Nikolaus Laing

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Nikolaus Johannes Laing (born December 5, 1921 in Vechta ; † December 8, 2013 in Stuttgart ) was a German engineer , meteorologist and physicist who, as an entrepreneur, ran his own physical-technical institute, registered patents and, since the early 1970s, through ideas to solve the oil crisis with the help of solar energy became known.

Career

Laing's father was the classical philologist Alexander Laing, a descendant of the British major and Africa explorer Alexander Gordon Laing . His mother was Henriette Laing nee Hoyng.

After graduating from high school, Laing did a university internship as an aircraft builder and was a test pilot during the Second World War . After the war he studied meteorology and physics in Göttingen and Karlsruhe . During his studies, a patent for vacuum cleaner fans developed with his future wife Inge Melchior brought in start-up capital of 300,000 DM.

Inventor and entrepreneur

Laing founded a physical-technical research institute in Aldingen , of which he became the boss and owner. The principle of his company was based on developing new technical solutions to industrial problems as an independent institution, which could then be sold. In 1956, Laing and engineer Bruno Eck jointly invented the tangential fan. The tangential or cross-flow fans are based on a hollow cylindrical rotor with numerous narrow blades as a cover, generate little running noise and have a very good control behavior. The tangential fan could be produced inexpensively and conquered large markets within two decades. It is used in hair dryers , fan heaters , night storage heaters and air conditioning units , thus in almost every household in industrialized countries. In 1967 Nikolaus Laing presented the development of a completely new electric motor. The rotor of this motor, built in the form of a spherical cap, hovers almost without contact in a pan and is driven by a rotating magnetic field. This eliminated the typical problems of electric motors, which with the usual shafts and bearings showed high running noises and unpleasant wear. By the early 1970s, Laing had registered more than 1,700 patents, including magnetic field pumps, submersible pumps and injection pumps. The industrial turnover of products based on his patents rose to over two billion DM for the first time in 1972, the annual turnover of his research institute to more than ten million DM. In 1972, 114 scientists from the fields of physics, chemistry, electrical engineering and other engineering disciplines worked in his company. Laing also became entrepreneurial in the USA and founded the Laing-Vortex-Inc together with Robert B. Anderson in 1965 . in New York. Numerous US products have been made based on over 100 Laing patents.

Visionary for the use of solar energy

Due to the oil crisis of 1973, Laing drew attention to itself with a new concept of the so-called energy cascade. Water from the subterranean Northern Sahara lakes as well as from other bodies of water in Africa and on the Iberian Peninsula should be heated to 650 degrees Celsius with the help of special solar collectors in the Sahara and thus converted into high-pressure water vapor. The thermal energy stored in it was to be transported to Central Europe through a pipe system developed by Laing and made available there to energy consumers. Laing had already developed the necessary technology such as solar collectors, heat rectifiers, energy storage and especially the super-insulated, non-metallic pipe system. Among other things, the vision was to let the warm return water from the building heating and industrial systems flow through hollow reinforcements in streets and bridges, thus ensuring that motorways are always free of snow and ice. Where the solar energy for this hot water cascade was insufficient in countries too far north, nuclear energy should be used to heat the water instead of oil and coal. This vision would have required international cooperation between all African and European countries involved in the project. A solar energy commission was supposed to take care of this coordination, with the management of the politician Hans Leussink, who was a friend of Laing . Laing invested eight years of research until the energy transport through water vapor in the super-insulated pipe system appeared to be resolved.

From then on, the use of solar energy determined Laing's life in the long term. In 1978 he presented non -aging latent heat storage and a cold district heating system based on latent storage for the first time . In 1979 he gave a lecture on the subject of solar energy and the energy cascade in the Liederhalle in Stuttgart , which, however, met with great skepticism. Laing decided, under the impression that his ideas for switching to solar energy supply in Europe could not be implemented, to emigrate with his wife to the United States of America.

Research and development on the Solarmarin concept

The Laing couple moved to California. In 1984 Laing presented the Solarmarin concept, which he had patented two years earlier. It was intended as an economical approach to a large solar power plant. The concept assumed that solar power plants on the mainland would require too much space. Instead, many square kilometers of plastic floating solar islands were to be made off the coast of the sea. The solar panels on it were supposed to generate warm water, which could be stored in a foil bubble suspended from the island. Deep water was provided as cooling water for the power plant. The physicist couple promoted this idea in California for two decades. The Laing couple founded Pyron Solar Inc. to develop a photovoltaic system for large-scale use. The Laings managed to win Edward C. Nixon, a brother of the former US President Richard Nixon, as managing director . In 2004 the pilot plant of the Laing solar generator was built in a row house garden of an employee in El Cajon near San Diego. In April 2005, Die Zeit reported under the headline The Super Cell about the promising facility. As chairman of the environmental committee in the Bundestag , Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker considered the concentrator cells used for this to be a cheaper alternative to conventional photovoltaics. Although the goal of commercial use of the concept seemed close in 2005, health and economic problems arose in the following years for Nikolaus Laing, which finally forced him to sell his company and his patents at a loss. The Laing couple returned to Stuttgart. Despite many setbacks in their later years, the couple remained inventive into old age, which was reflected in numerous patents.

family

Nikolaus Laing was Catholic and had been married to the five years younger physicist Ingeborg (Inge) Laing b. Melchior, whom he met at the University of Karlsruhe. His wife Inge played a major role in her husband's ingenuity. The marriage resulted in three sons and three daughters. Nikolaus Laing was buried on December 13, 2013 in Remseck in the Aldingen district.

publication

  • Energy, challenge to the creative mind. City administration, Heilbronn 1978

literature

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ^ Obituary notice for Nikolaus Laing
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Klaus Eichmüller: Inventor couple Laing . Stuttgarter Nachrichten, May 25, 2011
  3. ^ Felix R. Paturi : Chronicle of technology . Dortmund 1988, p. 483 f.
  4. ^ Felix R. Paturi: Chronicle of technology . Dortmund 1988, p. 512
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h inventor. Dream without borders DER SPIEGEL 8/1974
  6. ^ Felix R. Paturi: Chronicle of technology . Dortmund 1988, p. 554
  7. ↑ a b c d Felix R. Paturi: Chronicle of technology . Dortmund 1988, p. 574
  8. ↑ a b c d e Cerstin Gammelin: Energy Special: The Super Cell. THE TIME Nº 18/2005
  9. ↑ List of some US registered patents since the early 1970s
personal data
SURNAME Laing, Nicholas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Laing, Nikolaus Johannes (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer, meteorologist and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Vechta
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 2013
Place of death Stuttgart