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Ceperley5 anticipated that higher efficiencies
Reinventing
the engine
Steven L. Garrett
Glass-blowers have known for centuries that a heated vessel can
generate sound. Thermoacoustic energy conversion can now be
made as efficient as energy conversion in an internal-combustion
engine a feat that has been accomplished in a device with no
moving parts.
he operation of the internal-combus-
T tion engine depends on the proper
phasing of the compression, ignition,
expansion and exhaust stages of the power
cycle. This phasing is maintained by mechan-
ical means. Modern car engines may require
as many as 24 valves (each with a rocker arm,
spring, push rod, cam and so on) to produce
the required phasing. The thermoacoustic
Stirling heat engine, described by Backhaus
and Swift on page 335 of this issue1, has a ther-
mal efficiency (ratio of net work produced to
fuel energy used) of 30%, comparable to that
of a car engine (2540%). They use carefully
shaped acoustic ducts to provide the required
phasing, thereby eliminating any moving
parts, other than the acoustic oscillations of
the gas. There are no sliding seals or
machined parts requiring tight tolerances
and lubrication. The working fluid is pressur-
ized helium, an inert gas, which neither
depletes stratospheric ozone nor contributes
to global warming. The simplicity and effi-
ciency of their thermoacoustic approach
could provide new, environmentally friendly
options to industries as diverse as transporta-
tion, natural-gas liquefaction, refrigeration
and air conditioning (see Box 1, overleaf).
Over the past two decades, substantial
progress has been made in thermoacoustic
engine and refrigerator development. Ther-
moacoustic devices have flown on the space
shuttle2, cooled radar electronics on a US
Navy destroyer3, and liquefied 140 gallons of
natural gas per day4. In these earlier devices,
the gas used as the working fluid is placed in
thermal contact with a solid medium, called
a stack owing to its resemblance to a pile of
plates. During periodic fluctuations in gas
pressure, the gas passing through the stack in
an engine is heated at the proper phase in the
acoustic cycle to amplify the oscillations.
This is similar to the way light waves are
amplified as they reverberate within the
optical resonator of a laser.
The gas-filled interstices within these
stacks are comparable in size (` 0.5 mm)
to the distance over which heat can diffuse
during one-quarter of the acoustic cycle
typically about a millisecond. The imperfect
thermal contact in the stacks pores provides
the phasing between the compressions,
NATURE | VOL 399 | 27 MAY 1999 | www.nature.com
could be obtained using a solid medium with
much smaller pore sizes a Stirling-cycle
regenerator rather than a stack.
The history of the Stirling cycle goes back
to 1816, when the Reverend Robert Stirling
invented a hot-air engine that operated
without a high-pressure steam boiler. The
Stirling engine depended for its power on the
expansion and displacement of air inside a
cylinder, heated by external combustion
through a heat exchanger. Stirling also
conceived the idea of a regenerator to store
thermal energy during part of the cycle and
return it later. This increased the efficiency of
expansions and acoustic displacements the device, but its mechanical complexity
necessary to lead the gas through the desired
thermoacoustic cycle. The phasing for this
cycle is almost the same as the phasing of an
was greater than internal combustion
engines (which do not require heat exchang-
ers), resulting in high production costs and
acoustic standing wave within a confined restricting its widespread use.
space, such as the wave motion of air in an Ceperley recognized that the phasing in a
organ pipe. The pressure fluctuations lead or Stirling-cycle engine was essentially the same
lag the gas velocity oscillations by nearly a as in a travelling acoustic wave pressure
quarter of a cycle. This produces very simple and velocity are in phase. The gas-filled pore
engines and refrigerators, but the entropy sizes in the regenerator are so small that the
generated by the irreversible thermal trans- high heat capacity of the regenerator materi-
fer between the gas and the stack limits the al (usually tightly packed metal screens)
efficiency of such standing-wave thermo- causes the gas temperature to be the same as
acoustic engines. In the late 1970s, Peter that of the regenerator at all times. But there
a /4
Large gas motion
Large pressure
oscillations
Pmean+Pi
Pmean
Pmean-Pi
0
b
Heat leaves through Heat enters through
cold heat exchanger hot heat exchanger
Regenerator
Jet pump
Thermal buffer tube
Surge Flow straightener
volume
(compliance)
Flow constriction
Figure 1 The workings of the thermoacoustic Stirling engine. a, A quarter-wavelength standing-wave
resonator similar to that used by Backhaus and Swift1. The bulb is able to store gas and reduce
pressure oscillations at the open end of the resonator, making it half as long as it would have been if
both ends were closed. As the gas sloshes towards the closed end of the tube, the pressure increases
above the mean pressure. As the gas is forced back into the bulb by the excess pressure at the closed
end, the gas overshoots its equilibrium position and the pressure at the closed end is reduced below
the mean pressure value. This oscillation of the gas in and out of the bulb occurs at the lowest
natural resonance frequency. b, Backhaus and Swift exploit the large pressure oscillations at the
closed end of the tube to force gas through the regenerator in a Stirling-cycle engine. They produce a
pressure difference across the regenerator by adding a gentle flow constriction and some extra
volume that induces gas flow velocities through the regenerator with travelling-wave phasing. The
tapered orifice behind the cold exchanger acts as a jet pump to suppress streaming flow around
the loop. The flow straightener keeps the gas in the thermal buffer tube (shown here as bent, but
actually straight and slightly tapered) from being stirred up by the turbulence at the junction of
the loop and resonator.
