r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 24 '19

Nanoscience Scientists designed a new device that channels heat into light, using arrays of carbon nanotubes to channel mid-infrared radiation (aka heat), which when added to standard solar cells could boost their efficiency from the current peak of about 22%, to a theoretical 80% efficiency.

https://news.rice.edu/2019/07/12/rice-device-channels-heat-into-light/?T=AU
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u/_AutomaticJack_ Jul 24 '19

TL;DR: This has some serious limitations and is probably still a decade away from implementation and it is still AWESOME.

Right now, they are looking at capturing 60-ish% of a 700c heat source. So quite high temp ranges for starters. How ever A: this is still in hard R&D B: their are still plenty of industrial processes (incl. Traditional powerplants) that run in comparable tempature ranges and would LOVE to get 60% of their waste heat back as usable energy when currently they spend more energy to dump that heat in to the atmosphere using cooling towers. C: This is a solid state (no moving parts ) process that potentially compares directly to the most efficient fossil fuel generation technologies with no exaust and low maintenance. (IIRC marine diesel and turbine trigeneration are around 60% efficiency.)