Ohio Researchers Advance Heat Reclamation Technologies 124
Downchuck writes "Researchers at Ohio State University claim to have synthesized a new material capable of delivering electricity directly from heat, at an efficiency far better than existing thermoelectric materials. Scott at ArsTechnica has an interesting take: 'Merge this with the new MIT solar dish and you're in business!'"
Re:For those who didn't RTFA: (Score:5, Informative)
And since I can't make hyperlinks correctly on slashdot, I'll try again: thallium [wikipedia.org].
Nasty stuff, as its compounds are very easily absorbed through potassium uptake pathways in your body, but behave very, very differently from potassium. I seem to remember a chemist friend telling me that if you deal with thallium, you practically need an entirely separate lab for it.
Re:Technical point (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Technical point (Score:5, Informative)
heat != temperature
But you are right that you have to have a cold reservoir to get any work from the system. But heat in thermodynamics is not the same as temperature, and it generally denotes the amount of transfered thermal energy between two systems of differing temperature.
I'm assuming that the cold reservoir is the cooler temperature air surrounding the device.
Re:So, this is a reverse peltier? (Score:4, Informative)
This allows better RTGs, but they would only be marginally efficient for, say, reclaiming computer case waste heat. This is especially so as you can't put them on the CPU directly, where the differential is great, because they are insulating as well. You will need to put it at the radiating end, over a large surface.
Re:Technical point (Score:2, Informative)
Detailed Scientific Analysis Here (Score:5, Informative)
The article at the Green Car Congress site titled New Approach to Developing Thermoelectric Materials Doubles Efficiency" [greencarcongress.com] has a lot more scientific details than that article linked from the summary, especially on the actual formula that determines "zT", which is the thermoelectric conversion efficiency coefficient:
And also detailed nanomaterials engineering analysis of the quantum structure of the quantum chemistry's thermoelectric effects.
The comments attached to the fine article... (Score:5, Informative)
... contain a link to a possibly more useful article with some more comprehensible numbers:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/21125/ [technologyreview.com]
e.g. The device could increase fuel efficiency of vehicles by approximately 10 percent.
Re:Hot technology (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe the most important point, at what cost? how rare/expensive is that new material? If is very, maybe the main use would be not for our normal lifes, but maybe for i.e. space probes.
Lead is very cheap, Tellurium is about 20 some odd dollars per pound, but Thallium is damn expensive. In the late 90's Thallium was running about $600 per pound. That said, I'm not sure how much Thallium will be needed for this application.
Re:Technical point (Score:5, Informative)
But quadrupling them would. The old max zT these researchers were improving was about 0.87. They've now got it to about 1.5. And are targeting about 3.0 in their current research.
Freon refrigerators have a zT of about 3.0. Which makes these new materials look directly competitive with them for cooling when they reach that efficiency. Since zT 1 materials are about 10% efficient, zT 3 will be able to reclaim about 30% of waste heat. That would be about 20 points of the ~60% of gasoline energy wasted as heat in car engines. Since car engines are about 20% efficient now, that would mean doubling their fuel efficiency.
If these materials can be made, deployed, and recycled with close to (or less than) the energy inputs required now to make the car radiators/manifolds/exhaust systems they'd probably mostly replace, the benefits would be revolutionary.
Peltier devices work both ways (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Themoelectrics Already Pretty Good (Score:4, Informative)
"A thermoelectric material designed to replace a conventional Freon-gas refrigerator [llnl.gov] must have a ZT of at least 3."
But how does it compare to the JTEC? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Thallium (Score:3, Informative)
my chemistry professor was trying to stick thallium atoms to a cyclopentadiene molecules for some odd reason.
Usually when they stick goofy metals on organic compounds they intend for the metal to be replaced with some organic moiety. The metal guides the reaction so that the organic replacement attaches to the right carbon atom. Thallium cyclopentadiene is a starting material for prostaglandin synthesis. You add methoxymethyl chloride to it, and the methoxymethyl group replaces the thallium and you get methoxymethylcyclopentadiene plus thallium chloride.
Benzoxymethylchloride works too if you want to start with benzoxymethylcyclopentadiene.
Re:Technical point (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Themoelectrics Already Pretty Good (Score:3, Informative)
But this new material is already projecting a zT:3 as part of their current scope of R&D.
A Technology Review [technologyreview.com] article explains that in car engines, these zT jumps deliver efficiency from the old 6%, to the new 10%, looking at 21%. So it seems that this material does quite well at that hard job.