Posted on 07/06/2005 8:33:43 AM PDT by skyman
Really cool invention brings teens awards Physics students: They came up with an environmentally friendly, economical air conditioner By Jessica Ravitz The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune
BLUFFDALE - The code name, Space Beast, was one they came up with in the wee hours of the night.
Tyler Lyon, Daniel Winegar and Chad Thornley were overtired and giddy as they tackled a science fair project. Their idea: Eliminate the use of Freon in automobile air-conditioning systems by relying on the Peltier effect - of course.
"We aren't planning our lives around making air conditioners," Lyon explained. "We wanted to do something to help the environment and the economy."
But what began as a Riverton High School physics class assignment nearly two years ago has morphed into an award-winning, internationally recognized invention.
Lyon and Winegar, two recent Riverton graduates - Thornley graduated in 2004 and is now on an LDS Church mission - won the first-ever Ricoh Sustainable Development Award in May when they competed against 1,400 other worldwide invitation-only entries at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix.
Aside from the $50,000 college scholarship the two 18-year-olds will share, the budding engineers are jetting off to Japan today for a 10-day visit on Ricoh's dime. The office equipment and electronics company, a leader in the field of sustainable development, has invited the Utahns to attend the World Expo, address Ricoh executives, tour their research and development lab, meet with government officials - including the Minister of the Environment - and sit down with Tokyo University professors.
"It's been a total, unbelievable dream," marveled Tyler's mom, Diane Lyon, last week. "They're just typical boys. But when someone believes in you, amazing things can happen."
Physics teacher Kari Lewis, who recently left Riverton High, said trusting in Lyon and Winegar was easy.
"They came up with this idea . . . and they made it work," she said. "It's a perfect solution to an incredible problem."
Today, the young inventors say, U.S. drivers use about 7.9 billion gallons of fuel each year to run their air-conditioners, which draw power from the engine. By adopting their contraption - which taps into the electrical system, using fans to blow hot air through five Peltier chips and then releasing cold air - they say the country stands to save 3.9 billion gallons of fuel annually, or about $10 billion based on current gas prices.
Furthermore, the product would free drivers from Freon - which despite improvements, remains an ozone-depleting chemical in current air-conditioners. The Peltier chips, which they purchased on eBay for $9.99 each, have a life span of 20 to 30 years and an unfaltering cooling capacity. And like every component in the Space Beast, which can be minimized in size to about 2 inches in width, the chips are recyclable.
As a young boy, Lyon's parents said he tore apart and reassembled household electronics - CD players, clocks, an old stereo that didn't work until he fixed it. And while Daniel's mom, LouAnn Winegar, was grateful her son was "not a take-apart-person," she said her boy's love for science, engineering and computers has been consistent.
"It's nice to see all of his years of interest and hard work being recognized," she said.
The two-year process of fine-tuning, however, was not without its glitches. When the teens were trying to convert a blow-dryer fan from AC to DC power, a miswiring gave Lyon a doozy of a shock - "a low-enough amp that it couldn't really stop my heart," he said. And there was that computer power strip that they managed to ignite, before throwing it outside in the snow, only to retrieve it two days later to recycle its parts.
Despite the setbacks, and bouts of procrastination, the teens didn't give up. When they weren't playing computer games, skiing, snowboarding or, in Lyon's case, rock-climbing, they buckled down, sometimes working through the night. Their focus nearly cost them graduation - they had to scramble to make up work in other classes - but they accomplished what others couldn't.
After they had already begun their work, Lyon and Winegar learned about a 1964 General Motors analysis that explored the idea before the car company concluded it wasn't possible.
Going in with open minds, however, the teens were not deterred and pulled off what GM rejected. "Nobody told them it couldn't be done," Robert Lyon, Tyler's dad, said.
The first time he felt a cold gust of air successfully come through the system, Winegar said he remembers saying: "We may actually have something here."
Looks like they do. A Salt Lake City attorney is working to secure a patent. The Environmental Protection Agency called to express interest Tuesday morning. And though repeated attempts to communicate with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. have gone unanswered, high officials in Japan - an ocean away - are awaiting the arrival of Riverton's young inventors.
nope. the alternator upgrade was to cover lights and stereo, besides, its a jeep, who needs a/c when you have no top or doors? :)
You actually have a system?.......
