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New Device Turns Waste Heat into Electricity
livescience.com — Physicists have developed a way to turn heat into sound and then electricity, suggesting a new way to effectively recycle waste energy. “We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound,” said the scientist who led the effort, Orest Symko of the University of Utah.
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- hawkspur, on 07/08/2008, -0/+2Every new technology that helps increase our energy efficiency is a positive step forward.
- Brineshrimp, on 07/08/2008, -0/+3Waste heat, sound...
Clearly, Farts = Massive amounts of potential energy.- AmyVernon, on 07/08/2008, -0/+2this is why i love digg
- phreak79, on 07/08/2008, -0/+2I love these new innovations. I suspect that the death of fossil fuels will come not by one knockout punch but rather by a thousand cuts such as this one.
- masterofshadows, on 07/08/2008, -0/+3Okay i must admit, I am a bit intrigued by this. However, we have been able to convert heat to electricity for a long time, they are called thermocouples. I wonder what kind of efficiency this would have compared to a thermocouple.
- grumpyrain, on 07/09/2008, -0/+1The concept is interesting. The article was absent of detail. We waste so much energy through heat, and if there were a cheap way of recapturing heat as electrical energy with significant efficiency, I can just imagine the implications. For a start, triple your cars MPG without changing any other aspect of the engine. (Yes, it is that much energy that is wasted as heat and sound inside an internal combustion engine).
- newtoon, on 07/08/2008, -0/+1What is interesting with this invention is that it compiles different approaches.
Using piezoelectric systems with resonance is nothing new. It has been developed on tennis rackets for instance (to dampen them).
Here, the difference it that instead of dissipating the resonance vibe, we are interested in the produced electricity.
Concerning the heat-> resonance stuff, it reminds me of the "singing pipes" experiment : http://youtube.com/watch?v=kkKsnKhFn_A
You just need to compile those approaches to get an opportunity to get electricity from heat. - michaels73, on 07/08/2008, -0/+1Goodbye fossil fuels?
- PATSCRU, on 07/09/2008, -0/+1this is awesome, there's loads of excess heat coming out of even the most minute consumer electronics. I'd love to turn all that excess heat from my oc'd PC or my A/C unit into electricity.
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