Sound as a Source of Energy

No.

Just kidding...

Most sound, even when very loud, is relatively poor in usable kinetic energy, and mostly dissipate as slight increase of temperature.

It may irritate some of us, which may lead to violent behaviour, which in turn can be harnessed to create or accumulate some usable energy.

For example: take a sleepy worker, shout in his ear, and he may be driven to bang harder with a hammer

I have read about the use of heat to produce sound as an thermoacoustic Stirling engine, and sound to produce refrigeration. Here is a link to an article I found about that. Here is a second article which talks about using sound to produce energy for spacecraft with the same thermoacoustic idea.

So the answer is sort of, although sound is more the transmitter of the energy rather than a way of storing it as you would think of a fuel.

Los Alamos is a fraud organization. The advise is not sound.

Thanks for the sound advice. I almost wasted some energy.

Dear frankd20,

I read your link describing the thermo acoustic sterling engine and it is very, very interesting:

http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/100604/Sound_makes_electricity_for_space_Brief_100604.html

So much so, I'm now embarrassed to read the silly post I wrote above.

The Hub of thermo acoustic articles in:

http://www.lanl.gov/mst/engine/news.html

Is worth digging into. Some of us are not as serious as we should probably be (speaking for myself, that is)...

Thanks for the leads to the articles. kathy

Type of sounds : Classic to cool and rock to heat?

A lot work is produced by sound of the voice of a woman.

Well, when someone pulls up next to me at a stop light with their BOOM-BOOM-BOOM non-music, it sure fires me up.

By the way, I heard of a good way to retaliate against such irritations -- blast them with a hand-held boat horn!

I'm very surprised at the responses to my inquiry. Thank you all so much!

I love good humor, but truly for me this is a serious inquiry. I have a dream about this. Really. You know Da Vinci drew pictures of flying machines and talked about them to whomever would listen. It's a wonder the poor man didn't end up in chains or bedlam. And it wasn't until the Wright Brothers that it - pardon me - took off! Now we're looking at commercial flight into space!

I hate being held hostage to oil for all the obvious reasons. And this idea of sound keeps coming to me. So in the spirit of Da Vinci and the Wright Brothers...why not?

Thank you for your serious considerations. I'm just hoping that someone with the where-with-all will pick up the thread and run with it. We can do so much better than we are doing. Kathy

As I read this thread, I began to think of my wild idea that it is possible that not only one energy can be harnessed in a diesel or coal-fired power plant. If you have been to a power plant before, you would experience the noise and heat inside the plant. If anyone could look into these idea and think of harnessing the energy from noise and heat, the overall energy output from a power plant would be increased. Of course, I am not considering yet the initial cost of these new technology.

No idea is worthless! My Dad used to work in a steel plant. I imagine the noise and the heat to be much like you describe. I'm just trying to get us all to THINK! and be INSPIRED to brand new, easy, clean and inexpensive ideas. I think we all want our freedom back, don't you?

Come on America! Let's think OUTSIDE the box....k

As I was searching the web for other things, I ran across this forum and decided to take a look. My impression from the the banner was that this was a forum for engineers to discuss various topics. If so, I am quite disappointed at the level of exchange. An honest question was asked, and the majority of the replies were simply banter unrelated to the question. Some of the replies provided reasonable discussion about how sound waves can be used to transform energy from one form to another. These types of replies I appreciate. However, Cornstoves simply says Los Alamos is hoax and no information (from any of the 10,000 people who work there) should be trusted. I believe he should take a closer look before making such blanket statements.

To provide some actual content here.... The subject you are all discussing is thermoacoustics which is the science behind using acoustic waves to transform one form of energy into another such as: high-temperature heat (from say combustion) into acoustic power, acoustic power into electricity (via a electrodynamic alternator), acoustic power into refrigeration, or even acoustic power into the separation of a gas mixture into is constituents. Any of these various functions can be combined to make useful machines, e.g. heat-driven refrigeration. There is a wealth of information on thermoacoustics in the scientific and engineering literature which can be accessed by searching on " thermoacoustic" at an reasonably equipped research library.

Hello Scott,

Thank you for your comments regarding my inquiry about sound as a viable energy source. I appreciate that someone is taking it seriously. I have read about thermoacoustics, yet it still requires heat of some kind, and thus some type of fuel for combustion. My image is that of pure sound like the voice of the woman in the old Memorex commericals. Perhaps you don't recall, but the advert was for Memorex tapes for recording. A voice hits a pure high note and a glass shatters. That is what I am inquiring...is anyone investigating and researching that.

My Dad is an engineer, retired now. Mechanical and Industrial. I was his pal as a kid and learned to perhaps think about problems with an engineer's mind for the solutions. I am not an engineer, but more of a philosopher, I'd guess. But I saw this forum and thought perhaps i might peak someone's thoughts and interest to spark the investigations. Thank you so much for responding. Someone will, I know it. kathy

"...A voice hits a pure high note and a glass shatters. That is what I am inquiring...is anyone investigating and researching that..."

You are probably referring to "amplified resonant frequency"

You can press this link for further interest.

This is about that each material object has a natural resonant frequency, associated to it's rigidity, shape, and actual dimensions. Bang on a solid and hear an audible tone.

If you manage to accurately tune into this exact frequency, then amplify it when directed at this object, oscillations at this frequency will augment, in accordance to "wave additive interferency", where waves coming from two sources with the identical frequency and phase direction, manage to augment each other, more and more.

Glass is a solid-like substance. Not solid, but it acts like a solid.

It is held together under strong inner-tension trying to burst out.

When glass is subject to "wave additive interference", it will start to self-oscillate stronger and stronger, until it's natural inner-tension will eventually brake it.

Thank you Yuval, I notice you keep your ear to the ground here! How's things in Israel?

