Tungsten Oxide Thermal Metamaterial Innovation Helps Bring Waste-heat Harvesting Technology to Power Plants
An international research team has used tungsten oxide thermal metamaterial to control the emission of radiation at high temperatures, an advance that could bring devices able to get efficient waste-heat harvesting technology from power plants and factories. Roughly 50 to 60 percent of the energy generated in coal and oil-based power plants is wasted as heat. However, thermophotovoltaic devices that generate electricity from thermal radiation might be adapted to industrial pipes in factories and power plants, as well as on car engines and automotive exhaust systems, to recapture much of the wasted energy. In new findings, researchers demonstrated how to restrict emission of thermal radiation to a portion of the spectrum most needed for thermophotovoltaic technology. "These devices require spectrally tailored thermal emission at high temperatures, and our research shows that intrinsic material properties can be controlled so that a very hot object glows only in certain colors...