http://pesn.com/Radio/Free_Energy_Now/shows/2007/01/06/9700221_Eneco_t
hermal_electric/
The company's Web Site is at: http://www.eneco.com/
ENECO Engineering Low-Heat-to-Electricity Conversion for Market
The science is done, what remains is to engineer for production, with applications such as waste-heat and concentrated solar energy harnessing.
Pure Energy Systems News
Copyright © 2007
SALT LAKE CITY, UT, USA -- On Saturday, Jan. 6, 2006, Sterling Allan conducted a live interview with Howard L. (Lew) Brown, CEO of ENECO, which has a thermal-electric technology for converting heat into electricity via a solid state wafer.
The technology is presently rated in the top ten of the New Energy Congress' (NEC) Top 100 Energy Technologies listing. (Ref.) Articles about it have been published in at least two peer-review journals. ENECO'S scientific testing apparatus has been certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, whose independent (and non-published, since NIST cannot endorse commercial ventures) experimental conclusions report an efficiency of 38% of the Carnot limits. (Ref.)
Though the wafers begin generating electricity with a gradient (Ä T) as low as 1°C at room temperature, the range of feasible operation is at much larger temperature gradients and at temperatures of between around 200°C and 600°C. This points to a wide range of industrial waste-heat, geothermal, and commercial solar applications. Converting exhaust heat into electricity, to replace the alternator in a vehicle, is one application being vigorously pursued by ENECO
and an auto industry partner.
ENECO chips could replace the Stirling engine in Stirling Energy System's (SES) commercial solar arrays, producing electricity at approximately twice the efficiency but at half the cost. (Ref.) With their present set-up, SES is already competitive with conventional energy generation, so an alliance with ENECO would enable them to drop substantially lower than conventional energy
prices. Furthermore, the size would be much smaller, and the maintenance far less.
The typical method of converting sun energy to electricity is via a
photovoltaic (PV) module. They typically cost around $4 to $6.00 per
Watt, whereas the ENECO modules are projected to cost between $1 and
$4.00 per Watt. Furthermore, the ENECO module is more efficient at
converting sun energy to electricity. In harnessing heat, it draws
from a much wider spectrum of the electromagnetic spectrum emitted by
the sun -- not just from the visible wavelengths.
Inversely, if electricity is applied to the die, a refrigeration
effect is evoked, potentially going down as low as minus 200°C.
This, likewise, has a wide range of commercial applications, such as
cooling computer systems. ENECO envisions harnessing the heat
produced in a laptop motherboard, for example, and then using that
energy to cool the essential components.
"The science is done", says Brown. "Now we just need to engineer
this for production," which he anticipates could be ready within as
little as half a year. The company is also forging strategic
partnerships with a number of heavy-hitter industrial companies, such
as MagCorp in Utah, which see a lot of waste heat going unused. By
establishing partnerships with these companies, ENECO is able to get
closer to its financial requirements for completing the engineering
process.
ENECO is also under contract to go public in the London Exchange
within the next 12-16 months, to further raise funds for its ongoing
development and commercialization. They chose London over New York
for a number of strategically advantageous reasons, several of which
are enumerated in a recent Wall Street Journal article addressing the
shift from NY to London.
The company was established in 1991 by Hal Fox in connection with
cold fusion research being performed by Pons and Fleishmann at the
University of Utah. ENECO was tasked with finding a way of
efficiently harnessing low-level heat. In order to be feasible, cold
fusion needed a method of converting low-level heat into
electricity. Two of the earlier methods analyzed were quantum
tunneling and piezo effects (quartz), which ENECO ruled this out as
not being feasible.
This many years later, the number of investors still anxiously
waiting for a return on their investment is substantial, adding that
much more pressure on ENECO to get something into the marketplace.
Notwithstanding the long time it has taken, when given an option,
most investors opt for stock options rather then cashing out.
