My guess is that the system uses a small battery to generate some sound waves. Next a flow heat produced by a heat source is used to amplify the sound waves and these amplified waves produces extra electricity.
Harry On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 3:24 PM, AlanG <[email protected]> wrote: > This device is based on lots of past development, and possibly other > industrial devices. Think of it as a Stirling engine where the piston is a > thermoacoustic phonon in the enclosed gas. There's a good background > summary of related work at LANL in 2002: > > http://www.lanl.gov/thermoacoustics/Pubs/ICSV9.pdf > > Perhaps Ed Storms is familiar with the LANL work described and could > comment on it. > > The pending patent for the new device is owned by NASA, apparently from > work at Glenn Research Center on acoustic propulsion: > > http://www.google.com/patents/WO2013126206A1?cl=en > > AlanG > > David > Roberson<http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]&q=from:%22David+Roberson%22> > wrote on Wed, 01 Jan 2014 11:48:09 > -0800<http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]&q=date:20140101> > > Sounds like a trick to me. (no pun intended) I suspect that a heat pump will > be a better choice if the idea is to turn electricity into household heat > while > using some directly for other appliances. The main item of interest is how > efficient is the conversion of heat energy into sound and ultimately > electricity. The high efficiency that they mention likely is in response to > them using the waste heat in its degraded form. > > How does that particular process compare to thermoelectric generators which > are > its competition? > > Dave > > >
