Nanoionic Thermoelectric Regeneration

The DOEs Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is seeking to support development of advanced thermoelectric (TE) technologies for waste heat recovery in buildings, industry, and vehicle applications to generate electricity efficiently and cost-competitively because these typically low temperature waste heat flows do not provide enough temperature difference to support conventional thermoelectric power generators. Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Nanoionic Thermoelectric Regeneration (NITER) technology based on the thermo diffusion of protons in the nano-porous structures. These materials are commercially available due to progress in fuel cell technology, where they are used as proton conductive membranes.Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: NITER modules can be used in the waste heat recovery applications due to their ability to recover and convert heat to electricity from large and complex areas. NITER applications fall into two categories:Energy recuperation in cases where surplus process heat is not currently recoverable using standard recuperative techniques.Bottoming cycles to extract and convert residual heat to electricity where another technology is used for primary power generation.