RST Engineering wrote:

I'm just wondering if anybody has used either this scrap dump air to run a
wind driven generator, or whether any one of a number of ways of generating
electricity from heat has been attempted to convert waste exhaust gas into
excited little electrons? SOrt of a turbogenerator, if you will.

Jim


I remember one company making such a contraption as a drop down
emergency back-up generator. As I recall, the problem with using them
full-time is their horrible overall efficiency.

I'd be careful with anything that pulled energy from the cooling
airstream. Like Blueskies said, you gotta watch that you're not damming
things up. If you have engine cooling air leaving the airplane still
cool, the first thing you'd want to do is close up and streamline the
cooling intakes to reduce drag.

There have been some interesting developments with materials utilizing
the Seebeck (sp?) Effect recently. The new materials are driving the
efficiency up. I think the ultimate generator would be a
cylinder-head/peltier-cooler-in-reverse combination.