A newly establish venture “Alphabet Energy” came up with its first awe-inspiring product claiming it as the largest thermoelectric generator in the world.
Energy plants mainly discharge titanic size of fuel via heat showing 40 to 80 percent of the total fuel they burn to a crisp. The new innovative device has the features to turn down that wastage, save energy consumption and mitigate carbon emissions up to 3 percent and enable the entities to bank their allocated funds on account of fuel consumption. The 3 percent savage is not looking too much but if we talk in the context of air transportation, it accounts two percent of car emissions reduction worldwide)
The technology that is used in the generator is thermoelectric material which is recently invented by the students of Michigan University and later comes under the knowledge of energy related companies. The thermoelectric materials have a property to transform heat into electricity which has been discovered for decades but were not efficient and too expensive to deal in acute situations such as spacecraft.
Matt Scullin, CEO of the company stated that the device is to be connected along with the exhaust pipe of 1,000 kilowatt generator that will be able to produce enough electricity to preserve the expense of 52,500 liters of diesel fuel per year, and bring prosper impacts over the revenue figures. However, the technology will be even more beneficial for small engines where the savings would be comparatively higher.
The expected initial customers will possibly be gas, oil and mining companies that usually acquire heavy duty generators to yield extra power in remote areas. This technology is going to prove as messiah for those companies engage specifically in above sectors to save millions in fuel. Scullin suggests, “There aren’t many alternatives like this technology which these companies can implement to mitigate costs that much,” he said.
Ali Shakouri, a faculty member at Purdue University stated that, it sounds good to have cost cutting alternative by using thermoelectric material, even though he hasn’t get a chance to inspect the technology.
The economically viable product proposed by Alphabet energy is a complete module that can resolve the energy production concerns effectively by using high amount of waste heat and lead to healthy savings simultaneously. The company aims to prepare another material with same technology that will based on silicon nanowires, which will transfer the considerable amount of energy wasted from heat to electricity
Although, advanced thermoelectric materials have still not been successful to diminish the fuel consumption up to 5 to 6 percent. However, the other alternatives used to consume waste heat involve heating and even cooling near to buildings in towns.
