This is probably the closest you’ll see me to a commercial endorsement.
I can’t vouch for the veracity of any of this news release, but if it is true in terms of efficiency and cost, it certainly could improve the lives of millions living without electricity in the developing world.
The company representative sent a link where we would receive a commission on donations, but will not be posting it.
This is not a for profit post. Again if this is all real, these people deserve all the funding. Perhaps our readers can do some verification.
The following is essentially a slightly modified version of their press release~ctm
LUMIR K is the one and only cooking oil powered LED lamp that converts the thermal energy of cooking oil into electricity. Lumir K converts the small thermal energy of cooking oil into electricity and it turns on the bright LEDs. This amazing lantern will light up where you want and it make an impact on the world where it is needed.
Lumir K is an easy, accessible and sustainable solution for those who need a light.
Lumir K uses cooking oil to generate electricity.
Cooking oil is one of the cheapest and familiar ingredients as it is easily found from grocery stores in the city to tiny kiosk shops in a remote area.
Olive, canola and sunflower oil, it doesn’t matter what kind of cooking oil is. Without any batteries or external power supply, only with tiny flame which is as big as candle, Lumir K gives you an instant and 100 times brighter light.
Lumir K has brought the gaze of many design awards with its innovation and sustainability and it achieved CE and its core technology is patented.
Lumir K for Impact
Lumir has been resolving the light shortages and delivering the beauty of light.
Our journey started from a small but momentous experience during the trip to India, learning that there are so many places around the world suffering from unreliable or no electricity supply.
Among 1.2 billion who do not have access to electricity, most of them rely on kerosene lamps which is dark, harmful for health and the environment. Using kerosene lamps indoors has the same effect as smoking 40 cigarettes and the cost for fuel takes up even 30% of the household’s income.
That’s why we invented Lumir K as an effective solution for the light shortage issue.
In the case of kerosene lamps, only 10% of the energy from the fuel is used for illuminating because the flame itself is the direct light, and the rest, 90% of the energy is just scattered in the air as a heat.
However, Lumir K harnesses the wasted 90% of the heat energy to turn on the LEDs, so it is pretty economical as it provides a brighter light only with a small flame.
LUMIR K can be used anytime and anywhere while solar lamps has a big weather constraints in many areas like Indonesia where the average rainy days are more than 160 days.
After our first crowdfunding campaign, we became a partner of KOICA, Korean International Cooperation Agency, and Lumir K was piloted in Indonesia.
Lumir K provides 4.1 times brighter light than kerosene lamps, while its economic effect was also achieved with 80% lower fuel consumption compared to kerosene lamps. It also reduces carbon emissions by about 90%.
For every “Give” perks funded from the campaign, Lumir K will be distributed to power families in remote village in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Under a cooperation with government organization, Volunteer distribution trip is going to be in September and all the process will be shared via updates and newsletter!
If you support “Empower 100 families”, you can name a specific location you want to aid. Lumir will cover the shipping cost if the destination in one of the countries listed here. (Please note that you are responsible for applicable taxes and customs tariffs.) Or still you can pitch in supporting the village in Cambodia, 100 Lumir K you backed will be given out through our distribution trip
Key Features
▶Innovative
Lumir K harnesses the heat energy of a small flame which usually scattered into the air and generate electricity. Without any external power supply, it lights up LEDs which is almost 100 times brighter than a candle.
▶Easy to Use
Just placing the lamp over the lit wick will turn the LED light on.
▶Accessible
Olive, canola and palm oil, it doesn’t matter what kind of cooking oil is.
▶Efficient
Consumes only 5ml of oil for 1 hour of light
▶Instant light
No need of charging or battery, also it is weather independent unlike the solar products.
▶10-year life cycle
You can enjoy sustainable light of Lumir K for 10 years.
▶Make an Impact
Not only Lumir K comes in handy for users, also it provides the light of hope to those who without access to electricity in remote area. Your support will make the impact bigger.
About Lumir
Lumir is a social venture, resolving the light shortages and delivering the beauty of light.
With a goal to light up the world, team Lumir had a successful campaign with our first product, candle powered LED lamp.
