Comments on: Revolutionary Sonic Boiler Probably Not A Scam!

by: Sonochemist

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 12:15:35 +0000

Oh I forgot to add….Depending on the frequency the temperature of the bulk solution and the temperature of the solution during ultrasound could be different. Also, it doesn’t take much energy to get the “boiling” effect you see when ultrasound is induced on an aqueous medium. Less than 10W.

by: Sonochemist

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 12:07:51 +0000

Actually, no this is not really that new. This technology and immersion ultrasound horns/plates/cups are already used by many researchers in the fields of chemistry/physics/health. However, it will never be used for this reason, there is no way. Look up Sonochemistry in google. Back to the drawingboard… or your day job. Interesting but bad idea.

by: aLUNZ

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:16:05 +0000

Well, he does mention sonics and heat pumps are great for cheating thermodynamics - maybe he has built a very small thermoacoustic heater. If you squint hard enough that bulb might even be a Helmholtz resonator - although I am not sure that such would be useful in this application.

If the device is a mini-heat pump (rather than an immersion heating element that does not need to be fully submerged) then that is a terrific achievement - whatever the technology.

by: Jax184

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:03:07 +0000

You can see in the picture that the person just out of the shot is holding a temp probe in the water. So I doubt he’d be fooled by simulated boiling.

by: Mohonri

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:15:32 +0000

I wonder if this device includes one of those ultrasonic transducers that atomize water like those “cool mist” vaporizers. You turn it on and the water immediately starts bubbling and you get a mist out of it. The water isn’t getting any warmer, but you get the illusion of boiling. The fact that the inventor is using his bare hands to hold the glass of boiling water gives me pause. Even though glass is, in general, a good insulator, it isn’t that good.

So, take the ultrasonic transducer out of a vaporizer, add a traditional resistive heating element, and you get a device that makes water appear to boil right away, and you can stall any skeptics until the regular heating element actually heats the water.

One other thought came to mind: a small-scale reverse-cycle air conditioner, which has been mentioned by Dan on several occasions. Assuming you could get the dimensions of such a device small enough, you could put a whole lot more power into the water than just the energy from the wall socket.

by: opus7600

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:31:09 +0000

About your water heating math…been along time since I was in high school chemistry, but isn’t getting water to the boiling temperature the easy part of boiling? I seem to recall that there’s a “transition energy” you need to pump in to actually make the transition from very hot water to steam.

by: jaws_au

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:46:24 +0000

Out of curiosity… what’s the energy coupling like of a microwave oven? Does a 1000W microwave heat up water as fast as a 1000W kettle would? I’m assuming that the 1000W lable is the power available within the cooking area, as the magnatron is hardly 100% efficient.

by: dabrett

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:07:11 +0000

Well, the picture doesn’t give any indication of a pressure vessel, and a device that lowered the air pressure in an unsealed container filled with water would act as a straw and draw the water out.
The thing about resonance is that its main useful property in an application such as this would be to transmit mechanical energy- and given that converting electrical energy to mechanical energy is not as efficient as converting electrical energy to thermal energy, then even if your mechanical->thermal conversion is 100% efficient, you’ve used more energy than you would if you converted electrical energy directly to thermal energy, which is bloody close to 100% efficient as it is.
Unless there’s something weird like sonoluminescence going on (possible I guess) I can’t see how this is more effective than an straight resistive element job.

by: evilmrhenry

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:24:04 +0000

Technically, you could change the pressure of the water to make it boil at a lower temperature. That’s cheating, though. (This actually might be how the device works; it also gives a reason for the talk of resonance.)