Processor cooling = Electricity?

[Jakalwarrior]

Ok im sure most of us know peltier devices can generate electricity when you pass heat through it. Or it can move heat when you pass power through. You couldnt feasibly gain much power from a modern chip though because the insulating effect of the actual device would be too much (your chip would fry).

here is something new I ran across while browsing around in old tech news.
"When heat is injected, the heat builds to a threshold and moving air produces sound. The sound is then converted into electricity by using "piezoelectric" devices that are squeezed in response to pressure, including sound waves, and change that pressure into electrical current"

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32323/113/

The main downside is the intermediary. The heat is first made into sound... you know we all hate sound so that has to be shielded or canceled out. I can see some uses for this though. They claim it to be 20-25% efficent.
That GPU scorching along at 90*C might not be a bad thing anymore. Be kinda cool to have case fans run by your heatsinks. The hotter stuff gets the faster the fans spin etc...

 

[A Shiny Demon]

I've also wondered what happened to that idea; I heard about it a few months back back and then haven't heard anything about that technology since then. Of course, another cool idea would be using the heat to power a Sterling engine to spin a fan, but I don't know enough about them to even know whether or not that's feasible. Plus, I believe Sterling engines create a lot of noise by nature; they're piston-driven.

 

[holli4pirating]

Aside from the noise, you'd also have to deal with the actual vibrations. And if this device is actually on the processor, it seems to me it would vibrate the processor.

There's also no mention as to how the chip that would provide the heat would itself be cooled.

 

[Jakalwarrior]

Aside from the noise, you'd also have to deal with the actual vibrations. And if this device is actually on the processor, it seems to me it would vibrate the processor.

There's also no mention as to how the chip that would provide the heat would itself be cooled.

Might be possible to have a standard cooling and just use the hot air exiting your system (one exit fan) to supply the heat. Im sure it wouldnt be nearly as efficent (maybe they dont even work at those watered down temp? since they said higher heat = more efficency?) but it wouldnt cause any sacrifices with in temperatures. Maybe the combined heat of the PSU, CPU, GPU, NB, SB, RAM, etc.. would still be enough hot air to run something worthwhile.

 

[holli4pirating]

Might be possible to have a standard cooling and just use the hot air exiting your system (one exit fan) to supply the heat.

I don't know about you, but if I had hot air coming out of my case I'd be pretty nervous. My exhaust is never more than warm (if that), and I have everything in my sig in one case. There's no way that would give enough of a delta t.

 

[Jakalwarrior]

Probably right, its not even enough to make fan guards warm. The only other thing I can think of would be to install it at the base of heatpipes which takes you back to vibration issues.

 

[holli4pirating]

Yea, if I wanted to use sound to generate power in this way, I'd rather just hook up some cheapass speakers with long cables and bury them somewhere. I mean...there are far easier ways to get vibrations than turning heat into sound.

 

[A Shiny Demon]

Yea, if I wanted to use sound to generate power in this way, I'd rather just hook up some cheapass speakers with long cables and bury them somewhere. I mean...there are far easier ways to get vibrations than turning heat into sound.

The point is that the heat is already there and is actually wasted energy; since the process is far less than 100% efficient, you would be using more power to drive the speakers than you would convert from the vibrations.