Lonnie Johnson is a nuclear engineer who's worked as Acting Chief of the Space Nuclear Power Safety Section at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, Senior Systems Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and formed the energy research firms Excellatron Solid State and Johnson Electro-Mechanical Systems. But his most important contribution to society thus far is the Super Soaker, an all-purpose weapon for watery destruction, in any season. I bet life and limb on my Super Soaker many a summer, and along with a fannypack full of water balloons, it helped me survive the Great Water War in the jungles of Spring, TX back in '87.
But spaceships and water guns aren't the endpoint of Johnson's achievements: Johnson has invented a solid-state heat engine that has the potential to boost solar-power efficiency by as much as 60 percent, making the traditionally expensive source competitive with more destructive sources like coal or oil.
The Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Conversion System, or JTEC, eschews traditional photovoltaic technology and instead works like a fuel cell by circulating hydrogen between two membrane-electrode assemblies. It operates as a closed system, with no input other than the sun's heat, intensified by a system of mirrors, and an electrical jolt to get the process started.
“It’s like a conventional heat engine,” explains Paul Werbos, program director at the National Science Foundation, which has provided funding for JTEC. “It still uses temperature differences to create pressure gradients. Only instead of using those pressure gradients to move an axle or wheel, he’s using them to force ions through a membrane. It’s a totally new way of generating electricity from heat.”
The end result is a hyper-efficient solar power system that could help ease some of the energy crunch. I'm psyched about Johnson's contribution to solar-power efficiency, but can he please get back to innovations in hydrogen dioxide weaponry? I've got a boatload of overconfident, grade-school kids in my nabe who aren't going to spray themselves this summer.
Super Soaker Inventor Aims to Cut Solar Costs in Half (Popular Mechanics)
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