Harnessing the Energy of Arctic Air and Water

Someday soon, your microwave popcorn might be cooked by the Chena River. Your CD player might shuffle songs using the power of 40 below zero air. These electrical eccentricities may become possible because of an invention that generates power from the temperature difference of water and Alaska's winter air.

Perhaps the best thing about the device, dubbed the "Freon Gravitational Engine," is the identity of its builders--a 17-year old boy and a Geophysical Institute machinist. Joe Dick is a senior at North Pole High School who needed a mentor for a science project; he wanted to do something on alternative energy sources in the Bush. One of Dick's teachers, Jerry Gustafson, introduced Dick to Ned Manning, an inventive machinist at the Geophysical Institute.

Dick and Manning's initial meeting led to hundreds of hours of brainstorming, design, and the construction of a non-motorized machine with the ability to convert temperature differences into electricity. Dick's finished project for John Schauer's Science Seminar class--a rotating copper, brass and steel wheel--would not look out of place in an engineering journal. Despite its flashiness, the Freon Gravitational Engine works on a simple principle of physics. It takes advantage of the large energy difference between cold and hot objects.

During an Alaska winter, the air temperature is usually much colder than the temperature of water in streams, rivers and lakes. This difference is the fuel that powers the wheel.

Dick and Manning's invention looks like a three-foot-tall Ferris wheel. Where a Ferris wheel has seats, the Freon Gravitational Engine has canisters of Freon liquid. From the tops of the canisters, coils of copper tubing extend like curly hair. The wheel's support frame is adjusted so that the copper coils, also called "flash tubes," bob into water as the wheel turns. When the flash tubes touch the water, the Freon within them reacts to the relative warmth by changing from a liquid to a gas. The resulting pressure forces Freon to the top of the wheel, so the wheel becomes top heavy. The top-heavy wheel turns, and continues to turn as each flash tube contacts the warm water.

When Dick and Manning attached the wheel to power-generating windings, the Freon Gravitational Engine cranked out about 7 watts. Though 7 watts won't pop a kernel of your microwave popcorn, Dick and Manning envision much larger versions of the wheel, possibly whole "farms" of them, and they know a perfect place to set the wheels rolling.

Coal burning power plants, such as those used in Fairbanks, use water to cool equipment. Much of this hot water is then dumped into rivers or sloughs, often keeping the water free of ice all winter. The temperature difference between the cooling water and the outside air temperature can be more than 100 degrees. As an added bonus, the wheels will, in theory, generate more power as the temperature drops.

Dick and Manning don't have dreams of becoming electricity barons. They know unexpected engineering problems could arise in the construction of giant wheels, but their idea is good. So good that they applied for a patent on the Freon Gravitational Engine. Their application was turned down when the patent investigator found an Arizona man had drawn plans for a similar device, but he had never created one.

Dick admits that he's ready for a break after a semester of late nights, but he and Manning might try to reinvent the wheel next year, when Dick starts school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.