Slashdot Mirror
Refrigerators To Cool With Sound (Cool!)
T-Kir writes "A very interesting report from the BBC where researchers at Penn State University are developing a prototype fridge that cools using metal plates and sound waves. If successful, this technology would help remove the dependance on gases that contribute to global warming. Talk about Cool!"
Reduce the gases that contribute to global warming, but contribute to noises that drive Fido mad...
</senseless humour>
Check out their article here. Unfortunately, no mention of peoples' hair igniting.
Now maybe people will believe me when I tell them my fridge tells me to eat too much...
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
If my fridge were to emit some cool Barry White, that's be pretty ... well... cool.
... now the "cool note"
First there was the "Brown note"
Thankfully, even if the fridge cracks open the vast sounds generated within will not escape because the intense noise can only be generated in the pressurised gas locked inside the cooling system. Thats a damn scary sounding (no pun) fridge!
Paul Lenhart writes words!
If this is so cool...how come my constantly loud neighbors haven't turned into icicles yet?
But will it be cheaper to build and cost less to operate. If not, doubt it will catch on.
You know, that sounds way more fun that cooling some ice cream. Or maybe I've been playing too many videogames.
Err wait a minute, they're cooling with sound...ummm nevermind. Move along.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
You can also make refrigerators using a Stirling-engine like gas compression cycle. The guys at Medis Technologies have designed this. See here for the brief description. I guess instead of trying to extract mechanical work from a Stirling engine, they are just removing heat from one area and piping it off elsewhere. They claim this uses no greenhouse depleting gases, and it sounds plausible to me.
What I find more interesting than the projected "energy" savings (which I would have to see the science and the experimental data before I'd bank on), is that there is no compressor to wear out, no refrigerants, etc. Conceivably a service call would be something on the order of "open the sound box, unclip the sound driver, put in a new one", right?
I wonder what the heat output on the hot side is -- enough to supply a home's hot water needs, perhaps?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Can I use it as a sub-woofer?
Har, har.
I've got nothing.
Err 1990 calling Slashdot. Its been well over a decade since CFC were used as coolants in refrigerators. Hell the US Goverment have replaced CFC/ODS from ICBMs as it says here and other places.
So while its cool the Ozone bit is already being dealt with.
I still find it funny that something capable of killing millions of people is "Ozone friendly" apart of course from Ionising the atmosphere if it is used!
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Unfortunately, it was long ago (10+ years) back when I subscribed. Too bad they have no online archives I can search, or I'd give a link. The technology isn't really new, and makes a lot of sense, really (think what the compressor/condensor cycle does in traditional cooling, then think sound waves, think sonic booms, etc... lots of similarities there...).
All in all, neat stuff, though.
"Refrigerators To Cool With Sound"
So what. I live near the Capital of Washington State. We plan on heating our homes through the use of political speeches!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Perhaps, but more interestingly, can it be used to nuke something?
Cooling with sound waves? I'm pretty sure my Athlon Palomino system already does this... Otherwise it wouldn't be so friggin LOUD.
I have been waiting for this for ages. I first read the paper by Backhaus and Swift (and here is a more recent one) four years ago, and whichever site that directed my attention to that "promised" commercialization in the near future. Not exactly swift in high tech time, but still very much welcomed.
Too bad I just bought a fridge for my dorm room. )=
Werd
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
Just dig a holw a few feet deep in the ground, and get a cool 4deg all year round.
Easy, didn't take any rocket science, doesn't produce green house gasses (maybe some radioactive ones), doesn't make any noise, doesn't cost much to run, only a space and a pick needed.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
But it's possible to use ANY compressable gas for cooling. The ones we use now are simply very efficient because they can store a lot of heat. There are several ways to make a cooling system more efficient (at removing heat) assuming you have not already taken the particular step to the maximum.
Of course there are two heat exchange systems in a typical refrigerator; Those inside which are intended to absorb heat, and those outside which radiate it. In a peltier-cooled system the same heat exchanger(s) do both jobs. You also end up needing some kind of heat sink to increase surface area since the thermally active portions of peltier coolers are flat.
By using some combination of these technologies we can move away from environmentally unsafe gases. While this new technology is certainly new and may be superior in many aspects, the only reason we have not moved to more efficient and/or "eco-friendly" designs to date is expense. Welcome to capitalist terra, my friends.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Though the BBC didn't get his name right (Garrett), I actually worked for his research lab at PSU. Very interesting stuff.
