What is the worst thing that can happen on a mountain hiking or camping trip? Well! there are many answers to this question but one of the important one is when your phone runs out of battery. This is one situation that you must have seen in countless teen horror flicks. And that’s where the clever Japanese technology comes in handy where you can charge your phone with a cooking pan that is fitted with a USB port. So, now with this new age device, you can charge your phone while cooking your meal.
Christened as Hatsuden-Nabe, this marvel is crafted by a Japanese company called TES NewEnergy Corporation. The concept is very simple as it uses heat. The cooking pot over the flame only uses heat energy to cook whatever is inside it and thus a lot of heat is wasted in
the cooking process. This specially crafted cooking pot is fitted with a thermoelectric module that utilizes this excessive heat. This module converts the excessive heat energy into electricity that in turn is used to charge the phone battery with the in-built USB port. In fact, you can also charge other devices like iPhones, iPods etc by using this handy USB port. Giving an insight into the working of this cooking pan, TES NewEnergy Corporation explains that this can be used safely on an open flame.
The reason is that most stove flames burn at 900°F, however, the water boils at just 212°F thus wasting a lot of energy. Therefore, if you use this pot, you would be using energy that would have been otherwise lost into the atmosphere. The company is marketing this USB port-fitted cooking pot as a valuable emergency tool. The company does say that the pot can be used on an open flame but what it doesn’t really clarify is whether you need to keep the flame going for five hours.
And there isn’t much information available on the fact that for how long you need to keep the pot on a flame to charge your phone for a single phone call of two-three minutes. I mean, in a real emergency, you wouldn’t really have the time to sit by a pot of boiling water for hours. This 16-cm pot costs $280, which really makes us wonder if it is better to invest in a few spare batteries that could be charged and kept aside for use in emergency.
Via: Crunch Gear
