cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discoverd

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

ohiovr
Posts: 431
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2009 6:36 pm
Contact:

cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discoverd

Post by ohiovr »

http://news.sciencemag.org/chemistry/20 ... oing-waste

Assuming it has a temperature range between 300 and 600 K, efficiency could be as high as 19% which is comparable to an internal combustion engine, but with some not so obvious advantages.

ohiovr
Posts: 431
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2009 6:36 pm
Contact:

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by ohiovr »

I was wrong:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 13184.html

It has a upper temperature limit of 923 K (211 K away from its melting point) and therefor a absolute efficiency of 27%

ladajo
Posts: 6258
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by ladajo »

This is definitely something that makes me go "hmmmm".
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Skipjack
Posts: 6805
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by Skipjack »

ohiovr wrote:I was wrong:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 13184.html

It has a upper temperature limit of 923 K (211 K away from its melting point) and therefor a absolute efficiency of 27%
Wow, 27% would be very interesting! Nuclear battery anyone?

ohiovr
Posts: 431
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2009 6:36 pm
Contact:

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by ohiovr »

Skipjack wrote:
ohiovr wrote:I was wrong:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 13184.html

It has a upper temperature limit of 923 K (211 K away from its melting point) and therefor a absolute efficiency of 27%
Wow, 27% would be very interesting! Nuclear battery anyone?
Generational battery. Every 68 years you got to take the strontium in for refinement :D

D Tibbets
Posts: 2775
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:52 am

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by D Tibbets »

Some comparisons might be in order. My recollection is that typical thermoelectric devices are at best 2-3% efficient. If something can increase that 10 fold,that would be tremendous. The poorly performing and power hungry piezoelectric coolers/ heaters would be revolutionized. Spacecraft thermoelectric batteries also.

I suspect such a device may not replace camshafts or turbines for converting fuel energy into mechanical energy, but if they work at appropriate temperatures they could supplement the efficiency considerably. Instead of 30-40% efficiencies a combined efficiency of 50-70% might be possible. A coal fired power plant might increase output by hundreds of Megawatts without burning more coal. The only modification may just be cutting into the steam line past the low pressure turbine and diverting it to thermoelectric converters. The costs may be modest with the added benefit of less waste heat management resources needed. I could even see it applied to spent fuel rods once they cooled some, and provide additional (nuclear battery) power.

Even in a fusion reactor it would narrow the gap between a thermal steam plant and a direct conversion scheme. In a space craft it might eliminate the need for a steam plant in a D-T or D-D reactor, and perhaps decrease the radiator requirements for any given electrical output, even for a direct conversion reactor.. Using the Mars Curiosity rover, or the Saturn and Jupiter or Voyager, or New Dawns probes, the available energy available could be significantly increased while also significantly decreasing the weight and radiator needs of the nuclear batteries.

Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.

Diogenes
Posts: 6967
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by Diogenes »

ohiovr wrote:http://news.sciencemag.org/chemistry/20 ... oing-waste

Assuming it has a temperature range between 300 and 600 K, efficiency could be as high as 19% which is comparable to an internal combustion engine, but with some not so obvious advantages.


Veeeeeeerrrrryyy Innnnnteeeerrreeessstttinng.

Image
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Aero
Posts: 1200
Joined: Mon Jun 30, 2008 4:36 am
Location: 92111

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by Aero »

D Tibbets wrote:Some comparisons might be in order. My recollection is that typical thermoelectric devices are at best 2-3% efficient. If something can increase that 10 fold,that would be tremendous. The poorly performing and power hungry piezoelectric coolers/ heaters would be revolutionized. Spacecraft thermoelectric batteries also.

I suspect such a device may not replace camshafts or turbines for converting fuel energy into mechanical energy, but if they work at appropriate temperatures they could supplement the efficiency considerably. Instead of 30-40% efficiencies a combined efficiency of 50-70% might be possible. A coal fired power plant might increase output by hundreds of Megawatts without burning more coal. The only modification may just be cutting into the steam line past the low pressure turbine and diverting it to thermoelectric converters. The costs may be modest with the added benefit of less waste heat management resources needed. I could even see it applied to spent fuel rods once they cooled some, and provide additional (nuclear battery) power.

