Scientists have found a more efficient way to convert heat into electricity

When it comes to how to make existing power plants more efficient, most often the question is proposed to be solved by the beneficial use of excessively produced heat. Heat is produced to almost everyone: coal-fired power plants, hydroelectric power plants, cars, and even your refrigerator, which spends a significant amount of energy on reducing the heat it produces. If you find a way to start using this excess heat for the production of electricity, then we can not only seriously save on production, but also significantly reduce the consumption of combustible minerals. However, this question has always remained very difficult to solve.

Recently, a group of researchers from the University of Houston, Cambridge, Morgan State University and other institutions have created a new material that can be an important step forward in the issue of the thermoelectric method of energy production. The new thermoelectric material is capable of providing twice the output power, compared with conventional materials that are used now.

The efficiency of thermoelectrics is usually calculated at the expense of their power output ratio. Most of the materials used can be considered “effective” if their output power factor is about 40 points. The new material created by a group of scientists, consisting of an alloy of niobium, iron, antimonium and titanium, has a power factor of 106.

This means that the new material is capable of producing 22 watts of energy per square centimeter, while the efficiency of other thermoelectrics shows a level of 5-6 watts of power produced. What is remarkable, the main interest here is not increased efficiency, but the fact that a new material can be an excellent solution to the problem for the sources of production of a huge amount of excess heat. For example, for all the same coal-fired power plants. Its use at the same time can increase the profitability of such systems and at the same time seriously help in slowing climate change caused by air pollution.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/technology/uchenye-nashli-bolee-effektivnyj-sposob-konvertacii-tepla-v-elektrichestvo.html.