Lumir promised to keep developing solutions for families in off-grid area and finally came back with Lumir K by improving efficiency and changing fuel as cooking oil.
Currently, Lumir is working with many organizations to bring the light to off-grid world, especially where solar products are limited to fully function due to the climates, like Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, etc.
CEO/Founder of Lumir Jehwan Park was listed as 30 under 30 Asia by Forbes
(https://www.forbes.com/profile/jehwan-park/#687fe33b732e)
Achievements
Winner of Asia Design Prize
Dyson Design Award
KGCCI innovation Awards (in Sustainability)
Hardware Cup 3rd Place
And many more…
Campaign on Indiegogo: Until 6 July
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lumir-k-the-one-and-only-cooking-oil-led-lamp/x/10084318
Useful Links
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2ju36WFA5cwa8dmdZ-8mtA/
Website: https://www.lumir.co.kr/
Download Photos: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jjuwso0c3mjpu7w/AACA5LzyxOk6hK2ClHIclBsVa?dl=0
Social Media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lumirlight
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lumirlight/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lumirlight
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I recall seeing a naphtha powered mantle lantern (i.e. white gas Coleman lantern) that had a series of thermocouples that charged an internal L-ion battery which had a few 5V USB port so as could charge phones/tablets or wire in small LED’s where you need/want electric light. Not sure if it was a real prototype or a Popular Science concept project. A mass roll out of this tech for cheap would be great for the 3rd world. I have been to villages in SE Asia or Central America where there is no electric lights, save maybe for a kerosene or naphtha style lamp for an entire family. While these folks may never be able to afford electricity even if it was available, it would be good to solve the problem for some basic electric lighting and charging radio’s and cell phones. That would be a real good start and maybe the kids will do better in school if they can see to do their homework.
One thing not mentioned – vegi oils don’t burn clean. Fairly smokey and they leave behind gummy substances that would rapidly clog the works. Even if this does work, I would suspect it would be better to use the kerosene to run the system than vegi oil.
I am not well versed on anything mechanical or technical. That is why I enjoy reading all the comments from people who are. It tells me that if only a fraction of all the money spent on wind and solar subsidies was given to research, great things would happen. I keep hoping common sense will prevail at the cost of corruption.
I keep on praying……………………
The gas fire in my living room contains a thermoelectic powered sensor that ‘holds on’ the gas supply as long as the thermocouple is hot. If the gas supply is cut, or the flame goes out for some reason, the gas solenoid shuts under spring pressure.
It is a tried and tested way of generating small amounts of power.
Not sure why there are so many doubters here!
The hard part will be to get the design right to enable cheap and efficient production.
I wonder if filtered bacon grease could be used. We discard a lot of that around here…
If they are cheap enough, I might consider buying a few and competing with my gouging electricity supplier in Ontario, Canada.
You might want to wash the salt out of your bacon grease rather than just filter it. Mom used to do that to get lard for pie crust back in the day. Warm grease to liquid, mix 1:1 with clean water, allow to separate, drain off water, repeat at least 3 times, or until the grease(now purified lard) is no longer salty or bacon flavored. Unless you like bacon flavored pie crust. Ask me how I know. 🙂
actually would like to have some on hand here for winter use. freq power outages and often only need light so generator is waste. had looked at some similar items but the brightness was issue making it not worth it.
maybe this will work better.
time will tell.
Too bright, or not bright enough? See my comments above about my Aladdin Welsbach mantel lamp. It’s as bright as a Coleman Lantern™ on diesel / kerosene. I use it during extended power outages and could conceivably heat my cabin with it. I keep 5 gallons of lamp oil in the garage and the car and tractor are diesel powered.
not bright enough, did look at coleman but the total light cast was not enough. rather than a small bright focused beam need a wider less focused beam. have not spent lot of time looking into it as when power is out 75% of the time heat itself (as well as water pump) is issue but there are times I could use a “large glow” light that does not use kero/naptha fuel
“Lumir K gives you an instant and 100 times brighter light.”
How are you defining brightness? I can look directly at an LED light and nearly be blinded, but it won’t illuminate a room much better than a flame will, which I can look directly at. This sounds like somebody trying to make a career for themselves. These things cost $80 on Kickstarter.
