Salt Lake Tribune – Utah
Salt Lake Tribune – Utah
Really cool invention brings teens awards
Physics students: They came up with an environmentally friendly, economical air conditioner
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This is via Steve. Thanks for the pointer. I saw a link to this yesterday but failed to get through at the time.
This looks possible. Depends on how much electricity it uses. The Pelter devices I have played with were real juice hungry but they “were” older devices. I guess the first one I saw was in the late 80’s or early 90’s and they date way on back from there.
The article says they are using 5 of them so I’m sure they are getting a lot of cooling. The problem is going to be overcoming the initial thermal load of the hot air mass in the car as well as the hot mass of the car its self.
Will have to wait and see when more info is available.
Themocracy
Read some more of the /. comments after I sent the e-mail, the posters were divided as to how efficient this would/could be. Of course, the entire point of a breakthrough is that someone comes up with a new approach/refinement that permits something that has been around for a long while but impractical to become practical. As you say, we’ll see. It would be unlikely to be as refined as regular A/C, which has literally billions of development dollars in its history, but the auto companys are looking for something that does not directly take power from the engine. The last I had heard, they are moving to a higher voltage bus (~90-100 volts) which drops the amperage requirements tremendously, and allows for all sorts of things to be electrically powered, such as power steering. Since hybrid electric is getting such a boost, going electric powered with ALL
Well, hit the wrong key and posted by mistake in the middle of the sentence. As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, going electric powered with ALL accessories will simplify things for the manufacturers. And for the mechanics, somewhat-they will all HAVE to get formal training in electrical/electronic repair, which will probably help EVERYONE out. And I can hear the calls to the service departments now: “No, I DON’T know what’s wrong with the damn thing, the 300 amp main breaker just keeps popping out everytime I reset the damn thing!” Then , later: “Oh, you mean if I put a screw through the harness THERE when I install speakers, it could keep the car from running? AND void the warranty?” And: “What does ‘spot-weld’ mean, anyway? Ya’ know, now that you mention it, I DID smell something, and hear some kind of ‘thump!’ when I was driving that screw, I thought the drill had just put a little more ‘mojo’ on that one, though.”