Update: Heat to Electricity Tech Happens at U Minn

July 10th, 2011 by Jo Borrás

Cleantechnica blogger Tina Casey wrote about the results of an Oak Ridge study which pointed out that more than half of all energy spent in the US was “wasted” as heat. The Oak Ridge lab researchers were looking for ways to put this heat to work, as it were, and planned to develop tiny devices — about 1 mm square — that would deliver up to 10 milliwatts of power — useful only when hundreds of them were linked to a similarly tiny object (such as a computer chip).

A few weeks later I published a similar article covering a new “multiferroic” metal being developed at the University of Minnesota that was able to convert heat — waste heat — directly into electricity.

The two articles seem like they go hand-in-hand, so I’ve re-printed the Gas 2.0 article, in full, below, along with a link over to Tina’s … and I think you’ll agree: we need to get these two teams together!

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Tags: conversion, convert, current, friction, heat, heat into electricity, John Galt, lab, losses, Minnesota, National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, ORNL, thermal loss, U Minn, university, wast heat, waste

About the Author

Jo Borrás I've been involved in motorsports and tuning since 1997, and write for a number of blogs in the Important Media network. You can find me on Twitter, Skype (jo.borras) or Google+.