Feb
3
A More Efficient Way to Move Heat
February 3, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Rice University’s materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan with graduate student Jaime Taha-Tijerina and postdoctoral researcher Tharangattu Narayanan, with help from Matteo Pasquali, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry, have created a nano-infused oil that could greatly enhance the ability of devices as large as electrical transformers and as small as microelectronic components to [...]
Jan
26
Canadian Tech May Give Geothermal New Prospects
January 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment
For seven years Ontario’s inventor Ian Marnoch has been developing a new kind of “heat engine” that he says can generate electricity more economically from lower-grade heat. While that heat could come from anywhere: the ground, the sun, or an industrial waste process, geothermal needs a much better temperature spread to achieve wide ranging use. [...]
Nov
18
Good Thermoelectric Devices Coming Soon
November 18, 2011 | 7 Comments
Dr. Ole Martin Løvvik of Oslo University’s Center for Materials Science and Nanotechnology in Norway has been studying the thermoelectric effect at the nanoscale for several years. Dr. Løvvik’s project in semiconductor physics is to develop oxidic thermoelectrics for generation of electricity from concentrated solar heat, waste heat from fuel cells and engines at high [...]
Jul
28
A New Thermal Energy to Electricity Device
July 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment
The Wiz Folks at MIT have a new design to take heat and make electricity. Using a new nanofabrication technique, MIT’s researchers make plates of tungsten with billions of regularly spaced, uniform nanoscale holes on the surfaces. Using a further development of the thermophotovoltaic system, the new type of photonic crystal serves as a thermal [...]
Jul
6
Moving Infrared Wave Energy With Wires
July 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment
A project of three research groups at nanoGUNE at Donostia in San Sebastian, Spain, reports an innovative method to focus infrared light with tapered transmission lines to nanometer-size dimensions. The key in that announcement is the method of transporting infrared energy by wire. If the physics expressed in the paper work out to larger applications [...]
Jun
23
Heat Direct to Electricity Alloy Found
June 23, 2011 | 2 Comments
University of Minnesota (UM) engineering researchers in the College of Science and Engineering have recently discovered a new alloy material that converts heat directly into electricity. Getting from heat to electric power has a loss of the energy i.e. steam to turbine to generator with each step having energy losses of significance that the UM [...]
May
10
Collecting Solar Heat to Make Electricity
May 10, 2011 | 1 Comment
Rice University researchers are describing a new way to harvest solar energy with a new paper this week in the journal Science. Naomi Halas, Rice’s Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, the paper’s lead researcher explains, “We’re merging the optics of nanoscale antennas with the electronics of semiconductors. There’s no practical way [...]
May
5
A Totally New Take On Heat Pumps
May 5, 2011 | 1 Comment
From out of Norway comes a new take on the heat pump. Scientists at the University of Stavanger in Norway (USN) are testing an entirely new kind of heat pump. While heat pumps used today typically last 10 to 20 years, the Norwegian scientists are testing an entirely new kind of heat pump. Today’s heat [...]
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