GMZ Energy, a company formed by researchers from BC and MIT, are hoping to harness clean energy from a very unlikely place: commercial smokestacks and furnaces."Eventually, we're going to see a tremendous amount of waste heat recovery applications, but that's 5 to 10 years off," Mike Clary, the company’s CEO, said to CNET News. "We have to get to that 10 percent efficiency threshold to start making it viable."
It works by converting exhaust heat, or waste heat, into electricity instead of releasing that heat into the air. The company claims that at ten percent efficiency, the average home could power itself by keeping the heat on.
Car companies such as BMW are also trying to develop similar technology. They plan to create attachments that will harness power that would otherwise be lost through the exhaust pipe.
The major appeal of this technology is that this energy already exists, but it is not being utilized. As a result, scientists only need to capture it effectively as opposed to developing any new methods for producing energy.
A senior vice president at Recycled Energy Development, Dick Munson, said to CNET News that the amount of energy wasted by the creation of exhaust heat is “a problem and an embarrassment.”
The Boston-based team at GMZ Energy is hoping to make that a thing of the past. To read the full text, click here.
--Bridget O'Sullivan
1 comment:
I'm associated with Recycled Energy Development, which you mention in the post (via a Richard Munson quote). The thing is, we are NOT 5-10 years off from having plenty of waste heat recovery, at least at industrial facilities. It's happening right now. A single waste heat recovery project at a northwest Indiana steel plant generates more clean, fuel-free power than all the grid-connected solar panels in the world combined. EPA and DoE estimates say energy recycling could slash greenhouse emissions by 20%, and that's probably a conservative estimate. This is huge; it needs to become a much bigger part of the energy conversation.
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