12 PCWorld JANUARY 2022NEWS CONCEPT LUNA
hydroelectric power, while the motherboard
would be made with a flax fiber held together
with a water-soluble polymer that’s easy to
break down for recycling.
To cut down on parts, the motherboard and
CPU could be passively cooled and mounted
vertically behind the screen rather than the
conventional placement under the keyboard.
Since the motherboard itself is one of the more
intensive components in any laptop to make,
Dell helps cut down on that consumption by
reducing its size by 75 percent and reducing
component count by 20 percent.
To improve serviceability, Dell reduces the
use of screws by 10 times over a conventional
laptop and components would use a
keystone design that locks into place without
resorting to glue. Of course, the laptop would
be as modular as possible, and Dell is aiming
for a total of 1.5 hours to take the laptop apart
and replace components, including thescreen and keyboard. The battery would be
lithium iron phosphate, which has twice the
life cycle of a traditional lithium ion battery.
All this sounds great for sustainability nerds,
but the moon shot might be how the
Concept Luna is upgraded and reused.
Rather than chucking a Concept Luna PC into
e-waste or sending it out to be stripped for its
precious metals when done, the motherboard
could be removed from the laptop and
replaced with a newer one. While you get to
enjoy a newer, faster CPU in your system,
you’d return the older motherboard to Dell,
where the company could install it in a lower-
cost laptop for resale.
Obviously the new customer would know
he or she is getting a laptop built with reused
components, but Dell believes it won’t be an
issue as parts such as the motherboard and
CPU tend to be very durable well past their
prime. That’s largely going to be the hardest
part of Concept
Luna—getting people
to move from using
and disposing of an
entire laptop and
instead shifting to a
model of use, reuse,
and reuse again until
the individual
component has lived
its full lifetime
before it’s easily
Are you ready to upgrade your laptop with used components? recycled.