Last week, Palo Alto Research Center presented their latest innovation at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C: by replacing the mechanical compressors with thermoacoustic compressors, efficiency in certain appliances can be nearly doubled and a sizeable amount of U.S. power consumption stands to be reduced.
The California-based outfit calls the technology "next-generation high-efficiency cooling," explaining that the use of thermoacoustic refrigeration technology can achieve double the efficiency of even the best current available residential and commercial refrigerators and air conditioning systems.
According to the Department of Energy's 2008 Buildings Energy Data Book Buildings, refrigeration and air conditioning account for nearly one-fifth of the total energy consumed in commercial buildings and in homes. Buildings account for 39% of total energy consumption and 76% of electrical consumption in the United States.
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)'s website describes the firm as "a global center for commercial innovation [that] works closely with enterprises, entrepreneurs, government program partners, and other clients." Formerly known as Xerox PARC, this is the same company that brought Xerox copiers and technology to offices around the world. Their California headquarters was the birthplace of the PC.
Since copiers and computers, researchers and engineers have been hard at work developing the use of sound waves as a way to focus ink-jet droplets for printers and photo quality imaging. The thermoacoustic compressor device is their latest revelation.
Now if you're like me, you can vaguely visualize the illustration from your eighth grade science text book with the cross sectional illustration of the back of the refrigeration... there are blue arrows showing the cooling effect and red arrows showing a heating effect, and there are green arrows showing an overall compression and expansion of gases to generate both the heating and the cooling.
Allow me to give a brief scientific explanation behind PARC's thermoacoustic coupler technology...
Thermoacoustic compressors compress and expand gases with sound waves of high intensity. The compression of these gases creates heat, while the expansion of these elements cools. Mechanical compressors — while they operate on the same scientific principles — only achieve around 12% of the theoretical maximum.
On the other hand, thermoacoustic compressors can nearly triple that percentage of efficiency, based solely on the fact that sound waves have different inherent properties. (Think of a huge speaker or sub woofer's capacity to generate sound waves... )
Applying that energy to the cycle of heating and cooling would allow the compressor to complete 10,000 cycles/second, according to Scott Elrod, head of PARC's greentech efforts.
The real technological innovation on PARC's part lies in the creation of a thermoacoustic device for ambient temperatures. As they are used today, thermoacoustic compressors work best in extreme situations like laboratories for converting atmospheric gases to extremely cold liquids — a far cry from conventional use such as, say, powering the air conditioning units for a 70° office building. But PARC's device does just that: it replaces the mechanical compressors in heavy energy-consuming appliances with thermoacoustic compressors.
You can read more about PARC's Next-Generation High-Efficiency Cooling.
If widely deployed in the U.S., the technology could reduce energy consumption for cooling from 7 BTUS to 4 BTUs — a 13% reduction of electricity consumption, according to PARC's research.
As someone who endures Baltimore's hot and sticky summer months each year, PARC's latest technology would certainly be cheered for by commercial business owners and homeowners alike in terms of improving air conditioning efficiency...
The icing on the cake will be if — along with improved energy efficiency — the device reduces utility bills during those summer months...
Brigid
Subscribe to