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About Me
- Neal Asher
- Latchingdon, Essex, United Kingdom
- I’ve been an engineer, barman, skip lorry driver, coalman, boat window manufacturer, contract grass cutter and builder. Now I write science fiction books, and am slowly getting over the feeling that someone is going to find me out, and can call myself a writer without wincing and ducking my head. As professions go, I prefer this one: I don’t have to clock-in, change my clothes after work, nor scrub sensitive parts of my body with detergent. I think I’ll hang around. Contact: ndotasheratvirgindotnet
4 comments:
Yeah, interesting. I'm surprised that Stirling engines are the best we can do to recover electrical energy from the heat - it means using moving parts, and an extra conversion step (thermal > mech > elec). Shame there's no better (solid state?) way to do it.
[sorry if this posts twice, something screwed up.]
Well, the speed things are going in materials development I'm betting there will be a solid-state method within a decade. Check some of the articles here: http://phys.org/
Heh, and a day later I read this article: http://phys.org/news/2012-11-energy-savingseasy-dirt-pressure.html
Looking a bit further: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
it's nothing new ... I guess thermoelectric materials just don't produce enough electric bang for your thermal buck, because they must surely be more reliable than Stirling engines.
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