, the system 1200 can include one or more ports 1230 which can be used to pump humid air and alternately dry air between the DE layers to hydrate and dehydrate the hygroscopic material.
In an alternative embodiment, the device can be constructed from a material, such as a sheet material that is adapted to block the passage of water or water vapor on demand. To create cycles of water absorption and release, the surface that is close to high RH can be configured to block the water vapor and the hygroscopic material will dry. After a predefined time period, the water blocking can be reversed allowing the hygroscopic material to absorb water vapor and expand.
In a further embodiment, the device can be constructed to allow the hygroscopic material to be exposed to the natural, daily variation in RH. Thus, over the course of a day, the natural variation in RH can be sufficient in come locations and environments to cause the expansion and contraction of device according to the invention.
In an alternative embodiment, the hygroscopic material can be adhered or coupled to a rotating surface and rotated through a high RH environment and a low RH environment. When the hygroscopic material is rotated into the high RH environment, it will absorb water and expand and when the hygroscopic material is rotated into the low RH, it will dry and contract.
In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, systems containing hygroscopic materials such as bacterial spores can be used to construct energy storage systems. In accordance with this embodiment an expandable container of spores can be dried and compressed to store energy. As long as the spores in the container are sealed to prevent water and moisture from entering the container, the energy can be stored for long periods of time. To release the energy, a seal can be broken or a port opened allowing moist air or water to be introduced into the container. The spores will absorb the water and expand causing the container to expand. The container can be coupled to a mechanical device that converts the energy to electricity or a compressed fluid.
In alternative embodiments of the invention, the hygroscopic material can be exposed to moisture absorbing (e.g., high RH) and evaporating (e.g., low RH) environments by moving or rotating the device through these environments. In still further embodiments, the device can be configured to expand and contract based on naturally occurring variations in environment or a combination of natural and artificial produced environmental conditions.
In accordance with the invention, the spore (or other hygroscopic materials) are available or can be produced in various shapes and sizes. In sheet form, each layer of spores can be arranged in one or more predefined geometric, pseudo random and random patterns that can be optimized for energy storage and generation as well as to allow water or humid air to enable the spores quickly and efficiently be absorbed by the spores. Further, the spores can be arranged and oriented to produce predictable expansion or contraction along predefined dimensions.
Further, the description refers to bacterial spores, however other types of spores and hygroscopic materials can be used. As one of ordinary skill would appreciate, different spores or materials can be selected based on their properties and the desired energy release and expansion.
Other embodiments are within the scope and spirit of the invention.
Further, while the description above refers to the invention, the description may include more than one invention.
This application is a Continuation of Ser. No. 14/959,640 filed Dec. 4, 2015, now U.S. Pat. No. 10,125,747 issued Nov. 13, 2018, which is a divisional application of U.S. application Ser. No. 13/998,857 filed Jul. 23, 2013, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,234,508 issued Jan. 12, 2016, which is a 35 U.S.C. § 371 National Phase Entry Application of International Application No. PCT/US2011/061869 filed Nov. 22, 2011, which designates the U.S., and which claims any and all benefits under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/415,902 filed Nov. 22, 2010, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61415902 | Nov 2010 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 13988857 | Jul 2013 | US |
| Child | 14959640 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 14959640 | Dec 2015 | US |
| Child | 16185663 | US |