This link
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph240/machala1/
has some very useful numbers for the relative performane of kerosene lamps, lamps with mantles, cfl and led sources.
Obviously if you have something you can set fire to (such as bits of trees or even dried dung ) which costs you nothing that is cheap light, but likely to be low lux and have associated dangers.
If you just look at lumens per watt LED source is a clear winner but you need a source of electricity. Solar PV is free but with high capital cost and you need to store it. A hand (or foot!) cranked generator is likely to be cheaper than a solar cell and can be run anytime you need it. Disadvantage is you need a battery to store electric so adding to the capital cost.
So in conclusion I like the LEDs (efficent lumens/watt), like the unit IF it runs off free fuel (waste cooking oil). But suspect that a simple hand operated generator and battery pack would be of comparable, if not cheaper, capital cost and would be pollution free.
I watched a video on a YouTube channel called “Smarter Every Day” where the host, Dustin from Huntsville Alabama tested something similar. Only it didn’t need any fuel. It used a weight to turn a flywheel which turned a small generator (a dc motor) which lit the LED. It worked like an old grandfather clock, and the weight has to be raised about twice an hour. This seems to be a much better idea than burning food.
I like this comment on a (nearly) mechanical system to do the job. It’s GENIUS! It requires NO additional fuel source ever, and it works night or day, rain or shine. Of course a mechanical system will wear out or break eventually, but could be engineered for a very long life. A Seebeck or solar system with no moving parts could last much longer but there are advantages to going a pure “potential energy” route. You could assign or hire others to lift the weight. The rope/cable and weight (basket of rocks?) could be locally sourced. You would just need a hook, the gearbox/generator, and the LED. It’s even customizable. If you don’t want to hoist the weight as often you could put the generator higher, maybe even up a tree.
The analysis of a 3 watt solar/battery system was pretty on the mark too. It would be interesting to compare the energy and material costs to manufacture each, although I suspect the mechanical system might fare well.
The Lumir K lamp costs $34. It seems to me a pretty expensive thing to buy for millions of people. Better to have some sort of DIY lamp they can make out of materials they have lying around.
Lumir K lamp costs $34. It seems to me a pretty expensive thing to buy for millions (billions?) of people. Better would be a DIY lamp that could be made of material they have lying around.
Completely doable but the problem is that these people *don’t have waste cooking oil* because the oil is also eaten as part of their diet.
A solution without a problem. A weight based generator or a spring wind-up is 30x more useful and highly recyclable without the hazards of fire, carbon monoxide and asthma inducing soot.
These people deserve NO money and the article should be removed. We’ve had far better solutions for THIRTY YEARS.
Well, we are making real progress with adding fire as the source of energy. Much better than the Gravity Light, which was a sack of rocks weighing about 25 pounds, and you just had to hang up this bag of rocks vertically and it took 20 minutes for it to fall down while it generated less than 1/10 watt of power to make 15 Lum LED light. But someone had to lift up the bag of rocks every 20 minutes. I doubt the Gravity Light caught on. The spring loaded wind-up multi purpose clock/radio/light is a much better concept, especially if it had a mini detachable solar panel plug in and a LED battery with some low output 5 VDC USB ports to charge a cell phone. That would definitely be better than nothing.
Why not use one of these?
https://www.paddockspares.com/wind-up-lantern-4-led.html?gclid=CJT-9YXO3eICFdSI1Qod3_cN-w
No fuel, cheaper and a minute of winding gives 30 minutes of light
False advertising. The charge device inside wears out quickly and the magnets used on the generator are of incredibly poor quality.
I’ve seen those “be visible” for 30 minutes but you couldn’t read lit birthday number candles from the light they put out.
“Shake Recharging Flashlight”
15 to 25 US dollars
Russian Hacker review:
It is criminal to burn food
Sorry.
Sounds like what they are doing is generating a small amount of electricity (from combustion and Peltier effect) to drive some LEDs, which then provide light efficiently. High capital cost for over-elaborate electricity generation.