1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd 303
news and views
A clever arrangement involving a surge
Box 1:Cool sounds and hot loudspeakers volume (compliance) and a gentle flow
constriction (feedback inertance) near the
Like many other heat loudspeakers, which use closed end of the resonator (Fig. 1b) pro-
engines, the operation of a moving coil attached to duces sufficient pressure difference across
a thermoacoustic engine a felt cone to radiate the regenerator to force the gas through it
can be reversed. Instead sound, this loudspeaker with the proper travelling-wave phasing.
of supplying heat and uses a stationary coil The combination of travelling-wave phasing
generating sound, as and magnets that are and high acoustic impedance allows the
demonstrated by efficiency so that the attached to a moving stack to be replaced by a regenerator, which
Backhaus and Swift1, overall efficiency of the piston12. The felt cone is nearly doubles the efficiency of previous
mechanical energy could refrigerator or air replaced by a metal stack-based thermoacoustic engines6.
be supplied in the form conditioner is not bellows that can A further problem is created by the large
of sound. This would compromised. withstand large acoustic power flow in the engine. This caus-
mean the engine could Speakers used in pressures and still es streaming of the gas, which can short cir-
be used to pump heat home stereo systems or provide a flexible seal cuit the hot and cold ends of the regenerator
from a low temperature in theatres must cover that has low loss and and waste large amounts of heat. A novel jet
to a higher temperature, the entire audio can operate for 100 pump is incorporated in the Los Alamos
thus producing useful spectrum (20 Hz to 20 billion cycles. engine, which uses acoustics to create the
refrigeration. Several kHz), but they rarely The acoustic back pressure necessary to cancel the
devices that incorporate produce more than a amplitudes within these streaming. The jet pump relies on the asym-
both a thermoacoustic few watts of radiated thermoacoustic metry between inflow and outflow through
engine to generate acoustic power or refrigerators and engines a tapered orifice. In oscillatory (acoustic)
sound, and harness that achieve electroacoustic reach sound levels flows, summing these flow-direction-
sound to produce conversion efficiencies in around 190 dB. That is dependent pressures results in a net pressure
thermoacoustic excess of 1%. Recent about ten million times at the orifice7, which Backhaus and Swift
refrigeration, were advances in linear as intense as the front- adjusted to suppress the streaming.
developed at Los motors12 have made row levels at a rock Thermoacoustic engines and refrigera-
Alamos7 and elsewhere11 possible the concert and 300 times tors were already becoming attractive alter-
to create heat-driven development of the intensity required to natives in specialized applications24, where
refrigerators, again loudspeakers with ignite human hair! But their simplicity, lack of lubrication or sliding
without requiring any limited frequency ranges, because the sound is seals, and their use of environmentally
moving parts. but which can produce produced inside a rigid harmless working fluids, have been adequate
Most refrigerators and kilowatts of acoustic pressure vessel, the compensation for their lower efficiency.
air conditioners use power with measured sound levels outside This latest breakthrough1, coupled with the
electrical energy, not efficiencies as high as these devices are much earlier development of flow-through ther-
heat. To exploit 85% (ref. 9). lower, and can be lower moacoustic refrigerators8 and the demon-
thermoacoustic- A high-power, high- than existing vapour- stration of high-power, high-efficiency
refrigeration technology efficiency loudspeaker9 compression systems of loudspeakers9 (see Box 1), should eliminate
in those applications, a developed for a similar cooling capacity. the current efficiency deficit.