Even in a fusion reactor it would narrow the gap between a thermal steam plant and a direct conversion scheme. In a space craft it might eliminate the need for a steam plant in a D-T or D-D reactor, and perhaps decrease the radiator requirements for any given electrical output, even for a direct conversion reactor.. Using the Mars Curiosity rover, or the Saturn and Jupiter or Voyager, or New Dawns probes, the available energy available could be significantly increased while also significantly decreasing the weight and radiator needs of the nuclear batteries.

Dan Tibbets
That's thinking big power Dan. Think small for a bit. Some experiments have been made with existing thermo electrics using heat of the exhaust manifold on IC engines to supplement/replace the alternator. Cross country trucking is an application where it is most sought. I imagine police cars, busses, taxi's and other high duty IC cycle engines as installations making a big contribution to fuel efficiency once such generators are economical and efficient enough.
Aero

ladajo
Posts: 6258
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by ladajo »

This is an important consdieration. The normal running load of an average vehicle does not come anywhere close to attached generator (alternator) capacity.
It is sized to support battery load and abnormal operating conditions, such as all lighting active and battery charging at high rate.
This flyweight, even unloaded, creates significant drag and efficiency loss on the engine. Alternators do not have clutches like AC Compressors do.

Even placement of conformal solar panels on vehicles has the potential to significant reduce fuel burn in the aggregate. Especially if one attaches this idea to clutching out the alternator (generator) when using solar to supply low to medium system loads.

Note that the idea of using solar with a clutched generator/alternator is my idea alone. I claim rights to it here and now. :)
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Tom Ligon
Posts: 1871
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2007 1:23 am
Location: Northern Virginia
Contact:

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by Tom Ligon »

If I didn't have so many things that need doing today, I'd fire up the guarded hot plate sitting next to me with a bismuth telluride peltier device in it. I've already calibrated a handful of them as heat flow sensors, a job they do especially nicely.

What I've been meaning to do is load the devices down to measure power delivery instead of just voltage output. There are a lot of people toying with them as thermoelectric generators, but I've seen very little on their efficiency. I'm thinking of sticking a set on a heatsink and mounting it on the back of one of my photovoltaic arrays to scavenging waste heat.

These are commonly available and about two orders of magnitude cheaper than Omega HFS-3 thin film thermopiles, with about two orders of magnitude better output. But they're only rated to a temperature of about 90 C. Good for solar scavenging, not so good on the wood stove.

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by GIThruster »

IIUC, this will operate as a heater, a cooler and a thermal to electric transducer so it's pretty utilitarian stuff. It is essentially a nano-peltier device, that operates as it does because of the staggered n and p junction atoms. Note importantly, that because of this molecular structure, this can only be had in single crystal. Even anisotropic thin films do not display this kind of ordering. So they may call this "cheap" but it's many tens of thousands of crystal growth tanks away from ever being used for something like scavenging energy from an exhaust. Without investment in huge numbers of tanks, which is maybe even a billion dollar investment; these crystals are going to remain on the order of thousands of dollars/cc.

I think N-G has the largest dielectric crystal growth facility in the world and they have a couple hundred tanks. That's not enough to build exhaust systems at an affordable rate.

This has however, a multitude of applications that come before scavenging heat. Just being able to heat and cool in such a tiny package has real value. Look at where peltiers are already being used and you'll find the first applications. If this is really 27% efficient, it would enable the hottest chips to run unhindered on just a watt of power. That's enough for the next breakthrough in computing.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

Tom Ligon
Posts: 1871
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2007 1:23 am
Location: Northern Virginia
Contact:

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by Tom Ligon »

I did a little more looking into this article yesterday. I know some preppers interested in making thermoelectric generators (make power from you wood stove, etc.) I've got about 20 40 mm Peltier coolers that I've been working with as heat flow sensors. They're thermopiles, and can be used as thermoelectric generators. I've been paying about $5 each for them but you can get under $3.

The common bismuth telluride Peltier devices act as TEGs at about 4% efficiency, and can handle around 250 C. That's enough to be useful. A jump to, what did they say ... 19% ... is revolutionary.

ohiovr
Posts: 431
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2009 6:36 pm
Contact:

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by ohiovr »

Tom Ligon wrote:I did a little more looking into this article yesterday. I know some preppers interested in making thermoelectric generators (make power from you wood stove, etc.) I've got about 20 40 mm Peltier coolers that I've been working with as heat flow sensors. They're thermopiles, and can be used as thermoelectric generators. I've been paying about $5 each for them but you can get under $3.

