Bubble Power | Electronics Seminar Topic
Bubble Power
The standard of living in a society is measured by the
amount of energy consumed. In the present scenario where the conventional fuels
are getting depleted at a very fast rate the current energy reserves are not
expected to last for more than 100 years. Improving the harnessing efficiency
of non-conventional energy sources like solar, wind etc. as a substitute for
the conventional sources is under research.
One of the conventional methods of producing bulk energy is
nuclear power. There are two types of nuclear reactions, namely fission &
fusion. They are accompanied by the generation of enormous quantity of energy.
The energy comes from a minute fraction of the original mass converting
according to Einstein’s famous law: E=mc2, where E represents energy, m is the
mass and c is the speed of light. In fission reaction, certain heavy atoms,
such as uranium is split by neutrons releasing huge amount of energy.
It also
results in waste products of radioactive elements that take thousands of years
to decay. The fusion reactions, in which simple atomic nuclei are fused
together to form complex nuclei, are also referred to as thermonuclear
reactions. The more important of these fusion reactions are those in which
hydrogen isotopes fuse to form helium.
The Sun’s energy is ultimately due to
gigantic thermonuclear reaction.The waste products from the fusion plants would
be short lived, decaying to non-dangerous levels in a decade or two. It
produces more energy than fission but the main problem of fusion reaction is to
create an atmosphere of very high temperature and pressure like that in the Sun.
A new step that has developed in this field is ‘Bubble
Power’- the revolutionary new energy source. It is working under the principle
of Sonofusion. For several years Sonofusion research team from various
organizations have joined forces to create Acoustic Fusion Technology Energy
Consortium (AFTEC) to promote the development of sonofusion.
It was derived
from a related phenomenonknown as sonoluminescence. Sonofusion involves tiny
bubbles imploded by sound waves that can make hydrogen nuclei fuse and may one
day become a revolutionary new energysource.
