Three weeks ago MIT press released an article highlighting developments in the nebulous field of metamaterials, in this particular case, creating a means in which to control the direction of flow of heat, by means of converting the vibrations caused by heat, into a form that can be more readily manipulated. The article indicates that as understanding of this research becomes deeper it will be possible to develop thermal diodes, making it so heat will only flow one direction. Depending on a range of variables including cost efficacy, overall rate of heat transfer across the thermal diode, size requirements of the meta-materials etc.. a range of cool options could become available. If found to be very expensive, thermal diodes/lenses, would allow for remote sensors to operate without requiring costly batteries, this would make sense in situations where other traditional remote energy sources, solar and solar, make little sense. As cost goes down, cooler options become available, the obvious option is taking advantage of the waste heat from factories or other industrial facilities, where historically the energy density from the waste heat was too low to be captured. The technology I would like to see, just because I'm curious, would be to concentrate the heat that radiates off of nuclear waste onto some kind of generator, either thermo-electric generators or boiling some kind of operating fluid.
Now let's get cray cray, assuming thermal diodes are efficient enough and sufficiently low cost you could theoretically create a network of thermal lenses to concentrate the thermal energy found in extremely deep underground mines that are no longer used for resource extraction. Such concentrated thermal energy would allow for a very different type of geothermal power generators to exist without requiring excessive disruption of the surface environment, beyond low level cooling systems.
An Additional Idea Occurred Recently
This idea is entirely dependent on how the engineering parameters of a thermal diode material, but one field of technologies that could benefit from thermal diodes would be that of solar hot water heaters. Currently solar hot water heaters need to come in a relatively large single assembly. By directly applying a thermal diode underneath the black coating on the pipes used to transfer the heat to the working fluid it would be possible to eliminate the need for the extra weight of the systems glass cover. Designers would have a much greater degree of flexibility when it would come to designing a home solar hot water heater that emphasized aesthetics while still being efficient. (hey we're saying the thermal diodes are magic right now, when I get specs I can make less outrageous proposals)
Now let's get cray cray, assuming thermal diodes are efficient enough and sufficiently low cost you could theoretically create a network of thermal lenses to concentrate the thermal energy found in extremely deep underground mines that are no longer used for resource extraction. Such concentrated thermal energy would allow for a very different type of geothermal power generators to exist without requiring excessive disruption of the surface environment, beyond low level cooling systems.
An Additional Idea Occurred Recently
This idea is entirely dependent on how the engineering parameters of a thermal diode material, but one field of technologies that could benefit from thermal diodes would be that of solar hot water heaters. Currently solar hot water heaters need to come in a relatively large single assembly. By directly applying a thermal diode underneath the black coating on the pipes used to transfer the heat to the working fluid it would be possible to eliminate the need for the extra weight of the systems glass cover. Designers would have a much greater degree of flexibility when it would come to designing a home solar hot water heater that emphasized aesthetics while still being efficient. (hey we're saying the thermal diodes are magic right now, when I get specs I can make less outrageous proposals)
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