No, no, no. It works like this: You turn the little knob to all blue then the fan switch thingy to the picture of the Big Fan. Cold air comes out the hole in the dash and you make the slats turn to blow in your face. THAT'S how it works..........
you're kinda right. but it doesn't "move heat". think of it like this. what happens when you add cold water to hot water? it equalizes the tempreture, it doesn't displace it. a cars a/c unit sucks the heat from the (outside) air, then pushes the cold air into the vehicle, combining it with the warm air in the vehicle, which equalizes the difference between the two air tempretures. the excess (equalized tempreture) air is bled out of the vehicle (like what would happen if you kept filling the container of hot water with cold water until it overflowed.)
Watt, er, what would be a cooler idea is to figure out a way
to use the engine/exhaust heat with additional peltiers to
generate the power needed to run the cooling peltiers.
My parents built a energy efficient home in 1985. Part of the design included a geothermal "heat-pump." Since the well provides plenty of water their system is configured as an "open-loop" design. However, I have seen systems that skip the coolant-to-water heat transfer and circulate the coolant itself in copper ground loops.
Another great invention car companies are beginning to use:
remote keyless entry that instead of flashing the lights, turns on the reverse lights with no brake light. I was driving through a parking lot and saw a large SUV (Yukon Denali) with reverse lights on and no brake lights. Waited... realized the driver was not even in the car. I have seen this on a couple other cars.
My idea years ago (I live in Florida) was to bury a matrix of 12" PVC pipes in the ground, deep enough to be below the water table (about 4' or deeper during dry season here) The temperature of the water is always about 68°F year round. A circulation fan would direct air through the pipes and back into the house duct system with appropriate dust and critter filters.......
The peltiers could be mounted to finned heatsinks that are in the air stream or a duct that directs air to them from the front of the car. The faster you drive the more cooling the get.....
I don't have the URL handy, but one site showed a unit being installed in a NYC townhouse! They drilled into the sidewalk to place the ground loops. The catch with geothermal HVAC is that the initial costs are huge compared to traditional systems. However, my mom's winter electric bill was the same as mine (geothermal "runs" on electricity) but I still had to pay for propane. Ouch!
I've read few articles on generating applications. Mostly propane-based, out in the real remote locations.
Also for wood stoves, but the overheating issue is a biggie. Too easy to cook your investment w/o much of a return.
Anyway, you're stuck in traffic, and there's not much [cool] air moving across the the cooling fins, and you end up
like the guys with baked peltiers on wood stoves.
I'd rather have an RTG, myself... :)
A GTO with an RTG. What a combo!
I must have missed it. Where is the FREE energy mentioned here? I had impression that it was about improving the efficiency. Please explain where I am wrong.
I think myself6 should also stand next to a diesel electric power unit on a train as the engineer accelerates the trottle.
Democrats don't believe in our troops, the intelligence of the American people, the legislators or the institutions of marriage, church and family. NO wonder they keep losing. And no wonder I am a
Recovering_Democrat.
Lets say your engine is running at 2500 RPM.
You plug in one of those DC powered tvs to the lighter jack and turn it on.
The car is still running at 2500 RPM driving down the road at 55mph.
There was NO EFFECT on the mechanical load of the engine, therefore MPG was not effected.
If you increase the electrical load on the alternator beyond what it is rated for (you will probably blow a fuse before this happens) your engine will eventually stop running and your battery will be dead.
I refuse to drive a car that modifies the RPM of the engine according to the electrical needs. F--k THAT!
Within the alternator's rated capacity, if you perform the above steps, switching on the TV will increase parasitic drag on the engine. The drop in rpm will be barely noticeable, because the engine control opens the throttle to compensate - as if you were climbing a hill. You're holding steady at a given rpm, but you're burning more fuel to maintain that rpm given the increase in load.
How is Sherlock doing these days? I hope all is well.
I'm suprised that after nearly 200 posts someone has not mentioned the 480 system that I have on my car. Four windows down and 80 miles an hour.
His position was equivalent to the free energy position, and the knowledge (ok, faith) that perpetual motion machines are impossible to make serve to expain why his own position was wrong. If, in fact, it took the same torque to run a generator irrespective of the electrical load on it, then you could make a perpetual motion machine in the following way:
Get a small motor, and a bigger generator. The small motor is enough to overcome the friction in the larger generator with no load. Now, turn on the generator -which supposedly doesn't change the torque required to turn it. Since it's a bigger generator, it can not only power the small motor, there is power available for free on top of that.
The fact that the above is impossible can be used to prove that the torque must change with electrical load; the perpetual motion scheme falls on the assertion of torque being independent of electrical load. In fact, when you connect the generator to the motor (that is, when you draw a load from the generator) the little motor will no longer be able to maintain RPMs - it will soon stop if there is no other power source.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.