The by-products of potato juice

Today I have mostly been performing silly experiments in the kitchen. I like potato pancakes, but they are problematic to make because the moisture has to be removed from the potatoes before frying them. This usually involves dirtying a clean cloth, or trying to squeeze the moisture out by hand which doesn't work well. I've also tried using a ricer on raw grated potato which is quite effective.

I had a brainwave today - realising that I already had a device which does this job, namely a juicer. I pushed three potatoes through the juicer, and kept the pulp that normally gets discarded. Mixed with some chopped onion and seasoning, this makes really good, fine potato pancakes. I wasn't brave enough to try drinking the potato juice.

An earlier experiment to try separating freshly brewed coffee from its grounds using the juicer didn't work so well. It just tastes like soil.

12 volt mains

If you like gadgets as much as me you probably have a large number of AC adaptors with power bricks cluttering your house up. A lot of these have different output voltages, but I have quite a few that deliver 12 volts, or claim to. Is it possible to replace some of these with a single transformer to simplify the wiring and increase efficiency?

The experiments I've done so far suggest that the first part is quite possible, but surprisingly, I couldn't run my appliances as efficiently with a single power supply than with individual bricks.

The appliances I used for this were my Netgear ADSL Wifi router, my 20" LCD TV, and my mini-itx based server computer.

The first step was to give each a common connector. I split the cable on each and attached a PC drive power connector on each side. Drive power connectors are cheap, meant specifically for 12V and can be plugged straight into an ATX power supply.

Having done that I reconnected them to their original power supplies and switched them all on, checking the power consumption for each. Measured at the mains socket with a plug-in power meter, I got: PC on idle: 28W. TV: 50W. and the router: 7W. Total 85W. Incidentally, if you repeat this experiment, it might be better to plug all those into a power strip and plug that into the power meter, in case the meter has some non-linear error.

Using the first attempt - an "L&W" 250W power supply used 48W just to run the router and PC - obviously less efficient. The TV wouldn't work properly at all - I got sound but no picture. A quick check revealed that the 12V output of this power supply was actually only raising 11.05V unloaded - which presumably is not enough to power the TV properly. The PSU also used 12W without any load at all.

I tried again with an older Opus PSU which had the same problem powering the TV. It also used 8W unloaded.

Next was a Morex PSU, only a 200W model for a micro-ATX system but this was evidently of better quality and managed to get the TV running. However, just the TV and PC drew 92W from the mains - over the limit before the router was connected. It also drew 11W when idle.

The last test was my bench PSU. This is a bit of a beast, rated at 40A continuous, but given its higher cost I thought it might stand a chance of being more efficient. No such luck though - with all three appliances it drew 110W, consuming 18W unloaded.

So, while it might make the wiring neater if done properly, I've yet to find a power supply which will do the job more efficiently than using individual power blocks.

I suspect that computer PSUs are not the best choice for this job, as they are probably geared towards delivering a very stable smooth 5V and 12V rather than efficiency. The power bricks are not, so far as I can tell, very stable in their output voltage, probably relying on further conditioning inside the appliance.

As usual, I wouldn't recommend anyone else trying this for themselves - running things on too low a voltage could damage them, and not all PSUs output the voltage they claim - the router's power brick, for example, delivers 16V when unloaded.