Yes, amplified resonant frequency, thank you for defining the term. Now, how to focus it to move a car???? And I believe it can be done, we haven't looked hard enough or seriously enough. It's clean, I imagine it to be relatively cheap, and it is possible, I know.

Are you aware of anyone pursuing this line of inquiry seriously? Cheers! Kathy

There's one main problem in pursuing some application in this venue: Sound is very weak carrier of energy. If we want to move a car for instance, we need to convert acoustic to thermal, then convert thermal to kinetics, and given inevitable loss of usable energy during the conversion, we're left with nearly nothing left to apply.

The above given example of resonant frequency, manage to perform the trick, by:

1. Without conversion

2. Added energy of amplification, to boost acoustic output directed at the glass made object

3. Utilising the glass inner tension, by itself, immense potential energy, waiting to burst.

This is a rare and mazing case, but not as a powerful push, instead, more like pulling a key-pin, holding a structure from falling. It was referred in the bible as the horns that toppled the walls of Jericho

Exactly!!! Now that's what I'm getting at - if you can topple a whole city with sound, then something powerful is going on there. What if there were a way to focus that sound and push.

I know what I'm going to say next might off-put an engineer, but here goes. A few years back when I was studying all types of spirituality, there was a reference to a previous civilization now gone that traveled on the energy of sound. It has been done. I just don't know the physics of it or even "how" to think about it. I'm simply trying to get one of you guys to think outside the box and think, "what if...."

I so appreciate your comments and serious thoughts! Thank you so much.

Come on the rest of you out there ...IMAGINE!

Now, What if this were possible......Kathy

Now waitaminute... Jericho is like the glass case: It's apparent stability is held by a fine equilibrium, threatening to collapse anyway, the sound only pulled the pin to release the toppling forces already present.

Hmmmm......"the sound ...pulled the pin to release the .....forces already present.....hmmm. Think Yuval! Think how can I? Not why not. k

Hey, Don't expect me to re-write the laws of nature. I can only follow what's given.

Imagine that I want to levitate, and you tell me "You Can't. There's gravity pull, and you have to use some available energy and apply it in a specific way to create the necessary lift"

So, I reply "how about if I whistled?, will that help?"

And you "Whistle? what will that do?"

And I will say "But jets whistle while taking off and flying"

And you will say "A whistle is only a consequence of their turbines rotating, not the cause of their lift"

And I will say "But whenever they whistle, they fly..."

Think A.C. Guest, what will that do?

You seem to confuse here between cause and effect.

Now, think again. And again, if so necessary.

W.T.F...

People do levitate. Nothing is impossible. That's her point.

You mean like, levitate in meditation, levitate the spirit, levitate the level of discussion, or levitate physically, the body off the ground, without an engine and some fan system?

Listen, this is an engineering site. People can hardly be fooled here, even when they might give you such an impression.

You may see this as a tease. It's not really. People who will read or answer here, will hone their technique of answering tease-questions, with an ever-increasing skill, just for their fun and the entertaining value of it.

Don't you be fooled to think, that you manage to fool the experienced, not just here, but in general, in life.

Now, the ball is in your court, and think well before you reply:

You were saying?....

I've been looking at thermoacoustics myself for a few years as a point of personal interest. The sound that is used in current thermoacoustic applications is extremely loud, many times louder than the human ear can handle at the source. The farther sound gets away from the source, the less energy there is in it. So, I think that the problem that people can't get around is that ambient sound does not have enough energy in it to be converted to anything useful even if the sound source is totally surrounded by a device that converts the sound into a useable form of energy. This is not to say that energy can't be used from ambient sound in very small applications, but for something as big as even running a MP3 player would require a lot of sound gathering equipment.

I was wondering, however, if a person could use some really loud sound such as what comes out of a car exhaust pipe before the muffler could be used to do something. Currently, several people are looking into using the heat from car exhaust to do things like produce electricity or move heat (air conditioning), but this is by converting the heat into intense sound first and then using that very intense sound to do things such as running a thermoacoustic heat pump or linear alternator. It would be interesting to see if someone could use the sound as well to move heat or something. In using up the sound energy, there would be less sound afterwards and no muffler would be required.

It is too bad that there are so many people here criticizing ideas without really thinking about them. It reminds me of politicians bashing eachother hoping that if they bash the other candidate harder that people will vote for them.

Thank you Guest for your comments to my original inquiry.

In looking back I abandoned this discussion group a year ago because no one was taking it seriously and indeed, a few were even combative.

I hope your new comments will spark a serious discussion into sound.

Thank you kindly, kathy

Here is some serious futuristic application of sound applied for practical means: refrigeration.

Click this and enjoy.

Taken by the courtesy of "Engineering News" here on CR4

I hope you guys have not gone too far, i know it has been some time, but i just came across this site while searching as sound as a source of energy. But i search for a different reason, and as i have read the result are encouraging for my study. The fact that all forms of energy have been exploited as a source of energy except sound shows this is no coincidence. I'm a philosopher and my study focuses on the reason of existence; the essence of humanity. And the souls(i.e. the souls of human beings) and their origin brings many interesting questions. Not to digress; basically the souls are not from this world, they come from space and as we know music is food to the soul and music is sound. So sound can be an energy form because of its high importance in the universe, it being an energy form is just like its compliance for existing on earth(the physical realm). Else where in the universe it serves a higher function, so because sound is were the souls a from it is intune with us but will not carry out all the physical functions we require from it. So if i would say; sound will not be able to be harnessed as a convienient source of energy for us to utilize, despite how hard humans try, even though something comes up in the future, it would be something completing different from what we can imagine. So it is actually possible that sound can even be found to do something more important so may be if we try to expand our mind and not think within the narrow path of an alternative source of energy to substitute oil, we may just find something.