Hey guys, glad people are enjoying the site.  We appreciate all your comments and encourage you to post your own ideas!  New patents are on their way and should be posted beginning in May.

- Fresh

Dear Patent Pender Community,
           As I am sure you are all aware, we have dropped the proverbial ball receintly. For this we appologize, but we offer you new hope, for we have a site overhaul for patentpenders in the works, complete with brand new posts, comming soon! In the mean time you can still create your own posts, and leave your mark on history! Who knows, maybe someone with the knowhow will see your idea and invent it, and you will be their inspiration. Old posts and user generated posts will still be accessible after the overhaul. So stick with us and we appreciate your commitment and understanding during this time of transition.

Love,
 Drizz  XoXo

 ”The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” – Albert Einstein

Using wasted heat to keep use less energy when heating water

I’m talking about the pipes that run through your house and bring water to your sink… not that pipe.  This new pipe would be ideal for situations such as the shower where you usually require hot water but once the hot water has been used, it then exits through the drain.  In order to get this water hot, you need a water heater which can take up quite a bit of energy to get all that water to the temperature you want.

The idea behind this invention is to use that heat from the water exiting the drain to heat up the water that is entering the sower.  This way the water heater won’t need to heat up it’s tank quite as high because the wasted water will meet it half way and heat it up to the desired temperature.  The way this works is by inserting the pipe containing the warm drain water inside the pipe containing the unheated water entering the water heater.  The inner pipe should be made of aluminum or a metal that can dissipate heat well.

The pictures shows what the piping would look like if it were cut in half.  The warm waste water is moving to the right while the surrounding cooler water is moving to the left and receiving heat by conductive heat transfer.

Never Lose Your Car in a Lot Again!

Losing your car in a crowded parking lot is one of the most frustrating situations you can find yourself in. So we here at Patent Penders are calling for an iPhone application that can direct you to your parked car. Here’s how we see it working: After you park your car you open the parking application and hit the start button. After that you walk out of the lot or parking garage. Once you are outside the garage or lot you hit the stop button. The iPhone will have recorded the exact number of feet you have traveled, including the number of feet you traveled up or down (accounting for stairs in a parking garage). When you are returning to your car you simply open the application at the location where you previously stopped it, and you will receive detailed instructions that direct you to the exact spot your car is parked in.

iPhone with a USB port

How about Apple introduce the new iPhone (which will be in June) with a built in male USB port so we can just plug the thing in to any computer and use it like a portable hard drive.  I don’t want iTunes or anything to pop up, just a little window that you can drag data to.  It would be convenient and solve some of those problems where you think to yourself, “Damn, I wish I had my USB drive.”

We apologize for all those that despise the iPhone, but we love it.  What phone is better than the iPhone?  So far, we haven’t found any that come close.  So until that day, we will be coming out with ways to make the iPhone better… although these things won’t ever happen because Apple is not wasting their time with listening to us.

HUD stands for Heads Up Display, and is commonly found in the cockpits of modern airplanes. We want to take this technology and apply it to everyday vehicles. In a car a HUD could save lives. It could post the speed limit of the current area and even outline the proper lane to be in… No more accidental drives down the wrong way of a one way street!  It could also highlight the lane you are in and provide a clear path down a dark and windy road. The HUD could also have radar detection capabilities (where legal) and even outline the police car from a significant distance away.

Use your gym equipment to power your house

What does everyone keep track of when hopping on that stationary bike at the gym?  Calories.  Everyone wants to burn calories, but have you ever thought about how many calories you can generate from riding that bike?  Probably not much, but you could watch how many Joules (note, 1 Calorie = 4.184 Joules) you are generating for your house and also how much money you are saving from your electric bill!  What motivates people more than money?

Now, move all this equipment to the gym and suddenly you have a power plant of people on elliptical and stationary bikes.  It could be the first gym that pays you.  Imagine this example:

You sign up for Go Green Gym (GGG) and you are charged a small initial fee to join, just like every other gym out there.  But this gym is different, because when you hop on one of the stationary bikes or ellipticals, you slide your membership card and it keeps track of how many joules you produced.  At the end of the year, you are given a cut of the money that you saved the gym from electric bills!

Maybe this is what we need to bring down the average weight in America, a little money motivation.

Use wasted energy from your chimney and send it back to your house

Why do you build a fire? Probably to warm the house, and because it looks pretty cool. But what about all that wasted energy that exits the chimney as heat and burned up biomass. How about harnessing that energy and storing it? Yep, I want to turn your chimney into a personal power plant that can help keep your electricity bill down.  Or even better, you might be able to make some extra power and sell it back to the grid and make some side cash.  Think Stirling Heat engines.

Let’s first examine how much energy is stored in wood.  The Sustainable Energy Development Office (SEDO) states that wood has about 4.5 kWh per kilogram.

So how much electricity to run a house?  Obviously this depends on the homeowner, but a good estimate is about 50 kWh per day.

So if we were to burn 10 kilograms of wood in the fire place, you could almost live a whole day on that!  Now as an engineer, I realize that 100% efficiency is impossible, especially for the conditions your fireplace is in.  But, we could take some of that energy and suck it back to the power grid.  Your going to burn that wood anyway, might as well go a little green with it.

Plug Directly Into the Wall

Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you want to use the internet but there is no wireless capabilities at your current location, and the 3g speed of the iPhone is too slow or the phone dosn’t have a signal. This is when the iPhone ethernet plug comes in handy. Plug your iPhone directly into the wall and enjoy high speed internet acess for your phone! This would be great for the traveling business person who constantly find themselves in hotels, some of which still havent adapted wireless internet.

Solar Powered Cooler

The solar powered cooler invention would be a big hit at those pregame tailgating parties.  However, this thing packs a refrigeration system that is completely run by the power of our good ‘ol sun so it could probably graduate to the name of portable, solar powered refrigerator.  Either way, you are going to use it at the next tailgate.

I don’t think there is too much explanation on how this thing works.  Put it out in the sun, watch your beers get colder.  And if it is a cloudy day, then you better bring some ice because you have a regular cooler now!