The common bismuth telluride Peltier devices act as TEGs at about 4% efficiency, and can handle around 250 C. That's enough to be useful. A jump to, what did they say ... 19% ... is revolutionary.
Well they didn't specify the absolute efficiency I kind of figured that out using the formulas on the wiki concerning thermoelectric power. I made a spreadsheet to calculate it:

ohiovr.com/xfer/thermoelectric_performance.ods

It can be as high as 27% if the right temperatures are used. This could be a very useful technology on small scale solar thermal plants. A solar concentrator based on 1 square foot mirror tiles, placed on 3 boards of plywood could offer about 2400 watts of electric power, and you can use the waste heat directly in your water heater. If they can make it cheap it might make a lot of sense...

ohiovr
Posts: 431
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2009 6:36 pm
Contact:

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by ohiovr »

Tom Ligon wrote:I did a little more looking into this article yesterday. I know some preppers interested in making thermoelectric generators (make power from you wood stove, etc.) I've got about 20 40 mm Peltier coolers that I've been working with as heat flow sensors. They're thermopiles, and can be used as thermoelectric generators. I've been paying about $5 each for them but you can get under $3.

The common bismuth telluride Peltier devices act as TEGs at about 4% efficiency, and can handle around 250 C. That's enough to be useful. A jump to, what did they say ... 19% ... is revolutionary.

BTW are you saying you can buy Bismuth telleride modules for only 3 bucks? So far what I've seen cost nearly 100 bucks for just 5 measly watts....

Also Micropower global currently gets 19% efficiency on their lead telluride devices. They say they may reach 1 dollar per watt within a year or two. They were pretty excited when I told them about the tin selenide tech...

Tom Ligon
Posts: 1871
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2007 1:23 am
Location: Northern Virginia
Contact:

Re: cheap, high performance, thermo electric material discov

Post by Tom Ligon »

I've been getting them here:

http://www.mpja.com/Thermoelectric-Cool ... 30207%20PM

But the TEC1-12706 can be found on e-bay for less.

As a heat flow sensor the output voltage seems to be perfectly linear with heat flow.

I was surprised they can run this hot. As heater/coolers they're rated for 90 C max on the hot side. I've been thinking of putting them on the back of PV panels to use the waste heat to boost overall efficiency. Plus, cooling a PV panel boosts the efficiency a little anyway. But at 19% or better, why bother with the PV?

One digit change in the part number and you get data on it as a TEG in this abstract:

Title: Thermoelectric Power Generation System Using Waste Heat from Biomass Drying
Authors: Maneewan, S.; Chindaruksa, S.

Affiliation: AA(Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Thermal Energy and Energy Conservation Promotion Research Unit, Naresuan University), AB(Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Thermal Energy and Energy Conservation Promotion Research Unit, Naresuan University)
Publication: Journal of Electronic Materials, Volume 38, Issue 7, pp.974-980
Publication Date: 07/2009
Origin: CROSSREF; SPRINGER

Keywords: Thermoelectric, power generation, biomass drying
DOI: 10.1007/s11664-009-0820-5

Bibliographic Code: 2009JEMat..38..974M

Abstract
This paper looks at thermoelectric power generation from waste heat from a biomass drier. In this study, the researchers selected four thermoelectric modules: two thermoelectric cooling modules (Model A: MT2-1,6-127 and Model B: TEC1-12708) and two thermoelectric power generation modules (Model C: TEP1-1264-3.4 and Model D: TEG1-1260-5.1) for testing at temperatures between 25°C and 230°C. Test results indicated that the thermoelectric TEC1-12708 could generate a maximum power output of 1 W/module and TEP1-1264-3.4, TEG1-1260-5.1, and MT2-1,6-127 could generate 1.07 W/module, 0.88 W/module, and 0.76 W/module, respectively. Therefore, the thermoelectric cooling of TEC1-12708 was appropriate to use for thermoelectric power generation from waste heat. The experiments used four ventilation fans (6 W, 2.50 m3/s) and 12 thermoelectric modules which were installed in the back of a charcoal brazier. The experiments were conducted and tested in conditions of recycling 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% of outlet air. Testing results identified that the temperatures of the drying room were 81°C, 76°C, 70°C, and 64°C, respectively. The power generation system could generate about 22.4 W (14 V, 1.6 A) with an air flow of 9.62 m3/s. The thermoelectric module can convert 4.08% of the heat energy to electrical energy.

Post Reply