Thermophotovoltaic
Thermophotovoltaic systems generate electricity from the heat by the conversion of radiated photons into charge carriers. To establish the competitiveness of Thermophotovoltaic systems, as a beneficial solid-state engine in a Concentrator Solar Power Plant, it is important to establish their ability to have an efficiency that is comparable to that of turbines running on Brayton or Rankine Cycles. The focus of the is to maximize the performance of the Thermophotovoltaic conversion process.
Bio Fuels
Compression ignition engines are one of the world’s largest consumers of fossil oil but have energy extraction efficiency limited to 35%. Our group focuses on developing economic biofuels to improve the efficiency of these CI engines and reduce pollutants.
Solar radiation management
Global warming is one of the major problems in the current scenario, arises because of the increase in greenhouse gases. The deliberate injection of particles into the stratosphere has been suggested as a possible geoengineering scheme to mitigate the global warming aspect of climate change. Our group focuses on the impact of particles injection on solar energy output, agriculture harvest and temperature.
Thermoelectric
Managing big data is a thermodynamics problem; decreasing size and increasing performance of electronic devices necessitate the use of liquid cooling to dissipate massive amounts of heat that are generated as a result. In locations such as data centers, CPU cooling is accomplished through the use of air and liquid methods. Currently, the purpose of existing liquid cooling designs is to provide cooling to these high power CPU’s. We have tested and validated a modified liquid cooling design system, flow thermo-electrochemical cell (fTEC), that supplements the current cooling architecture with the ability to harvest energy from the waste-heat rejected from these heat sources.