All-Day Thermogalvanic Cells for Environmental Thermal Energy Harvesting

• Main Authors: Boyang Yu, Jiangjiang Duan, Jia Li, Wenke Xie, Hongrun Jin, Rong Liu, Hui Wang, Liang Huang, Bin Hu, Jun Zhou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019-01-01
• Series: Research
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.34133/2019/2460953

Direct conversion of the tremendous and ubiquitous low-grade thermal energy into electricity by thermogalvanic cells is a promising strategy for energy harvesting. The environment is one of the richest and renewable low-grade thermal source. However, critical challenges remain for all-day electricity generation from environmental thermal energy due to the low frequency and small amplitude of temperature fluctuations in the environment. In this work, we report a tandem device consisting of a polypyrrole (PPy) broadband absorber/radiator, thermogalvanic cell, and thermal storage material (Cu foam/PEG1000) that integrates multiple functions of heating, cooling, and recycling of thermal energy. The thermogalvanic cell enables continuous utilization of environmental thermal energy at both daytime and nighttime, yielding maximum outputs as high as 0.6 W m-2 and 53 mW m-2, respectively. As demonstrated outdoors by a large-scale prototype module, this design offers a feasible and promising approach to all-day electricity generation from environmental thermal energy.