www.indiegogo.com/projects/lumir-k-the-one-and-only-cooking-oil-led-lamp
Lumir K: burn your food to power an LED
Seems like a big improvement over candles or an oil lamp. The same principle, burning fuel for light but more efficiently. For people with no access to a power grid, I'd say this is preferable.
But the choices are not "oil or candles or lumir." The alternative is solar and solar-electric kicks its butt. They dismiss solar even though those countries have some of the best and most reliable year-round sun in the world. Making up a complicated and expensive solution to a problem that doesn't exist is how axesaws usually work.
This is actually pretty neat. I like that you still get the benefit of the light from the flame as well as the LED. But, i think this is probably more interesting when compared to a kerosene lantern. Which is what they seem to be marketing it as anyway.
I get what you are saying about the 100x candlelight being inaccurate, but marketing terms for brightness are just fucked all around so this doesn't seem that offensive. More importantly they claim it's 4x brighter than a kerosene lamp and that it outputs 96 lumens for 5 mL/hour. A kerosene lamp that outputs 28 lumens uses 30 mL/hour table 1, lamp 2. So this has a nice advantage in efficiency and a corresponding decrease in particulate pollution. Even with how cheap the solar/battery/LED option is I think this is still pretty viable.
Also, 4.5g of vegetable oil is 40 calories (according to google), so I am not sure how you are getting to 500 calories and equating this with a whole meal.
The only way it falls short of a kerosene lantern is that they only claim it has a 10 year lifespan (for the LED); with all the moving parts I can see why. A kerosene lamp will probably outlast you unless the metal gets corroded or the glass is broken.
I am not sure how you are getting to 500 calories
500 calories per night. Multiply the rate by 12 hours. Which is a little on the long side I will admit. But people are going to tend to leave this on for hours since relighting it is a hassle.
Speaking of hassle did you notice the lamp burner is a simple tube without any adjustment knob? Those are messy and annoying to adjust.
96 lumens
Somehow I glossed over that. Makes my entire calculation kind of unnecessary. Whoops.
with all the moving parts I can see why
Its articulated but most engineers would look at this and say it has no moving parts.
This seems like a cool thing to have in a winter cabin or the like — might not be much sunlight in the winter and if there's no electricity, it's still pretty easy to keep a big bottle of cooking oil on hand to make this usable.
Don't really see how it'd be all that useful in the backcountry though.
To their credit $40 is actually a reasonable price.
That said their claims are misleading. They say "1 Lumir K = 100X candlelight" which makes you think that it will be as bright as 100 candles. What marketers really mean by this is that it has an intensity of 100 candela. The total amount of light is not going to be much more than a real candle. Just all focused in 1 direction.
5mL/hour is a number we can do some work with. That is 4.5 grams per hour. Or almost 500 calories per night of food. Operating a few of these is not cheap! Literally another mouth to feed.
Expressed another way its almost 50 watts of thermal energy. But much of that energy is lost. Heating something over an open flame is only 30% efficient. So only 15 watts of energy can be captured by the thermoelectric generator. Thermoelectric generators are 5%-8% efficient. Let's say 6% for something this small. Rounding up that is 1 watt. And with LEDs operating around 150 lumens/watt you get a respectable 150 lumens.
And 150 lumens sounds reasonable for the photos they show. But that is "only" 12x more light than a candle. Still an impressive piece of engineering and good job on bringing it to market.
That said.... $40 could also buy a solar power lantern with no operating cost and no particulates or pollution. Heavy oils like cooking oil tends to be fairly smoky and bad smelling in use. And an electric lamp can be moved around much more easily.