There's more information about other projects the group is working on here.
Yeah, that's great, except that an inrease in decibels represents an exponential increase in sound.
CFCs are not the cause for global warming, they're the cause for the hole in the ozone layer.
On the other hand, producing the sound waves will cost some electricity, the production of which is still mainly a main CO2 producer. So my idea is it will enhance the global warming, if anything.
It doesn't say how energy efficient these things are. The gasses in your refrigerator typically stay trapped in the plumbing for decades. The gasses released by the power plant that makes your electricity don't. If these things are less efficient than current refrigerators, they could actually be worse for the environment.
Anybody out there know anything about the efficiency of this type of heat exchange?
The's a whole bunch of ways to cool things. It's just a matter of what works for a particular application.
Thermo-acoustic cooling has been considered for use in space to reduce the weight and mechanical complexity of traditional refrigeration systems. iirc, there was also the advantage of using less dangerous/toxic gasses with acoustic cooling.
The dominant effect of CFCs was to eat away at the Ozone Layer. However, CFCs are also greenhouse agents and actually far better at it than CO2.
Most of the compounds we have now introduced to replace CFCs are also greenhouse agents.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Decibels are logarithmic. A 20 dB sound is 10 times are powerful as a 10 dB sound. A 30 dB sound is 10 times as powerful as the 20 dB sound (and 100 times more powerful than the 10 dB one).
173 vs. 120 is more than 100000 times as powerful.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
We know exactly whats happening with that, just like we did with the Ozone. Damn hippies. ;)
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
First, for soundproofing the easiest method would be to place the sound source and the hot/cold plates in a "double, hollow walled box" evacuate most of the air between the hollow walls. This leaves no way for the sound waves to propogate outside the cooling unit. The cooling effect takes place outside of the hollow walled box because the fridge will still presumably circulate a fluid (which has absorbed heat in the refrigerator box through the cooling unit and back to the fridge/freezer. So there's wouldn't be a sound source even when the refridgerator is opened. Then put a sound sensor outside the box that shuts down the fridge if the vacumn fails and the sound rises above a certain level.
The second reason is that the current insulation in the refridgerator is still required --and the more the better-- to keep the heat from the rest of the world outside of the refrigerator or freezer box.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Global Cooling has been developing more efficient (and safer) CFC-free refrigeration and cooling (even cryo-cooling) systems for quite awhile, now.
=Smidge=
So let's see then (simple arithmatic)
...
173
-120
-----
53
Hardly what I would call "tens of thousands"
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question124.htm
"On the decibel scale, the smallest audible sound (near total silence) is 0 dB. A sound 10 times more powerful is 10 dB. A sound 100 times more powerful than near total silence is 20 dB. A sound 1,000 times more powerful than near total silence is 30 dB. Here are some common sounds and their decibel ratings:"
Decibel is a logarithmic scale, not a linear one.
So yes, 53db is 100,000x louder. Hundreds of thousands, actually.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
What did you say?
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
I asked if you'd like a cold beer.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Seriously though, I've seen a demo of this technology about 5-6 years ago and It's pretty cool.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Except the dB scale is logarithmic.
+3 dB = 2 x as loud
+10 dB = 10 x as loud
53 = 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 3 = 10*10*10*10*10*2 times as loud = 200000 times as loud. So actual its much more than "tens of thousands"
and obviously, chip cooling. I always thought loud music was cool.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
"Dude! Turn up the beer cooler to 11!"
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
It was developed at Los Alamos.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
At ridiculous volumes and/or frequencies, sound has some amazingly powerful properties, but I'm skeptical as to how practical such a technology can be. Here's why:
A professor at my university was doing some personal research with a small team at his house on the properties of high-decibel sound. Based on incredibly complex differential equations, one could project two sound waves at ridiculously high frequencies and volumes to create a special kind of interference. This interference would in essence start a new sound (at a hearable frequency/volume) from where the two waves intersected, effectively making it seem like a controlled sound was being created out of thin air at any point in 3d-space.
I don't think I need to point out applications to this technology. BUT - he decided to discontinue the project before it was ever completed. He had several pets in his house (dog + cats) that he tried to keep away from the testing, but they were still being driven crazy by the sound. He also started developing nasty headaches and suspected that his high-range hearing was being destroyed.
