New Tech Transforms Sound Into Electricity

Earnest Cavalli

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Jun 19, 2008
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New Tech Transforms Sound Into Electricity


With a clever bit of science, Japanese researchers have developed a gadget that turns sound waves into electrical energy.

This one is a bit heavy on the tech jargon, so hold on to your butts. Courtesy DigInfo:

[The device] consists of a piezoelectric element to produce the sound waves, a magnetic material to generate a spin current, and a three-layered metal structure to detect the spin current. By producing the sound waves, we inject a spin current from the magnetic material into the metal layers. And by using a phenomenon called the reverse spin Hall effect in the metal, we convert the spin current to an electrical voltage. In this research, we detected the spin current by measuring the voltage.

Did you catch all that? In layman's terms, the researchers (Professor Eiji Saito of Tohoku University and researchers from Japan's Atomic Energy Agency) used sound to vibrate a metal structure. This vibration causes a current to transfer from the magnetic layer to the metal layers. Then, via the "reverse spin Hall effect," said current is transformed into useful electrical voltage.

Admittedly, the relative amount of voltage generated here is rather small. More than anything, this experiment is a proof of concept for the idea that sound itself can be harnessed for electrical energy generation.

Currently, Professor Saito's team is looking into a range of other materials to see just how much voltage each might generate within this device.

I like the idea of capturing sound energy to generate useful electricity -- step out onto the corner of a busy street if you ever want an example of how much excess sound energy we have bouncing around -- but nowhere in this news does anyone ever discuss the efficiency of the process. It takes energy to generate sound, and unless Saito is a wizard, his tech likely doesn't generate electricity at 100% efficiency (for reasons too numerous to get into here).

However, assuming it can be properly scaled, I could see this technology functioning as a sort of "sound gutter" that catches excess noise that would otherwise drift into the ether and instead does something useful with it. Those vibrations were just going to ricochet out into space, so we may as well put them to work.

It's about time these lazy, freeloading sound waves started pulling their weight around here.

Source: Engadget [http://www.diginfo.tv/2011/09/20/11-0174-u-en.php]

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TheRightToArmBears

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I actually thought we'd already figured out how to do this, but apparently not. Still, that's pretty cool. I want to see how much electricity my shouting can make.
 

crazyfoxdemon

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My idea would be to install these on loud streets in places like Chicago or New York City. They might even be able to power traffic lights, street lights, or even cross walks. That would definately cut down on a city's power consumption.
 

rsvp42

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Finally, yelling at my appliances might actually make a difference now.
 
Feb 26, 2011
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Are the metalheads in the crowd thinking what I'm thinking?

Find a way to weapionize this, and we can FINALLY TURN THE POWER OF ROCK INTO A LITERAL INSTRUMENT OF DESTRUCTION! XD

Just imagine the power this thing could produce from a song like 'Hammer Smashed Face'!
 

Iron Lightning

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Oct 19, 2009
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This doesn't have a practical application. Even the alternative energy systems that work off of much more energetic sources (e.g. the sun and the wind) are nowhere near capable of the sort of mass power generation the world needs. Maybe a highly refined system could generate some supplemental energy but that's the most they could do.
 

kouriichi

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Great.... The only way to shut up those people who always talk on their cell phones was to wait for the battery to drain.

Now your telling me they can charge their phone by talking into?!?

Jeeze..... Technology is making things worse.
 

Smooth Operator

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Distorted Stu said:
Kapitan_Jack said:
"New Tech Transforms Sound Into Electricity"
Ummm, is it called "microphone"?
...

facepalm.jpeg

OT: This is AWESOME!

One step closer to THE FUTURE!!
Well the man has a point, induction microphones do exactly that, plus they are old as dirt and extremely cheap to make if anyone really wanted to use this principle.

But the problem with this for power production is sound itself which disperses in all directions, so even the loudest of streets could barely make a lamp glow.
 

drkchmst

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Mar 28, 2010
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Exactly which part of this is new? Is it that an external voltage doesn't need to be applied for it to work. I don't know if that's the case but some more details would be nice.
 

Mortuorum

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Oct 20, 2010
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Yet another nothing for nothing technology. Sounds waves are such a poor transmitter of energy that a single receiver located in Times Square at rush hour probably wouldn't produce much more electricity than a 9-volt battery.

A much better way to generate electricity in an urban area would be to put pizeoelectric pads under the sidewalks and utilize pedestrian energy. You could do the same thing on the roads with motor vehicles as well.
 

DEAD34345

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Aug 18, 2010
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Kapitan_Jack said:
"New Tech Transforms Sound Into Electricity"
Ummm, is it called "microphone"?
My thoughts exactly...

Maybe this one transforms a higher proportion of the sound's energy than normal microphones do? Still, I can't imagine it being very useful.
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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Kapitan_Jack said:
"New Tech Transforms Sound Into Electricity"
Ummm, is it called "microphone"?
Lol. I'm glad I wasn't the only one to notice this.

I was going to put this up as a facebook comment: "... In other words, they've developed a microphone with a higher voltage output. XD

(For those of you ignorant of the how a microphone works, it picks up sound vibrations and converts them to voltage fluctuations in an electrical circuit. Sound like anything familiar?)"

But facebook comments seem to fail to upload about 80% of the time...
 

theultimateend

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lunncal said:
Kapitan_Jack said:
"New Tech Transforms Sound Into Electricity"
Ummm, is it called "microphone"?
My thoughts exactly...

Maybe this one transforms a higher proportion of the sound's energy than normal microphones do? Still, I can't imagine it being very useful.
Put it under streets of a busy city.

The vibrations from traffic and people will generate large amounts of extra energy that was otherwise wasted.

So you are right, after thinking about it for 5 seconds to reply it doesn't seem very handy.
 

NLS

Norwegian Llama Stylist
Jan 7, 2010
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The Heavy Metal Nerd said:
Are the metalheads in the crowd thinking what I'm thinking?

Find a way to weapionize this, and we can FINALLY TURN THE POWER OF ROCK INTO A LITERAL INSTRUMENT OF DESTRUCTION! XD

Just imagine the power this thing could produce from a song like 'Hammer Smashed Face'!
You would have to spend quite a lot of energy on creating all this sound though. It would be more cost/energy effective to skip the whole concert.
 

Tharwen

Ep. VI: Return of the turret
May 7, 2009
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Is there any reason these couldn't be attached to the bottom of trains and generators to boost the power output slightly?

If they're efficient enough, they should also work as sound dampers.

Distorted Stu said:
Kapitan_Jack said:
"New Tech Transforms Sound Into Electricity"
Ummm, is it called "microphone"?
...

facepalm.jpeg

OT: This is AWESOME!

One step closer to THE FUTURE!!
Wait wait wait wait. Who were you palming at?
 

DasDestroyer

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Apr 3, 2010
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[HEADING=1]To everyone who thinks this is the same thing as a microphone![/HEADING]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal.
Basically speaking, microphones take electricity from their power source and encrypt the sound into that electricity, sending it out as an output.
tl;dr Microphones consume energy and output sound in electrical form.

Whereas this new invention takes the energy from the sound and transforms it into electricity. It does not output sound encrypted into electricity, but rather simply electricity.
tl'dr This invention consumes sound and outputs electricity.