From the University of Minnesota via Eurkealert today, this looks interesting:
University of Minnesota engineering researchers discover source for generating ‘green’ electricity
University of Minnesota engineering researchers in the College of Science and Engineering have recently discovered a new alloy material that converts heat directly into electricity. This revolutionary energy conversion method is in the early stages of development, but it could have wide-sweeping impact on creating environmentally friendly electricity from waste heat sources.
Researchers say the material could potentially be used to capture waste heat from a car’s exhaust that would heat the material and produce electricity for charging the battery in a hybrid car. Other possible future uses include capturing rejected heat from industrial and power plants or temperature differences in the ocean to create electricity. The research team is looking into possible commercialization of the technology.
“This research is very promising because it presents an entirely new method for energy conversion that’s never been done before,” said University of Minnesota aerospace engineering and mechanics professor Richard James, who led the research team.”It’s also the ultimate ‘green’ way to create electricity because it uses waste heat to create electricity with no carbon dioxide.”
To create the material, the research team combined elements at the atomic level to create a new multiferroic alloy, Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10. Multiferroic materials combine unusual elastic, magnetic and electric properties. The alloy Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 achieves multiferroism by undergoing a highly reversible phase transformation where one solid turns into another solid. During this phase transformation the alloy undergoes changes in its magnetic properties that are exploited in the energy conversion device.
During a small-scale demonstration in a University of Minnesota lab, the new material created by the researchers begins as a non-magnetic material, then suddenly becomes strongly magnetic when the temperature is raised a small amount. When this happens, the material absorbs heat and spontaneously produces electricity in a surrounding coil. Some of this heat energy is lost in a process called hysteresis. A critical discovery of the team is a systematic way to minimize hysteresis in phase transformations. The team’s research was recently published in the first issue of the new scientific journal Advanced Energy Materials.
Watch a short research video of the new material suddenly become magnetic when heated: http://z.umn.edu/conversionvideo
In addition to Professor James, other members of the research team include University of Minnesota aerospace engineering and mechanics post-doctoral researchers Vijay Srivastava and Kanwal Bhatti, and Ph.D. student Yintao Song. The team is also working with University of Minnesota chemical engineering and materials science professor Christopher Leighton to create a thin film of the material that could be used, for example, to convert some of the waste heat from computers into electricity.
“This research crosses all boundaries of science and engineering,” James said. “It includes engineering, physics, materials, chemistry, mathematics and more. It has required all of us within the university’s College of Science and Engineering to work together to think in new ways.”
Funding for early research on the alloy came from a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (involving other universities including the California Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, University of Washington and University of Maryland), and research grants from the U.S. Air Force and the National Science Foundation. The research is also tentatively funded by a small seed grant from the University of Minnesota’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment.
For more detail on the research, read the entire paper published in Advanced Energy Materials at http://z.umn.edu/energyalloy.
The Direct Conversion of Heat to Electricity Using Multiferroic Alloys
Vijay Srivastava1, Yintao Song1, Kanwal Bhatti1,2, R. D. James1,*
Abstract
We demonstrate a new method for the direct conversion of heat to electricity using the recently discovered multiferroic alloy, Ni45Co5Mn40Sn101. This alloy undergoes a low hysteresis, reversible martensitic phase transformation from a nonmagnetic martensite phase to a strongly ferromagnetic austenite phase upon heating. When biased by a suitably placed permanent magnet, heating through the phase transformation causes a sudden increase of the magnetic moment to a large value. As a consequence of Faraday’s law of induction, this drives a current in a surrounding circuit. Theory predicts that under optimal conditions the performance compares favorably with the best thermoelectrics. Because of the low hysteresis of the alloy, a promising area of application of this concept appears to be energy conversion at small ΔT, suggesting a possible route to the conversion of the vast amounts of energy stored on earth at small temperature difference. We postulate other new methods for the direct conversion of heat to electricity suggested by the underlying theory.
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Once it heats up and becomes magnetic, no more electricity! It needs a means to cycle the heating from the exhaust pipe and that means moving parts or similar complexity. The same damn thing would generate electricity based on the much more common and much cheaper fact that most magnets lose instead of gain magnetism when heated. But I guess they are adding a phase change to the mix to make it more abrupt, so that may be an advantage. I’m a bit confused though (being a chemist not a physicist). How does the solid know in which direction to magnetize? And why does it not in fact magnetize in opposing domains that cancel each other out macroscopically? Do they use another magnet underneath it? Answer: yes! That’s in the diagram. So really, this is a heat reversible magnetism blocker. Fine. Uh oh…equations involving the speed of light ensue, with a reference to Tesla. Wait, Tesla patented my suggestion ago!