Interestingly, one of the graduate students who worked with him on the project decided to continue the work on his own. From what I've heard, he had his work picked up and funded by the US military (DARPA, I think). When I heard this, it really didn't come as a surprise.
Experts agree: everything is fine.
Los Alamos national lab currently holds the record on using thermal acoustic engine. The thermal efficient of their engine is about 30 percent, compare that to automobile engine. which is about 25 percent. http://www.lanl.gov/projects/thermoacoustics/TASHE .html
How about we use glass doors on our refrigerators, the kind that have two panes and a vacume betweem them. This way we wouldnt have to open the door so much. Duh!
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
Well I'll just wait until it comes with Ogg Vorbis support before they get MY money!
--
refregerators are one thing, but I see this being a good application for roof mounted HVAC equipment. which is noisy anyways and are usually mounted in remote locations. This also applies to most commercial walk freezers/coolers. They all use a remotely mounted condencing (cooling) unit. My biggest questions are 1.) weight 2.) power consumption. I imagine this would remove the need for a compresser and radiator type vents making it lighter.
You know what I want? A fridge built into my countertop that pneumatically raises up at the touch of a button, leaving all the cold air still down in the refrigeration pit. It'd work just like your adjustable office chair. Yes, I know it would be a pain to clean when your cat knocks half a jug of juice down there, but isn't that a price worth paying?
Think about it... *whoooosh*... makes those 1950's techno-utopian dreams look almost attainable!
Wah!
Unless it is cheaper there's hardly any point.
That's not really the ice cream they are cooling...it's a stock photo! Just wait until someone figures out the true identity of the ice cream.
...
"1. ...Of course it does raise the cost of opening the refrigerator door, in comparison to the cost ratio now. ..."
Now we get to one of my pet peeves. Why doesn't any of the major, or minor for that matter, fridge manufactures make a chest style fridge. There are many chest style deep freezes, but no fridges. With a chest style fridge you'd only loose very little of the cold air in it when you opened it, rather than dumping darn near every bit of cold air out onto the floor as with the cabinet style fridges.
Just my $0.02
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
That's just asking for it to break.
I think the price of buying new lead-filled motors every year would offset any benefit of such a system.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I believe the new gases (e.g. Puron) are more efficient at this than Freon. I have a new air conditioner that uses Puron. It runs considerably quieter and uses less electricity.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
No. Global warming is caused by the sun.
If the sun were to go out, the planet would cool off and die. It would still happen even if we had all the refrigerators on the planet running at 100% duty cycles in an atmosphere composed entirely of "greenhouse" gasses such as carbon dioxide and cow farts.
BTW, the chlorofluorocarbons you mention are responsible for destroying ozone in the upper atmosphere, which allows more ultraviolet light through. That's a different problem, but related in the sense that now you could have sunburned, farting cows.
Little Debian: America's #1 Snack Distro!
We all know that ultra low frequencies can cause your bowels to, well, kick in and empty out, right? I wonder if you can buy a package deal - combo 'fridge/toilet. Kick in a TV, padded/heated seat on the toilet, and you've pretty much just created the ultimate guy Christmas present.
Sounds of 165 dB would cause a person's hair to catch fire from the frictional heating caused by air undergoing such intense compression and expansion.
/. in a long, long time.
This is the coolest thing that I've read on
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
I've often wondered why a two piece conventional freon refrigerator never caught on. You could place the compressor, condenser, and the support structure outside the house connected with two hoses (same as your whole house AC). This would eliminate most of the internal noise and be far more efficient as you are not releasing the hot air from inside the fridge + the electrical and mechanical losses into the house. In the fall through spring season cycle it would even be more an advantage as it is often much cooler outside then in the house and the compressor could even be bypassed. This would allow for smaller, quiter, and higher efficiency refrigerators and allow more flexibility as you could replace the inside and outside units seperately when and if needed. The inital conversion would be a little higher because you'd have to run lines and a concrete pad or wall hanging device outside but long term it would be much less. Installation in new construction would be simple. Anyone have some VC money they want to get rid of?
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
... refrigerator owners in Finland have been court ordered to pay royalties for the sounds generated by the space-age technology inside of their appliances. These royalties multiply depending on how many people are in the kitchen at the time. Hillary Rosen of the RIAA was quoted as saying "First they pirate our music, now they're cooling their food with it? Lots of people everywhere owe us money!"
use REALLY loud speakers.
