ARL: Army converts heat to electricity at record high rates, breakthrough research shows
ADELPHI, MD. (Aug. 10, 2018) – U.S. Army Research Laboratory-funded research at the University of Michigan has resulted in demonstrating a new approach for more effectively converting heat into electricity.
The research focused on fundamental improvements to an approach traditionally referred to as thermophotovoltaics, or TPV, and such technologies that are useful to Soldiers because they can enable generation of power from any heat source. Additionally they can be configured to work with sunlight in the day and with any combustible fuel in the night making them particularly useful for operation in the field.
The team of researchers accomplished this breakthrough, a 40-fold enhancement in comparison to traditional TPV, by employing new physical phenomena that arise at the nanoscale. The scientists said devices built using this approach can work far more effectively for remote power generation as well as in waste heat recovery.
These results are published in a recent edition of Nature Nanotechnology, authored by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows Dr. Anthony Fiorino, Dr. Linxiao Zhu, Dakotah Thompson, Rohith Mittapally and Professors Pramod Reddy and Edgar Meyhofer from the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Michigan. Read more