The Making Of New Technology

Thermoacoustics is a technology using high-amplitude sound waves in a pressurized gas system to pump heat from one place to another. This creates refrigeration. This is used to cool your food in a refrigerator. Thermoacoustics is actually not a new concept. But scientists are getting very serious about it these days. Sounds cool!

What’s the big deal? You might ask. What are the benefits?

Environmentally friendly. All refrigerated systems today use coolants that are potentially dangerous to the environment. Environmentally speaking, this is very negative. Thermoacoustics would be using helium, like from the balloons that people make funny noises with. This technology also uses another gas which is supposed to be in the air anyway, called Argon. These gases should be much safer in the long run. The goal is to find safer gases to work with.

Efficiency maximization. It is quite likely that this technology will be more efficient, or at least as efficient as the technology that is used now.

Little or no maintenance involved. Little or no maintenance will be required with Thermoacoustics. There will be less, or no moving parts needed, requiring less maintenance.

Cost efficiency. Obviously, less maintenance will also mean less cost. Any business or any homeowner is definitely interested in cutting costs. Especially when environmentally safer. Who will not be interested in this?

Thermoacoustics using heat to refrigerate. Los Alamos National Laboratory  has created an Acoustic Sterling Heat Engine. This uses heat to provide refrigeration, or can be used to generate electricity.

The team at PennState  is working on numerous exciting projects. They offer questions and answers about thermoacoustics. They are selling Acoustic Laser Kits to school children as science projects. U.S. cost is only about $24.00. That covers the shipping costs. Very nice.

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