Then go to a lan party where you can frag your neighbor with 173 decibels. That would be coooooooool.
I feel compelled to lay to rest all of these posts about people going deaf from these refrigerators...
Thankfully, even if the fridge cracks open the vast sounds generated within will not escape because the intense noise can only be generated in the pressurised gas locked inside the cooling system.
Think about it for a moment. To generate the 120 dB in front of the speakers at a rock concert, you need some serious wattage. Those are powerful blasters, my friends. Also realize that the Decibel scale is logarithmic, meaning that the amount of "sonic energy" or volume -- whatever you want to call it -- between say 20 and 30 dB is a lot less than the amount between 120 and 130 dB. We're talking about a difference between 120 and 173 dB, which is, as the article points out, "tens of thousands of times more intense than any rock concert." I'm not a physicist or anything, but I'd assume that's why the sounds generated in the cooling unit work within a highly pressurized atmosphere -- so the sounds can (1) be created more efficiently and (2) carry through the gas properly. Open the unit into normal air and I don't believe it works anymore -- the atmosphere is too thin to produce those kinds of levels. On top of that, the unit is probably insulated in a vacuum anyhow, so as to prevent sound from escaping.
You won't go deaf. Your animals won't go crazy. The most you'll probably ever hear is a soft hum.
On Slashdot, we don't say "thank you." We say "that's enough..." -_-;
didn't take any rocket science, doesn't produce green house gasses, doesn't make any noise, doesn't cost much to run, ...doesn't work worth a darn anywhere useful.
Assuming that 4deg is Celsius (Only a few places on Earth - mostly covered with ice - where that might be Fahrenheit), you're still talking about pretty high latitudes. 4C == 40F, but most temperate latitudes the constant ground temperature is more like 50F - 55F, getting warmer as you approach the tropics. Not cold enough for a fridge (typically 4C/40F), and you'd have to dig more than just "a few feet" anyway.
Unless you live in Greenland.
-- Alastair
I can't recall what vehicle it was, but an experimental luxury car had two of these type of units integrated for the back seat. They were built into the headliner of the roof and (obviously) fired downwards, with the nifty effect of producing sound audible by the person below it but nowhere else. I'm not sure if it ever entered mass-production. At any rate, the theory was the same, where the interference between ultrasonic sound waves created an audible result. Aside from the aiming problems I believe the biggest issue was poor fidelity, as it was difficult to reproduce the full range of frequencies necessary for music with this technique.
say... wasn't this the story of a movie?
_ ge nius.htm
something like the one with the space laser some
college kids redirected to the professor's house
and ended up destroying with popcorn?
http://www.dvdmoviecentral.com/ReviewsText/real
Global Cooling on the otherhand produce rival products to Medis El based on the Free piston Stirling Engine.
Despite being some impressive technology, Free Piston Stirling Engines haven't really been taken up to well. Its a shame because they do seem to be much more efficient.
If you are really interested then you might want to check this out At Ames Lab. Gschneidner's work on the giant magnetocaloric effect is REALLY impressive. Its all about the exchange of entropy between magnetic and kinetic forms. Damn cool.
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
By using some combination of these technologies we can move away from environmentally unsafe gases. While this new technology is certainly new and may be superior in many aspects, the only reason we have not moved to more efficient and/or "eco-friendly" designs to date is expense. Welcome to capitalist terra, my friends.
It's not as though expense can be omitted from the equation entirely. Cheap and easily produced refrigeration technology (and air conditioning, which is closely related) have probably prevented more illnesses than any recent development since antibiotics.
"The research is being sponsored by ice cream makers Ben & Jerry's and Unilever. "
"Humans feel pain when they hear sounds of 120 decibels, a level typically reached next to the speakers at a rock concert."
So the purpose of this research is to improve on the ice cream headache? Why?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
First, for soundproofing the easiest method would be to place the sound source and the hot/cold plates in a "double, hollow walled box" evacuate most of the air between the hollow walls. This leaves no way for the sound waves to propogate outside the cooling unit. The cooling effect takes place outside of the hollow walled box because the fridge will still presumably circulate a fluid (which has absorbed heat in the refrigerator box through the cooling unit and back to the fridge/freezer. So there's wouldn't be a sound source even when the refridgerator is opened. Then put a sound sensor outside the box that shuts down the fridge if the vacumn fails and the sound rises above a certain level.
