Apr

26

Thermoelectric Gains Performance With Better Materials

April 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment

The intense interest in harvesting energy from heat sources has led to a renewed push to discover materials that can more efficiently convert heat into electricity.  A team of Boston College and MIT researchers report developing a novel nanotech design that boosts the thermoelectric performance of a bulk alloy semiconductor by 30 to 40 percent. [...]

Apr

19

A Better Cheaper Thermoelectric Material

April 19, 2012 | 1 Comment

Purdue University assistant professor of chemical engineering Yue Wu leads a team developing a technique that uses nanotechnology to harvest energy from hot pipes or engine components.  The team has coated glass fibers with a new thermoelectric material they developed. When thermoelectric materials are heated on one side electrons flow to the cooler side, generating [...]

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 [...]

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