NREL discovers nanotubes may be key to heat waste capture

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) revealed in a study published online on Monday that carbon nanotubes have the potential to act as thermoelectric power generators for heat waste capture.

“There have not been many examples where people have really looked at the intrinsic thermoelectric properties of carbon nanotubes and that’s what we feel this paper does,” Andrew Ferguson, a research scientist in NREL’s Chemical and Materials Science Center and co-lead author of the paper with Jeffrey Blackburn, said.

More than half of energy consumed globally escapes as heat waste. The idea behind thermoelectric power generation is to capture such heat and convert it into usable energy safely and efficiently. The NREL study could provide the key on how to do just that. Single-walled carbon nanotube film that functions as a semiconductor has shown the ability to enhance the performance of thermoelectric generators while also maintaining low thermal conductivity. NREL researchers took this knowledge a few steps further by creating a process by which metallic nanotubes can function as semiconductors and by utilizing carbon to ensure that the film was lightweight and flexible.

The study, titled, “Tailored Semiconducting Carbon Nanotube Networks with Enhanced Thermoelectric Properties,” has the potential to greatly improve thermoelectric power generation implementation. Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, the University of Denver and the Metropolitan State University of Denver led the study.