Isn’t that kinda like a microwave oven?
President Clinton has been turning excess heat into sound for decades.
Space probes to the outer planets use the latter, using heat from nuclear decay. They're about 5% efficient.
Is this new process any better/more efficient?
Efficiency is everything. If this invention converts 1% of heat into electricity, it really isn’t a big deal (there are other conversion methods with greater efficiency). If it converts 50%, the results would be astounding. New nuclear reactor designs (no more steam turbines), hyper-efficient solar arrays, you name it.
Hot air into electricity, huh?
Who knew that Washington, D.C. and our liberal university professors could be an important energy resource!
Wow.
What good would that do? I’d only be able to run my air conditioner on hot days.
Oh, wait...
Another source of energy.
"Heat can't melt steel & can't make electricity! "
ping
Whatever happened to the acoustic refrigerator? I wish these guys the best of luck, but almost none of these energy related inventions ever make it to market.
This is a lot like thermoacoustics, which can take sound and convert it into waves of hot and cold bands — and can therefore be used as a refrigeration source.
You can do the opposite, use heat to generate the sound and use the sound to move a magnet through a coil to generate electricity.
The University of Pennsylvania has been working on this for years. There’s thermoacoustic refrigerators in use, and they were working on a self-contained machine for oil platforms to refrigerate natural gas (liquify it) by burning a small amount of it and using the heat to run a thermoacoustic generator which would provide cooling.
My daughter got a kit from the University and used it for a science fair project. It’s pretty cool, you just hook up a big 6-volt battery, it heats a small ceramic block in a tube, and you get a REALLY loud sound out of it, just from the standing heat/cold wave set up in the tube through the ceramic block (which is heated ONLY on one end).
I saw a rig that used solar power to heat the edge of the ceramic as well.
Internal combustion engines waste most of their energy as heat. If this works and can be adapted, perhaps a breakthrough here could improve a hybrid auto efficiency even further.
Mark
Kinda like when I first met my wife-to-be.
Just in time to save us from global warming. Turn all of that excess heat into electricity to power massive air conditioners to recool earth back down. Cool!
Did AlGore invent this too?
Gunner
Bush’s hydrogen future is here (Big break through)
United Nuclear
Posted on 03/07/2005 1:45:56 PM EST by JeffersonRepublic.com
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1357834/posts
University Unveils Method to Turn Ethanol into Hydrogen
Pioneer Press | Thu, Feb. 12, 2004 | DENNIS LIEN
Posted on 02/12/2004 7:53:51 PM EST by wallcrawlr
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1077024/posts
Carbon dioxide turned into hydrocarbon fuel
New Scientist | July 31, 2002 | Eugenie Samuel
Posted on 08/02/2002 10:43:06 AM EDT by Paradox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/726555/posts