Slashdot Mirror
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."
It'd be great if we could use this for cheap solar cells. Regular solar cells are pretty expensive. (I'm almost convinced that other industries are screwing with the market to make them cost so much). Anyhow, does anyone know how much this new stuff would cost? PS: nuclear's my favorite, but it's too easy for the govt to regulate.
I don't think so. First your 100 HP engine will only produce 25-35 HP most of the time. Peak power is only produced during hard accerlation during cruse it's much lower and at iddle almost nonexistant. This is 99% of the time. Also an alternator only produses 1-1.5 KW. And the battery cannot be replaced it's needed to start the engine and supply power at low speed when your charging device is insufficent.
Not too much info yet. In particular, there's no indication of how much such devices will cost per watt. This is a basic problem with things like Peltier-effect devices and solar cells; they work fine, but you need an awful lot of them to get serious power levels. If this requires something like a wafer fab to make, it will be a niche device for years to come.