Snipped from Newswise.com.

Now this is what I am talking about when it comes to innovative thinking. All sane people should, by now, understand our dire need for alternative energy. America does not look like it is going to half its energy consumption any time soon, so instead of lessening our use, we can use an alternative to the century old fossil fuels. Here is Orest Symko, a University of Utah physics professor, who has “developed small devices that turn heat into sound and then into electricity.” If this science is actually feasible it could mean many, many things when it comes to free energy.

Ever get into your car during the summer and it is hot as hell? Or felt the heat of your engine compartment? Or felt the heat coming off the dark colored shingles of your home? All this in theory could mean electricity, free electricity. The original goal behind the invention was to capture waste heat coming from any heat producing engine or electrical component. But, if this technology proves viable enough, I could see it used in many applications as we have heat literally everywhere!

Here is a portion of the article that reads how they go about producing this unbelievable conversion process.

“We are converting waste heat to electricity in an efficient, simple way by using sound,” says Orest Symko, a University of Utah physics professor who leads the effort. “It is a new source of renewable energy from waste heat.” …

The project has received $2 million in funding during the past two years, and Symko hopes it will grow as small heat-sound-electricity devices shrink further so they can be incorporated in micromachines (known as microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS) for use in cooling computers and other electronic devices such as amplifiers.

Using sound to convert heat into electricity has two key steps. Symko and colleagues developed various new heat engines (technically called “thermoacoustic prime movers”) to accomplish the first step: convert heat into sound.

Then they convert the sound into electricity using existing technology: “piezoelectric” devices that are squeezed in response to pressure, including sound waves, and change that pressure into electrical current. “Piezo” means pressure or squeezing.

Most of the heat-to-electricity acoustic devices built in Symko’s laboratory are housed in cylinder-shaped “resonators” that fit in the palm of your hand. Each cylinder, or resonator, contains a “stack” of material with a large surface area – such as metal or plastic plates, or fibers made of glass, cotton or steel wool – placed between a cold heat exchanger and a hot heat exchanger.

When heat is applied – with matches, a blowtorch or a heating element – the heat builds to a threshold. Then the hot, moving air produces sound at a single frequency, similar to air blown into a flute.

“You have heat, which is so disorderly and chaotic, and all of a sudden you have sound coming out at one frequency,” Symko says.

Then the sound waves squeeze the piezoelectric device, producing an electrical voltage. Symko says it’s similar to what happens if you hit a nerve in your elbow, producing a painful electrical nerve impulse.

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