Abstract
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-1 over a temperature window of 0 degrees C to 65 degrees 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.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2396-2401 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Energy and Environmental Science |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- DOUBLE-LAYER CAPACITORS
- ELECTROCHEMICAL SYSTEM
- FLOW-ELECTRODES
- THERMAL-ENERGY
- DEIONIZATION
- GENERATION
- CARBON
- BATTERY