I wrote:
> A 10 mW heat source may well be "commercial" in 20 years. It would be > enough to drive a cell phone. > Oops. No, it would take more like 12 W, I think. 3 W is the most a cell phone is allowed to produce, for health safety reasons. I suppose you could trickle charge the thing with a fraction of 1 W, but then it might run out of power in the middle of a long conversation. A 12 W thermoelectric heat source in a cell phone would make the phone too hot to hold. I guess some sort of trickle charging would be needed. I am having trouble finding the power consumption of a modern cell phone. It has fallen considerably in recent years. Here is a table of commonly used machines: http://www.wholesalesolar.com/StartHere/HowtoSaveEnergy/PowerTable.html Most are below the 1.5 kW limit. - Jed
