Using thermogalvanic technology as cooling mechanism may significantly reduce power usage, research says
Happy to hear from anyone with a bit more expertise, but this doesn’t sound very promising
Their energetic efficiency is low, in the range of 0.1% to 1% for conversion of heat into electricity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermogalvanic_cell
Even a 70% improvement doesn’t seem very good. Heatpumps are incredibly efficient, so it would be hard to beat.
In headlines lookout for weasel words
- could - also means could not
- may - also means may not
- associated - does not mean causes
Yeah, definitely. “Up to” is another one.
I think this is a researcher trying to drum up buzz to get funding.
The article is talking about out using them basically in reverse to suck the heat out for ‘free’.
Still no numbers on whole system efficiency and it’ll be hard to beat heat pumps that have 150 years of optimization.
The numbers I quoted are the wrong direction, but its hard to imagine the reverse being multiple orders of magnitude more efficient, I think that would violate laws of thermodynamics? This is not my area of expertise though.
