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/search?l=vortex-l@eskimo.com&q=from:%22David+Roberson%22>
wrote on Wed, 01 Jan 2014 11:48:09 -0800
<http://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=vortex-l@eskimo.com&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
