KOZHIKODE: Appliances like iron box, water heater and induction cooker are power-consuming that make your electricity bill expensive. Then, what if an iron box that normally requires 1000-1800 Watts or a hair drier that requires 1500 Watts that work with just 50 Watts? Dream? Well, these young engineers strive to prove it a reality.
Athulya Thulaseedharan, a fifth-semester Electrical and Electronics Engineering student of Government Engineering College, Idukki, who hails from Kanichukulangara, and Safnil S from Kunnamangalam, who has just completed his BTech in Computer Science and Engineering from the same college, have come up with ‘LED as a heat source’ technology. With the technology, coil-based heating appliances can work with the heat generated from the Light Emitting Diode (LED) enabled devices exempting the need for removing the heat from these devices.
They have developed an iron box and a room heater that work with the heat emitted from the 50 Watt high power LED array. Other coil based heating appliances like bread toaster, water kettle and induction cooker can also work using the same technology.
“A research paper on the thermal management techniques to deal with the heat generated by LED devices for its increased life led us to the invention. While going through the various techniques to remove the heat and to cool the device, we started thinking of how to utilise the heat also,” said Athulya and Safnil.
“It will take around three to four years for us to get the patent,” they added. “By adopting the technology to all the heating appliances, the total power consumption of the entire world can be reduced by 50 percent,” they claim.
With the development of the technology, the duo aim for opening a market for the LED enabled heating appliances along with carrying out further research in the field.
“With a financial crisis for further research and for making the products flexible for use, we approached several companies, but no one supported us for the research but rather asked us to focus on a particular product which they will bring into market. But, we aim to explore the technology as a whole,” said Safnil.
“The unavailability of a high power LED manufacturing unit in India is another major challenge for us. Rather than the monetary problems in importing the LED arrays, we have suggestions in its manufacturing too,” said Athulya.
“We can make 30W LED arrays generating the same temperature as the 50W LED array by incorporating certain changes in its manufacturing,” said them.
“Currently, these LEDs are made with reducing the heat while enhancing the light output. But, by making some changes in the manufacturing for enhancing the heat generation while reducing its illumination, the electronic devices can work with low power,” pointed out Safnil.
They have developed the iron box by removing the coil and placing a 50W LED array in it. The heat is generated from the LED, transferred into the thermal conducting plate on the iron box.
“We are working on reducing the illumination of the LED arrays we use in these devices, for generating more heat. Moreover, the heat generated from the 50 W high power LED array normally used for the illumination devices like flood lights, can also be used for some devices like a water heater,” said Athulya.
“The heat is normally removed by incorporating heat sink designs like water cooling or air cooling mechanisms within the devices,” she pointed out.
Moreover, you may also wonder that you can also use these devices when there is no power. It can work by using batteries and also using the inverters.
“As the devices working using the heat from the LED consume only low power, it can work using the inverters and as Direct Current (DC) is supplied into the LED for providing fixed amount of power, it can also work with batteries that are sources of DC power,” said Safnil.