It’s getting hot in here: WVU engineer improves efficiency of U.S. energy infrastructure

In power plants fired by fossil fuels alone, 67 percent of the electricity generated is released unproductively into the environment in the form of heat, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By rethinking the design of thermoelectric materials, which have the ability to convert heat to electricity, Xueyan Song, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at West Virginia University, is working to develop a method to recover the wasted heat energy from the air, resulting in improved sustainability and efficiency of the energy infrastructure in the U.S.

According to Song, thermoelectric technology has historically been too inefficient to be cost-effective in most applications.

“Since the 1990s, well developed thermoelectric materials have been heavy, toxic and low in abundance as natural resources, and only able to function in oxygen-free environments at high temperatures. Thermoelectric materials could be much more efficient if they were made of non-toxic and earth abundant elements and could operate in the air where the wasted heat energy is emitted from the manufacturing and power generation systems.”

Song explained that thermoelectric materials have been used to power spacecrafts for decades, providing a viable source of power for deep space missions when the sun is out of range and can’t effectively generate power through solar panels.

Through a $639,784 grant funded by the National Science Foundation, Song will use cobalt oxide-based materials, a chemical compound used extensively in the ceramic industry, to improve thermoelectric devices.

Read the full story from West Virginia University here.