Harvesting Waste Thermal Energy Using Carbon-Nanotube-Based Thermo-Electrochemical Cell
Harvesting Waste Thermal Energy Using Carbon-Nanotube-Based Thermo-Electrochemical Cell
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DOI：
10.1021/nl903267n
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发表时间：
2010-03-01
期刊：
影响因子：
10.8
通讯作者：
Baughman, Ray H.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hu, Renchong;Cola, Baratunde A.;Baughman, Ray H.
低效率和昂贵的电极材料限制了使用热电化学电池(或“热电池”)收集热能作为电能的能力。我们展示了实际配置(从硬币电池到汽车电池)的热电池，Chat使用相对便宜的碳多壁纳米管(MWNT)电极收集低级热能。这些电极提供了高的电化学可及表面积和快速的氧化还原介导的电子转移，从而显著提高了热电池的电流产生能力和整体效率。通过直接合成多壁碳纳米管作为垂直森林，降低了电极/衬底结合处的电阻和热阻，进一步提高了热电池的效率。具有碳纳米管电极的热电池的效率高达卡诺效率的1.4%，比以前证明的热电池的效率高3倍。随着多壁碳纳米管成本的降低，基于多壁碳纳米管的热电池可能成为商业上可行的收集低级热能的材料。
Low efficiencies and costly electrode materials have limited harvesting of thermal energy as electrical energy using thermo-electrochemical cells (or "thermocells"). we demonstrate thermocells, in practical configurations (from coin cells to cells that car) be wrapped around exhaust pipes), chat harvest low-grade thermal energy using relatively inexpensive carbon multiwalled nanotube (MWNT) electrodes. These electrodes provide high electrochemically accessible surface areas and fast redox-mediated electron transfer, which significantly enhances thermocell current generation capacity and overall efficiency. Thermocell efficiency is further improved by directly synthesizing MWNTs as vertical forests that reduce electrical and thermal resistance at electrode/substrate junctions. The efficiency of thermocells with MWNT electrodes is shown to be as high as 1.4% of Carnot efficiency, which is 3-fold higher than for previously demonstrated thermocells. With the cost of MWNTs decreasing, MWNT-based thermocells may become commercially viable for harvesting low-grade thermal energy.