Heat-to-current conversion of low-grade heat from a thermocapacitive cycle by supercapacitors

Thermal energy is abundantly available, and especially low-grade heat is often wasted in industrial processes as a by-product. Tapping into this vast energy reservoir with cost-attractive technologies may become a key element for the transition to an energy-sustainable economy and society. We propos...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energy & environmental science 2015-01, Vol.8 (8), p.2396-2401
Main Authors: Haertel, Andreas, Janssen, Mathijs, Weingarth, Daniel, Presser, Volker, van Roij, Rene
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Byproducts
Capacitors
Converters
Economics
Electric potential
Supercapacitors
Tapping
Thermoelectricity
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Summary:Thermal energy is abundantly available, and especially low-grade heat is often wasted in industrial processes as a by-product. Tapping into this vast energy reservoir with cost-attractive technologies may become a key element for the transition to an energy-sustainable economy and society. We propose a novel heat-to-current converter which is based on the temperature dependence of the cell voltage of charged supercapacitors. Using a commercially available supercapacitor, we observed a thermal cell-voltage rise of around 0.6 mV K super(-1) over a temperature window of 0 degree C to 65 degree C. Within our theoretical model, this can be used to operate a Stirling-like charge-voltage cycle whose efficiency is competitive to the most-efficient thermoelectric (Seebeck) engines. Our proposed heat-to-current converter is built from cheap materials, contains no moving parts, and could operate with a plethora of electrolytes which can be chosen for optimal performance at specific working temperatures. Therefore, this heat-to-current converter is interesting for small-scale, domestic, and industrial applications.
ISSN:1754-5692
1754-5706
DOI:10.1039/c5ee01192b