Word: kantrowitz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...different design and materials had been first tried in man 2½ years ago, when Dr. DeBakey used it to keep a moribund patient alive for 3½ days (TIME, Nov. 8, 1963), and for only the second time last February, when Brooklyn's Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz used a comparable device for 24 hours...
...possibility of generating useful amounts of electricity by blowing hot gas between the poles of a magnet has long intrigued adventurous physicists. Many have tried to turn the trick, but until Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz, chief of Avco Corp.'s Everett, Mass.. laboratory, reported impressive progress last week, large-scale magnetohydrodynamic power seemed as improbable as its nonstop name...
Nothing Simpler. Avco's Mark II generator has no moving parts; yet it generates 1,350 kilowatts of electric power. Dr. Kantrowitz likes to say that his creation is just like an ordinary rotary generator, but simpler. In one sense he is correct: a conventional generator has electrical conductors (copper wires) that are spun in a magnetic field by a steam turbine. Their motion causes a current to flow through them. In an MHD generator the conductor is a hot gas (plasma) that has been ionized by having electrons knocked off some of its atoms. When the plasma squirts...
...quickly destroys almost anything it comes in contact with, but Avco claims to have licked this problem by building the wall of its MHD generator out of water-cooled metal pegs separated by heat-resistant ceramic. This material has already lasted through six days of steady use. Dr. Kantrowitz feels sure that in a full-scale plant it will last long enough to make replacement a minor expense. Nor is he worried about the current that is consumed by resistance in the coils of the generator's magnet-a problem that has plagued experimenters in the past. Avco scientists...
...research is expensive and may become more so, but Avco is backed by a consortium of eleven powerful electric companies that sense a power revolution not many years away. If a full-scale generator works out as well as Dr. Kantrowitz expects, it will turn the chemical energy of coal or oil into electrical energy with 56% efficiency. The most efficient modern steam-driven generators do not get better than...