loudspeaker is required shipboard In applications that There is little doubt that this emerging
to convert electrical thermoacoustic air require low sound levels, technology, invented by a small cadre of
power into high-intensity conditioner with a 10 kW it is easy to cancel the physicists, will be further improved when
sound. This cooling capacity is residual sound the technical talents and resources of the
electroacoustic energy shown here (patent electronically because engineering community are applied to the
conversion must be pending). Unlike only a single-frequency development of new thermoacoustic prod-
accomplished at high conventional tone is radiated. S. L. G. ucts. Much needs to be done to exploit this
technology for applications that need
were problems with Ceperleys engine that cannot penetrate the closed end, but the mechanical or electrical energy. For exam-
prevented it from reaching its potential effi- pressure swings can be very large at the reso- ple, the acoustic power generated by the
ciency. The small pore size produces signifi- nance frequency (Fig. 1a). During one half of BackhausSwift engine could be used to
cant frictional losses as the gas flows through the acoustic cycle, the pressure is increased drive a loudspeaker backwards. The pressure
the regenerator. Additionally, the toroidal by the motion of the gas rushing from the on a moving piston could move the magnets
geometry proposed by Ceperley allowed the open bulb of the resonator towards the back and forth through the coils and gener-
gas to stream between the hot and cold heat closed end. The increased gas pressure even- ate electricity to recharge batteries in an
exchangers, wasting a large fraction of the tually stops the inflow and acts as a spring electric vehicle.
engines thermal energy. These limitations that accelerates the gas away from the closed Thermoacoustics may soon emerge as an
delayed the fabrication of any useful engines end during the next half of the acoustic cycle. environmentally attractive option for pow-
based on the travelling-wave concept. Because of its inertia the gas overshoots its ering hybrid electrical vehicles, solar energy
Backhaus and Swift1 now provide elegant equilibrium position, pulling gas away from conversion10, refrigeration, air conditioning
acoustic solutions to both of these problems the closed end and creating a pressure mini- and potential large-scale applications yet to
in their thermoacoustic Stirling engine, mum. At the closed end, the ratio of pressure be imagined.
developed at Los Alamos National Laborato- to volumetric flow rate (known as the Steven L. Garrett is at the Graduate Program in
ry. They placed their regenerator in a loop acoustic impedance) in the BackhausSwift Acoustics, Pennsylvania State University, PO Box
near to the closed end of their acoustic stand- engine is 30 times larger than that of an 30, State College, Pennsylvania 16804, USA.
ing-wave resonator. At this end of the res- acoustic travelling wave, thereby reducing e-mail: garrett@sabine.acs.psu.edu
onator, the gas motion is small, because it the frictional losses within the regenerator. 1. Backhaus, S. & Swift, G. W. Nature 399, 335338 (1999).

304 1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd NATURE | VOL 399 | 27 MAY 1999 | www.nature.com

2. Garrett, S. L., Adeff, J. A. & Hofler, T. J. J. Thermophys. Heat
Trans. 7, 595599 (1993).
3. Garrett, S. L. US Pat. No. 5,647,216 (1997).
4. Swift, G. W. Proc. DOE Natural Gas Conf. (Fed. Energy Tech.
Cent., Morgantown, West Virginia, 1997).
5. Ceperley, P. H. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 72, 16881694 (1982); US
Pat. No. 4,114,388 (1979).
6. Swift, G. W. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 92, 15511563 (1992).
7. Swift, G. W., Gardner, D. L. & Backhaus, S. J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
105, 711724 (1999).
Ecology
When one eye is better than two
Mandyam V. Srinivasan
volution has generated a bewildering
E variety of life forms on this planet.
Curiously, it has also occasionally pro-
duced animals from entirely different fami-
lies that seem to have converged on a similar
design plan apparently as a result of simi-
lar lifestyles and environmental pressures.
One instance of this, reported by Pettigrew et
al.1 and Fritsches and Marshall2 in Current
Biology, is vision in the chameleon and in the
sandlance Limnychthyes fasciatus, a small
teleost fish14.
The chameleon catches insects with a
quick flick of its long tongue5. The sandlance
lies concealed in underwater sand beds with
only its eyes protruding above the surface,
then lunges at tiny, unsuspecting copepods
(aquatic crustaceans) that stray too near4.
Pettigrew et al. and Fritsches and Marshall
now show that there are extraordinary paral-
lels between these two behaviours, and
between the visual systems that mediate
them.
To a casual observer, the dart of the
chameleons tongue is very similar in its
trajectory to the lunge of the sandlance. The
sandlance is, in effect, a chameleons tongue
with eyes at the tip1. Moreover, both the
chameleon and the sandlance move the two
eyes independently and alternately (Fig. 1)1,2
while one eye remains motionless, the
other scans the environment in a saccadic
(jerky) fashion, presumably seeking prey.