How about just buying one of those camping lights that you can power by hand-cranking a spring which can drive the LEDs, which then provide light efficiently in the same way?
There was a “Radio for Africa” marketed in the same way some years ago. It stored the small amount of required energy in a spring, very efficiently. The same way watchmakers have done for centuries.
As with most, if not all, green schemes, this fails at the first hurdle when compared to what is already available. Greens are easily impressed by many technologies, because they stopped studying the right subjects before they left high school.
The creation of electronically-tuned spectra spectra from apparently lower order kinetic EMF is a subject in itself. Possibly of great interest to all who, like myself, wish to improve our understanding of how atmospheres handle solar inputs. Just like the Plant Kingdom that I once specialised in, these things are ‘walking’ Physics lessons…….. Brett Keane
It reminds me of the National Lampoon parody issue of The Whole Earth Catalog, where, in addition to other things, they advertised a solar-powered sunlamp! It would give one a natural-looking suntan, but only while the actual sun was shining.
Another hoot from that issue was “Earth Tires.” These were a parody of “Earth Shoes,” an actual short-lived fad of shoes whose toes were elevated above the heels (giving one a sense of perpetually climbing a hill). Just as Earth Shoe ads had a complicated explanation as to why they were superior to ordinary shoes, the Earth Tires ad offered (and I paraphrase from memory) “Ordinary tires are precariously balanced on a single point, making them terrifyingly unstable. But Earth Tires [which are square, instead of round] offer a broad, stable contact surface with the earth. No chance of rolling away uncontrollably!”
I have a problem with the way the charity is done as described here. Better plan:
1) Go on “Shark Tank” with the compelling story.
2) Get $100K from one of the sharks to fund mass production.
3) Sell them for $19.99 and give 10% to non-profit buying them for 3rd world.
I’d buy three as a prep.
“▶10-year life cycle
You can enjoy sustainable light of Lumir K for 10 years.”
I find this claim highly questionable. 10 years is a lot of open flame combustion products being passed over the Peltier Junction. I would guess that even a small amount of soot and other deposits will rapidly degrade the efficiency of the lamp. I have actually used glass tower kerosene lamps a fair amount of the years; the glass requires pretty frequent cleaning. Cleaning would be a key long term performance issue. Note that the video shows the lamp being fueled with new oil. My guess is that anyone who really wants to use this is some developing country is going to use old oil…exacerbating the soot deposit problem.
From the previously posted link, http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph240/machala1/, which discusses the efficiency and economics of various lamps, it appears that the economics of such a lamp would be questionable. If the user cost is anywhere near $30…it has to compete with oil lamps with a cost of perhaps $1. Even with a lousy payback of 3%, you could buy a new oil lamp every year (.03 x $30 = $0.9). I would assume that the answer will be…”oh it will be free…” Right (ie UN printed money). The cost savings in oil could be a key factor due to the higher efficiency (assuming good real world performance over several years).
I’d need to see at least a years worth of real world usage before giving this device much credibility. My observation is that there have been a lot of ideas that look great in the lab, or a western style camping trip, but don’t really work well in third world environments. How many solar powered this or that, or special pumps, or special cook stoves, or special tents actually passed the reality test and were widely adopted in third world countries?
Lumir K sounds interesting. At its heart, there is likely an LED light and a thermoelectric generator, a semiconductor material that converts heat into electricity. Such materials are still limited by the Carnot efficiency: (T2-T1)/T2, where T2 is the temperature of the semiconductor heated by the flame and T1 is temperature on the other side of the semiconductor. According to Wikipedia, the best materials are only 5-8% efficient. ASSUMING it is coupled with an LED that is 25% efficient at converting electricity to light, the overall efficiency would be 1-2%. Lifetime in real world use is an obvious concern. (However, other mechanisms may be possible.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator
By way of comparison, an incandescent electric light bulb heats a filament to several thousand degK and convert 2-3.5% of the input power into visible light. The flame of a candle reaches only about 1000 K and emits visible light with an efficiency 0.04%. If this information is correct, this device might be 50 times more efficient than burning the oil to produce light. The efficiency of any simple burning device depends on how hot it gets (and the lifetime of the material at that temperature).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy