Pigment of Blue Jean for thermal energy harvesting

• Main Author: Lau, Nicholas Wee How
• Other Authors: Lee Seok Woo
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Nanoelectronics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/154129
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Low grade heat, which refers to waste or ambient heat from various sources like solar and geothermal energy, has a large distribution due to its occurrence in the environment naturally, and has a low temperature differential with respect to the environment as well. [1] Nearly everything in the world, from our handheld electrical devices to busy airports and vehicles on roads, produces waste heat in some form. Thus, it is challenging to convert such nearly omni-present heat sources into usable electricity. While there exists research into energy harvesting in the form of thermoelectric devices, they face their own respective problems in implementation, cost and efficiency. Hence there exists a research gap in this particular energy harvesting scope, and a recent approach to utilising low-grade heat sources in the form of an effective and low-cost thermal energy harvesting system would be through thermodynamic efficiency cycles. This undergraduate report seeks to investigate how such thermodynamic efficiency cycles, in particular, the thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle (TREC) can be useful to study heat-to-electricity conversion. The TREC will be produced through electrochemical reactions using Prussian Blue Analogue. A particularly significant value can be derived from the thermodynamic efficiency cycles, known as the thermal coefficient. This thermal coefficient will be important and its relation to efficiency for low-grade heat will be highlighted in this project as it can help set a precedent for future energy harvesting applications.