Thermalelectric technology has been around for about 150 years,
actually predating internal combustion engine technology. While
ENECO's variations draw from the thermionic and thermoelectric
predecessor work, it has developed substantial intellectual property
of its own. Ten U.S. patents have been issues, and nearly that many
have been issued in other jurisdictions. There are 48 patents filed
or pending, in all. Brown said ENECO would gladly license this IP to
interested parties. "One company can't possibly do all that can be
done with this technology," he said. The waste heat from fossil fuel
combustion alone represents a trillion-dollar market.
Charles T. Maxwell, Senior Energy Analyst from the Wall Street firm,
Weeden & Co, told Brown: "The cheapest barrel of oil is the one not
consumed".
Brown, a Ph.D. Plasma Physicist and successful businessman, joined
the ENECO team five years ago, and holds himself very confidently in
articulating both the technical and business aspects of the company.
The whiteboard in his office has the archetypal markings of a
brilliant mind busy communicating the ENECO vision to the myriad of
visitors that frequent the place from all over the world.
Allan visited Brown at the ENECO facility in Salt Lake City this past
Wednesday, and observed a prototype demonstration in which a die of
dimensions 1 mm x 1 mm x 0.5 mm was subjected to increasing heat, and
produced increasing voltage and amperage proportionately. When the
temperature in the lower electrode reached 300°C, while the upper
electrode was maintained at room temperature, the voltage was at
around 0.5 V, and the current was over 10 amps.
The "staff scientist" running the tests was Victor Sevastyanenko,
Ph.D., a Professor of Plasma Physics, who also demonstrated the
analysis software he created. He has been with ENECO for five and a
half years.
The test procedure entails taking a ½-inch diameter boule rod of
the alloy, cutting it thinly, polishing its surface, then applying a
the thin film barrier. These are then sliced into 1 mm squared sizes
called "dies". The sample is then measured, washed with alcohol, and
a coating of indium gallium solder is applied (for conductivity) to
the top and bottom of the die, as well as to the surface of both
electrodes where the die will be set.
As heat is applied to the base electrode (copper rod of about ½-inch
diameter), the voltage begins to appear. A load (flat copper sheet)
is intermittently removed then added to complete the circuit, and the
current is measured.
The temperature of the bottom electrode was determined by
extrapolation via two probes separated on the copper rod electrode.
The thermal conductivity of copper is well-known, so by measuring the
difference between the two positions in the rod, the temperature at
the end of the electrode can be calculated.
The high current production by the die requires the die to remain
small and not be scaled larger. Scaling will come in the form of
modularity, joining as many dies together as is needed for a given
application.
Also present with Allan this past Wednesday's visit were Tai Robinson
(ref.), also of NEC; David W. Allan (ref.), Sterling's father, who is
an atomic clock physicist whose professional career was spent at NIST
in Boulder; and David Yurth (ref.), who is involved with a different
solid state thermal-electric conversion technology.
Yurth thinks that ENECO faces some daunting engineering challenges in
making arrays of these very small dies that will hold up under the
rigors of industrial applications with higher heat and vibration.
Brown responded that the small size of the dies is an advantage
inasmuch as the smaller mass means less force being applied due to
the acceleration forces that the vibrations induce, per the equation
F=ma. He does acknowledge that ENECO faces some heavy engineering
issues, especially considering the variable expansion coefficients of
the various materials that will be used in the die and its casing.
Each material behaves differently at different temperatures, so
keeping things together and properly fastened and electrically
connected will not be an easy task. Their object of a 10-year
lifetime target, for industrial applications, adds to the challenge.
Another contention that Yurth put forward is that the ENECO paradigm
is like taking a sledge hammer to the materials to liberate the
electrons. The technology Yurth is involved with, which he says will
be announced in about three weeks, works with nature, using
homogeneous crystals that send the electrons to their periphery when
subjected to heat differential; and it is scalable. The feasible,
operational temperature of the technology Yurth is involved with
ranges from 0°C to 140°C. So the two technologies are more
supplemental than competitive in terms of their ranges of
applications. Yurth offered to assist ENECO identify solutions to
the challenges they face in engineering for production.
