Waste Heat to Electricity?

Darwin_Frog writes: "Recent advances in thermionics at MIT lets waste heat generate electricity, thus pushing entropy one step further down the chain. These devices work at a temperature around 250 deg. C, instead of around 1000, so cars can augment the alternator by using the waste heat in the exhaust system to produce power for onboard electronics and A/C."

Comments

Matrix style

[King of Caffiene]

soon they'll be able to use excess heat from humans...matrix style.

Introducing...

[Iamthefallen]

Introducing Athlon XP 5000 - Now self powered!

Re:Introducing...

[mother_superius]

In this universe, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

thermodynamics, and entropy, and all that

[StandardDeviant]

here's the layman's formulation of the things that give chemistry students the cold sweats, the rules of the game as it were:

1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You have no choice about playing.

Any closed system ends up in the state of most disorder, and all systems are closed if you look at the boundaries carefully. No matter how hard you try, no matter what ingenous things you do, in the end, the dealer wins and everything is dust. Cold dust, at that. The more energy you expend enforcing order, the more chaos you cause. There are no wins in technology, only a prolonging of the inevitable loss. So while I'm sure this new doohickey is neat, somewhere, Carnot is laughing and his cycle is tapping you on the shoulder snickering to itself.

Re:Meteor?

[dattaway]

How many kilowatts can we reclaim from this meteor?

Four smaller ones? Imagine reclaiming the heat from a cluster of these...