I actually came to the same conclusion, but ran into one problem with it: The heat exchanger. At some point the heat exchanger is going to have to contact the metal plates in the sound tube. Thermodynamics being what they are, the most efficent way for the cooled metal plates to suck heat out is going to be through conduction with the fluid (possibly through a interum medium, such as a heat sink). Just cooling the metal plates and waiting for radiation to transfer the heat through a near vaccum is going to be slow, very slow.
So now we have a heat exchanger, contacting the plates in the sound tube, the exchanger and contained fluid (if they use one) come into contact with both the air and the rest of the the fridge. making for one nice sounding board.
On the upshot though, you could use nylon fasteners to mount the exchanger system, thus isolating it a bit, and also a bit of insulation around the heat exchanger, except where it must be exposed, could go a long way to damping the sound. Also, as the article mentioned the system uses a gas under pressure to propagate the sound at the desired level, so even if there is some vibration transfered out through the heat exchange system, it may not generate much more noise than a current fridge.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
At about 6' down the ground temperature is roughly equal to the average yearly temperature of your location. If that is 4 degrees where you live then you dont have much of a summer do you?
Surgens general warning: Opening the refrigerator may cause strange noises.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Cold fusion has been reproduced by three labs using a Kenmore room fridge.
The discovery was made by chemistry students who accidentally let the pressurized gas out of their acoustic beer cooler and replaced it with the only thing they had on hand a tank of pressurized deuterium. Since the tone producing chip ( a common 555 timer ) of the fridge was smashed by the same idiot who fell over and knocked the tube assembly and the students were too plastered to drive to Radio Shack, the students routed Aretha Franklin's famous R.E.S.P.E.C.T track through the sound circuitry creating fusion.
The three cooked ramen noodles on the heat exchanger of their fridge and smoked some weed but were suprised when the tuble started to glow red and finally burst making a small hydrogen fireball in their dorm room.
The next day the students were all very sick and were admitted to the hospital where they were diagnosed with radiation sickness. Sadly the two that sat in the room next to the cooking noodles died within 48 hours, but the third went back into the room and studied the device. Under more controlled circumstances, he has found that other CDs do not produce neutrons or excess energy and that fusion doesn't start until the first round of 'Sock it to me Sock it to mes'
Eat at Joe's.
I was wondering what that annoying sound on campus was
Finkployd
PSU Programmer
Now we get to one of my pet peeves. Why doesn't any of the major, or minor for that matter, fridge manufactures make a chest style fridge.
I don't understand your question. All refrigerators are chest style; they only set them on one end in the store so they'll occupy less space. Oh, wait--you aren't one of those idiots that installed it that way when you got it home, are you? Hahahahaha!!! How stupid can you get? I'll bet you put CD's in your PC's cupholder slot too, don't you?
What a moron!
In some areas, such as Alaska, global warming is already a significant problem. Even anti-environmentalists like Alaska's Republican senator Ted Stevens are saying so.
A small team of 10 or so in conjunction with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory built a thermo-acoustic refridgerator. It didn't work to well but it sure did make a hell of alot of noise. :)
Our most successful aspect of the project was the prototyping of the stack. We discovered that a form of carbon areogel had some very cool properties that made isolating the heat exchanges easy. To test the new stack we created a "hooter-tube" (or holfer tube) which is the opposite of the refridgerator. We created a difference in temeperature to generate sound. We dipped one end of the tube in liqued nitrogen and then heated the other end with a blow dryer. It was a blast to play with becuase it was about the size of a light saber and becuase the open end was the cold end the air around the tip would condense and allow you to "see" the sound wave (well, a quarter of it anyway).
here are some photos and other stuff:
photo of hooter tube
photo of working refridgerator (very similar to ours)
Navy page with lots of info
BUNNY OF DEATH!
Certainly expensive refrigeration wouldn't solve problems for the impoverished. Of course lots of people in the world STILL don't have refrigeration, which (as anyone who has played civilization 2 knows) lets you produce more food because you can store/transport more.