“This invention is an improved form of electrical generator based upon the following well-known laws: First, that electricity or electrical energy is developed in any conducting-body by subjecting such body to a varying magnetic influence, and, second, that the magnetic properties of iron or other magnetic substance may be partially or entirely destroyed or caused to disappear by raising it to a certain temperature, but restored and caused to reappear by again lowering its temperature to a certain degree. These laws may be applied in the production of electrical currents in many ways, the principle of which is in all cases the same—viz., to subject a conductor to a varying magnetic influence, producing such variations by the application of heat, or, more strictly speaking, by the application or action of a varying temperature upon the source of the magnetism.” – Nikola Tesla, 1890, Patent 428,057.
http://www.teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla-patents-428,057-pyromagneto-electric-generator
-=NikFromNYC=- Ph.D. (genetics/organometallic/organic/materials/fabrication, Columbia/Harvard/MIT)
Sorry. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says this won’t work. I would venture to guess this is short lived and would dissipate before generating or converting enough energy to be useful. We shall see but very interesting that we might see a perpetual motion machine. I’m sure the result will be millions of DOE dollars to study this.
This comes under the heading of “increasing efficiency”…
Drill, baby, drill.
Corrigendum: “my suggestion ago” -> “my suggestion long ago”
… alloy creates electricity from … heat
Seebeck* effect anyone?
* Sorry Fox fans – nothing to do with Glenn Beck 😉
.
Latitude says:
June 22, 2011 at 10:53 am
“temperature differences in the ocean
when the temperature is raised a small amount
=====================================================
Wouldn’t the most obvious be to just put it out in the sun?
..what am I missing here?”
It is not using heat, it is using a change in temperature to generate the magnetism (which can generate electricity). It appears that to make this work they would have to alternately heat and cool the device much as a generator coil moves in a magnetic field. The problem becomes how to move the device in and out of a hot environment without using more energy than is produced.
Ummm Okay. Sounds great, but how much electricity?
Would be great for a regular IC car, not just a hybrid, removove parasitic draw on the engine, gain efficiency, you’ve got loads of heat to spare. But if all it’s going to do is power the map light for 30 minutes, who cares. If it will power the radio and the AC maybe even power steering etc, great.
This sounds like it could eventually find some applications in a heat exchanger for an existing design power plant or manufacturing plant, but you would need some way to pulse or oscillate the cooling, which would be bad for the HX. In any event improving existing processes, or using wasted energy from energy entensive heavy industries isn’t “cool” green energy. Disregard, build more Chinese manufactured windmills.
We have lots of waste heat in my plant. We looked at putting in a low pressure steam generator to use up the leftover 450 pound and 40 pound steam but the investment was significant and the regulations in California were a hinderence. In the end, the transmission lines are already overloaded and we limit production in our primary generators because we are pushing against the grid as hard as the transmission lines will allow already.
I am absolutely sure we would not be intesested in this technology even though we probably have megawatts of free heat.
Awesome, but has anyone heard what the efficiency is? I know most thermalcouples today are fairly low, like 20 or 40% conversion. Hence RTGs in satelites emit 1kw of heat and only get 200w of electricity in return. If they can up that to 50% or even 80% then WOW!. I’d say drop RTGs in neighborhoods.
Kelvin Vaughan says:
June 22, 2011 at 11:24 am
Can’t they just soak it in CO2 then the thing will obviously generate its own heat, which it converts into electricity and presto, it runs by itself. At least that’s how a combination of AGW theory and materials research should work.
/sarc off.
Ray says:
June 22, 2011 at 11:57 am
“Have you ever heard of Dr. Victor Klimov at Los Alamos National Laboratory? Apparently he has found a way to get free energy from the vaccum and his work has been proven and published.”
This free-energy-from-the-vacuum/from-parallel-universes is maybe not very helpful. Klimov tries to exploit carrier multiplication; the wikipedia has an article about it, why one wants it, and by how much it might increase the efficiency of photovoltaics. (Hint: not to over-unity. The Laws apply.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_multiplication
Patrick Keane, June 22, 2011 says:
“. . . the rate of change of temp and thus flux will be very slow and the resulting emf will be a gnats whisker of very little.”
Exactly. This is a relatively minor effect as only the change in magnetic field can induce a current. So, it has to constantly heating and cooling. How do you do that when it’s next to a hot muffler?
We would be hard put to create any kind of a 12V current to charge a battery. You actually need an overvoltage (>12V) to charge a 12V battery. This will never be a meaningful electricity source without, wait for, great expense.
In thermodynamics, the waste heat is called low quality energy. It cannot be converted into high quality energy.
Too bad there wasn’t a way to use a Crookes Radiometer here to provide the “motion” this device needs (“…The problem becomes how to move the device in and out of a hot environment without using more energy than is produced…”)
Place the device on the blades. Shade half the tube. As the device spins, goes from hotter to cooler.
Also, when a Crookes Radiometer is exposed to a radiant heat source, it acts as a heat engine “…heat loss through the glass keeps the internal bulb temperature steady so that the two sides of the vanes can develop a temperature difference…”)
Enough of a difference to power this thing? I have no idea.
