Yahoo Sports This Device Turns Low-Grade Waste Heat Into Electricity
Hong Kong University researchers have invented and patented a direct thermal charging cell (DTCC).
The DTCC is a recapture device that turns low-grade heat (under 200°C) into electricity.
Low-grade heat is a potential energy source around the world, including to desalinate seawater without outside energy.
Researchers at Hong Kong University have invented (and filed to patent) a way to convert the world’s plentiful low-grade heat into electricity.
Low-grade heat is produced on a massive scale around the world by manufacturing, computing, and many other industries—along with everyday items like air conditioners and household ovens. Scientists have worked to develop low-grade heat recovery technology for years, similar on a macro level to technologies like automotive superchargers or the KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) unit used by Formula 1. If we can capture our wasted energy before it actually goes to waste, isn’t that better?
In 2017, the European Union’s Central Europe Regional Development Fund published a report on low-grade waste heat. “Experts consider the dissipation of waste heat as a wasted opportunity if it is not recovered,” they wrote. “Most of the discharged waste heat during industrial processes is qualified as low-grade heat (under 200°C) which is immensely difficult to utilize.”
It’s within this gap in understanding where the HKU team got to work. They developed a direct thermal charging cell (DTCC) which is “bendable, stackable and low cost.” More importantly, the cell works with elusive low-grade heat. The researchers demonstrated by having a cell power an organic light-emitting diode (OLED).
The EU report cited industrial emissions reduction as one of the major incentives to recapture low-grade heat: preventing waste from leaving the premise while using its energy to power even small things is considered a win-win from an environmental and regulatory perspective. To that end, the HKU team took its invention to show at Singapore’s Hello Tomorrow Regional Challenge, a summit for startups and innovation that another HKU research team won last year with a design for less rigid, polymer-based medical devices.
Technologies like DTCCs seek to contribute to carbon neutrality—a term we hear constantly. A carbon-neutral technology can be anything from a device that recaptures and neutralizes its own waste using items like DTCCs and KERSes, but it can also mean companies that buy enough tree offset to balance their waste loads.
Giant corporations can often lead the way on carbon neutrality by having enough liquid capital to buy these offsets. Manufacturers and other industrial sectors have fewer attractive and easy options, but a low-cost energy recycling cell can represent a move toward carbon reduction that makes real sense for industry. The EU report put it simply: “Besides the obvious benefit of decarbonisation and sustainable growth, the use of waste heat recovery applications would contribute to job creation, the improvement of the Resource & Development sector, and have a positive effect to productivity and competitiveness.”
Small, but innovative technologies like this DTCC are steps on a much longer path to carbon neutrality around the world. We don’t know today what major invention could change the world’s approach to stanching climate change, and experimental progress with new inventions keeps the world’s imagination engaged as scientists apply for more funding and develop new research and devices to help us close the carbon gap.
A 2019 American Action Forum report concludes, “If a new energy source can be developed that fits the criteria of the above, the political calculus changes dramatically.” This seems especially true if the energy is from the parts of the world where manufacturing is still economically dominant.
You Might Also Like