On the other hand for most of the world it makes sense to purchase initially expensive refrigeration hardware because it will save on costs in the long run. It regularly pisses me off that it is generally impossible to get a refrigerator with a basic set of features (IE, no ice maker/crusher, no water spigot, no computer in the door) without industrial-quality insulation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
On the other hand if the gas is compressed farther it will be able to accept more heat, so you should be able to get a more rapid heat transfer
Sorry, it's been a few years since I had thermogoddamics, but I'm not sure this is correct. The heat transfer uses ENTHALPIC heat, which is given up or absorbed when the material changes state. In other words, Freon (ammonia, whatever) absorbs heat when it changes from a liquid to a gas, and vice versa. You compress the gas JUST ENOUGH to change its state to liquid, compressing it further has no effect (besides, compressing liquids isn't really practical anyway.) I believe what makes the Freon family so suitable for heat exchanging applications isn't it's enthalpic heat capacity, but the temperatures and pressures at which it changes state, i.e. practical in real-world terms. For example a compound that changed from gas to liquid at 2000 PSI at -140C wouldn't really be useful for much of anything. Some substances don't go through the liquid stage at all at practical pressures (carbon dioxide)... they go straight from gas to solid (and vice versa). Hard to pump a solid through a heat exchanger.
Anyway, you made some great points, but the solutions may not be as practical or simple as you suggested.
And I didn't see any mention in the article of what kind of compressed gas was used in the sound chamber.... Freon maybe? haha.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
That would be coooooooool
In more ways than one, at least according to the article.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Heat engines convert temperature -differences- into mechanical energy. If you plop one inside a furnace, it'll just sit there getting warm. Reversible in this case means that you can convert mechanical energy into a temperature difference, and so it can be used as either a heat pump or as a refrigeration unit, depending on which end of the output you're interested in.
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
I scream, you scream, this fridge screams to cool ice cream.
$8.95/mo web hosting
So when we hunted the bison nearly to extinction, we were doing a good thing.
Hey, it's your own logic.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Cold storage: cooling phase change materials by running the cooling system at night, then using the cold material for daytime cooling (lower nighttime electric rates, better efficiencies due to cooler nighttime air temp)
e .h tm
t yd evice.html
. ht m
/ ho mes/inside/windows/future.html
m u3 3v.html
http://www.cogeneration.net/thermalenergystorag
Using high efficiency solid state thermionics for no-moving-parts cooling:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/electrici
Storing nighttime coolness in phase change materials embedded in drywall:
http://doityourself.com/wall/phasechangedrywall
Windows which can switch on and off to reject or transmit infrared radiation:
http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/homeandwork
CO2 based automobile air conditioning system:
http://www.spacedaily.com/2002/021204065123.7v5
However it's not necessarily necessary :) to convert all the way to a liquid. If that's the way Freon works, it's neat to know and my hat is off to you.
Oh yeah I forgot another way to increase the efficiency of a refrigerator; increase the airflow over one or another of the heat exchangers. I thought of this because the issue of converting to a liquid made me think of automotive intercoolers (which are compressing air which as you know is mostly nitrogen and oxygen and obviously not compressing it to a liquid.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
At last, a fridge that goes to ELEVEN.
I guess why my CPU hasn't melted yet, is because the cooling fan is churning out 173dB. That could explain why I'm deaf...
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"The coldest temperature we have achieved with this test rig is eight degrees below zero--well below the freezing point of water," Garrett says.
Well since this is on a website with SCIENCE in the title, I think they mean Celcius.
BUT is also has American in the title.
I think my head is gonna explode! If it doesn't, I'll apply for a job at NASA.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
bullshitting creatively. You know, just like everyone else
:) to convert all the way to a liquid.I guess I forgot more thermo than I originally thought. You're right, I wasn't thinking. But, in fact, it's more efficient to use the enthalpic heat thingy for common refrigeration and a/c applications, so they do. I tried to google up some specific facts but hard info seemed fairly difficult to come by. I did find a meaningless PDF buried on DuPont's site someplace but it didn't seem particularly quotable. Maybe tomorrow I'll check howshitworks.com or something, probably while I'm looking for nits to pick in somebody else's post. Guffaw. :-)
I resemble that remark. haha.
However it's not necessarily necessary
I was glad they capped the karma, I never could get above 49 anyway. Some arsewipes kept modding my humor as "offtopic" and "flamebait". Go figger.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
I believe this phenomena has already been well-described in the science documentary "Rock and Roll High School".
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
This research made some noise (ha!) about ten years ago. A company called Macrosonix holds the patents. Even NPR has covered this in the past ten years.
The best explanation of the technology I've seen is in "Fluid Power Journal."
