Is sound a potential source of wide-scale electrical energy?

Question

As an alternative source of power I am thinking that in places where noise is prevalent like in factories and manufacturing plants, the noisy sound can be utilized to produce electricity. I have thought of this long before I read that the clicking sound on the computer keyboard can actually recharge to some extent the battery of laptop PCs.

Answer 1

this is true to some extend, howeever it would be like adding a drop to the ocean.

the sound would either need to be VERY loud to produce any energy of significant use. and i myself doubt it would ever return the energy put in to actually building a device to harvest this power.

Answer 2

I'm just going off the top of my head,so this might make sense.....the sound wave is a by product of electrical/physical devices.Any energy that would be composed from this would be due to kinetic,or static charges from the source,but since sound moves spherically from the source you would have to focus it in a sort of beam,similar to the way a Bose radio uses chambers to amplify sound from the source to be a practical way of harnessing any way to get power from it,otherwise just leaving the battery in the sun could produce the same effect of a slight recharge

Answer 3

Actually that is what microphones do but the energy produced is very small. Therefore the building of a device to get any electricity at all would be very expensive rendering it counterproductive.

Answer 4

yes, sound is a potential source of energy, but you would get so little generated electricity that it would be virtually undetectable. Since energy cannot be created, we would have to convert the energy in sound to electrically useful energy. Assuming lossless conversion, which is impossible of course, the amount of energy in sound is too low to be useful. basically, converting sound to electricity will not work for anything usefull.

Answer 5

I doubt sound will go far. But windmills on the edge of racetracks might get you something. Might as well go with sound energy for that matter also.