Comment on New technology could make fridges cheaper and more eco-friendly
CameronDev@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Happy to hear from anyone with a bit more expertise, but this doesn’t sound very promising
Their energetic efficiency is low, in the range of 0.1% to 1% for conversion of heat into electricity.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermogalvanic_cell
Even a 70% improvement doesn’t seem very good. Heatpumps are incredibly efficient, so it would be hard to beat.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
The article is talking about out using them basically in reverse to suck the heat out for ‘free’.
Still no numbers on whole system efficiency and it’ll be hard to beat heat pumps that have 150 years of optimization.
CameronDev@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
The numbers I quoted are the wrong direction, but its hard to imagine the reverse being multiple orders of magnitude more efficient, I think that would violate laws of thermodynamics? This is not my area of expertise though.