Super Soaker Inventor Hopes to Double Solar Efficiency

mattnyc99 writes "With top geeks saying photovoltaic cells are still four years away from costing as much as the grid, and the first U.S. thermal power plant just getting into production, there's plenty of solar hype without any practical solution that's efficient enough. Until Lonnie Johnson came along. The man who invented the Super Soaker water gun turns out to be a nuclear engineer who's developed a solid-state heat engine that converts the sun's heat to electricity at 60-percent efficiency—double the rate of the next most successful solar process. And his innovation, called the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Conversion (JTEC) system, is getting funding from the National Science Foundation, so this is no toy. From the article: 'If it proves feasible, drastically reducing the cost of solar power would only be a start. JTEC could potentially harvest waste heat from internal combustion engines and combustion turbines, perhaps even the human body. And no moving parts means no friction and fewer mechanical failures.'"

Comments

Re:And...

[fyngyrz]

...and I can guarantee that the whole idea of "wasting water" is ridiculous in the first place. Where do people think "wasted" water goes? When it evaporates, it comes back as rain; when it soaks into the ground, it is transpired by plant life, and again evaporates and comes back as rain; when it goes into the sewer system, it dilutes the sewage, makes it easier to process, is replaced into the groundwater, evaporates, comes back as rain...

The only way you can really "waste" water is to convert it into hydrogen and oxygen. Even then, we'll probably get it back eventually.

The only thing being "wasted" here is the money you pay the city to process that water so that when you super-soak the other person, you don't hand them a bunch of water-bourne disease vectors in the process. But it is your money.

Now, if you've gone and plopped yourself down where there isn't enough water for the population and industrial loading... that'd be your fault. Guess you'll just have to grit your teeth.

Re:Hmmm....

[ScrewMaster]

We'll see.

Re:not exactly :)

[Gandalf_Greyhame]

MHD methods are still not that efficient, then theirs adding the electrical energy to create the plasma in the first place.

I suggest that you go back and do a minor in english, or even go back and do 3rd grade english again :) You have the wrong usage of the word there. What you should have used is "there's" which is the shortened version of "there is." Technically speaking, you probably shouldn't be using that either, as the shortened version is perfectly acceptable in speech it is discouraged in written form.

Hey, this is Slashdot... it is full of pedants.

P.S. Yes, there are most likely many errors in the above discourse, which I am now awaiting corrections for :)
P.P.S. Please don't take this seriously... I am just playing around