Sound Compression for Power Generation
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 1997 21:51:47 -0500
To: freenrg-l@eskimo.com
From: Ralph Muha
Subject: Invention may do for sound what laser did for light
Invention may do for sound what laser did for light
'It's doing something completely impossible.' Lucas uses containers of
various shapes to eliminate shock waves.
December 2, 1997
Web posted at: 9:23 p.m. EST (0223 GMT)
From Correspondent Jim Hill
SAN DIEGO (CNN) -- A researcher says he has done something "completely
impossible" by harnessing the power of sound, and that eventually it will be
available in everything from home appliances to industrial compressors.
Tim Lucas says he made a radical discovery while working at the Los Alamos
National Laboratory in New Mexico that enables him to create more energy
through sound waves than was ever thought possible.
"It's not an incremental improvement in an existing technology," Lucas says,
"it's suddenly doing something which before was completely impossible."
Scientists have long known that sound is composed of pulsing waves of energy,
but it was considered useless as a power source because at high levels sound
waves distort into shock waves.
An example is the way sound distorts on a stereo or radio speakers when turned
up too loud.
But Lucas discovered that by sending sound waves through empty containers of
various shapes, the shock waves were eliminated.
Clean electric power generators?
"Once you've done that," he says, "you can add all the energy, create all the
pressure, and deliver all the power that you want."
Lucas calls his invention Resonant Macrosonic Synthesis -- RMS.
He has used it to power such things as a gas compressor, but believes there is
so much potential that he compares what he has done with sound to what the
laser has done with light.
His company, Macrosonix, is working on sound wave compressors which might one
day do everything from cool refrigerators and air conditioners in the home to
running compressors in factories and on construction sites.
The beauty of a sound-wave compressor is that it would do what a compressor
does, but without the moving parts required in conventional piston technology.
Mechanical engineering professor Mark Hamilton, who has followed Lucas' work,
says, "I don't think the idea struck people that you could use sound waves to
do, say, pumping that could be used on a commercial scale. And I think that
was the innovative part of the idea here."
Macrosonix researchers say they also hope to use sound to create clean
electric power generators, replacing any number of machines with the
technology of an empty cavity.