ENECO has been trying a wide range of alloys to try and find the
optimal combination for both thermal-electric conversion efficiency
as well as cost and environmental concerns. "Cadmium Tin Arsenide
works really well," said Brown, "but environmentally it has serious
problems." Cadmium is banned in Europe. Presently they are focusing
on an alloy of Lead, Tin, and Telluride, and are in process of
optimizing it.
A fairly significant gradient in temperature is needed for efficient
operation. For example, if one electrode was room temperature (17°
C), the other electrode would need to be 113°C to achieve a 10%
efficiency (Carnot).
ENECO has five permanent employees, and works closely with the
University of Utah and other facilities for outsourcing certain tasks
in the development process. An early and still active player on the
ENECO team is Peter Hagelstein of MIT, who is world renowned for his
ongoing work in the field of cold fusion.
- # #
REFERENCES:
NIST Report: Measurement of High Efficiency in Hg0.86Cd0.14Te
Thermionic Converters; Ray Radebaugh, and Mike Lewis; Physical and
Chemical Properties Division; National Institute of Standards and
Technology; Boulder, Colorado 80305; Prepared for ENECO, University
of Utah Research Park, 391-B Chipeta Way, Salt Lake City, Utah 84108;
December 7, 2001. (18 pp.)
"Introduction: In March 2001 NIST was asked by ENECO to
investigate the proper measurement procedures for determining the
efficiency of solid-state thermionic energy converters...."
"Conclusions: We have shown that high efficiencies in the
conversion of thermal to electrical power in MCT samples are
possible, but that rapid heating is required to obtain the results
before the samples deteriorate at high temperatures in vacuum. The
high efficiency of 38% of Carnot determined for one of the MCT
samples with rapid heating is comparable to the high values found by
ENECO previously with layered samples under steady state conditions
when heated in an argon atmosphere. We should emphasize that the
high efficiencies we have found are dependent on the theoretical
correction to the zero-current heat flow."
Energy Conversion Using Diode-Like Structures; Yan Kucherov, Peter
Hagelstein; Thermoelectrics Handbook, chapter 13; Edited by D.M.
Rowe, Ph.D., D.Sc.; CRC; 2006.
"Introduction: A new type of device called thermal diode is
described. It consists of a wafer of thermoelectric material and
incorporates a carrier energy sorting potential barrier on the
emitter side and an ohmic return current blocking barrier on the
collector side. This device can be used for heat to electricity
conversion or for cooling."
Importance of barrier layers in thermal diodes for energy conversion;
Yan Kucherov, Peter Hagelstein (MIT), Victor Sevastyanenko and Harold
L. Brown, Sivaraman Guruswamy, Wayne Wingert; Journal of Applied
Physics; Vol. 97, No. 9; 1 May 2005; pp. 094902 1-8. (This paper
reflects the present understanding of the technology by ENECO.)
"Abstract: Very high thermal to electric conversion efficiencies
have been reported previously with thermal diode structures in which
a thin n-type emitter layer is formed on the hot side of a thick near-
intrinsic thermoelectric semiconductor. The figure of merit derived
from direct measurements of electrical parameters and heat flow is
increased by as much as a factor of eight. The question of what
physical mechanisms are involved has been of interest since the
initial observations of the effect. We have conjectured that the
short-circuit current injection in these experiments is due to a
second-order thermionic injection mechanism. More recently, we
proposed that the open-circuit voltage comes about due to the
presence of a p-type blocking layer between the emitter and the near-
intrinsic bulk region. The experiments reported here show that a p-
type blocking layer is required for the effect, and the dependence of
conversion efficiency on the blocking layer concentration and width
is studied. The results are generally consistent with calculations
done so far based on nonlocal generalized Onsager-type transport
model."
Enhanced figure of merit in thermal to electrical energy conversion
using diode structures; Peter L. Hagelstein, Y. Kucherov; Applied
Physics Letters; Vol. 81, No. 3; 15 July 2002; pp. 559-561.
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