The two eyes alternate when looking around
the environment, and each covers about half
the panorama. Scanning alternately with the
two eyes reduces the chance of alerting the
prey by tell-tale eye movements. Plus, given
that the two eyes are not yoked together to
look in the same direction, it would be
sensible not to move them simultaneously.
Otherwise, it could be difficult for the ani-
mal to decide whether the two eyes were
viewing the same target.
In both animals, the cornea of the eye
rather than the lens provides the bulk of
the refracting power. This extends the effec-
tive focal length of the eye, giving it a higher
angular resolution1. Moreover, the cornea
(not the lens) enables the eye to change its
focus and view objects at different distances.
This property makes the sandlance very
NATURE | VOL 399 | 27 MAY 1999 | www.nature.com
8. Reid, R. S., Ward, W. C. & Swift, G. W. Phys. Rev. Lett. 80,
46174620 (1998).
9. Smith, R. W. M., Keolian, R. M., Garrett, S. L. & Corey, J. C.
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 105, 1072 (1999).
10. Chen, R.-L. & Garrett, S. L. in Proc. 16th Int. Congr. Acoust.
Vol. 2 (eds Kuhl, P. K. & Crum, L. A.) 813814 (Acoust. Soc.
Am., Woodbury, New York, 1998).
11. Hofler, T. J., Adeff, J. A. & Atchley, A. A. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101,
3021 (1997).
12. Yarr, G. A. & Corey, J. C. US Pat. No. 5,389, 844 (1995).
Figure 1 Keeping an eye on things
independent eye movements in the chameleon
and sandlance. The activity of the two eyes
alternates, each covering about half the
panorama. Pettigrew et al.1 and Fritsches and
Marshall2 show that there are many other
parallels between the visual systems of these two
animals, which are surprising given that they
come from such evolutionarily distinct families.
different from most other fish, which focus
mainly through the lens3. Pettigrew et al.1
show that, in both the sandlance and the
chameleon, the refracting power of the
cornea is adjusted by a fast-acting, striated
cornealis muscle. There is also evidence that
the chameleon perceives depth by monitor-
ing how much one eye is focused, rather than
by combining the images from both eyes
(stereopsis)5. The sandlance probably adopts
a similar tactic1, meaning that both animals
a
C A
N
b
C A
N
Figure 2 How the sandlance and the chameleon could gauge depth by rotating a single eye. a, When
the eye faces straight ahead, objects A and B are imaged at the same place on the retina. b, When the
eye rotates, however, the image of A moves by a larger amount than that of B, revealing that A is closer
than B. This method of estimating distance is possible only if the nodal point of the eye (N) is located
well in front of the centre of rotation of the eye (C), as is the case in these animals.
1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd
news and views
can, and do, strike at a target using visual
information from just one eye.
The stronger refraction provided by the
cornea (as opposed to the lens) means that,
in each animal, the nodal point the point
within the eye at which the lines connecting
points in the scene and corresponding points
in the image intersect lies well in front of
the centre about which the eye rotates1,6. As a
result, when the eye rotates, the images of
objects at different distances move by differ-
ent amounts on the retina (Fig. 2). This
means that rotation of a single eye can pro-
vide information about the relative distances
of different objects. The animal can even
J. D. PETTIGREW ET AL.
estimate absolute distances if the amount of
eye rotation is known. By gauging the dis-
tances of objects by rotating just one eye,
without using binocular stereopsis, and
without having to move the whole head as
some insects do7,8, the chameleon and the
sandlance minimize their chances of being
detected by potential prey1,3. At present,
however, such a means of distance estima-
tion by these animals is only a theoretical
possibility.
Despite belonging to such different
families, the chameleon (a reptile) and the
sandlance (a fish) seem to have converged on
a common set of design principles for their
visual systems. So, in these two animals, eye
design cannot be predicted by evolutionary
origin rather, it has been crafted almost
exclusively by environmental constraints.
But the visual system of the sandlance seems
to differ from that of most other vertebrates
(including the chameleon) in that, after the
eye has moved to a particular position, it
does not stay there. Instead, Fritsches and
Marshall2 find that the gaze drifts slowly back
towards the central viewing direction, pre-
sumably because of restoring forces exerted
by the muscles that rotate the eye. This drift
challenges the accepted idea3,9 that animals
strive to keep a still image of the world on
B
B
305