Nuclear engineer Lonnie Johnson worked on NASA’s Galileo mission, has more than 140 patents, and invented the Super Soaker water gun. But now he’s working on “a potential key to unlock a huge power source that’s rarely utilized today,” reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Waste heat… The Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter, or JTEC, has few moving parts, no combustion and no exhaust. All the work to generate electricity is done by hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. Inside the device, pressurized hydrogen gas is separated by a thin, filmlike membrane, with low pressure gas on one side and high pressure gas on the other. The difference in pressure in this “stack” is what drives the hydrogen to compress and expand, creating electricity as it circulates. And unlike a fuel cell, it does not need to be refueled with more hydrogen. All that’s needed to keep the process going and electricity flowing is a heat source.
As it turns out, there are enormous amounts of energy vented or otherwise lost from industrial facilities like power plants, factories, breweries and more. Between 20% and 50% of all energy used for industrial processes is dumped into the atmosphere and lost as waste heat, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The JTEC works with high temperatures, but the device’s ability to generate electricity efficiently from low-grade heat sources is what company executives are most excited about. Inside JTEC’s headquarters, engineers show off a demonstration unit that can power lights and a sound system with water that’s roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit — below the boiling point and barely warm enough to brew a cup of tea, said Julian Bell, JTEC’s vice president of engineering. Comas Haynes, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute specializing in thermal and hydrogen system designs, agrees the company could “hit a sweet spot” if it can capitalize on lower temperature heat…
For Johnson, the potential application he’s most excited about lies beneath our feet. Geothermal energy exists naturally in rocks and water beneath the Earth’s surface at various depths. Tapping into that resource through abandoned oil and gas wells — a well-known access point for underground heat — offers another opportunity. “You don’t need batteries and you can draw power when you need it from just about anywhere,” Johnson said. Right now, the company is building its first commercial JTEC unit, which is set to be deployed early next year. Mike McQuary, JTEC’s CEO and the former president of the pioneering internet service provider MindSpring, said he couldn’t reveal the customer, but said it’s a “major Southeast utility company.” “Crossing that bridge where you have commercial customers that believe in it and will pay for it is important,” McQuary said…
On top of some initial seed money, the company brought in $30 million in a Series A funding in 2022 — money that allowed the company to move to its Lee + White headquarters and hire more than 30 engineers. McQuary said it expects to begin another round of fundraising soon.
“Johnson, meanwhile, hasn’t stopped working on new inventions,” the article points out. “He continues to refine the design for his solid-state battery…”
I’ll believe it when I see it. I kinda get the impression that the primary purpose of this article is that…
McQuary said it expects to begin another round of fundraising soon.
I don’t disagree, but the article also mentioned that they’ve already sold their first commercial deployment so I don’t think it’s entirely vaporware…?
you mean like Tesla solar tiles???
Earth needs more energy
…does it?
Yes, even without ai it’s better for people to move away from gas. Electric cars, heating and cooking dinner is all moving to electricity.
Yeah, having an abundance of nuclear power is good regardless of the economic system as long as it’s done safely.
Hypothetically, any energy harvested from a zero-emission strategy might at least displace combusting some hydrocarbons.
This dude rules and is a freakin hero. Also love that the greatest invention was pressurized water device and this is pressurized hydrogen device.
ICE cars generate an incredible amount of waste heat.
80% of what you put into a gas tanks is just wasted as heat.
Sun is distributing free energy maybe gathering that will help us. But problem is big petro and coal cant let that happen as there is no monopoly on sun.
with water that’s roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit
barely warm enough to brew a cup of tea
That is scalding hot water brother LOL
It is scalding hot, but I think the key takeaway is that it’s not hot enough to boil into steam, which is our current go-to for harvesting energy from heat.
So after you do your steam turbine and you are left with not-quite boiling water, by today’s standards it is useless for further harvesting for electricity. If this article is as-advertised (a big if), then we can harvest more, adding efficiency to any process that boils water to turn a turbine.
Yup I get it, just don’t like marketing speak and downplaying what we are talking about - it takes a ton of joules to get water that hot and it’s dangerous.
The water in this case is not being heated up for this, it’s waste heat man. It’s already going to be hot.
Everything is dangerous. That’s why we have certification and training.
Where did I say the opposite of anything you are talking about?
The concern for how much energy it takes to heat up the water.
Y’all poopooing on this think about the amount of waste heat generated by industrial processes. This captures that and uses it to reduce the overall demand on the grid.
I always thought there was more to be extracted from waste heat. Similarly I wonder if modern techniques could extract more from mine waste instead of opening more mines.
So like a little removed from this but I always wondered why cant we harvest energy from busy buildings where people are closing and opening doors all the time? The doors typically already even have a motor on them to be handicap accessible and need to slow close anyways. If anything it could generate enough electricity for at least a couple lights or office computers
You’d probably generate less electricity then would be required to create the calories needed to cover opening the now slightly more resistant door.
You’d make it harder to open doors and slower to close, wasting heat in winter and ac in summer.
Almost every commercial door has a door closer rhat does exactly this?
The benefit is trivial compared to the cost
no it doesn’t
Only if we want more AI. And we don’t.
…and electric cars. And green energy.
We’ve had electric car in a major capacity since the late 2010s, why is it all of a sudden this big problem?
AI is a major energy consumer, requiring their own damn nuclear reactors.
Its been a problem for a very long time now, electric cars require large amounts of electricity to charge and that needs to be supplied through the residential grid. Higher use of electric cars means more electricity necessary. Electric cars usage is still going up and that is not likely to change soon. As for the more important part: Lots of power plants are not green, and replacing them means building more power generators. This device converts heat to (green) electricity. How could you possibly see this as a negative?
This device converts heat to (green) electricity. How could you possibly see this as a negative?
in theory.
Lots of these startups fail on practical applications.
I can’t imagine we currently produce enough electricity for every car to be electric.
Plus all the production processes for the cars themselves, and the energy to power them puts off waste heat. Even solar panels benefit from running cooler by having heat removed from them.
