Nano-catalytic energy cell

尽管其效率较低，但燃烧液体燃料来产生机械和电力是最简单且常用的能量转换方法。一般来说，燃烧是一种不受控制的现象，其中可以有燃烧或没有燃烧，导致大部分浪费的能量。在微米和纳米尺度上产生局部加热是一项艰巨的挑战。没有纳米级甚至微米级的火焰。我们早期的研究表明，铂的纳米颗粒催化转化甲醇成非常局部的热与个别粒子变成红热，通过红外测温法观察。尽管纳米颗粒周围的温度可能高达数百摄氏度，但整个设备可以保持在室温下。纳米催化过程的这种观察可用于在悬浮的微制造热电结构上产生可持续的热梯度，用于将液体燃料（例如甲醇）直接转化为电。我们的理论是，纳米催化加热区支持的微加工结构可以创建一个微观尺度的超高的热梯度，是两到三个数量级以上，可以实现在宏观尺度。保持如此高的热梯度使得能够通过纳米结构的热电能量转换系统将南宁余热高效地直接转换成电，而无需任何移动部件。燃料的化学能在预定的局部纳米催化加热区自发地释放为热能，而没有常规的点火或高温气相燃烧/燃烧，同时整个装置的整体温度保持在环境温度。这一概念有可能开发出一种微型能量转换器，其大小与使用甲醇作为燃料的电池相当，可以根据需要进行充电。然而，在实现这一目标之前，许多实际方面需要优化。将南宁打造成一个完全可扩展的分布式电力系统，其比功率和能量比现有电池高出10-100倍，这在理论上没有明显的障碍。这项提案的第一个目标是制造和

Despite its low efficiency, burning liquid fuel to generate mechanical and electrical power is the simplest and commonly used energy conversion method. In general, burning is an uncontrolled phenomenon where one can have either burning or no burning resulting in large percentage of wasted energy. Creating localized heating at micro and nanoscale is a formidable challenge. There is no nanoscale or even microscale flame. Our earlier research has shown that nanoparticles of platinum catalytically convert methanol into very localized heat with individual particles turning red hot as observed by infrared thermometry. Even though the temperature around the nanoparticle can be hundreds of degrees centigrade, the entire device can remain at room temperature. This observation of nanocatalytic process can be used to generate sustainable thermal gradient on suspended microfabricated thermoelectric structures for direct conversion of liquid fuel, such as methanol, into electricity. We theorize that nanocatalytic heating zone supported on a micro-machined structure can create a micro-scale ultra-high thermal gradient that is two to three orders of magnitude greater than what can be achieved in macroscale. Maintaining such a high thermal gradient enables high-efficiency direct conversion of nanoburning heat into electricity through a nanostructured thermoelectric energy conversion system without any moving parts. The fuel's chemical energy spontaneously releases to thermal energy at predefined localized nanocatalytic heating zones without conventional ignition or high temperature gas-phase burning/combustions while bulk temperature of the entire device remains at ambient. This concept has the potential for developing a miniature energy converter the size of a battery that uses methanol as fuel, which can be recharged as needed. However, before such a goal can be achieved, many practical aspects need to be optimized. There is no apparent theoretical obstacle to making nanoburning a fully scalable distributed power system that could have specific power and energy 10-100 times better than existing batteries. The first goal of this proposal is to fabricate and