Positive: There is a huge amount of low grade waste heat in the world that it would be good to convert to useful high grade forms such as electricity. Negative: Efficiencies of conversion are necessarily small because of the second law of thermodynamics. This implies that costs may be high, perhaps too high to justify investment. This is what has held back thermoelectrics for more than a century.
At this stage of the game this is akin to cancer drugs working exceptionally well on rats in the lab. Exciting but very immature.
I live in Australia. If our government had proposed spending some (already levied) tax dollars on a competitive programme for innovation in energy sources, efficiency and application thereof, I think they would have gained universal approval.
Incidentally, is the “Naval Research” funding from the same source as the – and I hesitate to call it thus – “cold fusion” projects?
This is exactly the sort of research that deserves funding. If only we could persuade the powers that be to take a deep breath and invest in our real energy future, rather than chasing ideological shadows down the rabbit hole, I reckon we’d have the goal of cheap, clean and (virtually) unlimited energy cracked well before peak oil.
“If it could heat and cool 50 or 60 times a second then we might have something.”
I think that could be easily managed with a mechanical valve that “flaps”. You would need four of them and they would need to be interconnected so that they “flap” synchronously, but I believe that would be manageable.
Heat is removed from most data centers using water. You have a hot water side and a chilled water side. If the hot and cold water could be applied alternately to the device, it could work.
[snip – no it doesn’t – Anthony]
I wonder if this post will pass the arbiters of good taste at WUWT? ; > )
If practical techniques can be derived from this, you can bet that the greenies will find some reason to attack it
RE: Expensive….. Tin is at the moment and has been for the last year. It was $30,000USD a ton in the last 6 months. I have faceting laps* from Jon Rolfe that are almost pure tin. The price has gone up enough that he has been working on other materials including semi-metallics. Cast Zinc in near pure form have come out as a strong alternative. Not as forgiving as Sn though.
* faceting laps are used to cut and polish gemstones by introducing diamond or oxide materials such as Chromium, Cerium or Aluminum Oxide into the lap and rotating it against the stone – a great hobby for engineers that have finished reading WUWT. This once, I have included a web link for contact if the admins feel it is appropriate and not too far off topic
Friends:
The reported novel multiferroic alloy is an important and interersting development but not for the purpose stated in the report.
The proposed multiferroic alloy device would need to be cycled through its phase transition temperature for continuous electricity generation, but this cycling through a specific temperature is likely to be an unsurmountable problem for economic electricity generation. A simple thermocouple would be a better option for the proposed electricity generation as it will operate at any temperatures higher than its ‘cold’ end but not so hot as to damage either of its bimetals.
However, the novel material is interesting in that it provides an interesting change of property upon changing from its martensitic to its austenitic phases. Different crystal phases often provide metals with different material properties and blacksmiths have made use of this for millenia: e.g. to provide the bulk of a hacksaw blade with ductile but soft strength while the edge containing its teeth is very hard but brittle.
Nobody can know what uses will be imagined in the future for the reported change of property with phase of the novel alloy. But the use stated in the article is not likely to be one of them (see above).
And it should be noted that an interesting property change does not always find a use. For example, air can leak through red-hot iron but not cooler iron, and no use for this has been found.
There is a problem with gaining research funds for novel materials: i.e. potential funders ask “What use is it?” and they expect an answer. So, researchers need to give an answer because no real use will ever be found if the research is not conducted. I suspect that the suggested ‘electricity generation’ for the novel multiferroic alloy may be one such ‘answer’.
The novel material we really need is a room-temperature superconductor. That would change the world.
Richard
When I was a youngster – 1960 plus or minus a year or two – a buddy of mine had a “science project”… What we would call a “thermopile”, I guess. A cylindrical insulator (asbestos, IIRC – this was in the days when we played with mercury for fun), with wires – I forget what two materials – welded together inside and out. Many junctions. Put a bunsen burner under the thing and it would light up a flashlight bulb.
Since I run a woodstove all winter anyway, I’ve always been interested in thermo-voltaics… If only we could get congress to repeal that pesky second law…
Interesting, but I’m holdin’ out for neutrino-voltaic panels!
Best,
Frank
There may be a way to incorporate this into building design to take advantage of the differences in temperature on the skin of the building as well as from the top and bottom of the building. Assuming of course that the materials cost would be cheap enough to justify it
Scott Covert says:
June 22, 2011 at 12:33 pm
We have lots of waste heat in my plant. We looked at putting in a low pressure steam generator to use up the leftover 450 pound and 40 pound steam but the investment was significant and the regulations in California were a hinderence. In the end, the transmission lines are already overloaded and we limit production in our primary generators because we are pushing against the grid as hard as the transmission lines will allow already.
I am absolutely sure we would not be intesested in this technology even though we probably have megawatts of free heat.
There’s one company in Canada that manufactures 38 KW Stirling engines that run on various forms of waste heat. google it. I m sure you’ll find it.