Posted on 07/06/2005 8:33:43 AM PDT by skyman
Really cool invention brings teens awards Physics students: They came up with an environmentally friendly, economical air conditioner By Jessica Ravitz The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune
BLUFFDALE - The code name, Space Beast, was one they came up with in the wee hours of the night.
Tyler Lyon, Daniel Winegar and Chad Thornley were overtired and giddy as they tackled a science fair project. Their idea: Eliminate the use of Freon in automobile air-conditioning systems by relying on the Peltier effect - of course.
"We aren't planning our lives around making air conditioners," Lyon explained. "We wanted to do something to help the environment and the economy."
But what began as a Riverton High School physics class assignment nearly two years ago has morphed into an award-winning, internationally recognized invention.
Lyon and Winegar, two recent Riverton graduates - Thornley graduated in 2004 and is now on an LDS Church mission - won the first-ever Ricoh Sustainable Development Award in May when they competed against 1,400 other worldwide invitation-only entries at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix.
Aside from the $50,000 college scholarship the two 18-year-olds will share, the budding engineers are jetting off to Japan today for a 10-day visit on Ricoh's dime. The office equipment and electronics company, a leader in the field of sustainable development, has invited the Utahns to attend the World Expo, address Ricoh executives, tour their research and development lab, meet with government officials - including the Minister of the Environment - and sit down with Tokyo University professors.
"It's been a total, unbelievable dream," marveled Tyler's mom, Diane Lyon, last week. "They're just typical boys. But when someone believes in you, amazing things can happen."
Physics teacher Kari Lewis, who recently left Riverton High, said trusting in Lyon and Winegar was easy.
"They came up with this idea . . . and they made it work," she said. "It's a perfect solution to an incredible problem."
Today, the young inventors say, U.S. drivers use about 7.9 billion gallons of fuel each year to run their air-conditioners, which draw power from the engine. By adopting their contraption - which taps into the electrical system, using fans to blow hot air through five Peltier chips and then releasing cold air - they say the country stands to save 3.9 billion gallons of fuel annually, or about $10 billion based on current gas prices.
Furthermore, the product would free drivers from Freon - which despite improvements, remains an ozone-depleting chemical in current air-conditioners. The Peltier chips, which they purchased on eBay for $9.99 each, have a life span of 20 to 30 years and an unfaltering cooling capacity. And like every component in the Space Beast, which can be minimized in size to about 2 inches in width, the chips are recyclable.
As a young boy, Lyon's parents said he tore apart and reassembled household electronics - CD players, clocks, an old stereo that didn't work until he fixed it. And while Daniel's mom, LouAnn Winegar, was grateful her son was "not a take-apart-person," she said her boy's love for science, engineering and computers has been consistent.
"It's nice to see all of his years of interest and hard work being recognized," she said.
The two-year process of fine-tuning, however, was not without its glitches. When the teens were trying to convert a blow-dryer fan from AC to DC power, a miswiring gave Lyon a doozy of a shock - "a low-enough amp that it couldn't really stop my heart," he said. And there was that computer power strip that they managed to ignite, before throwing it outside in the snow, only to retrieve it two days later to recycle its parts.
Despite the setbacks, and bouts of procrastination, the teens didn't give up. When they weren't playing computer games, skiing, snowboarding or, in Lyon's case, rock-climbing, they buckled down, sometimes working through the night. Their focus nearly cost them graduation - they had to scramble to make up work in other classes - but they accomplished what others couldn't.
After they had already begun their work, Lyon and Winegar learned about a 1964 General Motors analysis that explored the idea before the car company concluded it wasn't possible.
Going in with open minds, however, the teens were not deterred and pulled off what GM rejected. "Nobody told them it couldn't be done," Robert Lyon, Tyler's dad, said.
The first time he felt a cold gust of air successfully come through the system, Winegar said he remembers saying: "We may actually have something here."
Looks like they do. A Salt Lake City attorney is working to secure a patent. The Environmental Protection Agency called to express interest Tuesday morning. And though repeated attempts to communicate with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. have gone unanswered, high officials in Japan - an ocean away - are awaiting the arrival of Riverton's young inventors.
But isn't the alternator going to be running anyway? If the current is coming from the battery there shouldn't be increased stress/strain on the alternator.
Free energy! Get as much electricity as you want from any size engine!
Take a physics class before you embarass yourself anymore.
It is absolutely inefficient if you don't need the extra output. You are just throwing away energy.
Think down the road 20 years. Think about hybrid technology.
takes alot less to run an alternator than to run an a/c compressor. i've got a jeep that i increased gas mileage (and power output) by yanking the a/c and upgrading the alternator.
It's still too early to know if the boys will receive the patent. Nonetheless, it's wonderful that our patent system allows anyone of any age to patent an invention. When these boys invented their AC unit, they were too young to vote and probably too young to drive legally. However, they weren't too young to receive a patent.
The load the alternator exerts on the engine is based on how much current it is supplying. This whole concept reeks of perpetual motion type physics. I can't imagine 5 of these things have the capacity to do much more than reduce the hot intake air to the ventilation system to ambient temperature, much less make the cabin comfortable.
I think that guy did eventually win a huge court settlement based upon this stolen design.
When you operate one of these devices (by simply passing a current through it - connect it to a battery) the current itself dissipates some heat in the material, but that heat and some of the heat on the "cold" side get swept to the other side, the "hot" side. If you pinch one of the devices between your fingers and run it, one finger gets hot and the other cold. Materials with low thermal conductivity but good electrical conductivity have the highest figure of merit, and it turns out that the winners are made of bismuth and tellurium, especially. (Silicon has excellent thermal conductivity - no good here, it short-circuits the temperature difference.)
Incidentally, if you hook up the battery backwards, it simply reverses the cold and hot sides, with equal efficiency. And if you actively heat one face and cool the other face, it's an (inefficient!) electrical generator - in this case, the heat is being forced to flow, and the charge carriers are what get swept along for the ride.
Not if you cycle it on and off, which is what air conditioners actually do. Either operate at peak efficiency, or not at all, as I said. You can get more or less cooling by altering the duty cycle of when it's on, up to being on full time.
It sounds to me that the system would have to have another to cool it's exhaust. Since it is ambient, I don't think the traditional water cooling system would be all that useful.
"1964 General Motors analysis that explored the idea before the car company concluded it wasn't possible. "
"And though repeated attempts to communicate with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. have gone unanswered, high officials in Japan - an ocean away - are awaiting the arrival of Riverton's young inventors."
Congratulations to these young men. I hope that the adults around them don't take advantage of the young men's success.
Those two quotes... is it any wonder our country is in the shape it's in? Or that GM is where it is today?
I think it's a greeny-based global warming boondoggle. For some reason Tellurex Corp, which is one of the manufacturers of Peltier effect devices, thinks it won't work. You'd think they'd jump at the automotive market if they thought they could sell it, wouldn't you?
"Doesn't necessarily follow. The energy to charge the batteries has to come from somewhere."
I don't know the specifics, but I do know charging the battery isn't near the drag of running a compressor. The alternator is always "running", and a voltage regulator system decides whether the batter needs a charge or not. So, even though it's not free to charge the battery, it's close.
...and the Japanese patent law system of very narrow patents, will allow them to copy the idea with some minor changes and declare it a different "technology" with an exclusive japanese issued patent.
or
They just reverse engineer it, say it is an older idea they already had or simply it is too general a concept and fight the patent.
"does it dehumudify like a typical AC unit?"
I would expect it does. Dehumidification takes place naturally as a byproduct of cooling warm moist air.
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