Comments on: Okayama Solar Absorbers Use “Green Ferrite” to Generate Super-Cheap Electricity from Heat

By: MIT Developing Paintable Solar Cells Made Of Plants | CleanTechnica

MIT Developing Paintable Solar Cells Made Of Plants | CleanTechnica — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:20:14 +0000

[…] published by Scientific Reports, researchers say they’re successfully working toward making low-cost solar cells from plants. While, technically, all plants are some sort of solar cell (photosynthesis takes […]

By: Solar Skyscrapers Are Nearly Here | CleanTechnica

Solar Skyscrapers Are Nearly Here | CleanTechnica — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 22:09:31 +0000

[…] glass is pretty impressive. The team even thinks they may be able to tweak the dyes in use now to include infrared light and get up to 15% efficiency. This is without mentioning that if a window is producing electricity […]

By: jw

jw — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:40:00 +0000

SHUD UP

By: Breath on the Wind

Breath on the Wind — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:07:00 +0000

Yup, I have to agree with you. If this is not a mistake in printing or quoting, it is misleading at the least and a scam at worst. Sadly, the boom in tech will naturally bring with it a new kind of “gold rush” with all the classic attempts at “get rich quick” schemes.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 12:40:00 +0000

Not sure if i will get a reply as your comment is 3 days old.

When we calculate solar panel efficiency, say 10%, does this number mean that we only capture 10% of specific wavelength? Or all wavelengths? Or of all wavelengths AND heat?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:22:00 +0000

100% more (i.e. 2x as much) << 100x as much.

By: 8popcorn

8popcorn — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:40:00 +0000

100% more ie x 2 so the final efficiency could be not 10% but 20%. Not only possible but only remarkable if the cost factors are in place.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:28:00 +0000

Could be good for automotive waste heat recovery.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:15:00 +0000

Current solar cells do not use all available wavelengths. If they have a device/technology which can harvest energy from wavelengths outside the usable range of PV cells then the 10%/100% metrics may not be comparable.

Think about how it might be possible to gather energy directly from sunlight during the day and then from the heat given off by buildings/pavement throughout the night. The hours of production increase as the sources widen.

That said, best we pay attention to “hoping for a usable product by 2013″.

By: Breath on the Wind

Breath on the Wind — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:10:00 +0000

Solar PV panels are around 10 to 20% efficient while solar thermal panels are around 60 to 80% efficient. Materials that capture heat AND turn it into electricity have been made and they are generally under the study of thermoelectrics or thermovoltaics. How the cost of this material compared to existing technology will have to be proven. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Thermoelectric-Materials-Promice-Higher-Energy-Efficiency-71487.shtml Recent investigations point to a form of Silcone as an economic material that might be used.

To capture heat and store it indefinitely in chemical bonds for later release as heat we could use the thermal battery described here: http://cleantechnica.com/2011/07/29/21st-century-stable-thermal-energy-storage/

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:54:00 +0000

“Professor Ikeda has gone so far as to claim his product will produce 100x the amount of energy as a traditional silicon solar cell.”

Snake oil. Current solar cells have efficiencies of more than 10%. And it’s not possible to go above 100%.

By: Mekennedy1313

Mekennedy1313 — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:09:00 +0000

how about a link to what “green ferrite” is?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:57:00 +0000

“create a battery”

Is ‘battery’ a poor word choice?

—

If this pans out it’s game changing. But until I see a working prototype which can be manufactured at a good price….

The amount of energy we waste through discarded heat is tremendous. If they can make this work we could build PHEVs with much smaller fuel engines. Currently only about 20% of the energy in gas gets turned into useful mechanical movement, the rest cast off as heat. If we could capture most of that heat then a range extender engine could be tiny. Less range-killing weight, both engine and fuel.

Or we could skip the engine and just burn some fuel for heat when we need to drive further than the batteries will carry us.

All the waste heat coming from our refrigerators, air conditioners, clothes dryers, dishwashers, kitchen ranges – capture it and feed it back into the grid.

And industrial waste heat, that’s an enormous resource we could tap.

I hope these guys aren’t just blowing smoke.

Man, I could stick some of this stuff along side my wood stove and charge my batteries with firewood…