Part of the excitement in an era of fast-change auto technology is the interim steps within the process. I am sure you have heard the least common denominator American mantra "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". What we are finding now is that turn of the century internal combustion engine technology has huge areas of unexplored efficiency gains. One such improvement comes from the field of Thermodynamics. It seems that using heat for conversion into electricity is a widely used technology that has never really been applied to the automotive industry.
This article in today's Sciencedaily.com discusses the potential in capturing this underutilized wasted heat and turning into free cooling or storing it for use in an electrical process (can you say hybrid?). While it won't be as easy as bolting on the pictured device, we can surely work out the details well enough to create an under-hood converter that could tap into this wasted resource and do "something". Like most technological leaps, it typically takes one person to ask the question in a different way and then others to take the new line of reasoning and invent the breakthrough device. Hopefully today's article has gotten the wheels of thought rolling in a young genius engineering student who will change the way we use wasted energy in automobiles. I don't think cars are going away. Let's just continue to make them better and more efficient. Maybe someday in the near future you will be buying this thermo-electric generator from us.
Autopartstomorrow.com
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