New Method To Harness Wasted Energy

It is a scientific fact that nothing can be 100% efficient. Something is bound to be lost to the atmosphere and in most of the cases it is dissipated in the form heat. No matter what’s the extent of work, heat is always produced and it is just wasted. But now engineering researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed new nanomaterial that could help us in harnessing the dissipated energy and put that to work. What they used is aluminium and a microwave oven.

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The team decided to harness electricity from wasted heat. For this purpose they required a material that is a good conductor of electricity but equally poor thermal conductor. Zinc oxide being non toxic, inexpensive and with high melting point filled in all the conditions except that it is a good thermal conductor as well. And both the thermal and electrical properties being directly proportional decreasing one will certainly lower the other.

But researchers led by Ganpati Ramanath, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer, in collaboration with the University Of Wollongong, Australia, have successfully found a way to decrease the thermal conductivity of Zinc oxide without affecting its electrical property. They added small amount of aluminium to zinc oxide and heated it in the microwave oven. The desired results were hence so produced.

"Harvesting waste heat is a very attractive proposition, since we can convert the heat into electricity and use it to power a device like in a car or a jet -- that is creating the heat in the first place. This would lead to greater efficiency in nearly everything we do and, ultimately, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels," Ramanath said.

The nanomaterial was created by adding small amount of aluminium to shape controlled Zinc oxide and then careful heating in the microwave oven. They produced several grams of nanomaterial in just few minutes. The added advantage is that the process is less expensive and feasible to carry out and is totally environment friendly. Moreover unlike many nanomaterials that are fabricated directly onto a substrate or surface, this new microwave method can produce pellets of nanomaterials that can be applied to different surfaces. These attributes, together with low thermal conductivity and high electrical conductivity, are highly suitable for heat harvesting applications.

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