This was on slashdot before. The device was invented by a guy at MIT, and he's now running a company selling them commercially:
Holosonics (Audio Spotlight manufacturer)
Looks like there are several automotive companies using them, as well as lots of exhibitors and whatnot. Really cool stuff.
Marketing guy: Great! So we have Michael Jackson as a customer. Who else are we going to sell this thing to?
**RIMSHOT**
Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all week!
That is all.
I'm holding out for a fridge that cools with lasers, so I can make up a batch of Bose-Einstein condensate whenever I need some.
- - - -
The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
CFCs and their replacements, HCFCs and HFCs, are all tremendously potent greenhouse gases. They have global warming potentials several thousand times that of carbon dioxide. The ozone problem is pretty much solved because global CFC production has dropped to near zero following the implementation of international treaties to protect the ozone layer. However, the global warming potential of HFC and HCFC replacements is worthy of concern.
Global warming is caused by the sun.
Just as it is true that global warming is caused by the sun, so my body generates most of the heat that keeps me warm. Nonetheless, if I wear too many sweaters, I will get too hot. Taking them off will cool me down, despite the fact that the heat is all coming from my own body. The same principle applies to the atmosphere. The earth's temperature is determined by a radiative balance. We can't change the sun, but we can change the atmosphere (our sweater), and that can cause the earth's temperature to change.
What I would really like to see is a house designed around a centralized heat reservoir. Dump the heat generated by your Fridge and your AC into a stack where your water heater, your over, and your Heater can pull from. Obviously you'd also want a heating element there, but the energy savings of recouping the heat from the other applicances would be significant.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Yes!! This is exactly the grad student I was talking about. From the Holosonics site you linked, in the "technology" section:
...
While a graduate student developing '3D Audio' at Northwestern University in the late 1990's, Joseph Pompei had similar ideas of using ultrasound as a loudspeaker
He doesn't give credit to any specific people at Northwestern, but as I recall he did most of the work anyway. Interesting!
Experts agree: everything is fine.
I can't remember the name of the program, but it was one of those "Look what's new in science" type programs on the Discovery Channel. On this one I remember, I saw them talking about a sonic fridge. This was 10 years ago. They had a prototype 10 years ago. What happened to that?
HELLO?
Is your refrigerator running?
WHAT?!?
Is your refrigerator running?
WHAT?!? YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP!
Oh nevermind.. *click*
Hmm, no units, maybe it's Kelvin. That would be really impressive. :)
I read the internet for the articles.
Many large scale a/c systems produce chilled water for cooling the air. Sometimes the chilled water gets circulated, for example for conditioning areas. This water would also provide a convenient media for dumping the surplus heat from a refrigerator. It still remains two stage, but there isn;t the air buffer between the stages.
The article claims that 165dB is sufficient to cool a refrigerator - my neighbour's daughter exceeds that by a long shot. Does this mean we can put her inside a tube and get her to keep my beer cold?
It would really be nice if reporters would bone up on this stuff and give us the science and the facts, not hearsay.
For lots more debunking of just about every "science" fad, check this out.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Please enlighten me how you propose to unplug the sun.
We (or a plant we eat) will store this energy in our bodies for later use. When we run a mile in heavy clothing, some of this stored energy is coverted into heat (damn Thermodynamics!), and trapped by our clothing. The heat builds up and makes us uncomfortable
Exactly. Just as greenhouse gases trap solar heat to make the world hotter than it would be without them. Your solution of unplugging the sun is much like proposing that if I'm too hot, I should shut off my metabolism (die) rather than taking off a sweater. Each to his own, I suppose.
Even more evidence that the whole controversy over global warming is junk science.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
I'm not aware that the warming of Alaska would ever be bad, but of course, some people might think so. The problem is that local warming in Alaska isn't part of a global trend, and that carbon dioxide isn't the cause of global warming.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Hold on to your seats.
The CFCs quickly diffuse into the atmosphere and form a near uniform concentration. They eventually migrate into the stratosphere.
Weather patterns over the Antarctic remain remarkably stable during the winter in a so-called circumpolar Vortex. Now, during the Antarctic winter, it is permanently dark and even colder than normal at altitude. Ice crystals grow in the intensely cold atmosphere and these trap the chlorinated compounds.
The chlorinated compounds are busy reacting with water, hydrochloric acid and nitric acid all of which are found in the ice crystals. This produces (amongst others) molecular chlorine - a chemical which is not normally found at high altitude.
