A practical solution to help recharge cell phones and other portable electrical devices in remote villages and huts around the world was unveiled in Denver today by Traverse City-based Tellurex Corp.
Called the Tellurex World Pot it combines native cooking fires and thermoelectric science to do the recharging.
The company said that by putting a high performance Tellurex thermoelectric module and a UBS port in a teakettle and then placing the teakettle over a “modest fire,” a discharged cell phone can be activated within minutes.
The teakettle becomes an electric generator which activates the dead phone, said the firm.
Tellurex said the Tellurex World Pot can deliver important benefits to native people in the underdeveloped world who are sometimes ambushed and robbed while hiking to distant charging stations.
The pot may also be a life saver in an area hit by a natural disaster and power loss where rescue may depend on keeping the cell phone GPS and texting power working over several days.
“We’ve connected the past to the future and made it work,” said Tellurex chairman Clyde McKenzie. “Using a simple teakettle as a portable generator, we’ve created power for global communications from the kind of cooking fire that mankind has used for at least 2,000 years.”
The device is one of more than 30 products that are featured in the “Design for the Other 90 percent,” a Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum exhibition on display at RedLine in Denver.
RedLine is located at 2350 Arapahoe St. in Denver.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.