What was a good idea in 1987 is a better idea today.
Patent No. 4,680,478, granted to Prof. Frank Wicks for an
electricity-producing gas furnace, hasn't gone far in the last 16 years. Until
recently, energy was cheap and plentiful. And there wasn't a lot of worry about
greenhouse gases.
But now, says Wicks, things are different.
High energy costs, a reliance on imported oil, concern
over greenhouse warming, empty factories and government support for alternative
energy research … all have combined to make this the right time for Wicks to
fire up his idea.
On Tuesday, the professor of mechanical engineering demonstrated
his furnace to a steady stream of reporters, engineers, students and passersby at
the Ramada Inn. (He chose the Ramada because it provided easier parking than on
campus.) The demonstration was the start of what he calls a grass roots effort
to market his product and to lobby for legislation that would require gas
furnaces to produce electricity.
“I'm not trying to start a company,” he said. “I'm trying
to start an industry.”
The principle is comparable to harnessing the power of a
flowing stream, Wicks said. All heating systems are fundamentally wasteful
because they degrade all high-temperature heat into low-temperature
heat. “You can save the most where you waste the most,” Wicks said.
The simple system — comprised of a module, propane-burning
engine, generator and controller — can be made for about $1,000, Wicks said. It
converts 20 percent of the fuel to electricity and recovers the remainder as
space heat. “It is like a factory in which $100 of input fuel is transformed to
$80 worth of electricity and $80 worth of heat,” he said.
The furnace could be the most important advance in
decreasing the cost of home heating since Benjamin Franklin's wood stove cut
firewood consumption by 50 percent, Wicks said, adding that his invention can also cut
winter home heating and electric bills by half.
Wicks also is leading a petition
drive to have the New York State Legislature require by 2005 that 5 percent of
all new gas or propane furnaces should convert at least 15 percent of their
energy into electricity.
The ultimate potential in the U.S.
is to produce the electric energy equivalent of 25 large nuclear power plants,
as a co-product of home and other small space heating, he said.
Wicks' device was featured in the
late 80's on the business page of the The
New York Times and in Popular
Science. It has been recommended by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology. Prototype development and demonstrations have been performed by
Union students and funded by the United States Department of Energy and the
Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation. It has also been awarded the Energy Related
Invention of the Year by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Websites related to Wicks'
research can be found via Google by searching for “electricity producing
condensing furnace.”