New material makes electricity from waste heat
Researchers at Northwestern University placed nanocrystals of rock salt into lead telluride to create a material that is expected to be able to convert 14 percent of heat waste to electricity, a university release said recently.
"It has been known for 100 years that semiconductors have this property that can harness electricity," chemistry Professor Mercouri Kanatzidis said. "To make this an efficient process, all you need is the right material, and we have found a recipe or system to make this material."
"We can put this material inside of an inexpensive device with a few electrical wires and attach it to something like a light bulb," said Vinayak Dravid, professor of materials science and engineering and co-author of the paper. "The device can make the light bulb more efficient by taking the heat it generates and converting part of the heat, 10 to 15 percent, into a more useful energy like electricity."
Automotive, chemical, brick, glass and other industries that use heat to make products could make their systems more efficient with the use of this scientific discovery, Kanatzidis said.
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Electricity prices in Germany nearly doubled in a year
BERLIN - Record prices for electricity and gas in Germany will continue to rise in the coming months, the dpa agency, citing estimates from the consumer portal Verivox.
According to him, electricity suppliers, in whose area of responsibility there are 13 million households, made an announcement of tariff increases in April, May and June by 19.5%. Gas tariffs increased by an average of 42.3%.
According to Verivox, electricity prices in Germany have approximately doubled over the year - if previously a household with a consumption of 4,000 kWh paid 1,171 euros a year, now the amount has risen to 1,737 euros. Gas prices have risen even more: last year, a household…
