Broad Audience Title

Transforming Waste Heat into Electricity Using Flexible Materials

Scientific Title

Integrated Methods to Probe Charge Transport in Semiconducting Polymers

By Julia Lenef
Renewable Energy
iCons Year 4
2018
Executive Summary 

Most power plants in the United States at least 56% of their energy due to heat loss. This equates to an annual loss of over 6.5 quadrillion watt hour from coal, natural gas, nuclear and petroleum power plants--more than the energy in all the gasoline we use in each year. Therefore, this energy waste, also increases carbon emissions to meet the high energy demands of the US. In my senior thesis, I am investigating polymer or plastic thermoelectric materials that can take this waste heat and convert it back into usable electricity, which can serve as one possible solution this complex issue. Plastic thermoelectric are specifically preferable to inorganic thermoelectric due to their low-cost, flexible, non-toxic materials with simple roll-to-roll processing. However, many of these materials have low efficiency in producing electricity from a temperature because there is a lack of understanding of how charge moves in these systems. The plastic thermoelectric materials are also disordered polymers so there are many purposed pathways for electron movement. The goal of my research is to systematically examine the charge-movement in these systems at the nanoscale in the hopes of learning how to design more efficient thermoelectric materials and further reduce the waste heat of energy production. To learn more about these materials, we use an analytical technique including electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) which can reveal the characteristic ways a circuit conducts the flow of charge. We anticipate that EIS and other analytical techniques can probe the unique charge-transport behavior of these thermoelectric materials and suggest ways to improve their efficiency. Once the behavior of these systems is accurately evaluated, we can build better thermoelectric generators to reduce the infamous statistics of energy loss due to heat. 

Problem Keywords 
waste heat
power plants
Scientific Keywords 
semiconducting polymers

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