Thermosensitive crystallization-boosted liquid thermocells for low-grade heat harvesting

Low-grade heat (below 373 kelvin) is abundant and ubiquitous but is mostly wasted because present recovery technologies are not cost-effective. The liquid-state thermocell (LTC), an inexpensive and scalable thermoelectric device, may be commercially viable for harvesting low-grade heat energy if its Carnot-relative efficiency (r) reaches ~5%, which is a challenging metric to achieve experimentally. We used a thermosensitive crystallization and dissolution process to induce a persistent concentration gradient of redox ions, a highly enhanced Seebeck coefficient (~3.73 millivolts per kelvin), and suppressed thermal conductivity in LTCs. As a result, we achieved a high r of 11.1% for LTCs near room temperature. Our device demonstration offers promise for cost-effective low-grade heat harvesting.

Source: ScienceNOW - October 15, 2020 Category: Science Authors: Yu, B., Duan, J., Cong, H., Xie, W., Liu, R., Zhuang, X., Wang, H., Qi, B., Xu, M., Wang, Z. L., Zhou, J. Tags: Chemistry, Materials Science reports Source Type: news