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From LiveScience.com:
Researchers say they have successfully generated electricity from heat by trapping organic molecules between metal nanoparticles, a finding that could yield cheap refrigerators, not to mention new, more efficient energy sources in general.
Currently, about 90 percent of the world's electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels, which creates heat, often in the form of steam. The steam spins a turbine that drives a generator to produce electricity.
But this method is indirect, and in the process, plenty of heat is wasted and its energy goes uncaptured.
"Generating 1 watt of power requires about 3 watts of heat input and involves dumping into the environment the equivalent of about 2 watts of power in the form of heat," said lead author Arun Majumdar of the University of California at Berkeley.
For the past 50 years, scientists have been exploring ways to use this wasted heat.
"If even a fraction of the lost heat can be converted into electricity in a cost-effective manner," Majumdar said, "the impact it would have on energy can be enormous, amounting to massive savings of fuel and reductions in carbon dioxide emissions."
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Re: Scientists Generate Electricity in Novel Way
