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Key features of the NIFTE
A lack of dynamic seals and bearings gives NIFTE devices a clear set of
advantages over mechanical heat engines. Apart from unprecedented reliability
and low maintenance, NIFTEs can be manufactured from very low cost materials
using cheap and well established production techniques.
This makes them economically feasible in application areas where pumps are
not currently viable. NIFTEs are capable of pumping many different fluids,
from shear sensitive biological cultures to viscous and chemically, or mechanically
abrasive media. They have a gentle pumping action, and operate in almost
total silence. NIFTEs can be tuned during operation to suit a range of different
pumping head and flow requirements, and available power sources.
Another key attribute of NIFTEs is their ability to use heat as a power
source. Vapour cycle NIFTEs are particularly well suited to using heat at
low temperatures, such as waste heat from process loads or heat obtained
from solar collectors, thereby making them well suited to applications in
remote areas or hostile conditions, or helping users to meet increasingly
stringent emission standards.
NIFTEs can also use cool sources for power, taking their input heat from
the ambient environment. They are capable of adding or taking heat from
the fluid which they pump. This attribute can be adjusted to suit a wide
range of applications from those in which no heat flows into or out of the
pumped medium, to those in which almost all of the heat flow passing through
the system is added to, or removed from the pumped medium.
NIFTEs are self-starting, and require only small temperature differences
to excite and sustain oscillations. Furthermore, they do not require active
control systems, electronics or other costly or fault prone components to
operate.
Application areas
There are a number of applications in which one, or a combination of the
unique features of NIFTE devices make them highly competitive with existing
technologies. In many cases NIFTE devices open up the possibility of pumping,
heat pumping or compressing where it isn't currently considered to be an
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