Come spring, the arrival of the Sun brings an intense blast of ultra-violet light. Chlorine gas is readily dissociated by UV into chlorine atoms which are intensely reactive. Within a very short period of time, large amounts of atomic chlorine are circulating in the stratosphere.
The chlorine atoms then start tearing ozone (O3) into O2 + a free oxygen atom, which then reacts with the chlorine atoms to form chlorine oxide - itself unstable, which breaks down under ultraviolet light to regenerate a chlorine atom.
Eventually the chlorine atoms all settle down into stable molecules and the depletion ends. Gradually the influx of UV regenerates the ozone layer - just in time for winter when the process can begin again.
The important point here is that a single chlorine atom can tear apart hundreds of ozone molecules, so you don't need much chlorine in the upper atmosphere to cause havoc.
Outside of the Antarctic, the high altitude stratospheric ice clouds are much rarer. Without an icy substrate, the chlorinated compounds don't form chlorine molecules. No chlorine up there - no ozone depletion.
Hope that helps,
Mike.
My uncle is a science teacher at the McGehee school in North Carolina. He and his students calculated that the mass of the air inside of a refrigerator is about that of a grapefruit.
It's the same reason the temperature is different near the coast, or the ocean is still cold when the days are hot; air doesn't hold on to heat very well, at least not as well as ocean water...or grapes. Your refrigerator is much more efficient when it is full than when it is empty, because the food holds its temperature better than the air. Leaving the door open for several seconds isn't so terrible (however, you shouldn't keep very perishible items, such as eggs, on the door shelves, because they get waved around in the air away from all of the cold food).
An oven works the same way; when you open it, much of the hot air escapes. But if you've let it preheat long enough, the walls of the oven will have been heated through, and the air inside will be able to heat up much faster after you close the door again.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
He got a patent on a new kind of refrigerator .
.. bear in mind one thing: cost. Obviously any innovative solution that is ecologically sound is good and all, but the worry is that the uptake in 3rd world countries would be slow.
The new fridge might be more reliable and does not pollute, but the old technology has an army of technicians who can service it, and I believe countries like China are still allowed to produce CFC coolants. In fact, when countries agreed to phase out CFC, China's phase-out was based on its production several years in the future, and as a result its production actually jump in the subsequent years as manufacturers took advantage of the loophole.
More information here
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Just to clear this up:
Beat frequencies are not 'real' frequencies at all - they don't exist as frequencies. The 'frequency' is simply an amplitude modulation.
In a linear system, if you have two frequencies, they interfere and you get a beat, which is amplitude modulation at the difference in frequencies. The interference does NOT generate a new frequency, and does NOT permit 3-d positioning.
In a nonlinear system (such as air in this case), the nonlinearity DOES cause a new frequency to be created - it distorts the air to make audible sound. This is how the Audio Spotlight works.
What kind of wattage would it take to drive 173dB? OK, no gases, but more fossil fuels burned to power this thing, turning out more emmissions contributing the green-house effect. It's kind of like the whole electric car thing...electricity still requires energy from some source, and in most cases it's a fossil-fule burning power plant somewhere.
Yup, you're thinking of real genius.
But no, no oddball tricks with sound occurred in that movie. Definately nothing with ultrasonics.
You're probably thinking of the scene where they hid a small radio in Kurt's mouth, and then speaking to him claiming to be God.
"And Kurt... STOP PLAYING WITH YOURSELF!"
"It really is God..."
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You are right that nature puts CO2 into the atmosphere too, as well as aerosols. What's interesting is that despite all the volcanic activity that you note, humans have put more CO2 into the air in the last 50 years than nature did in the previous 10,000.
At the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago, the atmospheric CO2 concentration was about 270 parts per million by volume (ppmv). At the dawn of the industrial revolution in the 18th century, it was around 280 ppmv. In 1958, it was around 315 ppmv. Today it is about 370 ppmv.
As to aerosols from volcanism, they can have a dramatic short-term effect, but they precipitate out of the atmosphere over a few years, whereas excess CO2 has a residence time of about 120 years (this is a fairly ambiguous number because there are many sinks, each with a different capacity and time constant. The plausible numbers I have seen range from around 70 to around 200 years, with a maximum likelihood around 120).
By persuading it to sign an international treaty setting a reduced energy output level phased in over the next 10 years. Just like we did with America.
This is my World Wide Web of Whatever