FYI: Silicon Nonowires Convert Waste Heat to Electricity

Energy now lost as heat during the production of electricity could be harnessed through the use of silicon nanowires synthesized via a technique developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley. The far-ranging potential applications of this technology include DOE’s hydrogen fuel cell-powered “Freedom CAR,” and personal power-jackets that could use heat from the human body to recharge cell-phones and other electronic devices.

“Thermoelectric materials, which have the ability to convert heat into electricity, potentially could be used to capture much of the low-grade waste heat now being lost and convert it into electricity,” said Arun Majumdar, a mechanical engineer and materials scientist with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley  . . . more

Comments

[bigTom]

Assuming this stuff can lead to real products, this could be very interesting. A real product would have some important specifications:
(1) For a given application thermodynamic efficiency. A perfect heat engine would provide usable energy of (T1-T0)/T1. What fraction of this is obtainable by thermoelectric means.
(2) Of course cost, size, weight, lifetime, and ruggedness are also important aspects.
(3) For many applications, how much heat per unit area can be absorbed would be important.
If all three of these areas were addressed there would be many uses. Mostly they could be used to improve the efficiency of current devices. One example would be an ICE auto engine (such as in a hybrid electric vehicle). If the ICE was twenty percent efficient, and a ten percent efficient thermoelectric generator were applied to all the waste heat, then total efficiency could be increased to 28%.
I suspect this stuff is just gee-wiz lab results at this point.

[david]

if you have underwear made with this stuff then you could always charge any number of gadgets on your person

[Cyrus]

If a thermoelectric practical outside a few niche applications is developed, the first products I would expect to see it in are refrigeration systems. Run backwards, a thermoelectric is a no-moving-parts heat pump.

[Electric Car Kit Guy]

Does anyone know of specific uses in place today? It has beed a while since this was posted, so maybe there is more info on it?

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If all three of these areas were addressed there would be many uses. Mostly they could be used to improve the efficiency of current devices.

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What a great idea, why waste energy if we can save and use it??

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I hope they get this up and running, this could really help change the world.

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What is a nonowire?

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Such great stuff, is this being used yet?

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Wow how amazing that we could potentially use human body heat!