Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Table of contents
Nickel Titanium Heat Engine.......................................................................................1
Design proposal.............................................................................................................1
Author............................................................................................................................1
Table of contents...........................................................................................................2
Introduction..................................................................................................................3
The Design....................................................................................................................5
Fig. 1 The pump contracted...................................................................... ........................5
Fig. 2 The pump expanded................................................................................ ................5
Figure 3 The basic pump or heart.................................................................................... .6
Cycle of operation.........................................................................................................7
Implementation within a power station........................................................................7
Figure 4 A multi cellular arrangement.......................................................... ...................7
Overall benefits of adopting the design........................................................................8
Safety.......................................................................................................... ........................8
Fuel Efficiency................................................................................................................ ....8
Political implications....................................................................................................... ...8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................9
Introduction
With this in mind I have decided to rewrite the proposal and add a
another diagram for clarity and instead send this to pressure
groups for energy conservation and organizations tackling global
warming etc in the hope that they will pick it up and try to drive it
on themselves.
There are many sites on the Internet that go into detail on the
properties of these remarkable alloys so I will simply provide links
to a few of the more interesting and leave the reader to educate
themselves further should they choose to do so.
Stamford University: -
http://www.stanford.edu/~richlin1/sma/sma.html
http://www.memory-metalle.de/
The Design
Cycle of operation
1. With the heart at rest the water jacket is filled with cold water.
2. A low pressure pump inflates the heart with hydraulic oil.
3. The water jacket is then flooded with hot water, shown in
Red in Fig. 3.
4. The heart then compresses to its original shape. Thus forcing
the hydraulic oil out through the none-return valve to the
High Pressure Storage Vessel.
5. The high pressure out line shown at right then feeds a
conventional hydraulic motor.
Safety
1. The heat engine can be tuned to run at a lower temperature
than a conventional power station requires. Thus avoiding
the necessity of generating super heated steam at high
pressure to run a turbine.
2. Steam is corrosive to steel and lighter than air, therefore
escapes of steam are highly likely in conventional power
station design and difficult to contain once escaped.
Hydraulic oil does not corrode and is not lighter than air so
escapes are less likely and can be simply mopped up and
contained.
Fuel Efficiency
As no prototype has been built it is not possible to give any figures
for the efficiency of the proposed heat engine. However there are a
number of comments it is reasonable to make regarding the
eventual efficiency rating of the design.
1. SMA is the most efficient material found to date for
converting heat into mechanical movement.
2. As this design could run on hot water rather than super
heated steam; reactors can operate at much lower
temperatures and therefore need supply less energy. That
being the case they can run for longer on the same amount
of fuel.
Political implications
As far less energy would be required to produce the same amount
of electrical power output it would seem likely that far less
enrichment of uranium would be required to produce viable fuel
rods. So it may be possible to allow the proliferation of nuclear
power technology far wider than is presently considered
acceptable. As there is no requirement to enrich uranium to a
weapons grade to create viable fuel rods.
Conclusion
It is my hope that in the current energy crisis someone will now
pick up this design and seize the opportunity to generate electrical
power at a significant fraction of its present cost.
Bradley Atkins