Energy Discovery

[Jeff]

As an electrical engineer I find this stuff facinating on my own nerdy level, but I think everyone can admit this kind of discovery is definitly "game changing".

Game Changing Energy Discovery – (Popular Mechanics & The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Atlanta-based inventor Lonnie Johnson, a nuclear engineer and former NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee, was awarded a Popular Mechanic’s Breakthrough Innovation Award for his elegantly simple yet revolutionary way to generate electricity. His latest invention appears to do the impossible: generate electricity without fuel, without moving parts and with zero emissions. Best known for development of the high-powered Super Soaker water gun, Johnson actually developed the Super Soaker as a by-product of developing an eco-friendly substitute for Freon using water in heat pumps. Next was work on solid-state and lithium-air batteries. Now all of those experiences are being incorporated into a new device that uses heat to generate electricity. Called the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter System, or JTEC, this has the potential to work with even modest temperature differentials to say run implanted medical devices such as pacemakers running with the temperature gradient between body heat and ambient air to huge heat gradients such as from a parabolic solar array that could generate huge Con Edison-scale output. Again all without moving parts and zero emissions. Even the best photovolt solar systems convert only about 30% of received solar energy into electricity—making solar more expensive than burning coal or oil. This Thermo-Electrochemical Converter though is expected to achieve a conversion efficiency rate that tops 60% with a new solid-state heat engine making it less expensive than coal or oil.

What is fascinating are the comments being made about this discovery:

• Using heat to force ions out of a hydrogen cell is a stunning insight said Jerry Beilinson, deputy editor of Popular Mechanics magazine. I kind of thought we were finished; I didn’t think there was a new way. A whole new … technology.
  
• It’s freshman chemistry, said Karl Littau, a material scientist at Palo Alto Research Center, a California incunator for high-tech innovation. Millions of people learn about about that every year, yet he was the guy who put two and two together. You look at it and say, ‘Wow, why didn’t someone think of this before?’
  
• Paul Werbos of the National Science Foundations comments It uses temperature differences to create pressure gradients … Instead of using those pressure gradients to move an axle or wheel, he’s using them to force ions through a membrane. It’s a totally new way of generating electricity from heat. In the JTEC, hydrogen circulates between two fuel cell–like membrane-electrode assemblies. Unlike a fuel cell, however, the JTEC is a closed system—it doesn’t need new supplies of hydrogen. One assembly is coupled to a heat source (such as concentrated sunlight), and the other to a heat sink (ambient air). Once the cycle is started by an electrical jolt, the unit starts producing a current. Heat in, electricity out. This is a whole new family of technology. It’s like discovery a new continent. You don’t know what’s there, but you sure want to explore it to find out. It has a darn good chance, said Werbos, of being the best thing on Earth.

[saddlebum]

....Jeff, I read your post through completely, hanging on every word, and of course, my ole cowboy arse understood every word.
....but it sounds good..

[Testrackwoman]

Originally Posted by saddlebum

....Jeff, I read your post through completely, hanging on every word, and of course, my ole cowboy arse understood every word.
....but it sounds good..

Right there with you saddlebum.

[Jeff]

Basically this guy created a way to generate power using heat at twice the efficiency of solar panels, and half the cost.

[bamablazer]

Very Kewl!!!Very Interesting!

[Papa2]

Jeff, I , Myself also love htings like this and they do interest Me in ways Id never thought possible even if I dont work with them any longer! LOL!