On the fourth floor of a plain, grey office building bordering East Vancouver, former Creo scientists are playing with the guts of a small external heat engine that, when fully assembled, looks a bit like R2D2’s little brother.
The size of a basketball, Etalim Inc.’s thermoacoustic electrical generator (TEG) is remarkable, as engines go, in that it has no pistons – no moving parts at all, to speak of, in fact – produces no exhaust and uses heat, rather than creates it, for its fuel source.
“It’s fundamentally new and unique,” said Etalim CEO Ron Klopfer. “To our knowledge, this is the only device of its type in the world.”
Steven Garrett, professor of acoustics at Penn State University, said there are other scientists making thermoacoustic generators. But none so far have achieved the kind of basic energy efficiency that Etalim is claiming to be achieving: 40%. A second-generation TEG that Etalim is working on would run at 50%.
By contrast, a gas engine has, at best, an energy efficiency of 25% to 30%. Photovoltaic cells are even less efficient.
“If what they claim is true, this is important,” Garrett said. “If they’re getting a kilowatt out of a basketball at that kind of efficiency, my hat’s off to them.”
The diminutive dynamo converts heat – any heat source will do – into an acoustic vibration, which is then converted into mechanical energy and, finally, into electricity. Connect it to a hybrid car’s exhaust manifold and you get an auxiliary source of electricity. Focus the light of the sun onto a TEG with a tracking parabolic mirror and you create electricity much more efficiently than with photovoltaic cells.
That’s just a sample of the potential applications, said Klopfer, who puts the TEG in a lineage that includes the steam, internal combustion and turbine engines.
Garrett believes the most important application might be in places like rural India, where off-grid villages can burn virtually any kind of fuel to produce heat and electricity using a TEG. Because the TEG is an external heat engine, it doesn’t matter what fuel is used.
Etalim was co-founded by former Creo CEO Amos Michelson and Tom Steiner, the company’s former chief physicist, who also brought other Creo scientists and engineers on board after Kodak bought Creo in 2005.
Five years ago, Steiner approached Michelson with the germ of an idea he had for creating a better solar cell – an idea that morphed into something with a much broader application than he had originally intended.
Michelson wrote the first cheque to kick-start the company.
The TEG’s potential has been validated by Los Alamos National Laboratory, which Garrett said is an important step, because Los Alamos has pioneered thermoacoustics.
None of the basic principles used in the TEG are new. Etalim has simply refined them and made them work efficiently and with inexpensive materials.
“Generating sound from heat’s been known since the 1800s,” Garrett said. “But harnessing it efficiently in something the size of a basketball that can get 40% or 50% efficiency – that takes a lot of skill.”
Again, there are no moving parts in the TEG, unless you count a steel plate that vibrates. It’s therefore low maintenance. Etalim estimates a TEG will run for 40 years or more without any maintenance.
“The engine is very elegant and simple,” Klopfer said. “You can make our device in any factory that’s making auto parts today.”
Etalim plans to start producing TEGs in 2013 that will produce one kilowatt of electricity (enough for a European household). That would be followed by a second-generation TEG that would run at higher temperatures to produce three kilowatts with 50% energy efficiency in 2015, which is also when Etalim is projecting it will start turning a profit.
For now, Etalim will concentrate on the micro-CHP (combined heat and power) market. In Europe, manufacturers are encouraged to include micro-CHP in their furnaces and boilers for home heating. Etalim sees a huge market there, based on the fact the TEG engine would be cheaper to produce – and would last longer – than any of the other heat engines currently used.
“We’re now gearing up to raise an institutional venture capital of between $5 million and $10 million early next year,” Klopfer said. “That will be to fund the home stretch of the R&D program.”
He said Etalim will likely partner with a manufacturer to produce 40,000 units between 2013 and 2015, ramping up to a total of 400,000 units by 2020.