Super Efficient Material Converts Car Exhaust to Energy

by Will Safer on July 28, 2008 at 05:02 PM

Your car engine wastes up to 75-percent of the power it generates -- but a team of Ohio State University researchers thinks it has found a way to capture a lot of that wasted energy and convert it into electricity.

The promise is in a new material they've developed, called thallium-doped lead telluride. (Isn't that a black diamond trail at a Colorado ski resort?) This is twice as efficient at converting heat to electricity as any previously developed material.

The research team's lead, Joseph Heremans, says the thallium-doped lead telluride can convert a car's wasted heat into energy without causing pollution. "The material does all the work. It produces electrical power just like conventional heat engines -- steam engines, gas or diesel engines -- that are coupled to electrical generators, but it uses electrons as the working fluids instead of water or gases, and makes electricity directly."

Some experts argue that only about 25-percent of the energy produced by a typical gasoline engine is used to move a car or power its accessories, and nearly 60-percent is lost through waste heat -- much of which escapes in engine exhaust. A thermoelectric (TE) device can capture some of that waste heat, Heremans said, and it would also make a practical addition to an automobile, because it has no moving parts to wear out or break down.

Heremans' team didn't just try random new types of metals or coatings for their research -- the team is also working on the nanotechnology and quantum level. "We hope to go much further. I think it should be quite possible to apply other lessons learned from thermoelectric nanotechnology to boost the rating by another factor of two -- that's what we're shooting for now," he said.

If Hereman's next announcement is for a flux capacitor (1.21 gigawatts!), we'll know we've crossed over from science advancement to science fiction. Either way, with rising fuel costs, we hope car makers take notice of Hereman's breakthrough. [Source: BetaNews]

Tags: car, waste

Comments

mitchellJul 28th 2008 7:23PM

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o goody a way to make green cars even more toxic to the enviroment yet energy effieicent. and wow toxic substance now you'lll need a deposit on mufflers so that they can be taken to chemical depot.

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Ramesh VermaJul 29th 2008 5:11AM

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This is an excellent effort to make word greener.

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John Hanecker IIJul 29th 2008 9:02AM

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Great Idea if it works . How would the energy recovered be utilized by the vehicle ? Is there also anyway that the energy could be stored for later use ?

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M.CarneyJul 29th 2008 6:58PM

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Well if you use a different energy source than gasoline then pollution would be almost nil (nothing).

With this technology you could use a different liquid source for energy and make the components necessary to power a vehicle (on the ground).

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RaptoerSep 9th 2008 1:54AM

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This material uses thallium, which is produced as a side product from trace amounts from smelting other chemicals. It is primarily used in electronics, however it is also quite toxic. I doubt that this material itself is toxic however as it is lead doped with thallium, and would have chemical properties closer to lead (still a heavy metal, but much less toxic).

This idea is a form of cogeneration, already used in large industries, especially power plants. Cogeneration usually increases efficiency from 55% to 89% in power plants. The difficulty with putting these cogeneration facilities into cars is weight and pressure. If the exhaust is significantly slowed down or stopped to be put into some other component it causes problems with the engine.

As for the car itself most engines will get 20-25% efficiency, and the maximum possible (according to the laws of thermodynamics) is 37%.
If you can recover 1% of that energy and put it back into powering the car you increase the fuel efficiency by 4 - 5%.

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