Thermoelectric Paper from 2019: Turning Waste Heat into Electricity

Waste heat into electricity conversion, or any thermoelectric material in that sense, is an interesting topic since it can help reduce the stress on our normal generation process. Scientist on ICMAB has produced a paper that can convert waste heat we produce into electricity on the spot, and they call it the “thermoelectric paper”. Their research paper titled “Farming thermoelectric paper” has gone on to be published in the Energy and Environmental Science Journal and received attention from the media. In the ICMAB page that is dedicated to them, the device is portrayed as a helpful improvement that can be used on many daily applications while staying sustainable.

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How to convert waste heat into electricity with paper?

Thermoelectric materials are materials that can produce electricity from heat. While they sometimes exist in nature as biological organisms, we can also produce these kinds of materials artificially. In this research, scientists claim that they “use bacteria in environmentally friendly aqueous media to grow large-area bacterial nanocellulose (BC) films with an embedded highly dispersed CNT (carbon nanotube) network.”

This means that they grow bacteria that produce cellulose to allow their thermoelectric property of them to work. Allowing the electricity-generating carbon nanotubes to be produced in a sustainable way. Thus, allowing a new material that can bend, wrap, or endure high heat levels such as “500K” (~227 C) according to the paper.

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What will we do with this new material?

These kinds of materials produce a lot of small improvements that can have huge effects on our energy consumption. Usually, energy dissipation by heat is inevitable and most devices lose a lot of energy in the form of heat, even if you can catch a little bit of the energy back, it affects efficiency by a huge margin. However, this innovation cannot be used in huge energy-eating machines but it more likely is an alternative to the sensor or wearable energy sources. As the ICMAB page also states:

These devices could be used to generate electricity from residual heat to feed sensors in the field of the Internet of Things, Agriculture 4.0 or Industry 4.0.

So, rather than having to charge or change the battery of your sports watch, in the near future, you will probably just generate its electricity from your body heat. Or as another example, you will use power your automatic drop system with this. On the other hand, maybe you will want to power your device’s force sensor with it. Who knows? Still, there is a lot of talk about the “overpromising nature” of these kinds of technologies. While some claim that just using renewable energy sources would diminish the need for these devices, some claim that we need every bit of energy-saving technology since we will need them in the future.

As I should express, the efficiency of the devices, the energy levels, or the stability of the technology should be improved a lot before going into mainstream devices. But since it provides a material that can bend, wrap end endure heat it is a very good material for putting into moving devices. Despite the drawbacks, it is a huge step in sustainable energy efficiency devices that has high endurance and it should be congratulated.

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In the future…

Well, maybe your sports smartwatch or digital medical band can be powered with this technology in the future. These kinds of projects promise a lot, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Energy technology will surely be one of the most important fields in the future, as we can even see from a lot of corporate effort in the industry (Read: Hydrogen from Plastic Waste: 3 Major Corporations from Japan Has a Revolutionary Plan). As science goes with small consistent steps, we appreciate all the development and the brilliant minds behind these.

Reference: 

Deyaa Abol-Fotouh, Bernhard Dörling, Osnat Zapata-Arteaga, Xabier Rodríguez-Martínez, Andrés Gómez, J. Sebastian Reparaz, Anna Laromaine, Anna Roig and  Mariano Campoy-Quiles. Farming thermoelectric paper. Energy & Environmental Science. DOI: 10.1039/C8EE03112F.