Posted on 05/17/2011 9:36:31 AM PDT by dangerdoc
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Efficiency is a problem with today’s solar panels; they only collect about 20 percent of available light. Now, a University of Missouri engineer has developed a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light, and he plans to make prototypes available to consumers within the next five years.
Patrick Pinhero, an associate professor in the MU Chemical Engineering Department, is developing a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light. Today’s solar panels only collect 20 percent of available light. Patrick Pinhero, an associate professor in the MU Chemical Engineering Department, says energy generated using traditional photovoltaic (PV) methods of solar collection is inefficient and neglects much of the available solar electromagnetic (sunlight) spectrum. The device his team has developed – essentially a thin, moldable sheet of small antennas called nantenna – can harvest the heat from industrial processes and convert it into usable electricity. Their ambition is to extend this concept to a direct solar facing nantenna device capable of collecting solar irradiation in the near infrared and optical regions of the solar spectrum.
Working with his former team at the Idaho National Laboratory and Garrett Moddel, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Colorado, Pinhero and his team have now developed a way to extract electricity from the collected heat and sunlight using special high-speed electrical circuitry. This team also partners with Dennis Slafer of MicroContinuum, Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., to immediately port laboratory bench-scale technologies into manufacturable devices that can be inexpensively mass-produced.
“Our overall goal is to collect and utilize as much solar energy as is theoretically possible and bring it to the commercial market in an inexpensive package that is accessible to everyone,” Pinhero said. “If successful, this product will put us orders of magnitudes ahead of the current solar energy technologies we have available to us today.”
As part of a rollout plan, the team is securing funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and private investors. The second phase features an energy-harvesting device for existing industrial infrastructure, including heat-process factories and solar farms.
Within five years, the research team believes they will have a product that complements conventional PV solar panels. Because it’s a flexible film, Pinhero believes it could be incorporated into roof shingle products, or be custom-made to power vehicles.
Once the funding is secure, Pinhero envisions several commercial product spin-offs, including infrared (IR) detection. These include improved contraband-identifying products for airports and the military, optical computing, and infrared line-of-sight telecommunications.
If their claims are true, they will have no trouble securing dollars from everyday folks.
If they are just looking for a government grant, then they can screw it.
I will take one of those backyard nukes also!
A board painted black collects solar energy. They are using antennas, since light is an EM wave, and antennas turn EM waves into current, I think that the capture is in fact conversion.
I’ve seen the infrared nano-antennae concept before. It is legit as a physical concept, but whether you get 90% efficiency is a whole other subject, especially at all transmitted frequencies. I suspect it is 90% at one wavelength and probably not in the visible spectrum.
Assuming this is legit (a big assumption), the most likely application would be in roofing panels, not free-standing structures. Solar is too volatile to be a primary energy source, at least in most of the world, so it would just be used to supplement other sources.
Personally, should all the tech pan out, I wouldn't mind a 90% efficient solar panel array on my roof with an e-cat reactor in the basement or back yard to provide peak-demand and non-sunlight hours power. Anything that helps my energy consumption be as self-sufficient as possible is a good thing in my book.
Thanks, I have the link but can’t open pdf files at work. I’ll look at it when I get home.
I’m already planning to fly over there with my Popular Mechanics jet pack to pick up a couple or three of these new fangled solar panels!
They've got my attention...
Cool.
They mention they have working models in the infrared frequencies and are working on models that work in the infrared and visible frequencies.
Something I’ve wondered. The general rule of thumb is that there is about 1KW of light energy falling on one square meter. Does this include all frequencies or just visible?
It always winds up that this material uses some exotic element that costs $20,000 an ounce ($40,000 after this article is published) and that we have a three-year supply of.
This is one of many likely outcomes.
In California, despite all the breakthroughs in solar direct to electric conversion, the new solar plants are mirrors, towers and Rankine cycle.
Can anyone say Jimmy Carter?
Wish them luck on developing this, but we're stuck with coal-gas-nuclear for electric generation; well into the foreseeable future.
But it goes to 11.
Hope I’m wrong, but I don’t believe this article.
File it with the ‘water-burning engine’.
This should be national if not world news otherwise.
They are printing antennas not making exotic semiconductor junctions. This should be something that uses common materials.
ping
PVs use the light from the sun these use heat.
I work in this industry. I want this to happen. BUT;
When I see it and test it myself and not just believe it works but know it works I’ll just sit back and observe.
If true it would be wonderful.
However the constituent chemicals that are used to make the raw materials come from??
OIL
Or worse, COAL.
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