asymmetric-thermoelectrochemical-cell-for-harvesting-low-grade-heat

Asymmetric Thermoelectrochemical Cell for Harvesting Low-grade Heat under Isothermal Operation

Low-grade heat is abundantly available in the environment as waste heat. The efficient conversion of low-grade heat into electricity is very difficult. We ...

University of Hong Kong

This study demonstrates that the application of an external electrical potential to a phenyl-sulfonic functionalized graphene (SG)/water suspension distinctly enhances its electrical conductivity via the structural transition from isolated clusters to a 3D SG network. Microstructural and alternating current impedance spectroscopy studies indicate that the surface charge plays an important role in the state of dispersion and connectivity of the SG in the suspension due to the potential-dependent interactions with functional groups on the SG surface in the presence of an external electrical potential. In addition, the conductive SG/ice can be produced via liquid-solid phase transition of the SG/water suspension in the presence of an external electrical potential, which shows a one-order magnitude improvement in electrical conductivity compared with pure ice. The electric-field-tunable property advances the understanding of nanofluid systems and has many potential applications.

Electric-Field-Tunable Conductivity in Graphene/Water and Graphene/Ice Systems.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, as a novel economic lending model, has triggered new challenges on making effective investment decisions. In a P2P lending platform, one lender can invest N loans and a loan may be accepted by M investors, thus forming a bipartite graph. Basing on the bipartite graph model, we built an iteration computation model to evaluate the unknown loans. To validate the proposed model, we perform extensive experiments on real-world data from the largest American P2P lending marketplace-Prosper. By comparing our experimental results with those obtained by Bayes and Logistic Regression, we show that our computation model can help borrowers select good loans and help lenders make good investment decisions. Experimental results also show that the Logistic classification model is a good complement to our iterative computation model, which motivates us to integrate the two classification models. The experimental results of the hybrid classification model demonstrate that the logistic classification model and our iteration computation model are complementary to each other. We conclude that the hybrid model (i.e., the integration of iterative computation model and Logistic classification model) is more efficient and stable than the individual model alone.

A decision support model for investment on P2P lending platform.

Efficient low-grade heat recovery can help to reduce greenhouse gas emission as over 70% of primary energy input is wasted as heat, but current technologies to fulfill the heat-to-electricity conversion are still far from optimum. Here we report a direct thermal charging cell, using asymmetric electrodes of a graphene oxide/platinum nanoparticles cathode and a polyaniline anode in Fe/Fe redox electrolyte via isothermal heating operation. When heated, the cell generates voltage via a temperature-induced pseudocapacitive effect of graphene oxide and a thermogalvanic effect of Fe/Fe, and then discharges continuously by oxidizing polyaniline and reducing Fe under isothermal heating till Fe depletion. The cell can be self-regenerated when cooled down. Direct thermal charging cells attain a temperature coefficient of 5.0 mV K and heat-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 2.8% at 70 °C (21.4% of Carnot efficiency) and 3.52% at 90 °C (19.7% of Carnot efficiency), outperforming other thermoelectrochemical and thermoelectric systems.

Article	Year
Electric-Field-Tunable Conductivity in Graphene/Water and Graphene/Ice Systems. Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany)\| PubMed ID: 28834336	2017
A decision support model for investment on P2P lending platform. PloS one\| PubMed ID: 28877234	2017
Direct thermal charging cell for converting low-grade heat to electricity. Nature communications\| PubMed ID: 31515483	2019

Xun Wang

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